Consumption Diary April 2026

MUSIC

(I'm seriously considering jumping ship from Spotify to Tidal, but want some reassurance that playlists can port across easily and the music library doesn't have any glaring omissions... Watch this space.)

BOOKS

The Silver Book by Olivia Laing (novel, audiobook, UK, 2025) 

God damn amazing. Shares something of the stripped down, psychological distance of David Szalay's Flesh, but set in the world of mid-1970s Italian cinema. Strap a rocket on this one and send it straight to my Best of the Year post!

Seed by Elisabeth Easther (novel, audiobook, NZ, 2026)

Primarily four women (two pairs of friends) who do or don't want to get pregnant and do or don't get pregnant. I say primarily as there are chapters from secondary characters' perspectives (husbands/partners, the receptionist at the ad agency where one of the main characters works...), and sometimes the narrator slips inside other characters' heads (including children) during a main character's p.o.v. chapter. Overall: a bit much. Maybe if there was just one pair of friends? Or a more regular switching between the groups? Less may have meant more, for this dunce at least.

Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 2023)

I really like Odell's How to do Nothing when I read it in 2020. I found Saving Time a lot harder to get into. It seemed to circle round what its thesis might be, without ever really clearly moving forward. All lit review, no fuse lit. (Apart from a growing belief that the best way to talk about time, and alternative framing of time, is within fiction.)

Plus I'm partway through 3 physical books and 1 audiobook, which I'll pick up in the next consumption diary.

FILM & TV

Daisy Jones & The Six (limited TV show)

I enjoyed the book (top 10 in 2023) because it resembled the kinds of Classic Albums / band bio shows my dad used to love... And I liked the album of songs from this show (also listened to in 2023)... but I didn't have Amazon Prime until this past month, so have only now watched the TV show. And, well, it didn't work. The first three episodes in particular, before Daisy Jones intersects with The Six, felt full of rock cliches and lacking in narrative drive. It felt like they were searching for A Star is Born but the plot and format of the source text kept them from reaching escape velocity for hours on end. 

Like, I shouldn't be so bored that I'm searching the cast online. It was cool to discover Riley Keough is Elvis' granddaughter (and inherited Graceland!) and learnt to sing for this role (and her ability to sing is like, THE most crucial plot point). But still.

Oh well. I still think the feat of creating a goooood album of songs for a fictional band, sung by the cast, that still stands on its own in 2026.

Shows in progress: Beef (Season 2), New Zealand Spy (Season 1)

Movies abandoned partway: Now You See Me, Now You Don't, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, Jurassic World: Rebirth, Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning, The Naked Gun (2025) (some of these may have been from March, but the moral of the story is I can't seem to finish a contemporary Hollywood movie for the life of me).

Rewatches for me, first time for the kids: A Knight's Tale, Hook, Jurassic Park, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery