June 2025 reading round-up

The Scarlet Letters

Summer is already in full swing and we’ve only just had the solstice. Every weekend is busy, as are a lot of these long warm evenings. We’ve seen some great live music, theatre and comedy. It’s frighteningly easy to forget sometimes that awful shit is still happening out there.

Though June is generally considered Pride month, Bristol Pride Day doesn’t happen until 12 July. I am definitely expecting more serious protest vibes than the happy party atmosphere of recent years.

On the music front this month, our friend T managed to get us all tickets to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at the Royal Albert Hall, which was amazing. They not only added a string section but also made use of the huge pipe organ behind the stage. They had rearranged a lot of their songs for the venue, to great effect. It was a little weird to experience songs that started life in tiny New York clubs played by a three-piece punk band, reimagined 25 years later as epic rock songs. But good weird.

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Book review: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

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Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow book cover

Preconceptions and assumptions can be dangerous, or at least misleading. I thought Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin was time-travel SF – I guess I didn’t recognise the Shakespeare reference. But perhaps if I had, I’d have expected something very heavy and “worthy”, and might not ever have read it. Which would have been a true shame as this is a gorgeous novel.

Sam and Sadie first meet in the 1980s as 10-year-olds in an LA hospital and bond by playing computer games. Sam is a patient; Sadie’s sister is a patient. For a while they’re best friends, until an argument leads to them not speaking.

Years later while at university they meet in a train station in Boston, where they are both studying. They gradually grow to be close friends again but old habits die hard and failing to tell each other the whole truth leads to years of misunderstandings and resentments.

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K-drama review: Just Between Lovers

Just Between Lovers poster

The drama Just Between Lovers (JTBC 2017–2018), also known as Rain or Shine, is at the more serious end of the K-dramas I have watched. I really enjoyed it despite not having expected something with this tone.

The story’s background is loosely based on the real-life disaster in 1995 when Sampoong Department Store in Seoul collapsed. In reality 502 people were killed and 937 injured. In the TV show, the collapse of the fictional S-Mall kills 48 people and the drama focuses on two of the survivors 10 years later.

Lee Kang-doo (played by Lee Jun-ho) and Ha Moon-soo (Won Jin-ah) both lost a family member when S-Mall collapsed and they are still dealing with grief as well as their own trauma. Kang-doo was badly injured in the disaster and still struggles with physical pain as well as nightmares about the time he spent trapped in the rubble. He works in temporary construction jobs. He acts tough but is sweet at his core.

Moon-soo has trained as an architect specializing in safety regulations. She has her life together but suffers from her mother’s alcoholism. And though she has lost much of her memory from the day S-Mall collapsed, it still haunts her. She’s practical and not easily phased.

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May 2025 reading round-up

Slightly belated wrap-up of the month that was May. I’ve already written about our lovely holiday in Devon at the start of the month. Otherwise it was a relatively quiet month of beautiful weather and apparently overdoing the physical activity as my shoulder is plaguing me again.

I also managed to end the month with a bit of a lupus flare, which often happens in May. Right now I am really very tired, struggling to concentrate, headachy, a little dizzy – hence not posting this monthly round-up sooner.

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Far from the maddening crowds

Devon is nice. Holidays are nice. These are my wholly original observations. The world right now feels stressful, the daily news is awful and in order to keep on fighting for what I believe in, I badly needed a break. So we took ourselves off to Devon for a week. Dartmoor isn’t the easiest place to holiday without a car but we made it work and it was pretty awesome in the end. We had ideal weather, stayed in a cute dog-friendly glamping pod thingy and all got weirdly used to seeing very few people. Which may have ruined the dog for city life – she’s going to need a week or two to get used to people again.

Thanks to a very generous Christmas present from Tim, I now have a new SLR camera that’s much more portable than the old one I had basically given up on for being too much weight to carry around. So for the first time in years I took a bunch of photos on this holiday on a real actual camera and they really are so much better than phone photos. Which was handy as within a couple of minutes’ walk of our holiday park we were in ancient woodland and a mile later on the moor itself. And it was all beautiful.

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Book review: Roots by Alex Haley

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Roots coverRoots is one of those cultural touchstones that I’ve heard referenced all my life, but like most Brits I had never read the book or watched the seminal TV series that closely followed its publication. Then I watched the 2016 remake mini series – largely because I knew the cast included Regé-Jean Page – and immediately added the book to my wishlist.

It’s a big book – almost 700 pages of small print. So it took me a while to pick it up and a while to read it. I also found it a slow read to begin with, but I’m glad I persisted.

For those not familiar with Roots by Alex Haley, it’s the saga of a single family. It begins with the birth of Kunte Kinte in a small village in 18th century Gambia. We follow his life closely until at age 16 he is kidnapped into slavery and transported to the southern US. The book then follows generations of his descendants, beginning with those enslaved like him, and later on, free African-Americans up to Haley himself.

It’s this last detail that was both revolutionary and controversial. The idea that it was possible for the living American descendants of enslaved Africans to trace their family history, that their connection to their roots had not necessarily been severed – no-one had demonstrated that before. Roots inspired a massive increased interest in genealogy, particularly among African-Americans. Now, there is some question as to whether Haley got his research right – many people have picked holes in it both at the time of publication and ever since. I really don’t care if he was actually related to people with these exact names and biographies. I think the concept, and the huge cultural impact of centring these lives and experiences outweighs all that.

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April 2025 reading round-up

It feels like midsummer here in Bristol. Which is kinda lovely but also kinda terrifying on a climate-catastrophe level.

April was busy, mostly with fun things. We made our own spiced rum, went fossil hunting in Lyme Regis and saw the very excellent poet-musician Joshua Idehen perform.

April has also been a shitshow politically, especially for trans people in the UK. I am ashamed of my country right now. I’m trying to help by writing to my MP, donating to the Good Law Project and generally being vocal in my solidarity. Trans rights are human rights. No women are made safer by legitimizing the exclusion and ill treatment of a subset of women. I truly hope this is a short-term setback on an overall upward trajectory and that things will get better.

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It’s Easter, it’s readathon time

Long weekend plans

Pretty much every Easter I get 3 or 4 days entirely to myself – no work, no Tim or other family, no commitments. Just me and whatever I want to do. Well, okay, for the past couple of years I’ve had the dog for company too. So I go for walks, cook myself nice food, buy and eat Easter eggs. But most of all – I read.

I don’t set myself any targets or rules. I try to choose from my existing TBR because let’s face it, there are over 100 books sat in my bedroom waiting for my attention. But if a dog walk should happen to take us to a bookshop, then who am I to ignore the call of fate?

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Book review: Parable of the Sower by Octavia E Butler

Parable of the Sower book cover

Thank you again to the organisers of the Banned Book Club on BlueSky for prompting me to read this modern classic of dystopian fiction, Parable of the Sower by Octavia E Butler. I listened to the audio book read by Lynne Thigpen, which meant I couldn’t highlight quotes but it did really bring it alive.

In diary entries starting from 2024, teenager Lauren details what it takes to survive in an alternate California. The US is increasingly unstable between severe climate change; escalating privatisation of resources and services; and a scary drug that gives users a high from watching fire burn. Lauren lives in a gated community with her Black preacher father, Hispanic stepmother and gaggle of stepbrothers.

A gated community sounds fancy, but this is just an ordinary neighbourhood on the outskirts of LA of people who are at best lower middle class. They have had to put up walls, rigged alarms, set up 24-hour watches. They seem at first to be managing well. Several families grow some food in their gardens; one family breeds rabbits for food; most families have one person with a paying job. They trade between themselves, the teenagers date each other, the parents take turns teaching essential life skills to the children.

But they are under constant threat of robbery, violence, fire. When they leave the neighbourhood for weekly shooting practice they must keep constant watch for attacks from humans and feral dogs.

Added to this, Lauren has hyper empathy, literally feeling the pain and ecstasy of any people near her. Which is not helpful when surrounded by violence. She knows that worse times are coming and tries to encourage friends to prepare but they reject her warnings. All she can do is prepare herself.

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March 2025 reading round-up

Three-cornered leek

The sun has started to show its face; the clocks have changed; our cherry tree is in full blossom. The herb seeds I planted a month ago are varying from just peeking through the surface to recognisable plants on various windowsills around the house. I do like spring.

Health-wise, I’ve been getting out on my bike at least once a week and even started running again. My shoulder isn’t 100% recovered but I’m inching closer.

I joined BlueSky last year and so far my favourite part is the Banned Book Club, which names a different book each month to discuss. This month’s selection was Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler and I’m so glad I was pushed to finally read this terrifying modern masterpiece. It’s definite a good candidate for discussion. In fact, I think the discussion prompts really helped me to process this challenging read.

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