MUSIC
BOOOOOOKS
As I mentioned in my post about my reading in 2017, one thing I wanted to do in 2018 was read less white dudes, especially anglophone ones.
Nothing against them -- some of my best friends are anglophone white dudes! -- but, y'know!
I started out four-for-four in 2018, then read three straight anglophone white dudes... BUT I didn't break my hard rule about about no physical books by white dudes.
Phew.
Four of these books (Batuman, Whitehead, Stephenson, Hodgman) would have contended for a spot in my Best of 2017 list, if only I'd read them before New Years.
Oh well, hopefully this bodes well for a killer Best of 2018 list!
Looking ahead, I want to keep posting consumption diaries, if only so I can remember what I read a couple months down the track.
But this is the last from my blessed Burns year, and I'll be much briefer with my notes about each book in future.
Partly because I feel I never really do justice to individual books by spewing forth 100-300 words on them at the end of the month (in some cases 4 weeks after finishing them), but also because I can't see myself having the time to do even that when my writing days are squished down to two.
So make the most of the spewing while it lasts...
Nothing against them -- some of my best friends are anglophone white dudes! -- but, y'know!
I started out four-for-four in 2018, then read three straight anglophone white dudes... BUT I didn't break my hard rule about about no physical books by white dudes.
Phew.
Four of these books (Batuman, Whitehead, Stephenson, Hodgman) would have contended for a spot in my Best of 2017 list, if only I'd read them before New Years.
Oh well, hopefully this bodes well for a killer Best of 2018 list!
Looking ahead, I want to keep posting consumption diaries, if only so I can remember what I read a couple months down the track.
But this is the last from my blessed Burns year, and I'll be much briefer with my notes about each book in future.
Partly because I feel I never really do justice to individual books by spewing forth 100-300 words on them at the end of the month (in some cases 4 weeks after finishing them), but also because I can't see myself having the time to do even that when my writing days are squished down to two.
So make the most of the spewing while it lasts...
The Idiot
by Elif Batuman (novel. audiobook)The Idiot is smart. And charming. And funny.
I was expecting something overtly smart (ie not that smart), like Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot, but The Idiot isn't one of those campus novels. I mean, there is stuff about linguistic theory and Russian literature, but it's not like a hammer on an anvil.
The novel's appeal rests on how the reader responds to its protagonist, Selin. She's a freshman at Harvard but she's the idiot from the title (or at least the main one), spending most of the novel baffled - whether she's in the US or in Hungary. Her love story, with the post-grad Ivan, stumbles at almost every hurdle put up by the romance genre. And yet she is pleasant company. She's the well-meaning friend, the younger sibling. There's the sense that she might get it right one day... But the bigger question might be, what is lost when she get's it right and slips into line with everyone else's way of thing?
The Underground
Railroad by Colson Whitehead (novel, audiobook)
This is the kind of novel you need to read around as well as read into, and then re-read.
Whitehead makes the underground railroad a literal underground railroad, carved out of earth and rock by nameless men and presumably a few women (the novel is deliberately vague about the builders).
It's the kind of high concept fulcrum point upon which a lot of alternate history novels are built upon.
But to me it felt less important than, say, if the Jews set up a nation in Sitka, or if the Berlin Wall never fell or whatever it is the Game of Thrones producers are set to do with the Civil War.
Which is both a compliment and the nub of what gives me pause before praising this book unreservedly upon a first reading.
There's a tension throughout between the plight of the slaves, the moral implications for the whites who help or hinder their passage to safety -- all of which is meant to conjure the same emotions as the historical reality -- and the novelist's decision to warp this vision of the past in one particular way. It has to be for a better reason than just to give the novel a 'hook'... Right?
This is the kind of novel you need to read around as well as read into, and then re-read.Whitehead makes the underground railroad a literal underground railroad, carved out of earth and rock by nameless men and presumably a few women (the novel is deliberately vague about the builders).
It's the kind of high concept fulcrum point upon which a lot of alternate history novels are built upon.
But to me it felt less important than, say, if the Jews set up a nation in Sitka, or if the Berlin Wall never fell or whatever it is the Game of Thrones producers are set to do with the Civil War.
Which is both a compliment and the nub of what gives me pause before praising this book unreservedly upon a first reading.
There's a tension throughout between the plight of the slaves, the moral implications for the whites who help or hinder their passage to safety -- all of which is meant to conjure the same emotions as the historical reality -- and the novelist's decision to warp this vision of the past in one particular way. It has to be for a better reason than just to give the novel a 'hook'... Right?
We Should
All be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (non-fiction, audiobook)
This hardly counts as a book in its own right - it was adapted from a TEDx talk / the audiobook runs for less than an hour. But Wikipedia describes it as a book-length essay, so...
Maybe the fact it was rushed out on its lonesome, back in 2014, rather than bolstered by other pieces of fiction, says something about the appetite (perceived or real) for bold statements such as the one encapsulated in the title.
Although, it isn't that bold, is it? Indeed, the whole thing felt a little de-clawed, a little dated. It doesn't touch on intersectionalism, and even its discussion of feminism is narrow and dislocated from much of history.
But again, it started as a TED talk, so.
Beneath Pale Water by Thalia Henry (novel, NZ)
I read this to review, so my lips are sealed.
This hardly counts as a book in its own right - it was adapted from a TEDx talk / the audiobook runs for less than an hour. But Wikipedia describes it as a book-length essay, so...Maybe the fact it was rushed out on its lonesome, back in 2014, rather than bolstered by other pieces of fiction, says something about the appetite (perceived or real) for bold statements such as the one encapsulated in the title.
Although, it isn't that bold, is it? Indeed, the whole thing felt a little de-clawed, a little dated. It doesn't touch on intersectionalism, and even its discussion of feminism is narrow and dislocated from much of history.
But again, it started as a TED talk, so.
Beneath Pale Water by Thalia Henry (novel, NZ)
I read this to review, so my lips are sealed.
61 Hours by
Lee Child (novel, audiobook)
If you're gonna read a white dude, why not the ultimate white dude?
The number of literary types who've tweeted gleefully about reading Jack Reacher novels over the summer (and Danyl Mclauchlin's piece at the Spinoff) wore me down, alright?
I mean, I'm not against genre. See hard sci-fi below. But also crime and thrillers. I've read Elmore Leonard and Jo Nesbo and Ian Rankin and (pauses to think of a female crime writer) Vanda Symon (double points for being a Kiwi - yus!). But I'd never read a Reacher book (though I'd seen the first movie and now understand how ludicrous it is to have cast tiny Tom Cruise in the role).
Anyway: 61 Hours. It was brisk, brash and blokey, but not so much that I couldn't see my wife enjoying it while in a bach one rainy weekend.
I figured the mystery out early (please, hold your applause) and so the twist fell flat, but it all happened so swiftly I could hardy feel miffed.
The brevity is what makes having a twist such a challenge - only a handful of characters can be introduced in any detail, and even then those details tend to weigh heavily on the memory. A longer story would be able to throw up more red herrings (I'm thinking about all those The Killing-esque shows) but then it would just take longer.
Get in, get out - that seems to be Child's/Reacher's M.O.
Fair enough.
Will I read another? Well, summer's pretty much over...
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson (novel, audiobook)
This is the first book by Stephenson that I have read, though I've been vaguely aware of him and the fact he's lauded (in certain) circles for the scientific veracity of his fictions.
In the wrong hands, Seveneves could go down like the proverbial nickel and iron asteroid/balloon. All that detail. How the International Space Stations works is one thing, but how public transport works across a network of orbit chain-shaped habitats 5,000 years after the moon explodes... that's something else.
So I get that this isn't everyone's cup of tea.
But I like a strong brew.
I could poke holes in things like character development (actually, handled well for the most part) and perhaps some of the higher level things the second half implies about genetic and racial predispositions. But most times I felt he was wading into territory I felt I was about to be blessed with that modern tonic -- a dose of moral superiority -- the narrator acknowledge my facile point and undercut it with science or philosophy or -- shock horror -- a dramatic sequence.
It was both too long (880 pages or a day and a half of non-stop audio) and not long enough: the second half feels slighter that the first; it's revelations were satisfying but I could have spent another hundred pages each with the Pingers and the Diggers and how they worked.
If you're gonna read a white dude, why not the ultimate white dude?
The number of literary types who've tweeted gleefully about reading Jack Reacher novels over the summer (and Danyl Mclauchlin's piece at the Spinoff) wore me down, alright?
I mean, I'm not against genre. See hard sci-fi below. But also crime and thrillers. I've read Elmore Leonard and Jo Nesbo and Ian Rankin and (pauses to think of a female crime writer) Vanda Symon (double points for being a Kiwi - yus!). But I'd never read a Reacher book (though I'd seen the first movie and now understand how ludicrous it is to have cast tiny Tom Cruise in the role).
Anyway: 61 Hours. It was brisk, brash and blokey, but not so much that I couldn't see my wife enjoying it while in a bach one rainy weekend.
I figured the mystery out early (please, hold your applause) and so the twist fell flat, but it all happened so swiftly I could hardy feel miffed.
The brevity is what makes having a twist such a challenge - only a handful of characters can be introduced in any detail, and even then those details tend to weigh heavily on the memory. A longer story would be able to throw up more red herrings (I'm thinking about all those The Killing-esque shows) but then it would just take longer.
Get in, get out - that seems to be Child's/Reacher's M.O.
Fair enough.
Will I read another? Well, summer's pretty much over...
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson (novel, audiobook)
This is the first book by Stephenson that I have read, though I've been vaguely aware of him and the fact he's lauded (in certain) circles for the scientific veracity of his fictions.In the wrong hands, Seveneves could go down like the proverbial nickel and iron asteroid/balloon. All that detail. How the International Space Stations works is one thing, but how public transport works across a network of orbit chain-shaped habitats 5,000 years after the moon explodes... that's something else.
So I get that this isn't everyone's cup of tea.
But I like a strong brew.
I could poke holes in things like character development (actually, handled well for the most part) and perhaps some of the higher level things the second half implies about genetic and racial predispositions. But most times I felt he was wading into territory I felt I was about to be blessed with that modern tonic -- a dose of moral superiority -- the narrator acknowledge my facile point and undercut it with science or philosophy or -- shock horror -- a dramatic sequence.
It was both too long (880 pages or a day and a half of non-stop audio) and not long enough: the second half feels slighter that the first; it's revelations were satisfying but I could have spent another hundred pages each with the Pingers and the Diggers and how they worked.
Vacationland
by John HodgmanIf you're going to write about yourself as a white dude in 201X, I'd recommend reading Hodgman's book. He walks that tightrope between self-effacement and gratitude, and is funny the whole way through.
Structurally the book was a little misshapen. But Hodgman was such good company. I might have to read him again in 2019.
TV /MOVIES
Um, honestly, I can't remember watching much. I took my kids to Ferdinand, which was average. Where was that blockbuster kids film over Christmas? And I've watched most of Season 4 of Black Mirror, which seems to have tailed off. I mean, the episodes get more and more beautiful, but my responses to their conceits are less visceral.
Oh, and I finished Werner Herzog's filmmaking masterclass and feel like he's my gruff-but-well-meaning German uncle now. He's gonna regret doing that gig now that thousands of nobodies will have spent so long sitting at his feet listening to his stories about guerilla documentaries and fighting with Klaus Kinski.
Next up, Marty Scorsese and Ron Howard both have new masterclasses. Scorsese looks like he'll just be doing his usually thing about classic films that have inspired him, while Howard's looks to be more technical and workmanlike. Both (or neither) may be worth the time.
Oh, and I finished Werner Herzog's filmmaking masterclass and feel like he's my gruff-but-well-meaning German uncle now. He's gonna regret doing that gig now that thousands of nobodies will have spent so long sitting at his feet listening to his stories about guerilla documentaries and fighting with Klaus Kinski.
Next up, Marty Scorsese and Ron Howard both have new masterclasses. Scorsese looks like he'll just be doing his usually thing about classic films that have inspired him, while Howard's looks to be more technical and workmanlike. Both (or neither) may be worth the time.
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