In 2025, I would like to spend more time reading books than cleaning mud from the back garden off my dog’s paws. I didn’t manage last year, but I’m hopeful that writing them down each month will help me hit this target (also: paving in the garden).
Question 7, by Richard Flanagan (2023)
A lot of people get older and start researching and thinking deeply about where they come from. Not all of them are storytellers like Richard Flanagan, though, capable of a sadness and anger and shame so specifically Australian that it makes Gareth Liddiard from The Drones (my north star for this sort of thing) look like a Tik Tok dancer with a six pack.
Slow Horses, by Mick Heron (2010)
I liked the TV show so I decided to read the first book and loved it. I now have books 2-7 of the Slough House series on reserve at the library. There’s a few things I fear about becoming a middle aged man, but the idea of shuffling around town with a spy novel in my coat pocket isn’t one of them.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, by Alison Bechdel
A funny and sad autobiographical graphic novel that a friend recommended to Jess and she passed onto me. A cool fact: the author, Alison Bechdel, invented The Bechdel Test.
*Honourable mentions:
Black Ivy: A Revolt In Style, by Jason Jules and Graham Marsh
Technically a coffee table book, but I read it in bed like a novel until my arms got sore. It’s about how jazz musicians, artists and civil rights activists subverted the uniform of America’s elite - and I’d recommend it to everyone but particularly anyone with even a passing interest in what it means to be cool.
Apartamento Cookbook #9: Sandwiches
A Secret Santa present from my sister-in-law Bre. More of a book to use than read, but I still read it.
