I basically read nothing in December. It was a very busy month with other things. This meant I was 3 books shy of my goal of 50 books in 2023 but who’s counting?
I read exactly one novel, Burning for Revenge by John Marsden. Setting aside the very probbo elements of this narrative for a second, the book kind of slaps? Back in April I discovered my friend Sara had NEVER read the Tomorrow series, so I bought a boxed set on ebay and have been subsequently reading them/passing them around my friend group to read. Slowly I’ve been making my way through, I say slowly by which I mean I raced through the first three (good) ones, took about 6 months to read book four because it is a SNOOZE, and then finally picked it up again at book five after leaving my kindle a friend’s place left me unable to continue with Middlemarch temporarily. I don’t know if I have ever read books 6 and 7? Stay tuned I guess.
I wouldn’t normally write about a play on here because it’s supposed to be about reading and I don’t want this to be like ‘here’s a review of every single thing I did in —’ every month like some kind of culture writer, but I do have to say that I saw the Belvoir St Theatre of Master & Margarita, since we did the book as our Russian (not really!) for Better Book Club in 2022. The play was mostly good. It was a clever adaptation without being obsessed with its own cleverness, and did a pretty good job of adapting the themes and not always the material. Unforch the focus on theme meant that by the end of the second half it felt a little squashed under the weight of its own importance. There was A LOT of nudity on stage, and below you can see the sticker I took with me as well as a fake $20 note from the magic show, which was one of my favourite parts of the whole play.
WITH MY EARS I read Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World by Mike Davis. It was very good. Like, very, very good. I would encourage everyone to read it. I thought audiobooks weren’t the medium for me but it turns out it’s okay if it’s depressing facts audiobooks and not like, silly jaunts audiobooks. This book is chock full of depressing facts - here’s one: From 1757 to 1947, there was no increase in the per capita income of India. Mike Davis go 10 minutes without talking about cannibalism challenge! Parents eating their children, children eating their parents, families digging up their dead relatives and eating them - this book has it all!
My experience of reading this book went something like this:
MIKE DAVIS: And then all the shit that the colonists had done to the landscape caused some pretty big problems with the weather, which led to an outbreak of [something horrible]
MY BRAIN: Okay but please don’t tell me the colonists then used that to their advantage to fuck over the local population
MD: The colonists then used that to their advantage to fuck over the local population
MB: God damnit! Every time!
Anyway everyone should read this book it’s full of horrors but they are the kind of horrors you should know.
I’ll leave you with this quote from the intro to one of the later chapters which feels particularly prescient right now:
When the wealthy vie with each other in splendour and display while the poor squeeze each other to death; when the poor do not enjoy a moment’s rest while the rich are comfortable; when poor lose more and more while the rich keep piling up treasures … all of this will finally congeal in an ominous vapor which will fill the space between heaven and earth with its darkness. — Gong Zizhen
ONLINE
I read a few things, not a lot, but here are some that I enjoyed:
I Finally Watched Seinfeld. It’s all there in the name really. I have watched exactly 3 episodes of Seinfeld in my life - the one where someone (Jerry?) runs a race, the one where you find out Kramer’s first name, and the finale. I don’t feel the need to see any more. But this article is very good.
Turns out literary fiction was invented on purpose! Who knew? Not me, and I have some kind of a vested interest in that. Someone once told me my own novel was literary fiction and I basically blasted off into space. I think removing some of the mystery behind the whole thing was helpful? Maybe?
I read Confessions of a McKinsey Whistleblower, which is nothing you don’t already know, but interesting to read from an inside perspective instead of just John Oliver shouting over a desk.
Patricia Lockwood met the pope - it was good. I didn’t love her novel but I continue to love everything else she does.
Rolling Stone’s obituary of Henry Kissinger is chef’s kiss amazing. It was definitely channelling the energy of Hunter S. Thompson’s obit of Nixon, one of my favourite pieces of vitriol I’ve ever read, which was also originally published in Rolling Stone! After the Kissinger one I went back and re-read the Nixon one, fuck it’s just some wonderful writing. Haters gonna hate, after all.
I found a bunch of broken links that no longer go anywhere in my archive, despite Pocket’s claims that it maintains a permanent copy of everything I save for $7.99 a month (honestly I am so close to breaking up with Pocket, someone tell me what I can replace it with please?) But apt for the name of this newsletter!? Everything is ephemeral, after all woowowoowowowowoww
Bye xx
You keep me in Patricia Lockwood links. I thank you.