march round up
March has been: recovering from covid, finishing our loft, moving the kids into their new room, painting all the spots which we hadn’t got to, quoting for new projects and finishing outstanding ones, doing weights, navigating summer sunshine and freezing snow storms, sometimes both at the same time.
What I Read
1. To Paradise by Hanya Yanighara
2. I Came All This Way To Meet You by Jami Attenberg
3. The Red of My Blood by Clover Stroud
4. Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson
I have added in To Paradise again because I hadn’t finished it last month and because it is really 3 books in 1! I loved and hated this enormous book… Book 1: Set in 1893, is some sort of dystopian re telling of Henry James, based around Washington Square in New York, now named the Free States and detached from the rest of America. Where people are free to love whoever they choose, and about half the population seem to have chosen same sex marriages. Book 2 (my least favourite); From the same house in New York but also Hawaii with all the complexities of race and class and money and relationships, in 1993. Where people seem especially materialistic and concerned with surface level distractions. To Book 3, set in 2093, ah deep breath, this could have sat alone as a novel in itself. This section was the best told and Yanighara’s prose are beautifully written. New York is suffering from extreme climate change and people wear cooling suits to leave their flats. Fifth Avenue is lined with palm trees, a Fascist state is in power and most of the city has been taken over by science labs. The labs test treatments for the global pandemics which sweep through every 14 or so years. There is no internet, no television, no fiction books, no international travel. There are many erudite and prophetic details to this section I can’t begin to regurgitate! This book was heavy going and I had to start and finish another book (Open Water; a love story in London told by Caleb Azumah Nelson a black photographer/writer) as a bit of respite half way through but I’m glad that I read it and it hasn’t left my mind. It’s made me realise that we live in the most privileged and comfortable time in history. If you don’t have the strength to read it (fair enough) maybe just read quotes from it.
The Red of my Blood - Clover has written a stunning book about the aftermath of the death of her sister. I found Clover when she had only written The Wild Other, which is one of my favourite books. Now onto her third non fiction I know she has stretched herself into all the deepest, darkest depths of herself to write this one. It is stunning.
MONTHLY FAVOURITES
Watched… This Is Going To Hurt. I loved the book, I laughed out loud and cried a bit too. In 2016 I spent quite a bit of time in the hospital or going back and forward and I have all the scars to prove it. Being in hospital reminds you of all the people who haven’t made it out of the hospital and all the people living on the edge of life and also how fast that can be snatched away. There is something very humbling about that survival-only mode, addictive even. I think they honoured the book well although did they make changes to his character that I thought made him into a bad doctor? Perhaps.
Listened… I have been doing a 3 month Pathways to Pleasure course with the wonderful Gabriella Espinosa, which has included many lectures based on ancient wisdom and neuroscience regarding pleasure, embodiment and somatic movement. Check out what she is all about here.
Turned up at Chalk for… Self Esteem, supported by Seraphina. I loved this night and didn’t stop beaming for either of their sets but I don’t have any words left to describe it. The review sums it up better than I can here.
