In which I wrap up... the Lent Term???
So, it turns out that the Cambridge Lent Term is a Smol Black Hole that eats my ability to read or write other than for my degree, and now it is April? Who knows how that happened. Anyway, here is a little round up of what I have made it through… the final five books I read in the last ten days of March, in an end of term / short holiday rush.
THINGS I HAVE READ
Beloved - Toni Morrison. Starting the year strongly with this. I’d not read it before, and there’s a bit of me that’s glad that I read it now, when I was very ready for it and able to grasp what she was doing with it, without finding it hard to read and risking getting turned off by finding it ‘strange’ which I might have done a decade ago. A+ will obviously be reading more Morrison.
Seasons in Hippoland - Wanjiku wa Ngugi. A very engaging postcolonial comic novel. It’s not the richest, deepest, or sharpest, but actually I think it would be a really good starting place for people looking to read a bit more African or postcolonial fiction.
Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir. This was recommended to me as ‘lesbian necromancers in space’ during a conversation about religious themes and ideas in sci-fi and fantasy (because the Houses are slightly ecclesial) and I had an utter blast with it. Your mileage will vary based on your desire to read a novel that is so-describable and has a really sparky style, but if you think you might like it, you should try it.
Sharks in the Time of Saviours - Kawai Strong Washburn. I’d had this on my wishlist since reading a review of it on its publication, and finally found a paperback in Heffers. It’s a novel that centres around indigeneity and colonialism in Hawaii, its characters find their resolutions without becoming either overly-sentimental or romantic or overly-bleak, and I really enjoyed it.
The Harmony Silk Factory - Tash Aw. I’ve been reading Aw since picking up Five Star Billionaire a few years ago, but some of them have worked better for me than others. This, which primarily set in Malaysia around the Second World War, was the best I’ve read since …Billionaire, although it is actually his debut. I really enjoy his approach to writing around his story from different perspectives which emerges here, and it’s not an overly complicated story so much as a reflection on the impossibility of knowing one’s parent.
The Promise - Damon Galgut. Last year’s Booker Prize winner, and it’s a good and deserving one. I massively enjoyed this story of an Afrikaner family in South Africa in transition. It’s very evocative of its place and time and very effectively generous with its characters and who and why they are while also not indulging or forgiving of them. My mother described it to me as ‘very South African’ (which it is) and wondered if it would work for her book group - which is an interesting question. It did make me wonder how much of it worked really easily for me because I’m familiar with the place and times of the story (and a lot of the vocabulary) that might be a bit more of a hurdle for other readers—but honestly, it is a hurdle worth making yourself go over, because its understanding of various dynamics of complicity and avoidance in ongoing injustice is really great.
The Tombs of Atuan - Ursula Le Guin. Holiday reading yay! I massively enjoyed returning to Earthsea, loved being introduced to Tenar, and found the relationship that grows between her and Ged really touching. Again, I wish I’d read them as a child, because I can only begin to imagine how much I would have got out of them and their wisdom.
House of Trelawney - Hannah Rothschild. I picked this up because the reviews were good, and it sounded like an entertaining story set in Cornwall, and it was Not Good. It doesn’t seem to know Cornwall at all, and its use of the 2008 crash as a catalyst for the final unravelling as an aristocratic family while vaguely gesturing to the impact it had on those who were not in finance or the aristocracy felt quite grotesque. Don’t do it.
THINGS I HAVE WATCHED
The Batman. I made it to the cinema once in order to see Battinson, which was an unexpected joy. I was expecting Terramazing Trash Fun, and got a legitimately good and interesting Batman film that was trying to go somewhere different (delightfully) to the Nolan trilogy. I particularly enjoyed the sheer griminess of the whole thing, and the way it drops us into Batman being Batman without worrying too much about origins or any of the Batman-tech-porn which the Nolan films were so big on. The soundtrack was fab and I was, impressively, not bored in any of the three hours of running time.
West Side Story. I missed this at the cinema because of the omicron wave, and I wish I could have seen it on the big screen. I was deeply unsure about Spielberg making a musical because I am generally quite unsure about Spielberg, and yet his fairly straightforward get-out-of-the-way style works really well for this, and the set pieces are pretty damn fabulous. Anton Elgort is fairly forgettable as Tony, but also not annoyingly bad, but frankly, Tony is the least interesting character in the whole musical anyway, so it’s fine. On the other hand, Ariana deBose as Anita and Mike Faist as Riff are FIRE, while Rachel Zegler as Maria is just charming, and the songs and story remain barnstormers.
Encanto. While the film itself is essentially fine - sweet and funny, but not a Disney Great, I have joined the crowds of people who cannot stop singing We don’t talk about Bruno, and who recognise how much more therapy they need after sing-crying along to the two sisters’ songs. Let Lin-Manuel Miranda write all the Disney songs for the foreseeable, ok?
Station Eleven. I subscribed to Starz on Amazon Prime just to watch this because I adore the book and I’d heard really good things about the show. It is genuinely wonderful, though it is somewhat strange thinking about how people deal with surviving an apocalyptic pandemic after living through a pandemic. It’s slightly different to the novel, but I made a point of not re-reading the book recently partly because pandemic and partly because I didn’t want to remember it really well before watching the show, and so I couldn’t point to how and indeed I am not bothered by it. I’d really recommend it (and the novel)
THINGS I HAVE WRITTEN
My friend Jack invited me to write a piece with him reviewing Willie Jennings’ After Whiteness and Azariah France-Williams’ Ghost Ship for the wonderful publication that is The Hour and you can read it over on their website.
IN THE PILE FOR… WELL, NEXT TERM
I’ve started watching Moon Knight, which seems gloriously crackers, and am going to watch Slow Horses on Apple TV because it seems to involve Gary Oldman being in a spy drama which is basically my jam.
Book-wise, I’m about to start in on Harrow the Ninth, the sequel to Gideon and then I’m honestly just going to roll with what I feel like. The TBR pile includes Jessica Au’s Cold Enough for Snow, Philip Marsden’s The Summer Isles, and Mukoma Wa Ngugi’s Unbury Our Dead with Song.
Two PHOTOs FROM LENT TERM
Cambridge at dusk in early March
Paris at the end of March for a holiday outside the UK for the first time in two years.