xii. sydney symphony and stephen hough, dvorak's new world symphony and mozart piano conc no. 21
i got last minute tickets and it was ok, the conductor mark wigglesworth is very interesting! i'm pretty sure he conducted the dvorak without a score. also his conducting clearly went beyond any notion of marking bars at all, more just shaping the music in somewhat vague ways. anyway interesting.

cvi. atmospheric disturbances, rivka galchen
the 3 out of 5 star average on goodreads perfectly represents my feelings about this book. i suppose it was well written in a way, but the narrator/protagonist makes the premise clear in the 1st sentence, and does not develop beyond that, in fact devolves with no resolution. halfway through i was bored and looking for a hook which didn't materialise. having a part 1 and part 2 implies some kind of difference or development usually, but no, not here. the narrator is hard to identify with, clearly this was the intention, but it just distances the reader. also the narrator being a new yorker was not conveyed at all through his voice, i kept thinking that it was a european book. hence why choose new york as part of the setting? it could have been anywhere.

signor deh non partire

cii. granta book of the family
this started out more like 'book of sons writing about their relationship with whichever parent was more dysfunctional', but then i hit upon the genius idea of reading the female authors only for a while and that fixed things. the last one was by bret easton ellis and i thought it was non-fiction until i realised that the first-person voice was supposed to be female, possibly almost halfway through. one of my favourite things is trying to determine whether a piece is fiction or non-fiction; sometimes it's just not clear and this might actually be a sign of good writing. in my opinion.

ciii. granta 100
one of the better grantas that i have read. great selection and great authors featured.

civ. preincarnate, shaun micallef
a time-travelling vicious cycle, but made hilarious due to micallevian wit. such and such a book received 'an unseasonably warm reception', stuff like that.

cv. werewolves in their youth, michael chabon
i clearly didn't look very closely when i bought this book because only when i started the 2nd 'chapter' did i realised that this was in fact a book of short stories. they were pretty good, michael chabon does good short close-up work.