I’m not really one for nostalgia, but for some reason I tackled a lot of classics this last year. A few highlights were The Talented Mr Ripley (first read), Slaughterhouse Five (not), Cat’s Cradle, and some fun little Mid-century Sci-Fi. The real standouts though were the Elements Quadrology (by John Boyne) with the opener, Water, being the pick of the bunch. I also devoured Pig’s Head - a tasty Crime Noir mystery set in Hobart; On the Calculation of Volume I - Solvej Balle’s masterwork, and Beyond the Door of No Return, David Diop’s excellent follow-up to At night All Blood is Black.
A smattering of quotes and other nonsense in this post. Here’s to a hefty library in 2026 and more changes to come!
Stuff I read this year:
(there’s no way these posts are ever not self-indulgent, so apologies in advance)
Well. November is the cruellest month. That really sucked. And yet the bad thing that happened almost forced me to replace newspapers, substack, YouTube, podcasts, etc, with non-screen time, and that ended up helping me get to both my goal for the year and (re)discover some great authors.
Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet is probably the standout of the year, as it’s recent (I finished summer on NYE), bold, incredibly timely - it was begun after the Brexit vote and Orange Man victory #1 in 2016 - and evocative. Thematically and narratively it is a staggering achievement that manages to be political, philosphical, and darkly funny often in the same sentences and phrases. Unlike some other authors I tackled this year, Smith’s wordplay is always, well, playful, and for my taste she rarely crosses the line into pretension or purposeful impenetrability. If I have to pick a favourite it is probably Autumn and the half of Summer that deals primarily with Daniel Gluck: easily my favourite character of the series and a delight to spend time with in history, hallucinations, wordplay, memory, false memory, imagined dialogue, and floral orgies. Immense.
I also managed to read over 50% women authors, which makes me happy, including some great history books (a pretty male-dominated field), as well as yet more in French and Japanese translation. Maybe most important, I rediscovered my love for the library: both financially prudent and a good way to impose deadlines and jumping off points (50 pages is much easier to commit to when you’ve not bought the book entirely!)
Overall, I don’t feel like I missed out on too much, but having started to wade back into classic poetry this year, I’d like to tackle some more modern poets (rec’s welcome!) and a few classics.
This was… not a great year, but dark, dawn, etc.
Muchos besos
- John
#bookstagram #reading #2024inreview #insufferable
37 setting changes on my Canon, a dozen test shots, moving the tripod everywhere… and some how the iPhone gets this from the hip.
Cold toes again, worth it again.
#hotelranga
