Consumption Diary Q1 2026

MUSIC - JANUARY

BIOGRAPHICAL PRELUDE

The start of 2026 has been hectic. From our petrol people mover's engine blowing up the week before the Iran war started (thank god we bought a 2nd hand leaf in November), to the normal day-job craziness with the start of a new semester and emissions audit season (and me starting an undergrad te reo paper), Ockham judging duties (long-list decision, short-list decision, best first book and overall winner decisions - with the latter stage completed on 27 March) to work on my own forthcoming book... 

Which, yeah, is happening this winter. Like a lot of book things it was a case of nothing for a long time, then everything all at once. It's a collection of short stories. I was asked to write 1-2 new stories over the summer that could replace some previously published stories. In the end, I added one new story and set it very explicitly in early Feb 2026, so the main character is worried about ICE actions in Minnesota but didn't know war with Iran was the next step further down into hell - though she is very obsessed with large fossil fuel guzzlers (the story is called 'Ranger, Ranger, Ranger'). There's a symbolic comeuppance and now I'm wondering how it will play with readers knowing fuel price hikes were just on the horizon...

In parallel with writing this new story, I was working through my editor's comments on the rest of the stories in the manuscript. I may write more about this separately, a kind of four-books-in update to Notes on getting thoroughly edited (written in 2013 about the editing process for my 2nd book and first published novel).

BOOKS

(21 books in 3 months, not counting re-reads of Ockhams books. On track for a measly 80 books. Time will tell.)

Party Boy by Breton Dukes (novel, physical book, NZ, 2026) - went to the book launch at Woof!, which is where the opening section of the novel is set. Breton read part of this at the launch. It was like seeing a 4th dimension. A similar feeling pervaded the reading of the novel, with the main character traversing my patch of hilltop Dunedin for school and kindy dropoffs, and traversing the psychic geography of an anxious, overthinking, middle aged white guy who went to a conservative all boys high school. 

Bread of Angels by Patti Smith (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 2025)

The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing (non-fiction, audiobook, UK, 2024)

Will there ever be another you by Patricia Lockwood (novel, audiobook, US, 2025) - sure, we're calling anything a novel these days, and this wasn't as good as No one belongs here more than you, but it was still great in that way early 2000's Simpsons was great (untethered by received logic etc etc).

Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O'Brien (novel, audiobook, US, 1974)

Life after cars: freeing ourselves from the tyranny of the automobile by Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon and Aaron Naparstek (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 2025)

Extremophile by Ian Green (novel, audiobook, US, 2024)

Heated Rivalry by Rachel Rein (novel, audiobook, US, 2019)

Enshittification by Cory Doctorow (non-fiction, audiobook, Canada, 2025)

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R.R. Martin (3x novellas, audiobook, US, 2015)

Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy (novel, audiobook, US, 2025) - hard to live up to I'm Glad My Mom Died, especially when jumping from memoir to fiction. I'll never know how this would have landed without the legacy of IGMMD.

Becoming Tangata Tiriti: Working with Māori, Honouring the Treaty by Avril Bell (non-fiction, audiobook, NZ, 2024)

Wonky Optics, RedEdits, The Black and the White, Chosen by Geoff Cochrane (4x poetry collections, physical books, NZ, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2020) - re-reads for my larger project...

Football by Chuck Klosterman (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 2026) - I have read many Klosterman books, but his schtick in this context was almost intolerable. Like, just say your silly-but-sensible arguments - stop prefacing everything!

Atavists by Lydia Millet (short stories, audiobook, US, 2025) - these are linked stories, and probably closer to a novel that Will there ever be another you, but I'm glad it's billed as "Stories" on the cover. I really enjoyed this. Millet has been a fave author of my since I read Oh Pure and Radiant Heart back in,  2005 or 2006... I really should read that again one day.

The Breath of the Gods: The history and future of the wind by Simon Winchester (non-fiction, audiobook, UK, 2025) - It's good when non-fiction authors have a voice, a style they can lean into. But Winchester's is just not for me. He tries to add cultural balance, but it comes off as token. He add the arguments against a rabid eugenicist but then continues to laud his theory of the wind. I can't recall a single mention of a female. And structurally its a shitshow. He starts by talking about the concept of global terrestrial stilling (winds are getting weaker and people are trying to figure out why) only to throw a sentence or two at the end of the book saying, oh, yeah, people aren't so worried about that anymore. Give this a miss.

Adventures in the Screen Trade: A personal view of Hollywood and Screenwriting by William Goldman (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 1982) - facinating on many levels. There's the sense WG is writing this in real time, assessing the state of Hollywood in 1982 and the slate of movies in the cinema at the time. There's the section at the end where he adapts his own short story into a short screenplay, then gets a production designer, composer, editor and director to assess (read: excoriate in the case of the director) his attempt. And all the inside baseball about the making of movies like Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, The Right Stuff and Marathon Man.

The Uncool: A Memoir by Cameron Crowe (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 2025) - more inside baseball, this time 1970s music journalism. Crazy to think of Crowe interviewing these rocks stars as a 15 and 16 year old.

MUSIC - FEBRUARY

FILM & TV

Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie - saw this at the single cinema session in Dunedin... loved it. Looking forward to the sequel in another 17 years!!!

Project Hail Mary (the first movie I've seen in a cinema with my kids since Frozen II) - I loved the book, and loved this adaptation.

The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal - Season 1 - was always going to be a bit of a hagiography (directed by the late lead singer's brother) and would play up the Canada's Band angle, but there was enough in the third-quarter about messy band dynamics and less-than-perfect later albums (it has always been my opinion that: fuck Bob Rock), and as a non-Canadian mega fan I learnt some things and enjoyed it on the whole.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms - Season 1 - really good. Got me to read the novellas.

Heated Rivalry - Season 1 - interesting. I read the novel to see how that worked. 

A lot of AEW and WWE (and related YouTube content) as I'm still exploring the narrative implications of professional wrestling in this post-kayfabe phase... I still don't know if this will come to anything.

MUSIC - MARCH