July 2022 reading round-up
Well, July was a bit full. We went on holiday to South Wales with my whole family. We had a record-breaking heatwave that’s an ominous sign of things to come. Beckett nearly had to have surgery but then didn’t. I took myself on lots of solo bike rides for the fun of cycling.
I’ve been taking advantage of the (non-extreme) good weather by taking myself into the garden after work most days with a blanket, a book and the dog. Sometimes there is also wine.
Just over a week ago I went to theatre for the first time since 2019, to see Les Miserables with my Mum. I loved it, just as I did the first time I watched it on stage when I was 18. And Mum loved it just as much as when she last saw it at least a decade before that even. As I expected, it made me cry, but not just because it’s such a moving storyline with music and lyrics designed to give the tear ducts a workout. The first couple of big rousing numbers made me cry from the sheer weight of the experience of being in a theatre filled with a couple of thousand people listening to incredible singers. I suspect I’d have a similar reaction if I went to a gig right now.
Mum reminded me that after she first saw Les Mis, Dad bought her the book – in two volumes because it’s so long – and she ploughed her way through it increasingly slowly. I can’t say her lukewarm reaction to it is very enticing, but on the other hand she did stick with it, so maybe I should give it a go sometime?
What I did read this month was six novels, a couple of which were not what I expected. The Glass Hotel is by Emily St John Mandel, who previously wrote the excellent sci-fi Station Eleven. Even though I knew when I bought it that The Glass Hotel isn’t sci-fi, part of me kept expecting a sci-fi twist and I think that stopped me from appreciating it for what it was. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, on the other hand, I expected to be more biting on the matter of racism in small-town America. That was part of it, but it was much more about different approaches to motherhood, and how our circumstances are so much of who we are.
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