i have little preamble except that my yearly roundup is a touch late. my reading took a little dip and perhaps i found it difficult to find anything really amazing on all the axes of plot, character, writing, and relevance. perhaps my expectations have been too high? or have i been reading for pleasure on purpose and therefore avoiding the harder work of a deeper more involved work with a greater payoff. can i blame social media with its near-instant gratification like everyone else?
some book words:
i finished reading 61 books, of which i highly recommend the following:
- i keep my exoskeletons to myself (marisa crane): excellence in character, exploration of the human condition, humour, via a guise of a sci-fi contrivance which nevertheless is very successful. one of my favourite books of the last few years.
- big swiss (jen beagin): some books set themselves up to problem-solve their way out of a manufactured extreme combination of circumstances. this one was compelling reading.
- the bigness of the world (lori ostlund): great situational writing, comedy. i will be revisiting.
- biography of X, and pew (catherine lacy): audacious!! fiction in the guise of creative non-fiction in the first instance, and, a fine exploration of categorisation vs humanisation of a person within society. i look forward to the next books from this author.
- yours for the taking (gabrielle korn): many topics of relevance brought together in a pretty seamless way, via sci-fi hand-wavy mechanism that is really quite believable. differentiation of complex characters was done rather strikingly yet efficiently.
some film discourse:
courtesy of a very successful sydney film festival on my part (my part involved choosing films by their titles and from debut filmmakers) i enjoyed many films this year! highlights included:
- tar: there was unhappy internet discourse from several fronts (lesbians, classical music, classical music lesbians) but i thought (as a classical music semi-nerd) that it was fucking hilarious. the cellist doesn't know the relationship between daniel barenboim and jacqueline du pre?? a very serious half-hour buildup to the final shot?? excellent stuff. my sister and i laughed for 10 minutes straight as we left the cinema.
- aftersun
- women talking
- blue jean
- snow and the bear
- nothing compares: several moments of silence for sinéad o'connor, who was incomparable.
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