December 2024 consumption diary

MUSIC

SCHEDULING NOTE

I've got my best books and music lists in draft and will post on Bluesky first, then do my more detailed awards posts here in early Jan.

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)

Pounamu Pounamu by Witi Ihimaera (short stories, audiobook, NZ, 1972)

Dedications by JC Sturm (poetry, physical book, NZ, 1996)

Poūkangahatus by Tayi Tibble (poetry, physical book, NZ, 2018)

The Deleted World by Tomas Transtromer (poetry, physical book, Sweden, 2006)

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)