I went to see MJ Lenderman and the Wind at The Loons in Lyttleton at the end of March.
It was really great. The last 20 minutes of the set (before the encore) got a bit ambient/dragging on for my old, out-of-practice standing for four hours self. But either side of that: magic.
Opening act, Wurld Series, was also pretty good. Lenderman described them as weird. My wife said they looked like accountants who were also in a band. I think both descriptions are slightly unfair. They were more like if Midlake was a Flying Nun band (okay, maybe not as amazing as that sounds).
The thing I forget about concerts until I am back at one is how great they are for finding solutions to writing problems or coming up with new ideas. Something about being around all those other people - strangers mostly - but so much of the experience is personal and interior. Anyway, the novel I worked on last year and I thought needed to get much fatter and overtly "important"... well, I decided during the gig that maybe it would work as a novel-in-stories, and all the "fat" might be unnecessary.
READING
Stoner by John Williams (audiobook, novel, US, 1965) - A little late to the revival, or maybe I'm the start of the 3rd wave, but v v v v v good.
Gliff by Ali Smith (audiobook, 2024, novel, UK) - Triggering (not just in the title's similarity to my name) in the way Ali Smith can be: the slide to techno-authoritarianism shown from the other side, clear-eyed and pun-filled.
The reluctant fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (audiobook, novel, Pakistan/UK, 2007) - four hour audiobooks for the win. Any longer and the narrator addressing his American interlocutor framing may've become annoying. As is: great.
Several short sentences about writing by Evelyn Klinkenborg (audiobook, non-fiction, US, 2012). Loved the final section where VK dissects subpar sentences.
Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit by Emma Neale (physical book, poetry, NZ, 2024). My daughter's class had to memorise a sonnet by Shakespeare (each choosing a different one), so I learnt one of Neale's poems...The young house surgeon / jogs the tree canopied avenue (etc). I could feel my brain working in ways it hasn't for YEARS. So good.
Juice by Tim Winton (audiobook, novel, Australia, 2024). A good book in the end, marred by the fact the narrator said "cachet" instead of "cache" 90% of the time (post-apocalptic, so lots of caching)... Couldn't even be consistently wrong. (There were other mispronounciations, too. Tagging this for next time someone asks what my pet peeve is).
Going Zero by Anthony McCarten (audiobook, novel, NZ, 2023) - felt like it should have been a TV series, but also understandable why it wasn't.
Everything I know about love by Dolly Alderton (audiobook, non-fiction, UK, 2018) - I preferred the Alderton novel I read last year. This felt a bit random brain splurge. Sucker for structure, me.
The extraordinary disappointments of Leopold Berry, Sunderworld v-01, by Ransom Riggs (audiobook, novel, US, 2024) - Not really my thing.
(For those counting along, that's 9 books, which is what I averaged in Jan/Feb... so still on pace for 108).
MOVIES & TV
Adolescence - worthy of the buzz
White Lotus - Season 3 (okay, there's still one episode to go, but)
Paradise - Season 1
Severance - Season 2
Dune Part 2
(And my daughter finished all seasons of Gilmore Girls, include A Year in the Life... She got annoyed when I fangirled over the scene where Rory is at a Shins concert. Oh that we could live in 2000-2007 again (when many would have longed for an even earlier time)).
18 books so far this year. On pace for 108 (yeah, but, holiday reading... but also, no poetry collections yet...)
The Islanders by Christopher Priest (novel, physical book, UK, 2011)
Classic Priest tropes (twins, theatre, unreliable narrator) in his fantasy world that feel like Earth if only Europeans existed (so, kinda ick). More interesting conceptually than in execution.
The Rules of Backyard Cricket by Jock Serong (novel, physical book, Aus, 2016)
Imagine Mark Waugh bloodied & stuffed in a car boot, reflecting on life. Loved all the backyard cricket stuff, brotherly tensions & dependency, the rise through to state cricket legend... The crime framing and twists felt less vital.
Funny Story by Emily Henry (novel, audiobook, US, 2024)
As if reader notes from Henry's last book (Happy Place) said, "We want the exact same setup, but give him tattoos and spend longer on the sex scenes"... Elevated by the GOAT narrator (Goatarrator?) Julia Whelan.
Doxology by Nell Zink (novel, physical book, audiobook, US, 2019)
Picked up on the promise of the elusive GOOD rock'n'roll novel. Starts by diagnosing a character with high-functioning Williams syndrome, which is unknown to all characters, and we keep this level of remove from most characters throughout. Oh well.
Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret (novel, audiobook, US, 1970)
Simultaneously an artifact of its era, a blueprint for others to follow (even picked up some resonances in Doxology, which I read concurrently) and an engaging yarn. Now to see what my 12y.o. daughter thinks 🤔
The Survivors by Steve Braunias (non-fiction, audiobook, NZ, 2024)
The alleged final book in a true crime trilogy. Much like Palmerston North pathologist Cynric Temple-Camp's trilogy-capping The Final Diagnosis, which I read last month, there's great moments, but it lacks the cohesion of earlier books.
TransAtlantic by Colum McCann (novel, Ireland, 2013)
Had a couple solo South Island car trips tin Jan to churn through the audiobooks. Listening to this in transit felt apt, and the slow accumulation of detail, meaning and connection paid off...
Orbital by Samantha Harvey (novel, UK, 2024)
...unlike this one, which felt like an extended creative writing exercise. No liftoff, no new layers exposed, dead on arrival.
Foraging New Zealand by Peter Langlands (non-fiction, physical book, NZ, 2024)
The author's Instagram is full of quirky finds & unique dishes, but this is more of a straightlaced field guide. Kinda wished the book had more personality, & maybe a few place-based 2 page spreads (foraging at the beach, etc)
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (novel, audiobook, US, 2023)
Game of Thrones meets Harry Potter "romantasy" that was apparently big on BookTok (shrug) & people took the day off work to read the 3rd book when it came out last month. The engine runs but no need to ride again.
Magic Pill by Johann Hari (non-fiction, audiobook, UK, 2024)
Hari both sides the Ozempic debate, with a heavy dose of Supersize Me-style autoethnography.
When it All Went to Custard by Danielle Hawkins (novel, audiobook, NZ, 2019)
I was once on a panel with Hawkins & Lloyd Jones (who demonstrated zero curiosity in commercial fiction/romance). Turns out, Hawkins is just as interested in the economics of farming as affairs of the heart. Time for Take 2.
Northern Lights (His Dark Materials book 1) by Philip Pullman (novel, audiobook, UK, 1995)
Thought I should check out what all the fuss is (was) about. Twas good. Not sure my kids are fantasy kids, so may not every go any further in this series.
The Colour of Magic (Discworld Book 1) by Terry Pratchett (novel, audiobook, UK, 1983)
Thought I should check out what all the fuss is (was) about. Twas okay. I'm not a fantasy guy (nor a this whole scene/character is a set up for a joke guy), so may not go any further with TP, though Pratchett heads may twist my arm.
Twist by Colum McCann (novel, physical book, Ireland, 2025)
Reviewed this one for The Listener...
Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah (novel, physical book, Tanzania/UK, 2025)
...and this one.
Total F*cking Godhead: The Biography of Chris Cornell by Corbin Reiff (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 2020)
Reiff didn't get access to interview anyone in Cornell's inner circle, so relied on previously published interviews and articles. That distance is felt throughout, as is the fact there can't be any new revelations.
Villa Incognito by Tom Robbins (novel, audiobook, US, 2003)
Hadn't read Robbins (RIP) before. Still not sure how representative this one was. Sooo many references to scrotums.
MOVIES & TV
Rogue Heroes (of the SAS) - Seasons 1 & 2
The Jackal - Season 1
Black Doves - Season 1
Ludwig - Season 1
The Kins of Tupelo - Season 1
Win or Lose - eps 1-4 (me and my son are really enjoying this)
I read 20 books that were released in 2024, but that's burying the lede. I actually read 100 books this calendar year, published between 1837 (The Pickwick Papers) and 2024.
I had five reading targets for the year, all of which I met, but there was no target for gross number of books.
How'd I do it? When you look at what format I consumed these books, the answer might seem to be through my ears...
But I actually listened to more audiobooks (85) in 2021. This is the first time in over a decade I've read as many physical books. Issues with my eyes (and attention span) aren't as bad as they were. Yay!
I've also been more ruthless with audiobooks, abandoning some early (these don't count towards the total and I won't drag anyone here) and moving onto books I'm more likely to devour.
Speak of which...
Best Reading of 2024
Outline by Rachel Cusk (2014)
If there's a theme for this year's top ten, it's clusters. This year I read five books by Cusk, and the Outline trilogy was an absolute highlight. The first book in the trilogy gets top billing here thanks to the thrill of seeing the magician pull the trick for the first time (autofiction with the merest silhouette of the author-narrator). Rather than diminishing marginal returns in the next two books, the power of Fay's self-abnegation only builds.
Holy Moses this was great. This seems weird to say, and only just occurred to me several weeks after reading it, but it's like a grown-up Fight Club. The disaffection. The bifurcation. The sardonic wit. But without the empty nihilism and cheap shocks.
Looking back, this might've been the book that got me back into the physical form. So much good Aotearoa NZ stuff still isn't making it to audiobook.
Wonderful. Part of me feels I shouldn't have loved it so much as it's lineage back through Jonathan Franzen is pretty clear (even without Oprah's seal of approval for Wellness), but it deals with things I'm interested in (and made me interested in things I wasn't previously) and feels big without being overblown or tryhard. Need to go back and read The Nix now.
I'm a sucker for stories that immerse me in a world I was sort of interested in already but not obsessively so, like Saturday Night Live (which Sittenfeld repatches as The Night Owls in her novel). Pair this with a not-too-typical, not-too-out-there love story and you've got a winner.
The good test of a book like this, which is trying to have its genre cake and eat it too, is whether you can remember much of the plot or characters at the end of the year. This one absolutely passes this test. Memorable and smart. *Chefs kiss*
Martyr by Kaveh Akbar (2024)
Maybe this is recency bias, but Akbar claims the title of best book actually published-and-read in 2024 (just pipping James by Percival Everett, Good Material by Dolly Alderton, and Intermezzo by Sally Rooney).
This could be the start of a bad joke: Acclaimed poet writes a literary novel about death, religion, sexuality, loss, nationhood and lies... Except it fucking rules.
The narrative hinges on a pretty incredible (as in: hard to believe, though not hard to predict) twist, and yet somehow it doesn't scuttle the whole enterprise.
The most fun you can have while being miserable. Highly recommended.
Right Story, Wrong Story by Tyson Yunkaporta (2023)
First non-fiction on this list. First Australian. First first nations. Second book by Yunkaporta to make one of my year-end lists.
A worthy successor to Sand Talk, but I'm worried I might come across as one of the wrong kind of fans of Yunkaporta's books (who Yunkaporta addresses in this latest book).
Subsequently, I took part in an cross-discipline, online competition-cum-capacity-building-thingamee about indigenous perspectives on energy and climate change. Yunkaporta was one of the guest speakers and he was the same caustic, insightful, unserious-and-dead-serious-simultaneously self as presented in his (audio)books.
Another book I was on the fence about reading (having already committed many hours to listening to the very good, but very Irish Franzen-y The Bee Sting already this year).
Another book I ended up really enjoying. I think I preferred this to The Bee Sting because it's a bit less Franzen-y and because I myself have been grappling with a plot point not dissimilar to (not a spoiler, guys) Skippy dying!!!
Another fat book cluster. Unlike with Nathan Hill, I preferred Murray's earlier book to his newer one. It felt wilder. Less Seriously Funny Family Saga and more Stranger Things without the STRANGE THINGS (though there's plenty of lower case strangeness).
Yeah! This was excellent. Funny, dark-at-times, possibly even profound. And it has dogs in it!
I really liked that the protagonist/narrator was late 40s (I think) but language and ideas still seemed to be alive to them. It felt true(ish) to my inner dialogue as a early 40s person.
Totally unrelated negative-impulse: I don't want to Google how old Elizabeth Bennett's parents are in Pride and Prejudice...
Nothing further to add, your honour. The Defence rests.
The great Ali Smith keeps on being great in uncomfortable ways.
It's incredible how much now-ness Smith gets into her books. You can pretty much lock in a slot in next year's list for Glif (and maybe it's companion piece, Glyph, if it comes out and I read it before the end of the year)... though I find the sight of the word 'Glif' very triggering as someone who often gets called Cliff in email, and occasionally Graig.
Poūkahangahatus by Tayi Tibble (2018)
I didn't write about thing about this in my December consumption diary because I hadn't actually read it before I left for Christmas up North, but I had it in my backpack and needed to read it to complete my goal of reading at least 10 single-poet collections this year.
It's crazy it took me six years to get to this collection. Crazy.
It's incredibly polished for a first collection published so young... annnnnnd this is where I stop myself from saying other condescending-sounding drivel.
This is the collection that convinced me that I need to read AT LEAST another ten poetry collections next year (with Tibble's sophomore effort top of the list).
Graphs and shit
A little more on how my 100 books breaks down... (sorry for the pixelation, for some reason posting graphs directly isn't working today).
Works in translation: 7
Works by non-white authors: 27
This gender split was interesting. Last year it was 35 female to 23 male authors, but going back to preceding years, 2024 looks pretty typical. Maybe it's because of the non-fiction I read? I read 19 non-fiction books by dudes and only 3 by females in 2024... Whereas with novels it was 34 females to 28 males.
Reading targets for 2025
Read 100 books (why not?)
Read at least 10 single-author poetry collections
Read at least 20 physical books
Read at least 10 non-fiction books by female authors
Here's a playlist to listen along to selections from the prizewinners in 2024...
Top ten* albums of 2024
White Roses, My God by Alan Sparhawk
I'm not usually a fan of ultra-processed vocals. Nor of solo albums where the artist is trying so hard to make an aural break from previous bands (in this case: the majestic Low, the raucous Retribution Gospel Choir and funky Derecho Rhythm Section).
But Alan Sparhawk, my God.
And while I'm a massive fan of Low (seeing them live at Bodega in 2016 is probably a top five gig), I wasn't so high on the glitchy, electronic sound of Double Negative (2018) and HEY WHAT (2021), so to take that glitchy, electronic angle and turn it up to 11...
But Alan Sparhawk, my God.
Of course, after the death of your life partner and band mate (Mimi Parker) you want to obliterate old selves. But to forge something so listenable from such angular parts? The best grief-stricken record since Hummingbird?
Whether you come to this record from a rock, slow-core, hip hop or electronica background, chances are it'll speak to you.
My God, Alan. Bless you.
Lived Here for a While by Good Looks
Album opener 'If it's gone' might have been my song of the year, if top ten albums didn't render themselves ineligible. Tracks like 'Self-destructor', 'White Out', and 'Can You See Me Tonight?' aren't far behind. But repeated listens allows slower tunes to rise up. 'Broken Body' is about disability, childhood and regret. 'Why Don't You Believe Me?' about a mother-son relationship where it's the son's turn to let the side down.
These guys are from Austin, Texas, but sound (to me, at least) Australian. In researching their origins I learnt about the disastrous lead-in to this album.
The day after they released their 2022 debut, the clairvoyantly titled Bummer Year, guitarist Jake Ames was nearly killed in a hit-and-run. After a long recovery, the band got back and they road, only for their van to catch fire and destroy all their gear, instruments, laptops, and merch.
Lived Here for a While is infused with the knowledge of how bad things can get, but also the joy of not being done just yet.
Big Swimmer by King Hannah
The first track I heard from this Liverpudlian duo was 'New York, Let's Do Nothing', a talk-sung indie track in the vein of Dry Cleaning Cassandra Jenkins, Wet Leg, The Weather Station, Bongwater, Life Without Buildings, Young Marble Giants (and, of course, the Velvet Underground)...
So of course I loved that song, but King Hannah has other modes.
The title track is a big, seventies style ballad, replete with backing vocals from Sharon Van Etten (who reappears later in the album). 'Suddenly, Your Hand' sounds like Courtney Barnett in her calmer moments. 'Somewhere near El Paso' is more of a noise-rock jam in the vein of Sonic Youth or Swans. 'Davey Says' is straight-ahead garage pop-rock. Elsewhere, there's moments of Bill Callahan's chugging guitar and ironic vocals. Other artists, like Slint and John Prine are name-checked directly.
And yes, I like the fact that Hannah Merrick talks to/mentions her guitarist Craig Whittle in her anecdotes.
He first me five years later
Said that Craig and I worked too well together
(New York, Let's Do Nothing)
Craig and I have been
Craig and I have been
Watching quite disturbing
Documentaries in the evenings
(Suddenly, Your Hand)
More songs should talk to Craigs. We're good people.
My Light, My Destroyer by Cassandra Jenkins
Speaking of Cassandra Jenkins, she's followed up her big hit (for a talkie indie track in the age of streaming) 'Hard Drive' from the 2021 album An Overview of Phenomenal Nature, with a more diverse, more musical, more confident collection of tracks.
The field recordings and found samples are still part of the mix, but Jenkins puts herself front and centre from the opener. 'Devotion'. Her delicate, reedy voice then morphs into a kind of Sheryl Crow/Natalie Hemby clone suitable for fronting a country-infected, rock-driven album standout. It's gutsy while also still being whispery. 'Petco' and 'Only One' are similarly poppy (though in different ways), helping to balance out the more experimental and ambient tracks.
Lighthouse by Francis of Delirium
Is this the greatest band from Luxembourg ever? Even ignoring the bonus points they scored for calling a song 'Cliffs', I think it is.
They play big songs about big feelings. Every time I listen to the album I think I have a different favourite track: today, it's 'First Touch'... 'Cliffs' being ineligible due to a conflict of interest. Actually, now it's 'Blue Tuesday' (take that, New Order). Or maybe it's 'Ballet Dancers (Never Love Again)?
(Parenthesis ftw!)
Tigers Blood by Waxahatchee
I felt like I'd placed other Waxahatchee albums in my top ten before, but searching this site suggest the closest Katie Crutchfield came was an honorable mention for Ivy Trip back in 2015.
Well, this here album feels like the apotheosis of what Waxahatchee has been building towards. It's sooo confident. The vocals are so far forward in the mix. The choruses are the kind you can lose your voice to. The rhythm section is gruntier. We've moved from barbeque playlist to spring cleaning with your headphones on.
The duet with MJ Lenderman, 'Right Back To It', is the greatest duet since... ('Islands in the Stream' is all I can think of right now... Karaoke brain)... And Lenderman provides backing on some other tracks, but this is all Crutchfield.
Manning Fireworks by MJ Lenderman
I've put this album lower in my ranking than my gut wants me to, because a) I wanted to give Waxahatchee some non-reflected glory, b) Boat Songs made my top ten in 2022 and c) I'm excited about seeing Lenderman with full band live in March next year, so I'm not a reliable witness.
Where Boat Songs felt very influenced by Jason Molina, Manning Fireworks has more of a Neil Young vibe (not just because there's a 10 minute song called 'Bark at the Moon').
There's still the sharp as a Stanley knife lyricism ('Please don't ask how I'm doing / draining cum from hotel showers / hoping for the hours to pass a little faster'), but now it's matched musically. And songs like 'She's Leaving You' show Lenderman can tone down the lyrical audacity and just deliver a SONG.
In Lieu of Flowers by Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties
Sometimes an album comes along that teaches you how to appreciate a genre you never really "got". So it is with In Lieu of Flowers which sent me down an emo (or emo-Americana) wormhole in 2024, but Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties remained pre-eminent.
I love the conceit. Dan Campbell, frontman of The Wonder Years, writes songs from the perspective of fictional frontman, Aaron West: a character study conducted through music.
I've written elsewhere how compelling I find artists who admit the charade while still performing it (see: Lana Del Rey, Dave Wyndorf). On the face of it, it seems harder to do this in a genre like emo where so much of its power supposedly derives from the baring of raw emotion and the punk-inherited conceit of having no conceit, than pop or heavy metal.
But it works.
The album opens with the sound of barroom chatter. "Aaron West" starts singing along with an acoustic guitar and the chatter continues as West ramps up the volume of his vocals, until the two-minute-thirty mark where its as if the E-Street band has burst on stage and it's like sunrise in a My Morning Jacket song or a profession of undying love in a Dolly Parton song... Like: spine-tingling. Like: levitational. Like: "How did this make me feel this?"
In the narrative of the song (and the wider fiction of the Roaring Twenties), West is suddenly joined on stage by his estranged bandmates ('The burst of applause, a sudden eruption / Catherine nods in my direction, I turn my head / and outta nothing there's the band").
Though this is the third Aaron West album, I got chills starting just with this song.
I missed you motherfuckers bad
Over again and over again and over again
I missed you motherfuckers bad
Dude, you had me at "sudden eruption".
Rebuild Report by Hockey Dad
Okay, these guys sound Australian and are Australian (despite band name giving Canadian vibes).
Exhibit A: 'Wreck & Ruin' (can't believe this hasn't been released as a single)
If they sound happier and more naïve than Good Looks, that's understandable. Far from wishing van fires or traffic accidents on these lads from Wollongong, I hope they stay upbeat and pop-inflected for ever.
*Update: 17 January 2025
Originally I only had nine top albums because there was a natural break between the above and the next tier. But maybe I also subconsciously knew I was forgetting about this next album, which I listened to many times but for some reason hadn't filed away in my Best Albums of the year playlist, and thus didn't include in my ratings spreadsheet and omitted from the original post...
Lustre by The Buoys
Not the first all-female Australian band to make my top ten, and won't be the last. The band name works no matter if you pronounce it correctly (a homophone with 'boys' = ironic) or Americanly (boo-eys - which to American ears should still bring to mind buoyancy).
The lyrics are sardonic and largely relationship focussed, the sound is often peppy, not a million miles away from the Beths. The formula works best when they colour outside the lines a little, like the grimier sound (thrumming baseline and distorted chorus chant) in 'Check Mate', the alternating wordy and simple parts of 'Holding On', or the airier, band-in-an-empty-amphitheatre sound of 'Ahead of Myself'.
Honourable Mentions: Albums
Best of the rest from 2024
Pedro The Lion - Santa Cruz
Hamish Hawk - A Firmer Hand
ILDES - Tangk
Friko - Where we've been, where we go from here
Everything Everything - Mountainhead
Quivers - Oyster Cuts
Best from 2023 I flubbed on (and all three would deserve a top ten spot if not for chronology)
Margaret Glaspy - Echo The Diamond
Arborist - An Endless Sequence of Dead Zeroes
Gord Downie - Lustre Parfait (not sure I can ever live the shame down of missing this when it came out) - and while I'm at it, I also missed and liked Paul Langlois Band's Guess What.
Okay, now it's time for...
Best song of 2024
'Lagunita' by Lizzie No
This song starts like a runaway delivery truck. The lead guitar peel reminds me of Rob Baker from the Tragically Hip. The verse takes things down a notch to match No's careful, lightly country-fried vocals, then accelerates again for the chorus. The song proceeds as great songs do, familiar yet fresh, loud yet crystalline. The third verse acts as a bridge, and features what I think is agüiro.
It's just perfectly put together.
You just want to listen to it again as soon as it finishes. So you do, and find the güiro is there in the first verse as well. New layers keep emerging.
The lyrics gain weight each time.
"The angel I wrestled in darkness / he's pulling his socks on / withholding my blessing".
"Tell me you care for me, tell me a secret that you've half forgotten / Thieving and dying in the arms of love."
"And I’ve learned to love the sinner and the sin / See the brush in the painting, taste the calf in the gelatin."
Sometimes you don't need nonsense syllables to make a gem.
(NB: While this song was released as a single in late 2023, it appears on an album released in 2024, which is where I discovered it, so it totally counts based on my own made-up criteria).
A close second:
Drunk by Maggie Rogers
Similar to 'Lagunita', but even louder & more breakneck.
Best "new" old artist:
Radney Foster
Follow me down the rabbit hole (as I remember it). I listened to Toad the Wet Sprocket do a cover of REM's 'Driver 8', which I then couldn't find online, but discovered its a heavily covered song and listened to lots of other covers, which got me listening to Hootie and the Blowfish's covers record Scattered, Smothered and Covered (2000), which opens with 'Fine Line' which became my newest earworm, so then I looked up who did the original, and it was Radney Foster from his 1992 album Del Rio, TX 1959.
Whew.
Foster's original clears the Hootie cover (which feels rushed and breathless). But it may not be the best song on Del Rio... that's probably 'Nobody Wins' (which has 69x more plays on Spotify). Both are superbly crafted country rock songs.
The way the fine line between right and wrong in the first line of the chorus of 'Fine Line' moves from metaphor to geography in the next ("He's been crossing over that border way too long" - earlier we learn our married trucker has another woman "down in Georgia").
Or the profusion of rhymes in the pre-chorus (used/truce) and chorus (lose/bruised/fuse).
Foster is great at building engines to make human beings sing.
Digging deeper into his discography gets a little weird, with the nostalgia for a bygone America implied in his debut album's title doubled down on with songs like 'Texas in 1880' when he was part of the duo Foster and Lloyd (unfortunately, it's another banger).
Honourable mention: Richard Buckner
I think Buckner's track 'Loaded at the Wrong Door -Acoustic' from the Deluxe Reissue of his 2002 album, Impasse, must've made it onto an automated Spotify playlist somehow. Weird that it would be this bonus track, which has fewer listens than the album track, but it's a) better and b) still my favourite Buckner song after going back through all his stuff.
It's oddly structured, oblique. His singing is not objectively good. But it does have feeling. It worms its way into your head and your soul. I mumble-hum this song A LOT in the shower. (I can also recommend 'The Ocean Cliff Clearing' from 1998's Since).
Is it possible for an artist to be 100% vibe?
These days he performs concerts in people's living rooms, which is kind of perfect for how to consume his music: so close and personal it's both awkward and euphoric.
Now to see how much it'll cost to get him to Dunedin...
I've got my best books and music lists in draft and will post my annual awards here before the end of the year if I find time.
BOOKS
Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright (novel, audiobook, Australia, 2023)
This novel starts in a kind of ecstatic, fabular mode that another novel might use as a couple-page prelude before slowing down and becoming a "proper novel", but Praiseworthy is what it is from page one to page 736 (or hour 36 and minute 50). To which I say, bravo. Love the chutzpah. I'm no expert in the narrative modes of the Waanyi people, but this storytelling feels both ancient and infected by our doomscrolling, caricatured present.
(Is it always thrilling? No. Neither is Gulliver's Travels. Satire sags when pursued at length. Both are still classics).
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar (novel, audiobook, US, 2024)
This could be the start of a bad joke: Acclaimed poet writes a literary novel about death, religion, sexuality, loss, nationhood and lies... Except it fucking rules.
The narrative hinges on a pretty incredible (as in: hard to believe, though not hard to predict) twist, and yet somehow it doesn't scuttle the whole enterprise.
The most fun you can have while being miserable. Highly recommended.
Return to Harikoa Bay by Owen Marshall (short stories, physical book, NZ, 2022)
Sleepwalking in Antarctica by Owen Marshall (poetry, physical book, NZ, 2010)
Return to Harikoa Bay was Marshall's first story collection in over a decade. It sat on my bedside table for two years before I finished it. And it was a sloooooooooog.
I bloody love Marshall's stories. 13 years ago I dedicated a whole month on this blog - back when I posted often and at length (pre-kids!!) - to Owen Marshall to celebrate the release of Living as a Moon (his previous collection)...
So I bought Harikoa Bay as soon as it came out, but it suffers from what put me off the two Best Of collections of Marshall's work: too much of the same kind of story. I almost wrote: too much of a good thing, but after a while, the goodness was no longer apparent. Too many stories start with big-ass pronouncements and end with neat topic sentences.
And there are a lot of stories. Like 33. No collection (even a best of, probably) should have that many stories.
There's a bit more variety in the final third, but by that point, the die was cast.
I went and read Marshall's poetry collection afterwards out of curiosity. I'd describe most as moment poems, a single experience (in some cases: image) covered in less than a page. Mostly crisp, astute, but rarely surprising.
But the endings were better than the later stories...
Like in 'Tuoro', a poem about a visit to the Italian cemetery of the same name, which ends:
And we sit here, at the end of a corridor
Of time, and drink dark espresso in the sun.
The 'corridor of time' is a bit much, but saved (slightly) by the enjambment. I wonder if I cut the last sentence or two off every story in Harikoa Bay, and then took the best fifteen, maybe it would have hit different?
Anyway, it took be so long to read Harikoa Bay that Marshall's come out with another collection, the imaginatively titled: New Stories.
Check back here in two to thirteen years for my thoughts.
The Final Diagnosis by Cynric Temple-Camp (non-fiction, audiobook, NZ, 2024)
Advertised as the third and final book in Temple-Camp's series of true tales from a provincial pathologist. You'll have to read to find out why there'll be no more...
The greatest trilogy set in Palmerston North since... ever.
Good Material by Dolly Alderton (novel, audiobook, UK, 2024)
I read this at the same time as I watched Baby Reindeer. Both stories feature flailing stand-up comics with disastrous Edinburgh fringe experiences. While Baby Reindeer goes dark, Good Material trims a course close to the Romance Novel coastline, without needing THAT kind of happy ending. But what if I wanted that kind of happy ending in my sappy dotage?
The Wager by David Grann (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 2023)
If someone asks what Creative Non-fiction is, I'll point them to this book, somewhat ungenerously. Maybe I like my history bone dry and my love stories soft and gooey?
On Bullshit by Harry G Frankfurt (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 2005) - Was this meta, or just shit?
Stray Thoughts & Nose Bleeds by Duncan Sarkies (short stories, physical book, NZ, 1999) - Came out the same year as Scarfies... not a bad quinella. The title makes it sound like a collection of newspaper columns, but it's a depraved inversion of the Joe Bennett afterworld.
The Deleted World by Tomas Transtromer (poetry, physical book, Sweden, 2006)
Dedications by JC Sturm (poetry, physical book, NZ, 1996)
Poūkangahatus by Tayi Tibble (poetry, physical book, NZ, 2018)
How to watch basketball like a genius by Nick Greene (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 2021)
Different Dude: are you ready for a better life? By Rod Benson (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 2023)
I actually listened to these two books mid-year, when Spotify started offering audiobooks and, by virtue of my listening to a lot of basketball podcasts on Spotify, these two books were high on my recommendation list.
FILM & TV
Day of the Jackal (2024 TV series)
Baby Reindeer - Season 1
That's Not Entirely Accurate (Pretty Good, Secret Base)
The History of Slipping on Banana Peels (Pretty Good, Secret Base)
Pet by Catherine Chidgey (novel, audiobook, NZ, 2023) - Eighties nostalgia + creepy teacher + dead mother = a winning combo.
The Bone People by Keri Hulme (novel, audiobook, NZ, 1984) - Audiobook made it both easier (faster) and harder (more superficial) to get into this classic. Ruby Solly's narration was great.
The Yield by Tara June Winch (novel, audiobook, Australia, 2019) - Really great. At certain points it felt like it was becoming a large social novel (think Jonathan Franzen without the forced jokes), only to move on to other modes, other things.
A Very Short History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict by Ilan Pappe (non-fiction, audiobook, Israel, 2024) - Don't worry, this Israeli historian really doesn't like Settler Colonial Israel either (but it fairly clear headed and concise about it all).
The Lazy Boys by Carl Shuker (novel, physical book, NZ, 2006) - Thought I should finally read this book about a particular kind of student experience at Otago University in the 1990s, which is and isn't that different to today. Unpleasant to sit with Richey for so long (which is the point). Weird to know exactly which flats and dairies are being mentioned.
Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase (novel, audiobook, Botswana, 2024) - Took forever to get to the crime fiction plot that was prominent on the cover blurb, which unfortunately made all the world-building feel like throat-clearing.
Aisle Nine by Ian X Cho (novel, audiobook, Australia, 2024) - YA set in the US after portals to a nightmare world start to open up. A bit paint by numbers.
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (novel, audiobook, Ireland, 2024) - Hard not to read Rooney's latest in light of her previous work. This is and feels longer, but not necessarily bigger. It's less thrilling (feels like the author has more sympathy for her characters, which means there's less cravenness), more measured... kinda like a game of chess.
Ghost Bus by Anna Kirtlan (short stories, audiobook, NZ, 2020) - Far be it from me to critique an author-with-a-day-job's creative work on the basis of their day job, but you know how sometimes fiction feels false, like it was written by a journalist or a comms professional...? Like, how sometimes the title is enough for you to know exactly what you'll get? Stories aren't peanut butter - at least, I'd prefer them not to be shelf stable commodities.
Plus I read / assessed an MA in Creative Writing thesis, which I won't include in my reading stats for the year.
Statistical interlude
With one month to go (86 books & counting), here's how I'm tracking against the semi-random reading targets I set for 2024:
At least ten single-author poetry collections: 7/10... Should be easy enough to slip 3 more into December's reading IF I remember
I came 2nd in the Sargeson Prize with my story 'Robinson in the Roof Space', which was subsequently published at Newsroom. I wrote the first half of this story in my first month of the Burns Fellowship in 2017, alongside two other stories, when I was loosening up for the novel that would eventually become Nailing Down the Saint. I wrote the second half of the story in my last week at the Michael King Writers Centre in Devonport in June this year (alongside one other story). There's clearly something about the figure of Robinson that appeals to me when on a writing residency...
In terms of the composition of the story itself, it follows George Saunders' approach of building a story sentence by sentence, and though I hadn't read A Swim in a Pond in the Rain when I wrote the first part. It does have a Saunderian vibe, though. And adding each new sentence so that it was adding to the story, making it better, like a bricklayer building a wall, made it pretty easy to pick up and finish seven years later.
In other publication (non)news, the agent I pitched both the novel and short story collection I worked on while in Devonport didn't want anything to do with short stories and was lukewarm on the novel sample. It helped clarify how I was feeling about the novel manuscript: it still wasn't wholly what it wanted/needed to be. So another draft is on the cards, when I can manufacture the time/headspace/roofspace.
A university press also passed on the story collection, citing the horrors of the marketplace. Oh well.
So for now this turtle has pulled his head right back into his shell. It's nice to have some things in the chamber when I feel like pitching again or the Universe comes knocking.
READING
The Nix by Nathan Hill (novel, audiobook, US, 2016) - I read Hill's sophomore novel, Wellness, earlier this year and reading his debut cemented a few things for me. Wellness wasn't flawless, but it's felt more unified than The Nix, and will definitely be in my end of year top 10. When you add Hill's two novels to the two Paul Murray doorstoppers (Skippy Dies and The Bee Sting), and possibly also Gabrielle Zevin's novel (see below), I think these are the sorts of books my novel manuscript is wanting to become. Bigger. Polyphonic but in a more sedate way. Timelessly topical.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (novel, audiobook, US, 2022) - I liked but did not love this one. But having read Sam Brooks' ludicrous review for The Spinoff, suddenly I'd die for this novel. The references thing in particular - I thought this was well-handled. Just to pick the first from Brooks' list, Metal Gear Solid isn't a throwaway line, but a long passage about stealth games, the game's designer/publisher deciding to rebrand the series to appeal to an American audience - all of which was germane to the characters' own decisions about their games AND hit that nostalgia dopamine release for the days of the original PlayStation.
Companion Piece by Ali Smith (novel, audiobook, UK, 2022) - The great Ali Smith keeps on being great in uncomfortable ways.
Say's Who? A kinder, funner usage guide for everyone who cares about words by Anne Curzan (non-fiction, audiobook, 2024) - Cliff Notes version: languages evolve, go for it.
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood (novel, audiobook, Australia, 2023) - The adjective Woody, in this case, refers to something intimate and yet bone-cold.
Murder at the Museum by Alasdair Beckett-King (novel, audiobook, UK, 2023)
You Don't Have to Have a Dream by Tim Minchin (non-fiction, audiobook, Australia, 2024)
BBQ Economics by Liam Dann (non-fiction, audiobook, NZ, 2024) - I left this particular BBQ early.
The Mires by Tina Makereti (novel, audiobook, NZ, 2024) - So great to have NZ books available as audiobooks, even if they aren't all to my tastes (see above).
Above the Noise: My Story of Chasing Calm by DeMar DeRozan with Dave Zarum (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 2024) - So great to have DeMar DeRozan on the Sacramento Kings.
Chosen by Geoff Cochrane (poetry, physical book, NZ, 2020)
Conventional Weapons by Tracey Slaughter (poetry, physical book, NZ, 2019)
I re-read Living in the Maniototo a few more times (and dipped back into Rachel Cusk's Outline trilogy and Parade) in August as I prepared my talk for the symposium on Reading Janet Frame (for) Today on the 30th. It was a great event!
I also read:
The Material World by Ed Conway (non-fiction, audiobook, 2023, UK) - this really did make me look at the (material) world differently. I highly recommend it.
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt (non-fiction, audiobook, 2024, US) - this was basically a recapitulation of Haidt's previous work on anti-fragility, repackaged as an anti-phone treatise. He admits as much toward the end of the book.
Children of Paradise by Camilla Grudova (novel, audiobook, 2022, Canada) - okay.
Until August by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (novel, audiobook, 2024, Colombia, translated) - I can see why GGM wasn't keen on this being published, but also why his literary executors thought better of his wishes and pubbed it anyway.
James by Percival Everett (novel, audiobook, 2024, US) - I retelling of Huck Finn from Jim's perspective. In the spirit of Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, Everett employs alternative history (Jim and the other slaves are highly educated and eloquent, but speak in their dumbed-down patois to white people for a range of reasons) in such a way that you realise the "history" was also partly fiction. Unfortunately, the book is limited by the picaresque nature of the original narrative so that, like any remake, it never quite becomes its own thing, and like any road-trip (or river-trip) novel, it never quite feels complete, but merely finished.
Chosen by Geoff Cochrane (poetry, physical book, 2020, NZ) - this came out as I was preparing to move islands and I didn't get around to reading it before Geoff died, or his posthumous best of came out. Now that I've read this last collection, it's time to delve into the best of (I suspect it will suffer the same problem that Owen Marshall's 2x best of story collections have, in that the quirky, interstitial pieces might not carry the individual heft to make it into a best of, but leaving them all out means the sum of the parts is less than the whole impression of breadth and deliberate unevenness -- or maybe willingness to subvert reader expectations is a kinder way to put it -- in any one collection)… We shall see!!!
Fire and Blood by George R.R. Martin (fiction, audiobook, 2018, US) - I quite liked Season 2 of House of the Dragon, but became increasingly intrigued by what book readers were saying about how much action was left to come in the show's final two seasons, so I became a book reader myself and... this was not my cup of tea. I read the first two novels in A Song of Fire and Ice and quite liked them, but feel no compunction to read the rest. But Fire and Blood is not a novel, but a collection of fictional histories Martin knocked out for certain anthologies. The sections that inform House of the Dragon are the most engaging, but they are still pretty tedious. I guess I'm no Westeros completist.
Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen (novel, audiobook, 2004, US) - Several times I felt like I'd read this book before, but I can't find any hard evidence. This speaks badly for Hiaasen and/or me.
