Shaky Roundup: May 20th
Everything I have found recently interesting
Welcome back to the Shaky Roundup!
It’s been a wonderful month for reading, some of the best things I’ve read in a very long time. Also realised there’s an Americana theme threading through the list… I suppose I’m feeling out my new roots.
Also, it’s Beethoven May (playing the Missa Solemnis and the complete piano trios this month) and I’m riding high on that molto-crescendo-to-subito-pianissimo thrill. Just to put you in the context of my current mood.
Enjoy the last of the gorgeous weather before the brutal heat hits!
See you in the comments,
F
‘Headshot: A Novel’, by Rita Bullwinkel. This was such a fantastic read. A story, or multiple stories, about young female boxing champions, this book is told in a sequence of short vignettes, which reads, itself, like a boxing match. Heartpumping, evocative, and totally absorbing from beginning to end, I found Bullwinkel’s writing truly masterful.
The statistic that ‘2 in 3 people consume fast food at least once a week’. And, ‘more specifically, 54% of millennials report eating fast food a few times a week, with 23% consuming it daily.’ Mind blown. What is my generation doing?! There is only one acceptable circumstance in which to consume fast food imo, and that is on a great American road trip.
Speaking of American road trips, I really enjoyed this piece, ‘What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66’, by Aatish Taseer for NY Times. Very relevant material for me this week. I read this after drinking exactly two glasses of wine, and I think that was the perfect way to let myself be submerged into the sprawling, expansive imagery of America seen through the lens of an immigrant.
“We think we know a place, in the same way we sometimes feel we have read certain famous novels, but there is no substitute for watching land go by. The stamina, endurance and, at times, monotony are not incidental to the experience; they are the point. They change us not for what we might later say about them but because we went through them, because we turned every page.”
I’ve been borrowing DVDs from the library and having so much fun doing so! Spending half an hour browsing titles (of which there are 1000s I’ve never heard of), choosing a couple each week, and then watching my picks complete with pre-movie ads AND the bonus materials (!)… such nostalgia for the early ‘00s. Highlights so far have included Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia” and “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas”, starring Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds. Each of these would have cost $3-4 to rent from Am***n.
Sitting for hours shrinks the brain. Time to get up and go for a walk?
“The study showed that even those who exercised for 150 minutes a week still experienced brain shrinkage if they sat for long hours. Memory declined, and the hippocampus lost volume.”
I went to see Anna B Savage on her DC tour stop at DC9 and was weeping within minutes. Her voice is magic. “Lighthouse” was my favourite song; “My lighthouse, he is home” 🥲
A book of short stories called “I’m A Fool To Want You”, by Argentinian author Camila Sosa Villada. Truly one of the best things I’ve read all year. So original and imaginative and daring. Can’t wait to read everything she writes.
The saying ‘a selfish hand has a short reach’. You know when that thing happens where you’ve never heard of something before, and suddenly you see it everywhere? That’s happened with this, and now I picture everyone with tiny arms…
The gorgeous novella, ‘The Hour of the Star’, by Clarice Lispector. I had never heard of this Brazilian author before; it seems she was somewhat of an eccentric character. This was the last thing she ever wrote, about a poor, destitute woman called Macabéa, who didn’t know how poor she was, so she simply carried on with life anyway. Haunting and challenging, I think about Macabéa all the time.
‘Moonlit Cove’, by one of my favourite American artists, Albert Pinkham Ryder. There’s always a secret in his paintings; can you see the fishing boat in this one?
