Sunday Bookmarks | October Edition
Hello all, long time no speak to most of you. As I mentioned I moved my weekly version of this letter to my Patreon, but I wanted to retain a monthly version for you here. It is going to take a slightly different format, less long form writing and more short recommendations of culture I have consumed in the last month, here we go.
CURRENTLY READING //
Reading has taken a back seat as I struggle to balance my masters studying and my writing work, which is not a complaint, just a readjustment of priorities. I have abandoned more books in the last few months than ever before, and that is not a judgement on the books themselves, I was enjoying all of them to some extent. I am a greedy reader, if I were to draw a graph to plot enjoyment against the number of days spent reading the book, it would decrease exponentially as the days went on. Almost all my favourite books this year are ones I have devoured over a short span of time, squeezing in pages on the tram, before bed or in the middle of the night. So when life gets in the way and a book is cast aside for a Netflix binge or a bout of illness, I tend to come back to it with less enthusiasm, itching to start something new instead.
Right now I am enjoying Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan, a toxic relationship, a woman unable to recognise her worth and bending to the will of an awful man. Although this is a trope I read often, I am careful to spread such stories across a number of reads, otherwise it becomes less a practice of witnessing reality for many young woman and more a fictional romp that feels like voyeurism (longer read piece coming soon on why we love to read about toxicity in love lives)
LISTENING //
Like any good Literary fiction gossip lover, I have been devouring the podcast series Once upon a time at Bennington College. Part of the latest wave of high production, serialised drama / documentary series, that are audio only. Produced by C13 and intermittently featuring interviews and book extracts, it feels like great listening value, considering it is totally free. Following life at a private liberal arts college whose alumni went on to write the books assigned to most of us, as we decide reading is part of our teenage identity. A series of two halves, focusing first on literary badboy, Brett Eaton Ellis, the author whose first book he claimed to have began as a high school student, age just fifteen. A good sport throughout, even when memories disagree, Ellis is interviewed by podcast narrator, to give his side of the story, unlike our second guest, Donna Tartt. The Secret history is not so subtly based on life at Bennington, names are changed but personas remained, so it is forgivable that Tartt declined any invites to be involved in the production. I suggest you listen soon as I predict ms Tartt’s lawyers are working around the clock to get it taken off air.
Less high stakes production, more bedroom cosy, Craft (by Wasafiri magazine) is a new literary podcast, , which I must say I am not usually a listener of. I am not entirely sure why, but podcasts talking about books I haven’t read tend to set off a FOMO feeling, a pang of existential anxiety of all the books I have left to read. However, the inaugural episode of this new series is an interview with Nina Minya Powles, and focuses on the making of an authors book, the experiences that led them to write and the process of writing for them, a joyful listen.
READING ONLINE //
I read (And was infuriated) by Rupert Hawksley take in the independent, suggesting we insult authors by not finishing every book we buy and start. Hawksley obviously hasn’t been acquainted with DNF’ing, I suggest it might free up his leisure time, giving him more space to think more critically in his opinion columns. I am all for giving books a chance, but I won’t slog through hundreds of pages just to say I finished it, much of Hawksley’s principles were built on arcane ideas of the canon, the novels we must all read before we die, conflating writing excellence with convoluted and complex vocabularies. I live and die by a 50 page rule, slightly more forgiving than his citing of Mark Billingham’s 20 pages, but the principle remains, reading is for joy not moral superiority.
Julia Kornberg for the Drift ( a new favourite publication of mine) on the double edged sword of translation for the western reader. She deftly explains what it is to write, when your international (and lucrative) success often hinges on the whims of American (or any western english speaking group).
“The market for foreign works is so slim that what gets translated is usually tailored to a particular kind of American reader — one who reaches for Latin American literature to encounter difference, or maybe to feel morally righteous for reading about the misfortunes wrought by an American government she doesn’t support”
It touches on the Latin American Boom, the reason why we see Magical realism akin to Latin American literary tradition, a myth in itself, and the disservice American /Western publishing houses does to inventive readers who wish to move beyond the stereotypes and moral goodness that comes with reading of singular, impoverished experiences of the continent, that contains multitudes of lives, ripe for exploring. ( It also made me desperate to read Mona, which I will add to my Christmas list immediately)
A swift pivot to something more academic, recommended by my professor in a module I am taking on the development of policy in the context of the city, a module much more historical than I had first assumed, by quelling my homesick too. Journalist Sigal Samuel plots every city in the world that has trialled or implemented a universal basic income, something I stand by as a policy we must adopt on the path to a more equitable society. Worth your time.
Molly Mcully Brown, whose book I devoured earlier this year and pour over my dog eared pages of regularly, has a reading list of books about the body. The list contains some left field choices, including her read of Frankenstein as a building of a body that is inhabited and devastated, made me want to pick up this classic I would have only skimmed as a young teenager.
I had zero energy to pitch or write about the shit show that COP26 has been, on all accounts but particularly as another example of how the environmentalism movement chooses to ignore disabled people in its fight for a better planet. Instead you can read my friend Lucy’s brilliant piece on the specific incident of inaccessibility in Glasgow here (behind a paywall buy accessed through a free trial).
WATCHING //
I went to see the French Dispatch yesterday with a certified Wes Anderson Stan. I am a lover of some of his films, Fantastic Mr Fox is one of my beloved sick day movies, but this latest instalment felt more style over substance for me. I will never not love Anderson’s camera direction, objectively he makes beautiful and satisfying scenes full of symmetry and aesthetic dress codes. This one however left me feeling a little hollow. I liked the three act format, each short story an illustration of the sections of the magazine we are meant to be reading, but they felt too restrained. Particularly the middle story, a political youth movement against forced enlistment and conformity, it had potential to say something, but as it often is the case with Anderson, he shies away from partisan conversations, self conscious of the audience. Worth watching for the beauty, but not my favourite by a long stretch.
LIVING WITH //
I have been negotiating the boundaries of private and public a lot recently, as I write more, for places that are not here, that are not owned by me, about what exactly it is I want people to be able to find out about me through a cursory search. So much of what I write is concerned with myself, as often is the case when writers and journalists start out, write what you know after-all. Although it is about me, my body and my experiences it often involves my partner, which I am aware is not something he signed up for, so it is an ongoing navigation of what is mine to share, and what is his and what is ours, to be decided upon together, and that part is the most complex of all.
On Brain fog & Forgetfulness //
(a Work In Progress of an essay coming out in the next couple of weeks)
There is this disconnect between my mind and my mouth. Once I recover what I want to reply from the depths of my mind, to interject into interesting conversations with friends, often it gets lost on its journey to my voice box. Then I began to think, who am I if I cannot articulate myself? I have rooted my selfhood in my ability to participate in conversation, in ardently arguing my point across a bar, in being the one to recall funny stories over lunch. Maybe that is why I have found a renewed love for writing as I have become more unwell, it has always been in me, but I hadn’t seen the need. I could talk someone’s ear off about politics and plot lines, I would get frustrated that my mind moved faster than my hand when I tried to condense what I had to say, to paper. Now, when I write about things, there is time to edit, to re write, to consider what i want to say before i say it , providing me crucial time to find what i think, process through my now sieve like head and put it on paper, for the record, in hope of the next time I forget what I thought about that thing that happened to me, I will have to refer to.
Forgetfulness is deemed the fault of the person, something we can work on, try harder and you will remember where you parked your car last night. It feels juvenile to forget, makes me incompetence at jobs and less likely to speak up. It is viewed as a trivial personality quirk that impacts daily life more than those who can help it, will ever know.
If you enjoyed this, and would like weekly instalments via Patreon, click here to subscribe for £2. Otherwise, I will catch you back here in December.
Love, Hannah