11th hour reading

what I read in November

November was a quiet month for reading, mostly because I was travelling a lot! I was only at home for eight (eight!!) days in the whole month, but here's what I was reading:

For Better Book Club we read The Fraud by Zadie Smith which I touched on briefly last month. It was really good!! Zadie Smith is the best! It gave me slightly GOLDEN HILL vibes in the sense that I didn't really know where it was going for a while, but I tend to take books very much at face value and assume it will work itself out in the end, which it did, brilliantly. Everyone in book club really liked it, we pretty much only had good things to say. I still regret not going over to Zadie Smith when I saw her in a bar once to tell her how much I admire her. Oh well, maybe she'll read this. Book club was so long ago I can't really remember what any of our thoughts are, I should probably make notes or something next time.

We're reading Middlemarch now and I usually hate Ye Olde Timey Bullshit lol so I imagine I will have some reckons.

Still cracking on with Quarterly Essay, I read Lifeboat, by Michelline Lee. It was terribly depressing (are they all??). I worked in Aged Care for three years, and we had some interactions with the NDIS because of having NDIS clients in Residential Aged Homes (which we were working on unpicking). The only good thing anyone ever said about the NDIS is that at least it's not Aged Care, which is a pretty low bar if you ask me.

Not for book club, but book club adjacent, was Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang. I think book club adjacent in the sense that literally everyone I know is reading/has read it and wants to talk about it? Two people I work with hated it, some friends of mine loved it, others were more meh. I was probably a bit meh, I thought it was fine. It was super easy to read, but it definitely got stupid in the last third. I'm glad we didn't read it for book club because I don't really have anything to say about it, it's all there on the page. I didn't get a photo of the cover because I gave my colleague her copy back, so here's a completely unrelated random photo of Ariana Grande.

ONLINE

Still working through my Pocket backlog, I came across an old essay by Smith called In Defence of Fiction. It's from back in 2019, I do remember earlier, when I lived in London (so mid 2010s I guess?) it felt suddenly en vogue to not read fiction anymore, how fiction seemed frivolous and unproductive. Our obsession with productivity needs to end, I am so tired of Instagram ads for notebooks, or pencils, or keyrings being called productivity hacks. Yes we certainly are time poor, but this is not the solution. Actually that reminds me of The Tyranny of Time, which you must must MUST read, about our relationship with time, and how we measure time, and how the clock has become an enabler of capitalism.

Two men with palindromic names are on long distance cycling trips -  Noel is American and riding East, Leon is British and riding West, they meet in Kazakhstan. Beauty ensues.

I would not necessarily recommend anyone read this article about the obsession with reproductive risk. That's not true, I would probably recommend everyone read it, but do so at your own peril. It is brilliant and incisive but it is a tough read, and I am not even a person who can get pregnant.

I didn't re-read this article about the Zanesville Animal Massacre, but if you haven't you should, I just came across it when I was deleting old articles from my kindle. I'm not putting up any pictures because they're all awful, but don't worry they've been scrubbed from the article so you'll be safe unless you google (don't it's fucking depressing).

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO READ SOMETHING LESS HARROWING, the oral history of the making of Mamma Mia was published in Vogue recently and it is fucking amazing. I really love oral histories, I think they're especially suited to writing about creative projects, and I hope to write my own if I can ever find the time (watch this space).

FINALLY, Radhika Jones' piece on Barbra Streisand, Malibu Barbra is cool as shit. I know nothing about Streisand, and yet after this I felt compelled to go out and buy her NINE HUNDRED AND NINTY TWO PAGE (same as Middlemarch!) autobiography, My Name is Barbra. Here is a picture of the spine!!!!!

Okay Merry Pringles see u in Jan xxx