A curmudgeon writes.
As it’s the first day of a new year, it’s also the time when (apparently traditionally, now) I select a list of potential reads. There’s 25 this year (because 2025 right?) and while I doubt I’ll read them all, they give me something to aim for, and at the very least provide 25 options for when I’m stuck wondering what I should read.
Here’s the list. And a little write-up.
Continue reading “Planning the pages: 2025 edition”It’s the last day of 2024. I am tired, but I am also eleven years deep into screaming into the void about the things I liked during the year, so I’m armed with a vat of tea, a container of lollies and the burning desire to see whether the stuff I consumed throughout the year has a hidden message.
This one could be a bit wilder (and woollier?) than preceding iterations, so if you’re feeling like something’s missing, you can check through the previous versions (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here) for some more me-review action.
Or you could log off and go look at some fireworks. I dunno, I’m not your mother.
(Edit: I got too tired before the actual turn of the year and went to bed. This is a New Year’s Day post now, so I assume you are no longer wearing a party hat as you read this, which saddens me slightly. I did a psych! move and this post still appears to have been written in the dying minutes of the year, so it’s still on time, kinda-sorta.)
Continue reading “2024: consumption: a look at some stuff I liked”Well, here we are. It’s almost the end of 2024! I figured I’d better get some reviews in for the books I’ve been reading recently. I want to ensure I’ve written up everything before the calendar flips over, because… OCD reasons.
The larger stuff I liked post for this year will be coming along (ideally on the last day of the year – i.e., tomorrow – but let’s not hold our breath too much) but here’s the books I read in the dying days of December.
(Ooh, alliteration! I’m fancy.)
Continue reading “Book reviews: reaching the end”The year keeps rocketing towards its end. I keep trying to read more and get bogged down in the whole rocketing-towards-the-endness of things at present. You know how it is – everyone is busy at this point, and things don’t seem to get less hectic. I’m continuing to read Miss Macintosh, My Darling and Finnegans Wake and I’m hoping to have both of those finished before the end of the year, though the chances of the latter actually getting done diminishes with each day. Largely because I’m increasingly feeling like I ain’t got time for Jimmy Joyce’s bullshit on this one.
Happily for my TBR list, I’ve been out of town for business and so have had a bit of time to read – hello, four-hour layover – during travel. So here’s another few reviews of what I’ve been working through.
(I seem to be continuing my exploration of both the built environment (and its fuck-ups), so it’s nice to know there’s some kind of theme at work.)
Continue reading “Book review: another five down”Not as quick as I’d hoped, but here’s another five book reviews.
I say ‘book’, but in this lot there’s just one physical book. The rest were audiobooks because the physical books I’ve been powering through are phonebook-sized volumes, and I’ve needed something shorter to break them up a bit.
(It’s an indicator of Books of Some Length when Paradise Lost is considered a quick read.)
Anyway, there’s nice range of stuff in here, and I’m quite pleased to have powered through them while driving, whether that be a) to Sydney and back or b) around the block on the mower.
Continue reading “Book review: cinq?”Obviously my intent to power through my backlog of reviews has stalled like my Mazda 323 shitbox once did on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. (Embarrassingly, lots of honking.)
So yeah, let’s get to it.
(You’ll be pleased to know that my reading has slowed down a little, at least in terms of numbers of books read: I’m currently ploughing through two volumes – one fiction, one not – of more than 1000 pages each, so the numbers are not ticking over especially quickly at present.)
Continue reading “Book review: bites, knuckles, magical coffee and droughts”Time for the first in a number of catch-up posts. Since I last wrote the reading has continued apace even as the reviewing has fallen off the cliff.
Fear not, though: I’m not going to subject you to dozens of recaps in one go. I figure five will be more than enough to be going on with (at least until I write up the next five, right?)
Right.
Continue reading “Book review: recommendations, rereleases and revision”Returning from the Northern Hemisphere to home where a feels-like temperature of minus nine is more common than not? A bit of a rude awakening, I must admit.
What’s positive about this state of affairs, though, is that I have continued to plough through the books. There’s nothing better to do in winter than hunker down with text, and I’ve been enjoying it greatly. Even if I have to wear a beanie throughout.
Continue reading “Book reviews: post-trip reading”I’m back. Not from outer space, but from the other side of the world where a nice holiday was had, and I purchased some eau de toilette that smells like a David Lynch movie or a murder weekend:
A calm yet confrontational scent that traces your neck like a sharp cold blade with buchu sulfur, metallic bloody notes and cold aldehydes. There is a feeling that something is going to happen with burnt rubber, cold cedar notes creating a concrete effect, combined with birch tar, leather and bay oil. Dying out on a cold, damp cellar smell with cedar atlas, dark musk and moss.
I also bought two dozen-odd books from across the UK, lest you think I would be caught slacking on the purchasing front. In particular, I must laud Halcyon Books in Lewisham (£2 per book! Any book!) and Criminally Good Books in York (a murderer’s delight).
In addition I can recommend staying in the Bram Stoker-themed room at La Rosa in Whitby, close to the spot where old mate came up with Dracula. (It’s suitably atmospheric, and the proprietors are lovely.)
On with the reviews!
Continue reading “Book reviews: holiday reads”We’re about to go overseas for a month, and so I’m hoping that the next post here will be a recap of all the things I get through during fifty-odd hours of flights and however many hours of sitting in gardens.
HOWEVER that means that I need to clear my backlog of books read before I place myself at the tender mercies of security at the international terminal.
So let’s get to it, because fuck knows I’ve got a lot of pre-trip packing and organisation to get through.
Continue reading “Book reviews: pre-flight five”
Yeah nah. 