May Consumption Diary

MUSIC

I saw Big League at The Crown at the start of the month. They ended the show with a cover of 'Everything Flows'. *Chefs kiss*

BIOGRAPHICAL INTERLUDE

I went to the Auckland Writers Festival in May to:

• announce the winner of the $65,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the Ockham NZ Book Awards ceremony on the Wednesday night
• chair a solo session with the winner (Ingrid Horrocks) on the Friday morning
• make the most of my festival participant lanyard and check out as many other sessions as possible. Mick Herron! Tony Tulathimutte! Karen Hao!

The vibes were good. Attendance and book sales records were broken. It was a good way to put a bow on my Ockhams judging experience. Time to cross back over the line and get ready to be judged again...

BOOKS

All the books listed below, plus these three which I read/read read earlier to prep for my session with Ingrid at AWF, but had to keep shtum until the award was announced:

• Where We Swim by Ingrid Horrocks (non-fiction, NZ, physical, 2021)
• Travelling with Augusta by Ingrid Horrocks (non-fiction, NZ, physical, 2003
• Mapping the Distance by Ingrid Horrocks (poetry, NZ, physical, 2010)

Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon (novel, audiobook, US, 2025) 

I haven't read a Pynchon novel in years, and the start of Shadow Ticket is intoxicating. The wacky names, the hep lingo, the humour and paranoid fantasies. I was like, Why did I stop reading Pynchon? But about a third of the way through, as the novel was bouncing from one paranoid vision to the next and the characters remained vessels to spout and conspiracy and patois, I was like, Oh yeah.

Such Great Heights: The Complete Cultural History of the Indie Rock Explosion by Chris DeVille (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 2025)

I enjoyed listening to the playlist of songs mentioned at the start of each chapter more than the book itself. By no means "complete" and kind of facile.

We Pretty Pieces of Flesh by Colwill Brown (novel (in stories), audiobook, UK, 2025)

Very good but should come with a surgeon general's warning that can lead to omission of definite articles (it's narrated in a very specific Doncaster voice).

Necropolitics by Achille Mbembe (non-fiction, audiobook, Cameroon, translated, 2011)

Gotta say, like with Franz Fanon, I struggle with this kind of theoretical writing, especially as an audiobook. So much abstraction, it's hard to get a toehold.

Vigil by George Saunders (novel, audiobook, US, 2026)

I was asked to review this at the start of the year but had to turn it down as I was still immersed in Ockhams judging duties. On the plus side, I'm glad I did because I didn't enjoy this book despite loving Saunders (more accurately, Saunders' short fiction and non-fiction). 

On the other hand, maybe if I had read it in hardcopy rather than listened to the over-produced, ensemble-narrated audiobook, maybe I would have found more redeeming features. 

As it is, you can basically take my views of Lincoln in the Bardo from 2017 out of the freezer and reheat them here. 

Don't Burn Anyone at the Stake Today by Naomi Alderman (non-fiction, audiobook, UK, 2025)

I think most of these books (non-fiction about a modern malady situated within historical or theoretical framework) are twice as long as they should be, but then I consume this 4 hour audiobook and feel underwhelmed... so what do I know?

The Nights are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar (novel, audiobook, Germany, translated, 2025)

The sections set in Germany felt realer/deeper than the earlier ones in Iran... so I was not surprised to learn Bazyar was born in Germany to Iranian immigrant parents and wanted to use the book to explore the experience of her forebears.

FILM & TV

Weapons

Delores Claiborne

The Crash

Welcome to Wrexham Season 5 (eps 1-4)

Quite a lot of Super Rugby, the Wahs and wrestling.