January-Februrary 2025 Consumption Diary

MUSIC - JAN

READING

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)

The Lost Children

Night Bitch

Speed*

Mrs Doubtfire* (umm...)

MUSIC - FEB

Consumption Diary: Jan-Feb 2024

MUSIC - February

BOOKS

Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking by Tyson Yunkaporta (non-fiction, audiobook, Australia, 2023) - 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).

She's a Killer by Kirsten McDougall (novel, physical book, NZ, 2021) - 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.

Madness is Better Than Defeat by Ned Beauman (novel, audiobook, UK, 2017) - So long. Too long. Lots of Pynchoneering. But about three-quarts of the way through it starts to reference how long it is and then it starts to get really good. 

Happy Place by Emily Henry (novel, audiobook, US, 2023) - The third (I think) book I've read of Henry's... not as good as Beach Read, better than You and Me on Vacation. Perfectly acceptable summer holiday fare.

Shy by Max Porter (novel, audiobook, UK, 2023) - The usual Porter: lyrical, Alan Garner-esque, get-in get-out before you can be accused of dark tourism (grief, depression, despair)... but probably his most affecting (very short) novel to date.

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (novel, audiobook, Ireland, 2023) - The Irish Franzen? As if anyone would deliberately set out to do that, but when pitted against Sally Rooney's sparser, more caustic vision of young people in Ireland, perhaps Murray had to go generational? 

Border Districts by Gerald Murnane (novel, physical book, Australia, 2017) - I don't read a lot of physical books due to eye/brain/life issues. I can't decide if this kind of book is perfect for people like me or a bad idea: it's so interior and meandering that it works well in 3-5 page spurts. It's clear he's a genius, turned an an oblique angle from most of the rest of us, but I'm not sure the angle is particularly... interesting??? Or am I making the mistake of reading this as fake fiction (a.k.a. autobiography without a fact checker)? Guess I'll have to read another Murnane and report back.

Baumgartner by Paul Auster (novel, audiobook, US, 2023) - Auster can be hit or miss. And sometimes he can wedge the dart right in the frame of the dartboard, like with this book, which is kind of neither. 

World Within a Song by Jeff Tweedy (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 2023) - meh. I didn't like the Dylan book where he tried a similar thing of using individual songs to anchor each chapter (but with more brio), so maybe it's just a bad approach?

I am Homeless If This is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore (novel, audiobook, US, 2023) - I love Lorrie Moore. Nothing will change my affection for Birds of America and Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? and Self-Help and A Gate at the Stairs, but IAHIFINMH was kinda forgettable, sad to say.

Sure, I'll Join Your Cult by Maria Bamford (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 2023) - felt too much like stand-up, not booky enough, soz.

Death and the Conjurer by Tom Mead (novel, audiobook, UK, 2022) - nope.

*

Checking in on my semi-random reading targets for 2024:

• At least ten single-author poetry collections: 0/10 (fear not...)
• At least one book from every continent: 3/6 (Asia, South America and Africa to go... may also need to read a book about Antarctica for completeness)
• At least four books in translation: 0/4
• At least four books by Australians: 2/4
• At least five different genres of novel: I'm going to say a conservative 3/5 (romance, mystery, and lit-fic), but pretty confident there'll be some hard sci-fi and detective fiction coming down the chute. Maybe I should have aimed higher, or set a more specific target? Oh well.

PRODUCTIVITY INTERLUDE

From December I've been participating in a Creative Impact Lab focussing on climate change. You can read more about it here or here (I'm guessing these event-based links might break one day). It culminated in a group exhibition at Tūhura Otago Museum (my first time having "art" [text-heavy video works] exhibited) and a few public events (like this one) in support of it. May potentially go a bit further (exhibiting elsewhere, and maybe a supporting publication/book). 

It's been great to be thrust out of my comfort zone, but in a really supportive environment. 

FILM & TV

Carol and the End of the World - Season 1 - So good. Watch it! It's slow-thrilling like Better Call Saul, has a couple of episodes to rival "Forks" (The Bear) as best standalone, self-contained masterpiece episode of 2023, while being this deadpan, dry-as-cold-toast animated 

Fargo - Season 5 - I have a hard time differentiating seasons 1-4, and maybe 5 will get put in the memory blender shortly, but right now it stands out for leaning less into the strong female cop and more the strong female suspect/victim/hero. Super enjoyable, but also frustrating (John Hamm is so good at being baaad).

The Curse - Season 1 - gave up after 3 episodes (it's deliberately cringy, which isn't my favourite genre) but returned after I caught wind of a crazy ending. And yep, the second half of the final episode sure is crazy. Verdict: worth it.

One Day - Series 1 - good sound track, middling execution (my wife didn't realise the premise of the show was each episode was the same day in successive years until I mentioned it in episode 4 - and I totally can understand how), some good acting, but ultimately *spoiler alert* let down by making cycling seem unsafe (LOL) and revealing that the show (and the novel) had a main character and it was the one you cared less about.

Curb Your Enthusiasm - Season 12 (still in progress)

Spaceman

Mister Organ

Sleeping with Other People

Paper Planes

Leave the World Behind

The Other Guys

I Love You, Beth Cooper

MUSIC - JANUARY

February Consumption Diary

MUSIC

BOOKS

Lanny by Max Porter (novel, audiobook)

I started listening to this while camping last month, when I couldn't sleep because of the logging trucks, but I started from scratch again this month and yeah, I'm glad I did.

Porter has a subversive streak, evident both in how he puts a page together and use of narrative... For the longest time, the 'disappeared boy' arc felt fresh and new. That it doesn't hold that line to the very end is a bit disappointing, but it's still fantastic overall.

The Teleportation Incident by Ned Beauman (novel, audiobook)

A colleague said my latest novel reminded him of Beauman's work, so of course I checked him out.

On reflection, this is not the way to attack a new author. It's like being shown a photo of a celebrity and being told you look like them. You'll only see how old they look, or how far short of them your own appearance falls.

For me, The Teleportation Incident held up a mirror to my own hangup about soggy middle sections...

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (novel, audiobook)

One of the gazillion 'great' novels I've never read but knew enough about not to skip the Introduction for fear of spoilers.

I enjoyed it, but the fact I moved onto Middlemarch next, in which the characters seem much fuller and there's a sense of humour and brio, means Bovary has already slumped in my estimations. Sorry Gus!

...

And then these books, which for different reasons (some of it is laziness!), I won't comment on here:

Drongo by Ian Richards (novel)

This is Pleasure by Mary Gaitskill (novella)

Mother Nut by John Jeremiah Sullivan (novella)

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur (poetry)

The Book of Traps and Lessons by Kate Tempest (poetry)

MOVIES & TV

My Neighbour Totoro

Pokemon: Mewtwo Strikes Back

Logan Lucky

Uncut Gems
Skyscraper

Succession - 2nd half of season 1 and all of season 2

Rick and Morty - Season 4

Brooklyn 99 - Season 1

Better Call Saul - first 2 eps of Season 5 (i.e. as soon as new eps drop, we're on em in the Cliff household)

January Consumption Diary

MUSIC

BOOKS

Medallion Status by John Hodgman (non-fiction, audiobook)

I really enjoyed Hodgman's previous book, Vacationland, when I read it in January 2018, and his follow up didn't disappoint. This was the first book this year that I found myself making time for, rather than it just being the thing that played when I had time to listen.

It's all about voice and tone. Hodgman is self-effacing, funny and just honest enough not to stiffle that humour.


Death is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa (novel, audiobook)

Tonally, this comes across as a comedy in a tragic setting (contemporary Syria). It lets you slip into this world, and follow Bolbol and his siblings as they try and transport their father's corpse across the war zone, bear its frustrations and absurdities, and experience something of what it is like the have civil war take root in your country.


On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (novel, audiobook)

It's very interesting to hear Vuong talk about the use of biographical fact for this novel and the power derived from this.

As a standalone work, it is powerful. It doesn't have a traditional narrative drive, which is probably what I was looking for at this time of year / in my mental state.


Doggerland by Ben Smith (novel, audiobook)

Smith tells his tale of the near future (probably a couple of decades hence) in simple prose. The protagonist is referred to as the boy. The business that he and his grandfather work for, maintaining an offshore windfarm, is The Corporation. But at a certain point this simplicity becomes vagueness - the social / economic / environmental breakdown that has occurred isn't ever really explained. And so the lasting memory of this book is one of vagueness.


FILM & TV

The Leftovers Season 2 - so gooood. The best description I've read about season 2 is that it's Damon Lindelof doing fan fiction based on Tom Perrota's novel (which season 1 was based on), just as he used the Watchmen graphic novel as a base to riff away and come up with the single season of goodness that was "his" Watchmen.

Silicon Valley Season 6
The Favourite
Mid90s
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Ghostbusters (original)*
Toy Story 3*
And a bunch of other forgettable movies watched at other people's homes during the summer break :)

September & October publicity and consumption diary

It's been a busy two months. Manic, at times.

Sometimes everything wants to get through the eye of the needle at once.

A second burst of activity in support of Nailing Down the Saint (more on this below), the most challenging period of my professional (ie not writing books) career, a week in Melbourne for work, and in general the lowest ebb for my mental health in maybe fifteen years...

But anyway...


MUSIC - SEPTEMBER

Back in early September it was Going West Festival, in Titirangi. It was my second time at the festival (the first was in 2011), and it still has the cosy, kindly curious vibe. I did a session with Rosetta Allen about our latest novels, ably chaired by Caroline Barron.

Elizabeth Knox giving her address on opening night at Going West 2019

Then it was down to Dunedin with the family for a trip down memory lane (two years was two much for my son, for whom half a life has elapsed since my Burns year) and a solo session on the top floor of the city library. Afterwards, I had a chat with a Catholic priest who remembers St Joseph of Copertino being struck off the list of saints and was going to slip a little of the Joseph's life into the prayer group he was hosting that weekend.

St Clair

At the end of September, Elizabeth Knox and I shared the stage for a Writers on Mondays session at Te Papa, chaired by fellow novelist Kate Duignan. We got cartooned, which was cool (second time in my "second" career).

"Interruptions are like flies."- @ElizabethKnoxNZ https://t.co/EasCxnBViH pic.twitter.com/XcrsL5CjjE

— Tara Black (@ablack_art) September 30, 2019

Reviews? Well, there's not a lot of bandwidth for any writing these days, but I did have positive reviews in North & South and The NZ Herald. ("Satisfactions abound" is a pretty pleasing headline for a review (even if the headline was probably the work of a sub-editor who hasn't read the book.)


BOOKS



Ghost Wall by Sara Moss (novel, audiobook)

A short novel told in the first person, I was gripped throughout but the payoff for the ever-growing sense of dread felt a little meagre.


Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry (novel, audiobook)

Another shorter book (though not as short or tight as Ghost Wall). This time it was the language that gripped me. The amazing, theatrical banter between the aging Irish gangsters, waiting at a North African port for the daughter of one of them. A blend of Shakespearean asides, Beckettian logic and Irish pub craic, it was so intoxicating the sections that lept back in time and away from the port flagged in comparison.

And another landing that felt less substantial that the waiting promised.

(I'm beginning to think I like the idea of short novels more than I do the reality.)


You Know You Want This by Kristen Roupenian (short stories, audiobook)

I wanted to find fault with this book. I wanted to look down my nose at the stories in this book whose blurb touts the face "Cat Person" was "the first short story to go viral". (I listened to "Cat Person" in 2017 and thought it was a decent story published at the perfect moment but two years later could remember very few details).

And yet my bias was defeated. This is a very good collection. Very very good.

Brave but not just for the sake of bravery. Bold but modulated in tone and intensity.


The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox (novel, NZ)


I don't read many books with faeries in them, but this is safely the best.



The Way Home by Mark Boyle (non-fiction, audiobook)

So weird to listen to this as an audiobook, pumped into my ears via my cellphone, when Boyle has turned his back on modern technology (he writes toward the end of the book about considering if there was a way to avoid typesetting the printed version of the book).

I originally put this book on my reading list as I thought it might provide some sparks for a post-apocalyptic story, but as life got shitty I could see the contemporary appeal of unplugging, tuning out and dropping off the map. Total middle class yt ppl masochistic fantasy on my part, but still.


Underland by Robert MacFarlane (non-fiction, audiobook)

There was a good book here, but it's buried (*rim-shot*) beneath an excess of description and, just, too much content.


Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch (non-fiction, audiobook)

The two biggest challenges of writing about language on the internet in book form:

1) Managing tone - how do you pay due attention to interesting linguistic features and developments without disappearing up your own @#%?

2) Managing time - the internet moves fast - how do you talk about language, memes, platforms with a half-life of months?

McCulloch pulls it off in both respects.


Sula by Toni Morrison (fiction, audiobook)

When Morrison died in August, I knew it was long past due some of her books on my to-read list got taken off the shelf. Sula, her second published novel, opens up a world in its first few pages and adds so much depth to it, so deftly, that it's a little scary.

RIP Toni!


Flying Lessons and other stories, by various, edited by Ellen Oh (short stories, audiobook)

A mixed bag, as most anthologies are, but some standout stories from Kwame Alxander and Sunil Malhotra.


Minotaur by Peter Goldsworthy (novel, audiobook)


A blinded cop, two years into his convalescence. For most of the book, the tensions are between the reader and their expectations. Will this become a true hard-boiled detective story (early on, Detective Zadow is offered a new job on the force, a kind of human lie detector to weed out crooked cops)? Or is it a story of revenge... or depression... or medical misadventure... or madness? Is it a love story, comedy (the buddy cop chemistry between Zadow and Siri... yes, that Siri... is real) or a tragedy? Modern myth or missed opportunity?

There are a few cringy parts (okay, so maybe I'm supposed to cringe at the description of Zadow's Asian ex's "almond" eyes... every time they're mentioned and exoticised), but for the most part this is an interesting, absorbing psychological thriller in hardboiled garb.


MUSIC - OCTOBER

FILM & TV


Rookie Historian Goo Hae-Ryung - 20 hour-long episodes, really got sucked in after getting used to the variety of tones (it's a bit like Shakespeare... or anime). Has totally thrown a cat among the pigeons of my Netlflix recommendations

El Camino - made me more eager for the next season of Better Call Saul rather than nostalgic for Breaking Bad

John Wick 3 (in-flight viewing - abandoned due to excessive violence in a constrained space)

Detective Pikachu (in-flight viewing - abandoned due to boredom)

Fleabag Season 1 (in-flight viewing - devoured)

The Chills: the triumph and tragedy of Martin Phillipps (in-flight viewing coming back from Melbourne... I also watched another movie... some recent release from Hollywood, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was, which tells you all you need to know)

Crashing Season 1

Rugby World Cup - my quadrennial descent back into caring about rugby

NBA - every Sacramento loss (ie every Sacramento game) so far this season (it's fair to say sport has done nothing for my depression...)

June Consumption Diary

MUSIC

BOOKS

The Angel's Cut by Elizabeth Knox (novel, audiobook, NZ)

It only took me ten years to get around to reading the sequel to The Vintner's Luck but boy howdee this was good.

It sent me scrambling for reasons for how a sequel could be this good. Like, it helps when the main character doesn't age, so the sequel can take place at any time or place that takes your fancy up until the present day... but it still takes a massive amount of  skill to pull off!

There's a lot in this book that echoes what I was interested in when writing Nailing Down the Saint. It goes a lot further in pushing forward a counter-story to the rational materialist world view (the main character is an ANGEL! Lucifer makes regular guest appearances), without ever seeming like fantasy for the sake of fantasy.


Hark by Sam Lipsyte (novel)

I'd been hanging out for Hark to appear on Audible (or one of the borrowing services I can access through my library) but I got tired of waiting and read the physical book instead.

And at first it was like a drug. I was taking photos of individual pages so I'd have record of an amazing sentence, or a hilarious joke (often both at the same time).

An example from page 78, where two characters are at an art gallery:

"It says here that we should enjoy Volk's work but not forget that we was distant with his family in later years and once considered having an affair with a neighbor."

So much to unpack!

I did struggle slightly to separate the first perspective character (the novel has a handful of them), Fraz Penzig, from Milo Burke, the protagonist of Lipsyte's previous novel, The Ask (2010) - and Steve and Lewis from the two novels that preceded that one.

The middle section of Hark suffers a similar, you're-not-really-reading-for-plot-are-you?, doldrums. The kind I'd normally be able to power through in an audiobook, but is more pronounced when you can't multi-task. And the ending... well, it sucked.

Zooming out, I think we've all been conditioned to be a little tougher on satire in the last few years, which makes it hard for Hark to hit all of its targets. Like that joke above could be seen as minimising the shittiness of the Woody Allens and Louis C.K.'s of the world... You really need to go with the fact none of the characters - but the white males especially - are vessels for hyperbole. Heroic they are not. And when a joke makes you squirm, there's power in holding that space and interrogating why, even if you come out the other end thinking: you really shouldn't have, Sam.

Still, like The Ask (which was my favourite read of 2017), I've got a lot of love for Hark - it's verve and eye-descaling moments - but it won't compete for a spot in my top ten reads this year.

Aside: Any author concerned about your average star-ratings on Goodreads should scan Sam Lipstye's for a reminder that average + Amazon = piffle.



The Dry by Jane Harper (novel, audiobook)

Pretty standard crime thriller.

Revealed the killer a little early (and the twist wasn't in a very satisfying direction), puncturing the tension.

But then: could I write anything near as thrilling? Nope.



Fight Club 2 by Chuck Palahniuk and Cameron Stewart (graphic novel)

Shit.

God awful.

Mercifully short.


MOVIES & TV

Chernobyl
Game of Thrones - Season 7* and 8
Succession - Season 1
Black Mirror - Season 5
Always Be My Maybe
Behind the Curve
About Time

May Consumption Diary

MUSIC


May is the month I finally got a feel for 2019 musically, from amazing albums from Aldous Harding and Orville Peck, to the fact my four year old wants to listen to 'Old Town Road' on repeat...

MAILBOX #1

Advance copy of my next book, arrived 30 May 2019
(Anyone who asks why the book is dedicated to Gord Downie clearly has clearly never read this blog)

BOOKS


There There by Tommy Orange (novel, audiobook)

Wow. I loved this.

I was a bit apprehensive when the novel began with a long, direct address about the lives of urban Native Americans, particularly those in Oakland, and how they got there. I was thinking: Where can this go from here?

And then Orange begins to introduce a large cast of characters, each with chapters from their own perspective. Weird comparison, but it felt a bit like George R.R. Martin at the helm of another exploding narrative (albeit in a mix of first and third person).

So I was still like: How's he gonna land this plane?

And he fucking does!

There's so much heart in here it's easy to overlook the head required to corral so many moving parts.


The New Ships by Kate Duignan (novel, NZ)

Oh my god, I finished a physical book. And a NZ novel, to boot!

I really enjoyed this. It was dense in a good way. Not at the sentence level - at all - but the way there's all these time periods layered, geologically, and at various points we dig through from one time to another.

One observation: I kept forgetting I was reading a first person narrator. Peter Collie is so in check, in the beginning at least, despite the recent death of his wife, that it feels like a third person coolly narrating the story. I found this distance, ironically, pulled me in. What's up with this dude? Turns out, if you dig, plenty.


An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter by César Aira (novel)


What? Two physical books in a month? Well, I did fly for work a little more than normal. And this one is only 87 pages.

Aira is an interesting writer. Whatever number of books I say here, he'll have published more than that by the time you read it. Wikipedia doesn't even try, listing only a "Partial Biography", comprising 73 novels published since 1975, and a bunch of other shorter works.

Is this a novel or a novella? It's unlike any novella I've ever read. It's so dense and direct. After reading Carl Shuker's A Mistake a couple of months ago, which is 182 pages, I've been thinking a lot about how to get in and get out in less than 200 pages. Aira has me lowering that page limit.

There's a particular kind of story that suits the level of compression and focus required to make it feel bigger than a short story but not leave you wanting more. The title of Aira's 2000 novel, translated by Chris Andrews and published by New Directions in 2006, tells you a lot about how this one works.

One thing that slim books can get away with: getting better upon re-reading.

Which is ironic as Aira claims never to go back and edit his work. That's how he can churn out three books a year, a superhuman feat regardless of length. The complete lack of editing is surely posturing. The way he leaves the date he finished the manuscript on the last page! But I certainly felt the forward momentum he claims comes, for him, only by laying sentence after sentence in an indelible sequence.


Artful by Ali Smith (fiction/non-fiction hybrid, audiobook)

So, I thought I was going to listen to four lectures Smith delivered at Oxford, now read by the author herself in audiobook form - and this was true. But those lectures took such an inventive form that once can only refer to the resulting book as a hybrid of fiction and non-fiction.

Artful served to reinforce a couple of things.

Like: shit, Ali Smith is a good writer.

And: I could never do that! I don't think it's meant as an intellectual flex, but the connections she draws across literatures (albeit predominantly European) is impressive, and then to do it within a frame narration that is heart-breaking?

Damn.


The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff (non-fiction, audiobook)

I'm only halfway through. I had to stop as this book was making me overthink a lot of things.

There's plenty to agree with here. Call-out culture isn't something we'll look back on and say: that's where things started getting good. It makes me anxious even saying anything about call-out culture.

But there was an underlying tone in this book. The glee it felt in focussing on left-wing examples of violence and hypocrisy and blinkeredness and general badness. I couldn't stop thinking about Trump's "on both sides".

So I hit pause and I'll try finish it next month. Because muting isn't the solution when dealing with confronting ideas and material.

MAILBOX #2

I ordered a quilt and nailed it to the wall of my garage.
Time will tell if this is the start of my Tragically Hip shrine.

FILM & TV

Game of Thrones, seasons 4, 5, 6 (continuing the our rewatch) and eps 3-6 (& The Last Watch) of Season 8

My reckons, briefly: the final season was rushed. It would have been so much better if it was stretched into 10 episodes. There were at least 10 good episode-ending beats. A little bit of extra time for the big events to breathe. No need for any more CGI or crowd scenes: just people talking in rooms or on ramparts. You know, the show's bread and butter until the checkbook was opened too far.

Back when the show behaved liked TV, with all it's budgetary limitations and workarounds (see all of Rob Stark's off-screen battles in the early seasons), there was nothing but time. But it morphed into a full-blown fantasy-action epic with cinematic budget (and the echoes to Peter Jackson's Rings films got more and more pronounced), while still obeying something resembling a TV schedule. 6+ hours of content delivered over a 2 year period? No wonder everyone involved, from the makeup artists to the showrunners, wanted the dream to end. The fact 2 of those 6 hours were effectively action sequences (battles of Winterfell and Kings Landing): that's a lot of time and cost and effort that simply wasn't part of the formula when Thrones was building its fanbase.

So effectively four hours to explain everything that had built up over almost 70 hours previously? Ouch.

And then there's the expectations of the audience.

A lot of people were watching the show wrong (ha!). The death pools that people ran at the start of the season, as if that's the most interesting part: seeing characters die. Some people were only there for the cinematics. For the CGI dragons and the army of the dead. And then they have the gaul to join the chorus of people criticising the scripting and execution?

If you set aside the fact things were incredibly rushed, did any of the major plot points come without heavy foreshadowing? What Arya achieves in episode 3 was built up for seven seasons! (I concede her "leap" was poorly shot and did this plot point no favours.) Daenerys' heel turn: did y'all not watch the first half of Battle of the Bastards? And all of that Jon being Jon. The thing that becomes apparent when rewatching the show was how shit of a military commander Jon is, how frequently others bail him out (Stannis, the Knights of the Vale, Arya, Drogon) and how he'll never fully exercise his agency.

Season Six was when the show well and truly left the books behind and rewatching it in tandem with the last couple of episodes of Season 8 demonstrated the showrunners were working really hard to get to their ending. But a lot of people's reactions reflect the fact it was 2.5 years since season six aired and people just don't have good enough memories.

Small, non-spoilery example: two of my friends mentioned they didn't remember who Edmure Tully was when he stood up and started to pitch himself as the next king in the final episode, despite him being prominent in the siege of Riverrun late in Season Six (and his earlier significance leading up to the Red Wedding). So that whole 'Sit down Uncle' bit made them shrug.

Endings are hard. Game of Thrones had it worse than most: a thousand strands to pull together, a rep for subverting expectations, millions of fans that rage from rabid to extremely casual but everyone feeling entitled to express their opinion in real time (and in an age when social status can be accrued through denunciation without debate), and doing so at double speed.

But to say the final season should be handed to someone else and reshot? Every one of the signatories for that petition should be forced to make their own piece of art, a short story or film or script for a single episode of TV, and then reflect on their right to demand greater satisfaction from the labour and creativity of others.

Barry, Seasons 1 and 2

Having said something about GoT, I feel I should say something about this quite different HBO show. I also watching in May.

Season 1 didn't wow me until late in the piece, but with 30 minute episodes and 8 episode seasons, I was able to power through quickly and become hooked.

NoHo Hank is one of the better characters in TV history and it will be interesting to see how the show balances the need to give us our Hank fix without imbalancing things too much.

I love that the show feels so free to take risks, like the whole supernatural Taekwondo 12 year old in Season 2, or the way the inspecting officers don't stick around long. There's a bit of Thrones (at least, what GRRM wrote) in this ruthlessness.

Bumping Mics, Season 1

Isle of Dogs (watched in April, I think, but I left it off that list because it was... regrettably forgettable)

December Consumption Diary

MUSIC

Albums from 2017 to add into consideration for my top ten, if I hadn't already posted it:

• Jane Weaver - Modern Kosmology
• The Surfing Magazines - The Surfing Magazines
• Jay Som - Everybody Works

And I might've bumped Protomartyr up further after getting excited about seeing them in Wellington in February and listening to them a lot in recent weeks.

(The list of good things about moving back to Wellington is growing, but the ledger is by no means level.)

BOOKS

Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse (novel)

I picked this up from the bookshelf of my Island Bay holiday home at the end of November. It transported me back to my undergraduate days of reading “classics” (though not this particular book): the love of multiple frame narrators, the unabashed passages of philosophy, the unapologetic return to fiction.

This was the kind of book I might have loved at 19, though I responded to differently at 34. Even though I didn’t read it at 19, it felt a little like time travel, or a time travel experiment gone wrong where I was both 19 and 34 at once, both falling for the façade and seeing the sadder side to the tale of the wolf of the steppes.

Maybe I should re-read it in another 15 years?

Alright, pencil it in!

Other minds: The octopus and the evolution of intelligent life by Peter Godfrey Smith (non-fiction, audiobook)

I enjoyed this. Since finishing it, I've been tempted to refer to something covered in the book (most often how far back you have to go to find the common ancestor of humans and the octopus, and how incredible it is that intelligent life could evolve in parallel...) about a dozen times, though I've held my tongue.

Better to be THAT GUY on here, than I.R.L.

Clash of Kings (parts 1 and 2) by George RR Martin (novel, audiobook)

Like the first novel in GRRM’s Song of Fire and Ice saga, this book is split into two audiobooks (each over 16 hours long).

I didn’t get as hooked into the listening experience as I did with A Game of Thrones, partly because of the way the second novel – necessarily – spreads out its focus, introducing new perspective characters and expands the map.

After two books in the series, I have a greater appreciation for the challenges, successes and (rare) missteps of the TV show.

Will I listen to the next book in the series? Should I? Those are questions for 2018.

Waking up by Sam Harris (non-fiction, audiobook)

There’s something about vehement, aggressive atheists that brings out the contrarian in me and makes me want to believe (I don’t, but).

There’s some good stuff in here, but the book is poorly structured. At various points I wasn’t sure what it was trying to be. Having finished it, I'm still not.

I listened to one of Sam Harris’ podcasts (one about the Heaven’s Gate cult, which quoted from a short section of Waking Up) and found it more rewarding that this whole mishmash of a book. So go there, if you must.

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett (play, audiobook)

An experiment to see what listening to a play would be like after so long consuming audiobooks.

Way back when I started listening to audiobooks, when I was living in Brisbane (so 2004-2007), I went through recordings of all of Shakespeare’s plays I hadn’t read/studied or seen performed. And I found it rewarding – and not that challenging - though my retention of most of those plays is pretty poor a decade or more later.

(The same can be said for many books I read or listened to in that era, so...)

Listening to Beckett, however, was more of a struggle. I thought a play so interested in language would suit being denied all the other senses but hearing, but I grew frustrated. This wasn’t someone reading a book into my ear, it was a reduction of something quite different.

So yeah, plays, like kids (?), should be seen and not (only) heard.

AND...

Three physical books (NZ novels) I read for review (The Necessary Angel, Our Future is in the Air, Salt Picnic) so I won’t discuss them here.

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And that's it. My top ten books from 2017's reading will be found among my monthly consumption diaries. I have Elif Batuman's The Idiot and Colson Whitehead's Underground Railroad queued up as the next audiobooks I listen to, and had been hoping to squeeze them in before 1 Jan to give 2017 as rich a crop as possible, but it's considered rude to walk around with your earbuds in during the holidays. Go figure!

FILM + TV

Easy - Season 2 - a kind of anti-TV, thrilling in it's ability to be contemporary without using it (eg being an Uber and stand-up comedian) for a joke, but never quite getting to the dramatic bits either. 

Dead Man Down – this is the kind of movie I watch with my in-laws, and as far as those sorts of flicks go, I really enjoyed it. I’d never heard of it, and was surprised to learn it wasn’t liked by critics when it came out in 2013. I didn’t find the twists all that implausible, and I liked that they were laced throughout all of the acts, not withheld until the final one.

Suicide Squad – another one with the in-laws. God almighty. I’d heard it was bad, and was in the mood for a trainwreck, but it was worse than that. Somehow Margot Robbie managed to be compelling among the other wreckage. But sheesh.

The Great Wall – yep, in-laws again. Matt Damon isn’t in yellow-face (instead he put on his best Liam Neeson voice – go figure) but it is sad that a huge number of people can only watch a movie if the protagonist is a white dude.

A Night in Casablanca – Classic Marx Bros flick. Full of dad jokes and creepy uncle jokes.

The Lobster – Dead Man Down reminded me that I watched Colin Farrell in the Lobster earlier in the year and never put it on one of these diary lists…

Gary of the Pacific – abandoned before the end. It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t smart. I just wanted the islanders, especially Gary’s sister, to tell him to stop being a dick but I couldn’t give them any more rope.

The Meyerowitz Stories – Someone decribed it as a more mature Squid and Whale – I didn’t like that movie and I disliked the first half of this one even more. Somehow, the inevitable dad-in-hospital, siblings-unite plot kept us watching and we made it to the end, but I’m so over Noah Baumbach.

And a lot of Disney’s Moana (the kids’ current fave and probably better than everything listed above).

Consumption diary – January/February 2017 (part 2)

For music, see my Burns Fortnight #2 post.

Books

The Bone Clocks - David Mitchell (novel, audiobook)

Hard to mention this without it sounding like a massive humblebrag, but I remember talking to David Mitchell about this book (he was nearly finished with it) when we were both at the Sydney Writers Festival in 2011. Reading it now, there's a lot in the Crispin Hershey section that borrows strongly from Mitchell's experience at Australian writers festivals (mostly those that pre-date 2011). And there's a New Zealander in the novel BUT he's a dude from the Chatham Islands who is granted the secret to immortality in the 1st half of the twentieth century, so safe to say NOT modelled on me!!

Mitchell is a go-to writer for readers who want chunkiness and can live with the unevenness that is part of the bargain. I enjoyed it, but all the references back to other Mitchell novels felt too much like a self-congratulatory version of the Shanghai Knights effect (oh, so they're in Victorian England, so they have to meet Arthur Conan Doyle etc). It's worse in that the big conceit of The Bone Clocks (there are these two warring factions of immortals and lots of other people have psychic abilities) has now retrospectively infiltrated Mitchell's back catalogue. Most significantly affected/diminished are Black Swan Green and The 1000 Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

Yes, so a book about which it is easy to feel conflicted.


The Ask and the Answer - Patrick Ness (novel, audiobook) - Book 2 in the Chaos Walking trilogy, read a couple of years after I really enjoyed Book 1. This one felt more static, and as a result, longer, than the first. But still a pretty great exercise in -building (world-, character-, patois-).


Ready Player One - Ernest Cline (novel, audiobook)

The first two hours (audiobook, remember) felt like 90% exposition, but I enjoyed it anyway for its unabashed geekiness. Take a step back and it's a bit uncomfortable to think about how Halliday, the deceased game designer who kicks off the hunt for the key to his fortune, is essentially vehicle for Cline's wish fulfilment. Gee, if only everyone in the world loved the same stuff I love? What if there were hordes of Gen Y, Z, AA and BB kids who devoted 12 hours a day, as Wade Watts does in Ready Player One, to absorbing 80's sitcoms and mastering arcade games? What if everything I know and all my useless skills actually became valuable?

Some problems with pacing, characterisation, and the ending, but I enjoyed this book more than anything I've read in the past year, so there.


10th of December - George Saunders (short stories)

Re-read this to help me think about short stories and oblique angles. Also, gearing up for reading Lincoln in the Bardo next month.


Hicksville - Dylan Horrocks (graphic novel)

Another re-read, another effort to re-centre myself as I geared up for a new/renewed writing endeavour.


The Man Who Could Fly - Rudolpho Anaya (short stories)

Short stories from 'the godfather and guru of Chicano Literature', chosen because of the title story. Interesting without being uplifting or massively transportative.


More Than This - Patrick Ness (novel, audiobook)

Chose this instead of finishing the Chaos Walking trilogy because a) I didn't feel like more sci-fi just yet (though it's not that sci-fi) and b) I was curious what Ness's other YA stuff is like. I'd describe More Than This as emo.

Visual media

This will be an incomplete list as I haven't been keeping record of what I watch, but I think it's a worthwhile exercise this year.

* Films

The Last Valley, Platoon, Sneakerheadz, A Few Good Men, Goodfellas, Trouble with the Curve, Silence.

Silence was the only one I saw in a theatre. I went to a 2pm session on a Friday - one of the affordances of fellowship life - but it was research for my novel. No, honestly. Maybe I'll explain one day.

But Silence. Um. Cinematically, it's essentially a series of torture scenes connected together by shots of greyscale people huddling in one place or another and the crickets and air conditioner hum soundtrack. It's been described as a Scorsese passion project because it was in the works for 28 years (and because it was never going to be The Wolf of Wall Street), but maybe it took so long to come to fruition because of a lack of sustained passion?

It's a one-note film that goes for more than two and a half hours. If I had a passion project, it would be some massive overreach - a symphonic shambles of ideas. But that's just me, I guess.

(And isn't any novel written by 99.9% of writers a passion project, in that it's something the establishment doesn't really want from you. That's how I see my work, anyway.)


* TV (a misnomer - I wonder if we'll ever get around to calling it something different?)

The OA, Fargo (Season 1), Abstract, Luther, selected episodes of The West Wing, and so much Paw Patrol (I wish there were more girl dogs but when I asked my daughter, whose favourite is Sky, she wasn't fazed).

Notes: 

• Roughly ranked in order of appreciation.
• Entire series run to present day, unless otherwise noted.

April through my ears

Tunes

My daughter likes music. She likes dancing. Which is cool. Her taste in music is questionable, though. Her favourite song right now is 'Hollaback Girl', which she calls the 'Nana' song (this shhh is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S).

My daughter is 16 months old.

In April her favourite song was Phil Collins' 'Sussudio', which she first heard while she and I were at the supermarket (Newtown Countdown has this peppy late80s/early90s vibe with is playlist: the other day I found myself singing along to 'Stop Draggin' My Heart Around'). She went on a real Phil Collins/Genesis/Peter Gabriel binge on Pandora after that. And I have to say, maybe some of those songs were kinda alright.

And me? I'm really into Future Islands' new album 'Singles' at the mo. Like, really into it.

Lia likes it too, but it's no Gwen Stefani.

Yarns

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (novel, audiobook)

I was pretty keen on this novel in the early stages (as my March reading update attests). But the book tended to get caught up in trivial situations that just churned and churned for pages. What has the technician come down with? Why can’t Kivrin understand the ‘contemps’? Interesting enough plot points for a page or so, but stretch that to twenty and you’ve got a ponderous book.

As it went on, I found myself most excited by how stuffy and unfuturistic the novel's present (our future) was. The novel was written in 1991 but set in 2054/5. In almost every way except the fact historians can time travel (so just a minor thing, really), our 2014 is more futuristic than Willis’ 2054. They don’t have cellphones, let alone smartphones. The internet isn’t a thing (there's ‘the net’, but that refers to the method universities use to travel back in time).

There’s a quest to get into a locked office to get paper files (there are electronic files, but they don’t have the patient’s NHS number to access them)... 

Even the NHS is still intact (call me a sceptic by I can see it lasting another Tory government).

So often writers are guilty of over-predicting the level of change in the future. Flying cars. Android servants. Meals in pills. It was refreshing to see such an unassuming vision of the future and reminded me how much like a visitor from the stars I would have seemed if 31 year-old Craig appeared to 8 year-old Craig in 1991 with my iPod nano stocked with audiobooks, my iPad (presuming it could still connect to the 2014 version of the internet) and my android smartphone (just in case you think I’m an apple tragic!).


The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Gal... who am I kidding?, JK Rowling (novel, audiobook)

Speaking of the miracle of audiobooks, something odd happened with The Cuckoo’s Calling. I started listening to it over Easter while I carried out grounds maintenance at my estate (okay, so I pruned some trees... but it took ages!). 

The story started with what I thought was the prologue: a tired, injured detective observing the fall-out after solving a case. It seemed pretty standard way to start a crime novel, but as it progressed I got more excited by the level of detail of this dummy case and the depth of the relationships between detective and his office lady and a couple of the other characters. It felt complex and murky but totally alive. Then the narrator of the audiobook said, “That was The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith, read by Robert Glenister”.

Turns out I’d been listening to the epilogue, which my iPod for  decided to play first some reason.

Before I could put down my hedge trimmer, the story moved onto the next track, which happened to be the prologue, which was much less exciting the epilogue.

So, ladies and gentlemen, a rule: if you must have a prologue, make it the epilogue from an unwritten book.

The problem with listening to the actual epilogue first is it drains so much of the mystery and tension from the book. While The Cuckoo’s Calling felt well-handled throughout, I couldn’t help being disappointed. I wanted the book that followed the epilogue, the unwritten one (or maybe it's The Silkworm) and that’s totally on me (or my mischievous iPod).

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (novel, audiobook)

I checked that I was about to listen to track one before pushing play this time. And wham, Richard Poe started talking to me in this florid, biblical polysyndetic prose. 

Vivid, violent, unhinged, mythic, vile, meandering, arch... Blood Meridian is an Elmore Leonard western written by the bastard love child of William S Burroughs and Henry Miller.

Now I get why people rave about CMcC and Blood Meridian in particular.

'Tele'

This year I've been taking TV seriously. Not live broadcast TV of course, but binge-style box set TV. First it was House of Cards (the US version... twas good, my only wish was that the Finchery text messages popping up on the screen from first 2 eps carried through the entire run). Then True Detective (so much promise, such a slack ending). 

Aside: mid-season of True Detective I entertained fantasies about writing a TV show next. Nic Pizzolatto published a short story collection, then a novel (just like me) before penning True Detective, I thought. Such fantasies have waned now.

At the moment I'm doing Breaking Bad. I never got on that ride at the time, so I'm still in Season One.

Then there's Season Four of Game of Thrones to catch-up on.

And finally, a shout-out to the local show, Step Dave, which I thought would be a bit of a cringe-fest. The set up, 24 year old bartender hooks up with 39 year old mother of 3, didn't sound like my kinda thing at all. But I gave the first episode a shot via TVNZ OnDemand and wound up watching the whole season, mostly while doing the dishes (normally Podcast time). 

Bits of Babel, Books, Birds, Base/Bass & Basketball (#94)

Babel Building Blocks

The writer Isaac Babel is said to have asked women he met if he might rifle through their purses to inspect their contents. Some accounts have him paying for this privilege, fewer still suggest that he paid prostitutes for this (and this alone).

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"A well-thought-out story doesn’t need to resemble real life. Life itself tries with all its might to resemble a well-crafted story."
— Isaac Babel ('My First Fee')

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“How late I learned the essential things in life! In my childhood, nailed to the Gemara, I led the life of a sage, and it was only later, when I was older, that I began to climb trees”
— Isaac Babel

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"I grew up wishing that someday, somewhere, a door would open and my father would come in. We would recognize each other immediately, and without seeming surprised, without letting him catch his breath, I would say: "Well, here you are at last. We've been puzzled about you for so long; although you left behind much love and devotion, you bequeathed to us very few facts. It's so good to have you here. Do sit down and tell us what happened."
— Nathalie Babel (Isaac's daughter, quoted here)

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Anniversaries

Today marks one year since the book launch for A Man Melting (and one year and one day since getting engaged; still a few months to go before November!!).  The book was officially released on 2 July 2010...

I'm working like stink to get a book together that might be able to come out in the second half of 2012, but there are a lot of things outta my control (and even the things that are in my control I might not be able to manage), so for now it'll do to look back on my first launch and the solid twelve months me and A Man Melting have had, including: 10 positive reviews (0 negative), 2 end-of-year best book lists, 1 "hot writer" appellation, 1 "best dressed", 3 appearances on radio NZ, two appearances on TV, a prize, a number of newspaper articles about me, 21 columns published in the Dom Post, 1 travel article published and 1 fiction review submitted and set to appear shortly. 

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And 1

And it's nice (in a strange way) to have my words being picked up and mangled by spammers. Here's the latest:

"She was only a newcomer (her solo moody was 4 years later) and described herself as 'a pouch of potatoes'"

- misquoted here, original here.

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The word and the image

a little thing, made big from not knowing when to leave off:
gone past all need except need, enough never enough.

I only started noticing starlings after reading Tim Upperton's poem, 'The Starlings', two years ago. Until then, I guess I didn't bother to distinguish them from blackbirds and thrushes, despite the fact this now seems ludicrous: the metallic glints of their feathers, their electro-squeals, the packs picking through seaweed or muscling out sparrow and chaffinch on the freshly sown lawn, even their silhouette (short tail, thin beak) - how could it be anything but a starling?

The pursuit of knowledge is like the starlings' drive to reproduce in Upperton's poem: never-ending and perhaps even pointless. But once you start, it's harder to derail a certain fascination.

It wasn't until this year that I took note of the difference between a summer starling and a winter starling. And it's all thanks to my new Canon 550D and its image stabilised 55-250mm lens which allows me to get close-ups of birds and capture them in motion while still keeping the images clear. Before this starts sounding like an infomercial... it's time for pictorial illustration.

Because I only got my camera a couple of months ago, I don't have any summer starling photos, but here's a nice illustration courtesy of http://www.g1art.com:

Winter starling (top) and summer starling (bottom)

In winter, a starling's plumage gets all spotty and they look a lot more sinister, to me at least. I think the sinisterness (?) is directly proportional to the starling's immediate environs...

In a tree: moderately sinister.

Peering down from a powerline: quite sinister.

3 puffed up brutes keeping lookout from a Sky aerial: highly sinister

Controlling the national grid: terrifying!

Okay, I know I've already lost most of you, but does anyone else think a starling in winter looks like a dalek? 

Am I right? Fine, next topic...

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I like you're old stuff better than your knew stuff

When I lived in the UK I really enjoyed watching Masterchef, which was a 30 minute show every weeknight which pitch 6 amateur chefs against each other. Every episode there were 3 challenges and one person left standing at the end of the episode. Then it was quarterfinals, semis and a week long final where the final few went of the the jungle or something.

Now of course every country has their bastardised Masterchef - none of which I can stomach. The Australian one, which runs before the TV1 news here in NZ (so I am destined to catch the last 2mins of every episode) is the worst. At the moment they are working their way through the top 50, kicking out people every two challenges. On average it seems to take 1.5 episodes to finish one challenge (and these are 60 minute episodes). And the challenges seem to mostly be them all cooking the same freaking dish! No thank you.

So I was delighted to see this video on YouTube (via Twitter) today that took me back to the good old days old Greg and John on the original Masterchef:

  

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Locked Out

The NBA has officially locked out its players as negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement with the players union have stalled. NBA.com has also gone into lock down mode.  It's looking like some or all of the 2011-12 NBA season will be lost. The last time a labour dispute affected a season was back in 1999, when they managed to come to an agreement in December and held a 50 game regular season (as opposed to the standard 82).

The maths is simple for most: a full season > a partial seasons > no season at all. Sadly, most might not include the owners (several of whom are losing money, so no season means less loss) and some of the players. But sucks for the fans.

It especially sucks for Sacramento Kings fans (like me), after the Californian capital managed to keep its franchise for one more season, but needs to increase attendance and get a deal for a new arena done in order to insure the long term viability of an NBA team in Sacto.  Add to this the fact that in the last week the team has acquired three new potential starters: Jimmer Fredette (#10 pick in the 2011 draft and the latest great white hope), John Salmons (via a trade with the Milwaukee Bucks) and JJ Hickson (via a trade with the Cleveland Cavs). And the Kings probably aren't done revamping their roster. Whenever the lockout ends and free agent signings can commence, they should be targetting another big man from Nene, Tyson Chandler, Marc Gasol, or resigning Samuel Dalembert.

I was talking to a friend the other day who said he just can't get into basketball because to him the game seems relatively static and repetitive. I can totally see this, but once you buy in to the narrative of American sports (in which statistics and economics play major parts) it's difficult to disentangle oneself. There's always some drama going on, most of it off the court, or between possessions.  The loss of an entire season does toss a wrench or two into the machine (how will the draft order be determined if no season took place? what happens to players in the final year of their contract who don't get a chance to play their butts off in 2011-12 to earn their big payday?) but it also threatens to break that narrative thread. The NBA could lose a lot of fans in the next 12 months as people find new time sponges.  I know I'll certainly notice the extra 2.5 hours 3 times a week that'll free up with no Kings games to watch on NBA league pass.  Will it make me more prolific? Meh, I'll probably just play angry birds.

But, while there's still some Kings news to report, I'll just wish Omri Casspi well with the Cavs. If only you were as devastating in purple as advertised!!