in which I wrap up July and August
Things I have read
I skipped out on writing this at the end of July, so this is my weirdo summer reading list (along with a whole bunch of postcolonial cricticism and ancient historiography… ).
Filthy Animals - Brandon Taylor. I love Taylor’s writing (I also highly recommend his substack newsletter for his criticism and his twitter for the lols), and this collection of interconnected short stories is really good. I really appreciate the really acute observational approach he has going on and how that really lets his characters breathe honestly in all of their messiness. I often find short story collections a bit of a pain to read (do you dip in and out? read it straight through? and so often they’re SO pretentious) but this flowed really nicely - there’s a similarity in the tone that helps but without getting flat, and you get to return back to the interlinked stories at regular intervals, so there’s a really nice pace.
Sabaa Tahir’s Ember in the Ashes series (An Ember in the Ashes, A Torch Against the Night, A Reaper at the Gates, A Sky Beyond the Storm) - pretty much once a summer I’ll go off and lose myself in a YA fantasy series and this was this year’s. It was a fun time, and I really enjoyed the characters - but I’m not convinced the world building fully held together, and the first book is definitely the strongest.
Jesus and John Wayne- Kristin Kobes du Mez. The obligatory ‘I’m a woman who was in evangelical churches’ read, I found this disappointing after all the hype. The subtitle is ‘How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation’, and while its historical narrative of white evangelicalism is fairly accurate (from what I know from other reading and being conscious of the world at large since the late 80s) she basically assumes that you think that the things she is describing ARE a corruption of the Christian faith. That is, it’s a history, but doesn’t do any theological work to explain why the history should be worrying for people of that faith, regardless of the impact it has had in the political life of the US. You could read this book and think, well, I don’t agree that this stuff is a problem and so I’m holding to my faith and we’ll have to deal with the fallout (or not) another way.
The Wizard of the Crow - Ngūgī wa Thiong’o. I started this when I was in isolation from an NHS app ping, having been meaning to you for ages, and let me tell you it was worth every one of its 700 pages. It’s wonderfully sharp and satirical and yet empathetic and understanding of its wild and wonderful characters, and its own strange yet very recognisable world.
The Nightwatchman - Louise Erdrich. This was recommended by a friend, and I’m so glad I read it. Its beautifully written and emotionally devastating - the only thing I can compare it to in that way is The Underground Railroad in that what it is telling you about the world is deeply painful, about the things that the powerful have done to those they have in their power, and yet compelling and necessary to keep going to the end. And like Wizard… it brings a world to life for a reader who likely isn’t very familiar with it or likely to experience it themselves and does the world-expanding things that really great books do.
Black Gay British Christian Queer: The Church and the Famine of Grace - Jarel Robinson-Brown. This one, I’m going to want to go back to a few times, in and out. I think if you’re in the church and committed to it having a future, it’s one to read. I found its framing within a discussion of grace particularly helpful: given that full theological agreement on sexuality is unlikely, grace is a really important and helpful lens in thinking about praxis and how we are with each other in the church.
Things I have watched
Jungle Cruise - some friends got this on Disney plus and invited me over for food and film, and this was a lot of fun (and I didn’t really miss the cinema for it). It’s fun, and silly, very The Mummyand not quite Indiana Jones, and both Emily Blunt and the Rock have better chemistry with the leopard than each other, but it is a joyful experience.
Days of Being Wild and Chungking Express - I got into Wong Kar Wai’s films sometime in the noughties after Hero came out and opened my world to Asian cinema and Christopher Doyle’s cinematography. Chungking… I haven’t seen since then, and Days of Being Wild I never did find, so I was extremely excited to get back to the cinema when the Picturehouse started showing the regraded and rereleased films. Ohmigosh, so beautiful and woozy and magical. It’s hard to explain why I love Kar Wai (trying to outline a “plot” is zero help) and yet the stories and characters and moods pull me in. Chungking is somewhat legendary (“we made it on a break from Ashes of Time) and it is an absolute joy. Its two stories balance each other tonally, and you end on a glorious high - and oh to have the style of Faye Wong casually invading Tony Leung’s life.
Free Guy - I probably wouldn’t have gone to this, except the good church Wittertainment’s substitute vicar, Robbie Collin, gave it a good review. It is a barrel of fun, with Ryan Reynolds doing his handsome yet doofus thing at its best, with a little bit of nice social commentary along the way, but not too heavy handedly. Apparently they’re already thinking about a sequel though. Don’t.
A Recommendation of Some Kind
The Beach Boys released Feel Flows - the Sunflower and Surf’s Up Sessions. These are two of the bands best ‘late’ (aka, after Pet Sounds and the demise of SMiLE) albums, so have them and some session outtakes is lovely, and well worth a listen. IMHO the post-Pet Sounds Beach Boys are underrated in the midst of the whole, ‘Brian was very not well, and they made no hits’ narrative, and you should also check out Holland (my personal fave) and Friends and 20/20.
In the pile for September
I’m halfway through Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem, which I’m hoping to finish on this, the first day of my Cornwall break. With me I also have Felix White’s It’s Always Summer Somewhere, a birthday gift from a friend who has forewarned me that it is not all happy-upbeat; some Graham Greene, Deborah Levy, Jeanette Winterson, and Mūkoma wa Ngūgī’s Nairobi Heat. I’m also looking forward to going to see Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Tony Leung as a Marvel villain!) and hopefully Annette at the cinema. However, it’s also Back to School month, so time for all of the fun things gets reduced again.
A picture from the past two months
I finally took my bike for a ride up the Cam, to Bait’s Bite lock