I am writing this in the bath. Usually I sit in the empty bath and fill it up around me, then do the same in reverse when I'm done, pull the plug and sit there while it drains. This time I ran the whole bath while I was reading, and then got in all at once. I was surprised to find it wasn't warm at all, not like a bath and more like a swimming pool, if that were any objective measure. It's not unpleasant. I remember the COVID lockdown in 2021, how much time I used to spend in here, what a refuge it was from the world outside - the only place where work emails couldn't reach me.
Anyway here's what I read in October
Last month I was like ooh ahh let's not be squeamish about gay sex and then I read THE SLUTS by Dennis Cooper. Here is a book that could have benefited from some squeamishness!!! It was creepy as hell and kind of despondent, and hopeless, it gave me severe Shopping & Fucking flashbacks, a text which was so fucking bleak I still can't even think about it without feeling miserable and hopeless, even more so than usual. I am very much prone to fits of hopelessness, especially with everything going on out there in that big wide horrible world, and Shopping & Fucking really managed to crystalise all of that into a tight 90 pages. Anyway The Sluts was giving me very much that vibes, however without being too spoileristic I'd say the author really undoes himself in the novel's final few pages, a strangely censorious turn at the end, perhaps more reflective of that time in American history (2004) than anything else.
I listen to this podcast called TEEN CREEPS where they read a lot of teen horror from the 80s/90s, pretty much all I read from ages 6-14 (other than Nancy Drew). I've slowly been making my way through the episodes and this month I read THE IMMORTAL by Christopher Pike, which was one of my favourite books as a kid. It has all the things a horny, precocious kid stuck in Auckland New Zealand could want - SEX! MURDER! GREEK MYTHOLOGY! BIZZARE SCI-FI SUBPLOTS! Upon re-read I would say it is 'not that good'. One of the characters gets ground up glass put in her hamburger meat!!!!!!! I was SO AFRAID of that happening to me as a kid. I will hang that up with being buried alive, kidnapped by smugglers, or involved in a counterfeiting ring as things I thought happened ALL OF THE TIME thanks to the books I read as a kid. Reading Christopher Pike's entire bibliography was another one of those things that started in lockdown, I'm just over halfway through now.
I finished THE UNWRITTEN, it was probably on the whole okay. I thought Mike Carey was probably the greatest living comics author, that was largely based on Lucifer (which is kind-of-but-not-really the basis of the terrible police procedural Netflix show), and maybe the truth is that nothing will ever be as good as Lucifer was. I can never recommend Lucifer enough, it's such incredible writing, and I think especially because it's a comic I think maybe 2 people in total have ever read it on my recommend, if you are reading this and thinking 'hey maybe I'll give comics a go' I would say put Lucifer high on your list. Put The Unwritten maybe a little lower. It was still good but it felt a bit more haphazard and like its central thesis, which is about fiction and ideas and stories and a collective unconsciousness, was less fully realised and more made-up-along-the-way. Perhaps I've just read too many stories about the power of stories, I'm so fucking sick of the power of stories, stories are great but what feels like a recent obsession with them seems both lazy and self-congratulatory on the part of the people writing them.
For Better Book Club we read THE FRAUD by Zadie Smith and I won't say much about it now because we haven't had our book club meeting yet but I will say that I liked it, I liked it a lot! The Audiobook I'm listening to right now is set at the same time as The Fraud but it is a very different vibe. I will write about them both next month so to my 13 readers… stay tuned lol.
My exploration of the Quarterly Essay back catalogue continued with THE WIRES THAT BIND: ELECTRIFICATION AND COMMUNITY RENEWAL by Saul Griffith. I really enjoyed the essay and although it was a good mix of practical and hopeful, as I said before I am prone to fits of hopelessness and sometimes the more hopeful things I read, the more depressed I feel about what feels like an endless tide of inaction. Anyway the essay was good and the science was interesting, but ultimately what good is an essay? The magic of stories? Sure. Stories will not save us, because those who hold positions of power are so lacking in imagination it's hard to think they have ever even picked up a book. Perhaps it's just easier to be cynical, but on the other hand optimism just feels masochistic by this point.
WITH MY EARS
I read DARK EMU by Bruce Pascoe. I have picked up and put down my hard copy a few times since I bought it a couple of years ago, and the audiobook format, one I abandoned a long time ago proved a good medium for reading that book. I rode my bike along the Cooks and Paramatta Rivers for three and a half hours while listening to the bulk of the book, and I cannot recommend that enough. It feels especially correct to be outside, both in nature and in the absence of any real nature at all, while listening and learning.
I also listened to THE SANDMAN VOLS. 2 & 3 which is more like a radio play than a book. I know the comic so well that I mostly already know what the characters are going to say next because I can see the panels in my mind. There is some terrible accent work going on in some of the episodes (why are the Norse gods Scottish?!?!?!?! but overall it's really good (which is why I am still listening after 50ish hours). I will probably do a re-read of the comic at some point because the Audible version is doing a good job of reminding me just how good the original comic is. Once I do that, naturally it'll be time for a re-read of Lucifer (it's a spin off), which you might have gathered, I really like.
I didn't have as big a month
ON THE INTERNET
as September, mostly because I spent too much time playing Assassin's Creed Valhalla, a game so boring it provides just the bare minimum in terms of dopamine to keep you playing. It really is the 'mindlessly scrolling through tik-tok’ of gaming, and I have almost officially given up after around 20 hours (or like, 5% of the way through the game). But I did spend quite a while reading RADICAL CHIC, THAT PARTY AT LENNY'S, a Vanity Fair article from 1970 about Leonard Bernstein and the Black Panthers. I cannot recommend this enough. Not only is it interesting from a historical standpoint, but fuck Tom Wolfe knows how to write. There is a subtlety to his writing which I dream of achieving (me, all the subtlety of Dr Seuss in my own).
LAND HO is about homesteading, something I find kind of interesting and grotesque at the same time, those people give the heebie jeebies in such a specific way, the perfect blend of cringe and performance and vaguely threatening and smug, a home baked, hand dyed, home grown kind of car crash I can't look away from. The article is old (I'm working through my archive) so none of it was particularly revelatory, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
I love Lorde so much, and still hold her first album Pure Heroine in such a specific place in my heart. It was fun to revisit the first big profile of her, written 10 years ago by Duncan Grieve, just after the release of 'Royals' and right when she really, really broke. I'll always be mad about missing her play in London to an audience of like 25 people because I had to go on a work trip, but when I saw her play at the Brixton Academy she was one of the most captivating performers I've ever seen on stage. That was still true when I saw her in Sydney earlier this year.
The reason we read THE FRAUD for book club this month was because of this article by Zadie Smith, so I recommend reading that and then reading the novel. Zadie Smith is so good!!!!! The Fraud is a TREAT.
My hopeless feelings have definitely not been helped by politics on both sides of the Tasman, not to mention further afield. John Campbell's excellent writing in the aftermath of the NZ Election is worth a read however. September/October felt like it was particularly allergic to any substantial (or even surface level) analysis by journalists, and no amount of November hand wringing is going to make up for it. I also read the Open Letter from the Yes campaign to the Prime Minister and the Parliament of Australia, and (so far) have managed to avoid most of the online vitriol directed at it.
I got engaged a couple of months ago and of course the most important consideration is regarding the music that will play at the wedding. To that end, my friend sent me Nick Cave's lecture on Love Songs from 1999. I am not a huge fan of Nick Cave's music (unless the immigration dept is reading this), because I infinitely prefer female vocalists, but I will say that that guy knows how to write the absolute living fuck out of a love song. Two versions of his songs that I come back to over and over again are Cat Power's cover of Breathless, and Camille O'Sullivan's cover of The Ship Song. I've seen them both performed live and they are high on a list of possible walk down the aisle songs. It seems increasingly likely that climate change will take care of us before I have to go through with it anyway.
xoxo go piss girl
see you next month