This Fluid Thrill Awards 2023: Best Reading

This list is all about the best books I read in 2023, not necessarily those that came out this year.

I've done this before. See: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, & 2010.

I read 59 books in 2023. The first time since 2018 that I didn't crack 60. But close to the average of 62 per annum from 2010 (if you exclude 2013-2016 when I didn't keep great records, in part because I wasn't reading or blogging as much).

More graphs and junk later. Let's get to the top 10!!

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (novel, physical book, NZ, 2023)

What I said about it in February:

Potentially the best book I'll read this year and it's only Feb. If you loved The Luminaries you'll love this. Don't let the thriller billing lead you astray (though it does get thrilling) - this is a novel that revels in moving fully rendered, psychologically complex characters around the stage and getting them together at opportune/inopportune times (or, excitingly, for me at least, alone: a couple of these lonely, quiet moments seem to act as tent poles for the three act structure). 

If you are one of the people who talk openly about never finishing The Luminaries, when in the last 10 years did you start admitting this like it was a badge of honour? Go take a hard look at yourself in the mirror, then read Birnam Wood, though you might find it too slow as well. In which case, I've got nothing for you. I guess you don't need to be devastated as deeply as I do. 

Nothing further, your honour.

Foster by Claire Keegan (novella, audiobook, Ireland, 2010)

I read three very short books by Keegan this year. Foster was the first to be published by the second I read, and here's what I said about it in May:

It's probably only a short story, but it's packaged as a standalone book, much like Small Things Like These. Loved this one. Every books should be this short.

But, but, but! I didn't like So Late in the Day, when I read it toward the end of the year, and felt it didn't work as a standalone book. So maybe only great books should be this short.

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson (novel, audiobook, US, 2020)

Here's what I said about it in May:

Another kind of novel that doesn't care much for things like character development or careful observation at the micro-level. This is all about the macro: what if poor performance against the Paris Agreement meant there was a Ministry for the Future to try and drive intergenerational justice (and what if that needed to be complemented by a dark-wing to get stuff done without bureaucracy). I got very depressed to begin with (I deal with this shit every day, so nothing was a surprise, it was more like: why I am listening to this while I work in my garden?!) but it kind of justified this depression through the journey it goes from this launching point. 

To which I'll add: it's the kind of book people who've read bring up in conversation (and maybe even some of those who haven't read it). I think it's even influencing the framing of some climate solutions, and/or reporting thereof. Who says fiction has lost its power?

Lioness by Emily Perkins (novel, audiobook, NZ, 2023)

I listened to this audiobook while in Europe. Specifically, lying beside the pool at the house in the Algarve we'd rented with our friends from Germany. So: not normal life (and not wholly consistent with my admiration for Kim Stanley Robinson and my day job tackling carbon emissions). But it felt appropriate to be living like the 1% while immersed in Perkins story of a rich man's second wife and the slow unravelling of everything. 

Just who is the lioness? Is it Therese/Theresa, or her more forthright neighbour, Claire? Can there be only one?

Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You by Lucinda Williams (memoir, audiobook, US, 2023)

This is another audiobook I listened to on my trip (hence no contemporaneous micro-review to quote here). I love Williams' album, Car Wheels on a Dusty Road, but couldn't profess to knowing her full back catalogue or anything much about her life before reading this book. And it served to both point me to albums and songs I should listen to intently (hello, 'Pineola'), and, more importantly, leave me with a strong impression of the human being behind the words, her musical family, her prolonged naievty, her relationships with men, some of whom are equally lauded musicians. 

Martin Dressler by Steven Millhauser (novel, audiobook, US, 1997)

What I said about it in June:

To read Millhauser is to flirt with fables and the fantastic, but never quite cross over. It's fascinating. I think I prefer his shorter works, where you spend more time - proportionately - on the knife's edge.

Yes, but, actually, in hindsight, this was one of the novels I remember most vividly from my reading this year. And part of this is from the accumulation of detail, the slow edging away from diecast reality, that only a novel can deliver. 

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (novel, audiobook, UK, 2009)

What I said about it in February:

Yeah, okay, I get it now.

Audition by Pip Adam (novel, physical book, NZ, 2023)

A sample of what I said about it in my review for Landfall:

Both structurally and thematically, the closing seventy pages feel akin to the nocturnal swim in The New Animals—we are pulling a thread of strangeness and following wherever it may take us. Sometimes psychedelic, sometimes just plain stoned, but always surreal. Free of earthly forces and pre-eminent Western ideologies, might there be a chance for Alba, Drew and Stanley to remember and reconcile the past, heal, and move beyond?

Audition remixes the tricks and conceits of Adam’s earlier books in such a way that it’s hard not to think about it as a kind of capstone... 

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid (novel, audiobook, US, 2019)

Here's what I said about it in May:

I grew up with a father who loved rock documentaries so I enjoyed this. Spent a lot of time wondering why others who might be less of an anorak when it comes to music would enjoy it - the love triangle never quite joins up, which means it skirts around the worst cliches of these kinds of tails but it doesn't really have a huge amount of tension to drive the narrative forward. 

Shortly thereafter, I read Jenkins Reid's Carrie Soto is Back, which, despite also liking sports stories, I enjoyed less. I haven't seen the Daisy Jones TV show, but I did enjoy the album. Will it make my top ten albums of the year??

(Spoiler alert: No, it won't, but it would definitely make my top ten albums by a fictional band list.)

The Bell by Iris Murdock (novel, audiobook, UK, 1958)

One of the last books I read in 2023, and one of the earliest written. There's definitely a contrast between the depth and complexity in a book like this and, say, something by Taylor Jenkins Reid. The thing I sometimes forget, when reading mostly contemporary fiction, albeit across a range of genres, is that writers now held up to be literary greats are, so often, funny. And it's true that a brand of non-LOL humour provides the little bubbler outboard motor that kept things moving in The Bell. All the characters are faintly ridiculous. Murdoch is also a great teller. The opening of the novel is an onslaught of telling (as opposed to showing) and it's an absolute hoot. You can show me the glint of the moonlight on the blade, but I'll enjoy it more if you've told me how she got married to the wrong man, became estranged and has now decided to return to him in a rollicking dozen pages first.

---

2023 reading year statistics

Some years I set targets for diversity for the reading year ahead. Others I just wing it. I winged it in 2023 and my reading wasn't that diverse...

And only 9 of the 59 books I read in 2023 had non-white authors. Interestingly, no Australians, which must be a first, no Asian or African or South Americans, either. Sheesh.

For 2024, I'm going to set some reading targets:

• At least ten single-author poetry collections
• At least one book from every continent
• At least four books in translation
• At least four books by Australians
• At least five different genres of novel.

Consumption Diary - September-December 2023

Four months. 

Dog dramas, kid conundrums, my own health hobblements (lingering costochondritis). 

A depressing election result and ever-more-depressing as the coalition of cut-backs moves into delivery (or de-delivery... livery?). 

But I am looking forward to making my best of 2023 lists, which means revisiting good stuff and wielding (imaginary) power. My sense is that it was a very good year for albums and post-prestige TV, but it will be slimmer pickin's on the reading front. 

Check back in early Jan (promises, promises) for the actual, official, lofty-but-also-wholesome-and-grounded, This Fluid Thrill 2023 awards.

MUSIC - SEPTEMBER & OCTOBER

Speaking of awards: best gig of the year was Black Belt Eagle Scout w/ Mount Eerie at the end of September. The official billing was BBES was supporting Mount Eerie, but BBES was who I was excited about and they didn't disappoint (despite being limited to a two piece due to the cost of gigging crisis). And then said two-piece formed the backing band for Mount Eerie (normally just Phil Elverum) and they rocked out way more than I expected.

Also, pour one out for Dive, just one more Dunedin venue to fall by the wayside.

BOOKS

Exit Stage Left: The Curious Afterlife of Pop Stars by Nick Duerden (non-fiction, audiobook)

Bodies: Life and Death in Music by Ian Winwood (non-fiction, audiobook)

This Is Memorial Device by David Keenan (novel, audiobook) - been on a bit of a music book kick lately.

The Fifth Season: The Broken Earth, Book 1 by N. K. Jemisin (novel, audiobook)

Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention by Johann Hari (non-fiction, audiobook)

I put off reading Hari's previous book, Lost Connections, which was about depression, for almost two years, but when I did it caused a minor breakthrough in my own personal life. I noted the changes I made when I put Lost Connections in my top ten reads of 2020.

(Interestingly, I had forgotten Hari's book had any role in the decisions I made in 2020/21 until I went back and re-read the two posts linked to above.)

I did a similar thing with Hari's next book, Stolen Focus. It took be about a year to start listening to it, and then I had to stop after two chapters because it felt too close to the bone listening to this as an audiobook while doing dishes, cycling or some other activity that probably should be an opportunity for meditative reflection. About ten months later I returned to it, mainly because I plan on cancelling my Audible subscription (dirty ol' Amazon) and felt obliged.

Am I going to quit social media now? It's not like I'm massively online. But I do think I'll download Freedom app to cut off the internet for designated periods. 

So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan (standalone short story, audiobook) - I loved Foster. I liked Small Things Like These. But So Late in the Day wasn't for me. It's a short story. Why is it a standalone book? It's not enough. It's too on the nose. It needs to be surrounded by sibling stories that complement and contrast and round off some of the nosey edges.

The Bell by Iris Murdock (novel, audiobook) - Loved it.

Jewish Space Lasers by Mike Rothschild (non-fiction, audiobook)

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue (novel, audiobook)

The Hard Way (10th Reacher novel) by Lee Child (novel, audiobook)

High Heat by Lee Child (standalone short story, audiobook) - After reading another Reacher novel, and falling out with Claire Keegan, I checked out a standalone Reacher short for comparison. Funnily enough, I have more vivid recollection of this story than The Hard Way.

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman (umm, audiobook) - sorry, I just can't get into the work of someone who signs off as Neil Gaiman, visionary.

Āria by Jessica Hinerangi (poetry, e-book)

Classic American Poetry by various authors (poetry, audiobook)

Dear Girls by Ali Wong (non-fiction, audiobook)

The Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach (novel, audiobook)

Fungi of Aotearoa: A Curious Forager's Field Guide by Liv Sisson (non-fiction, physical book) 

My Christmas present to myself. The first few chapters felt repetitive, perhaps worsened by the fact I'd previously read many of the books Sisson uses for reference (Robin Wall Kimmerer, Melvyn Sheldrake, Michael Pollen, plus work on Hua Parakore). 

And when I got home after my trip to Queenstown, it had clearly been a wet week in Dunedin and my lawn was sprouting 'shrooms... though I couldn't find them using this field guide :( 

Might have to go back to those early chapters!!

Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut (novel, physical book)

My final read of the year was my first re-read (and one of only a couple of physical books). It was on the shelf at the house we rented in Queenstown between Xmas and New Years. I'd recently rediscovered the mini-essay I wrote for the Iowa City Writers Festival in 2013: The Vonnegut Effect: Entering the Potato Barn, when Academic.com wanted to add it to my profile (LOL). So of course I dived back into the world of Rabo Karabekian.

The thing that stood out to me this time around was the pacing, specifically the way new characters are introduced throughout the novel. It's so measured. And there's no wasted characters (Sam Wu, Celeste, Fred Jones). It'd be cool to graph all of the character mentions, like Ngrams, and visualise way the supporting cast are rolled out...

FILM & TV

A Murder at the End of the World - I loved the OA, for all it's rough edges and over-reaches. A Murder at the End of the World was not it. Bad dialogue. Obvious big bad. 

Squid Game: The Challenge - Season 1

Bodies - Limited Series

Last Stop Larrimah

Taskmaster UK Season 16

Taskmaster Australia Season 1

Welcome to Wrexham Season 2

Alone Seasons 7-9

Stavros Halkias: Fat Rascal

T2 Trainspotting

Rudy

Music and Lyrics

The Lost City

Sport (basketball, rugby and cricket world cups, start of another NBA season: GO KINGS, and some NFL)

PRODUCTION INTERLUDE

I'll be taking up a 3-week mini-residency at the Michael King Writers Centre in Auckland at the start of winter next year.

My review of Pip Adam's Audition was published in November. (Minor disappointment: they didn't use my suggested title: "Grow, Don't Tell").

In December, I took part in a Creative Impact Lab on Climate Change, hosted by the Otago Museum and funded by the Leonardo Institute/US Embassy. It runs through to February, so we'll see where it goes...

Oh, and the story the opens my debut (and thus far only) short story collection, 'Seeds', was included in the Penguin New Zealand Anthology: 50 stories for 50 years in Aotearoa. Must be time to corral a second story collection and give the anthologists some new options!

MUSIC - NOVEMBER & DECEMBER

June, July, August 2023 consumption diary

MUSIC - JUNE

Maybe it's more appropriate to call this three-month update an emissions diary, as my family of four flew to Europe and back in June and July - perfectly timing our stay with family in Italy to coincide with the heatwave (what were we thinking?), then got a puppy (what the fuck were we thinking?).

As I said in my last post, I rationalised the trip as it stacked business travel for my wife to the UK and Portugal with downtime in the the Algarve with our friends, then said family time in Northern Italy. My daughter (10) hadn't been overseas since she was 11 months old (coming back from our semester in Iowa) and my son (8) had never left the country. And we aren't planning on going anywhere else anytime soon, financial and environmental limitations being aligned in this respect.

But I still felt fuckin' bad about it.

And then we're over there and people are fainting in the heat and getting burns from the footpath and the next day it's hailing and ice floes are careening through Milan and people are spouting conspriacy talking points about the 15 minute city and not believing cows contribute to climate change until they see the research (fuckin' LOOK) and the there's fuckin' Dubai, where we spent a couple nights on the way back to break up the trip home, which is like Total Recall-style, massive infrastructure spend to support life and luxury in an inhospitable place, built on the back of the fossil fuels that (ruminant animals aside) have fucked the rest of us... And so I get back to my desk at the University of Otago as the Net Carbon Zero Programme Manager, trying to get our 30,000 tonnes of CO2-equivalent in 2022 (down from 49k pre-pandemic), down below 20,000 by the end of the decade, and keep these gross tracking down and down beyond 2030, while connecting with others so that what we're doing can have a ripple effect and maybe 10x our impact, or 100x, but whatever-x we do, others are probably going to take advantage and choose growth over justice, profit over planet, now over next. 

And then I'm supposed to pick up by doctorate, looking at sustainability cultures within government organisations and how they response to the dictates of the Carbon Neutral Government Programme...

And I think maybe writing a pissant short story isn't such a daft thing to do while Rome approaches melting point.

And maybe as we approach melting point it's time to finally let the walls between booky-me and worky-me dissolve and coalesce and just do what feels right at the time.

Maybe.

BOOKS

Cousins - Patricia Grace (novel, audiobook, NZ)

Flux - Jinwoo Chong (novel, audiobook)

A Thousand Ships - Natalie Haynes (novel, audiobook)

Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You - Lucinda Williams (memoir, audiobook)

Getting Lost - Annie Ernaux (memoir, audiobook)

Everything is Beautiful & Everything Hurts - Josie Shapiro (novel, audiobook, NZ)

Golden Days - Caroline Barron (novel, audiobook, NZ)

Lioness - Emily Perkins (novel, audiobook, NZ)

Nothing to See - Pip Adam (novel, ebook, NZ)

Audition - Pip Adam (novel, physical book, NZ)

Poor People with Money - Dominic Hoey (novel, audiobook, NZ)

Sellout: The major-label feeding frenzy that swept punk, emo, and hardcore 1994-2007 - Dan Ozzi non-fiction, audiobook) - the rightful heir to Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life, which was a foundational book for the failed novel I wrote during my MA in Creative Writing about an indie band that all individually want/need to become famous but can't admit it to each other and thus must connive their way to infamy behind each others backs... This book slots in between the pre-Grunge alternative scene of Azerrad's book and the late-90s/early00's slacker indie (think Pavement) of my manuscript (written in 2006). I can't say Ozzi's scene is my favourite musically speaking (At the Drive-in, Jimmy Eat World and Green Day were the only bands that get full chapters I've ever had much time for), but it's a great book.

MUSIC - JULY

Film & TV

The Bear - Season 2 - sometimes who and how you watch a show has a big influence over how you react to it. Season 1 I watched with my wife who really dislikes shouty shows. Season 1 was A VERY SHOUTY SHOW. (She also dislikes ranty books, an example she'd give is Phillip Roth). So I watched Season 2 myself (sometimes on the TV while she was doing a puzzle, sometimes on my phone in bed while we took turns sleeping downstairs in the first fortnight of having the puppy and needing to be handy if it needed to pee in the night). I was swept up in the feast of the seven fishes (ep.6). I cried at the end of Richie's episode (#7). I listened to The Watch podcast's 3-part breakdown of the series as I made it through each chunk, then their interview with co-showrunner Christopher Storer, who spoke about how Season 2 needed to be lighter (incl. visually) and less shouty than Season 1. I communed with the content. I loved it. I might go back and rewatch Season 1 then get my wife to join me next time through Season 2 (maybe closer to Season 3, whenever that may drop).

Colin from Accounts - Season 1

Black Mirror - Season 6

Alone - Seasons 7,8, 9 (all those available on TVNZ+, though I just noticed Season 5 is on Netflix...) - the TV version of whale song or ambient rainfall while I make the kids' lunches in the mornings

Quarterback - Season 1

Muscles & Mayhem: American Gladiators - Season 1

The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin Keystone Collection and Chaplin (biopic starring Robert Downey Jr) - there was a Chaplin collection on Emirates in-flight entertainment

Inside Man

John Wick 4

Dune

Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond

David Brent: Life on the Road

The Brothers Grimsby (abandoned midway)

Champions (Woody Harrelson bball coach flick)

Taskmaster NZ - Season 4 (eps 1-4 so far)

The History of the Minnestota Vikings (Dorktown) - eps 1-5

MUSIC - AUGUST

May consumption diary

MUSIC

So I heard 'Give Me Back My Man' for the first time in May 2023. The B-52's had always seemed a novelty act to me. 'Love Shack' being trashed in the Fat Ladies Arms when I was 18 probably didn't help. But holy hecka, this song. It's like the sort of thing I'd go crazy over if you said it was the Bush Tetras or something similarly obscure. But the B-52's?

Blink 182 was wrong. I guess finding out bands you'd dismissed your whole life are actually amazing is growing up.

BOOKS

Boxer by Ryan Pinkard (non-fiction, physical book, 2022)

I love Bloomsbury's 33 1/3 series. I pitched to write the book on Monster Magnet's Powertrip back in 2018, but didn't make the cut. Hard to know whether it was their view about the potential audience for any book about Monster Magnet, or their view about the version of the book I pitched (with two sample chapters), or both. 

Boxer is one of my favourite albums. I trashed it during my year of a million words (2008), when I wrote most of my first book, A Man Melting, and book and album have become entwined since then. Pinkard's book is a pretty straight-forward account. There's one intrusion of the "I" voice in a footnote during the book, and an I-forward epilogue... I guess I still prefer these pocket-sized books to be more than biographies of an album thanks to the challenge of having less words to play with.

As another aside, it did make me feel bad for falling out of live with The National after High Violet. The reason Boxer was so important to me in 2008 was because it was such good writing music, and I was writing a lot. The album was a grower. While I'm probably still right that The National haven't gone far enough into new territory in the last 15 years, I haven't listened to new albums 5, 6, 7, 8 times in close succession. It doesn't help they got super popular and it kinda feels too true-to-label, normcore, beardy dad to like The National... I always think of the kid in the Seattle grunge doco, Hype, who has cotton buds (or cigarettes?) stuck up his nose and bemoans everyone is starting to like the bands he liked so now he needs to find something else.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (novel, audiobook, US, 2001)

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace (short fiction, audiobook, US, 1999)

Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility - Edited by Rebecca Solnit & Thelma Young Lutunatabua (non-fiction, audiobook and ebook, 2023)

I'm a Fan by Sheena Patel (novel, audiobook, UK, 2022) - I was not a fan.

M Train by Patti Smith (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 2015)

Martin Dressler by Steven Millhauser (novel, audiobook, US, 1997)

To read Millhauser is to flirt with fables and the fantastic, but never quite cross over. It's fascinating. I think I prefer his shorter works, where you spend more time - proportionately - on the knife's edge.

BIOGRAPHICAL INTERLUDE

The nuclear family is going to Europe in three weeks. We're trip-stacking (wife is going for a conference in UK and site visit for work in Portugal; we're meeting friends from Germany in the Algarve who we haven't seen in person since our co-honeymoon in NZ; then taking the kids to meet their cousins in Italy and connect with that part of their whakapapa)... but it still feels WRONG. Like, our household carbon will be about 4x higher this year than last year because of this trip. And it's insanely expensive. Like, double what it might have been five years ago.

The cognitive dissonance is worse than normal since I just audited an Australiasian version of the Carbon Literacy Trust's carbon literacy training, AND had to do an exercise on household carbon footprints for my DBA.

But it does provide a nice break between finishing up the last of my papers for my DBA and going full thesis (or pulling the pin if I can't face my own research project when I get back).

The challenge is the opportunity cost of doing another 2 years on my doctorate is writing any more fiction.

I've toyed with ways to combine the two (sci-fi futuring workshops... deconstructing the lone hero narrative... using cathedral thinking to drive a story...) but it feels like taking a baby elephant to calf club day.

I have three novella (or long short story or short novel) projects I want to finish (the short novel I wrote last year that centres around the COVID mandate protests at parliament, but continues forward in time multiple years), a story about climate refugees reshaping life in Māori Hill for the better (a kind of reverse prepper manifesto), and something that I might publish under a pseudonym so better not say much more about it (coded message for future sleuths: books read this month and last month are part of the inspo, but it's an idea I've had for years).

FILM & TV

Woman at War

Bo Burnham: Inside and Inside Outtakes - couldn't get past 10 mins when it first came out, perhaps because it was "too soon", but genuinely very good. 

Succession - Season 4

Avatar - rewatched, this time with kids. Best parts: all the things that made sense on big screen 3D but not so much streaming on Disney+

I think you should leave - Season 3 - I gobble up each new season in 90 mins then wait 18 months of more, tided over only by the NBA x ITYSL memes on Twitter

The Pez Outlaw

Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain

Ugly Delicious - Season 1

The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker

White Men Can't Jump (2022) - turrrible. 

The Gone - Season 1 - turrrible title, decent Kiwi-Irish crime noir

March and April Consumption Diary

BIOGRAPHICAL INTERLUDE

It's the first of May as I start this. I have COVID for the second time. Last year it went through my house at the start of the Easter school holidays. This year it was at the end of the holidays. Like last year, I was the last in my family to succumb, so my isolation period will be longer. Unlike last time, I'm not putting the finishing touches on the first draft of a novel. That first draft remains unimproved. Instead, I'm preparing for a presentation on my doctoral research proposal. I started my doctorate in July last year and the first twelve months involve upskilling each cohort to be able to go off and complete their research and thesis in 2-howevermanyittakes years.

Oh, and the Sacramento Kings lost in Game 7 to the Golden State Warriors this morning. Stephen Curry scored 50 points and the Kings imploded in the third quarter when they couldn't grab a defensive rebound. It was a fun season and Kings fans haven't felt this feeling in 17 years... actually longer. It's more like 1999-2000 when the last great Kings team was on the come-up, but needed to experience adversity to toughen them up for period like today's third quarter. 

So now I have more time to think about non-basketball things... maybe, even with my doctorate, I'll have time to return to last year's novel...

Oh, I'm going to Europe with the family at the end of June (health and geopolitical stability willing). So maybe not?

BOOKS

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid (novel, audiobook, US, 2019)

I grew up with a father who loved rock documentaries so I enjoyed this. Spent a lot of time wondering why others who might be less of an anorak when it comes to music would enjoy it - the love triangle never quite joins up, which means it skirts around the worst cliches of these kinds of tails but it doesn't really have a huge amount of tension to drive the narrative forward. 

Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid (novel, audiobook, US, 2022)

From rock stars to sport stars, in this case tennis. More of a straightforward first person narration with occasional "implags", the interest here was whether the story was going to use Carrie's position on the Autism spectrum as a "twist"/big reveal. It didn't. I was glad. Again, I'm a bit puzzled by how this worked, when the outcome of every tennis match described was easy to forecast and the description of said matches was often something like: "I served, she returned, I returned, she returned, I returned, she missed... Then it was match point and I won with a forehand slam."

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson (novel, audiobook, US, 2020)

Another kind of novel that doesn't care much for things like character development or careful observation at the micro-level. This is all about the macro: what if poor performance against the Paris Agreement meant there was a Ministry for the Future to try and drive intergenerational justice (and what if that needed to be complemented by a dark-wing to get stuff done without bureaucracy). I got very depressed to begin with (I deal with this shit every day, so nothing was a surprise, it was more like: why I am listening to this while I work in my garden?!) but it kind of justified this depression through the journey it goes from this launching point. 

Quit by Annie Duke (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 2022)

I didn't know about Mohammed Ali's late career exploits. Great way to start a book about why gritting it out isn't always the best approach. 

Better the Blood by Michael Bennett (novel, audiobook, NZ, 2022) 

My brain enjoyed this, but I didn't really feel it elsewhere in my body, if that makes any sense.

Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy (novel, audiobook, US, 2022)

All talk. Madness... Genius.... Where's the line? I think McCarthy is possessed of both, so maybe there is no line.

Foster by Claire Keegan (novella, audibook, Ireland, 2010)

It's probably only a short story, but it's packaged as a standalone book, much like Small Things Like These. Loved this one. Every books should be this short.

These Precious Days by Ann Patchett (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 2021)

Essays penned during the pandemic. Manages to avoid being intolerable. Patchett is smart and kind. I've enjoyed her novels in the passed. Convinced me to go back and read Bel Canto.

The Story of Art without Men by Katy Hessel (non-fiction, audiobook, UK, 2022)

Listening to an audiobook about art isn't the best experience, but it helps to know what you don't know much about (so long as you keep asking questions).

Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey (novel, audiobook, NZ, 2020)

There's always a hump to get over when a novel is set in Nazi Germany, especially when it's a NZ author's second book set there (though it's a standalone tale), but I got sucked in and bowled over. Good stuff.

The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 2022)

I enjoyed the playlist I found on Spotify of the songs mentioned in this book more than Dylan's parsing of the lyrics or hepcat word associations (and don't get me started on his version of making America great again).

Nonzero by Robert Wright (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 1999)

Culture and Sustainability by Janet Stephenson (non-fiction, PDF, NZ, 2023)

FILM & TV

Down in the Valley (40 for 40) - great watch on the eve of the NBA playoffs

The Matrix Resurrections

Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel

Men - I vow never to watch another Alex Garland thingamee

Emily the Criminal

Nope

Lewis Capaldi: How I'm Feeling Now

Mindhorn

Beef - Season 1 - I mean, how could I not fall for dialogue like, "I thought I was Webber, but I might be Stojaković, right?" 

The Last of Us - Season 1 - gave up after 10 mins of the pilot (zombie is my least favourite flavour of apocalypse) but was lured back in by raves. The Ron Swanson-Armond romance episode was sweet. I liked the way the season dealt with time (...three months later...). So yeah, worth watching.

Succession - Season 4 (first half) - sometimes you just want to hang with characters from the bottom right corner of the D&D moral alignment chart

Chad and JT go deep - Season 1

Cunk on Earth - Season 1

Taskmaster UK - Season 15 

The Night Agent - Season 1 - I kinda hated this  for being so fucking basic, but I devoured it like a stupid idiot anyway

Barry - Season 4 (1st half) - feels like a real drag... Like the writers got sick of the characters, or gummed up by what happened in Season 3...

MUSIC - APRIL

January & February 2023 consumption diary

MUSIC - JAN

BOOKS

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (novel, physical book,  NZ, 2023)

Potentially the best book I'll read this year and it's only Feb. If you loved The Luminaries you'll love this. Don't let the thriller billing lead you astray (though it does get thrilling) - this is a novel that revels in moving fully rendered, psychologically complex characters around the stage and getting them together at opportune/inopportune times (or, excitingly, for me at least, alone: a couple of these lonely, quiet moments seem to act as tent poles for the three act structure). 

If you are one of the people who talk openly about never finishing The Luminaries, when in the last 10 years did you start admitting this like it was a badge of honour? Go take a hard look at yourself in the mirror, then read Birnam Wood, though you might find it too slow as well. In which case, I've got nothing for you. I guess you don't need to be devastated as deeply as I do. 

The Mirror Book by Charlotte Grimshaw (non-fiction, audiobook, NZ, 2021)

A different kind of devastation. Bold, sure. No one comes out looking good. The way certain phrases (mostly one's her father used in his work or interviews) keep coming back, unrelentingly... I couldn't decide if it was artful or unhinged (like Coach Mosley's church deacon-esque tirades in Last Chance U: Basketball).

Radical Uncertainty by John Kay & Mervyn King (non-fiction, audiobook, UK, 2020)

I don't put everything I read for my doctorate up here, but this felt general fiction-y enough to qualify as a book "consumed". 

Haven by Emma Donoghue (novel, audiobook, Ireland, 2022)

I enjoy bleak survival tales, especially when they're largely self-imposed. Monks, eh?

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub (novel, audiobook, US, 2022)

I enjoy family dramas told via time travel, especially when they get the level of meta-ness right. This did.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (novel, audiobook, UK, 2009)

Yeah, okay, I get it now.

Brightness Reef by David Brin (novel, audiobook, US, 1995)

My first sci-fi for the year, if you don't count Straub's time travel lit-fic. 

1979 by Val McDermid (novel, audiobook, UK, 2021)

1989 by Val McDermid (novel, audiobook, UK, 2022)

I saw McDermid speak at an event in the tail end of last year and she mentioned how her Allie Burns series was her way out of writing her autobiography. I enjoyed 1979. 1989 felt more of a pastiche, with perhaps too many big events from that year being brought into the narrative. Or maybe I'd just read it too soon after its predecessor??

--

Tracking stats: 78% female, 100% white, 100% anglophone, 78% fiction

On pace for: 54 books read in 2023 (if you don't count the three other books I'm partway through, 2 physical and one audiobook).

FILM & TV

Andor Season 1 - I haven't watched any of the Star Wars shows since season 1 of The Mandalorian (snoozefest) but kept seeing people rave about Andor... And gosh, this was right up my street. I loved the stretch where Andor was in prison. The closed world, the arcane routine. And it came after a heist that felt like it might be the climax of a normal season, and before another big showdown. All with minimal faffing around with The Force or reliance on Skywalker family ties.  

Star Wars: Rogue One (rewatch)

The Banshees of Inisherin

Poker Face Season 1

Top Gun: Maverick

Last Chance U: Basketball, Season 2

The Menu

White Noise - one of my favourite novels... didn't like this film. Too faithful to DeLillo's dialogue. It seemed to be about the dialogue, as if that's what made it great. It was like someone adapting Roald Dahl and depicting every cruelty as it is described (or dashed-off) in the book. (I guess adapters will have issues with that now that Dahl's been watered down... This is not a statement for or against the literary sanitation dept... Whatever I say can and will be used against me in my public shaming).

ANNNND...

The Sacramento Kings keep lighting the beam, baby! On Saturday my time they won a double OT thriller against the stacked Clippers in the 2nd highest scoring game of all time, which isn't a knock on the defence: both teams were trying, but the Clippers in particular were locked on, and the refs were very suss... Incredible that heart and superior chemistry got the Kings over the line and they're closer to 2nd place in the West than 4th. They've been the healthiest team in the league this year, though, and they're young and inexperienced. They can't keep this up for another 24 games and win a first round playoff series, can they?

MUSIC - FEB