Things I’ve read

I really did try to have a proper break for at least two weeks over Christmas and read some not-work related books. So I read one…

The Ratline, by Philippe Sands. I really loved Sands’ East West Street when I read it earlier this year. This is equally engaging, in a slightly different way - and if you’re not sure you want to go into the development of international human rights law in East West Street (though I’m here to tell you, Sands tells the story really well) then the family story of The Ratline might be more your jam. It’s particularly fascinating on how children deal with the sins of their fathers, and Sands’ telling of his relationship with Horst is generous and painful.

I also read a good 75% of The Eighth Life by Nino Haratischvilli, and as it is 1000 pages fat, I’d call that two novels if I actually cared about keeping count. I’m finishing it up at the moment, and while I’m enjoying it it’s good rather than great. I generally just enjoy a massive family saga, and this one, set in Georgia and the USSR across the twentieth century is really readable and engaging. I’m enjoying the way it weaves in and out of some of the political history I’m familiar with while focusing on the social, but it feels a little too baggy at the moment and the magical chocolate element has not yet paid off, disappointingly. I’ll report back as to whether the final 200 pages pull it out of the bag though

However, I did still read Esau McCaulley’s Reading While Black, Linn Tonstad’s Queer Theology : Beyond Apologetics; and Willie James Jennings’ After Whiteness: an education in belonging because right now that’s what I want to read. I talked about most of them over on twitter, and would recommend all of them. The McCaulley is particularly accessible if you’re looking for something on how the Bible is read. If you’re in thinking about education through a Christian lens in any discipline, I’d really really recommend the Jennings (and also, I wanna know what it makes you think about!)

I also wrote up my favourite books of the year list, if you’re into that kind of thing or have some Christmas money to spend.

Things I’ve watched

What is cinema? When will we be able to go back to it? I remain just bad at watching new things not in the cinema and engaging with them well, and so I have a backlog of last year’s interesting films that I’ve just not watched. Instead I just watched a bunch of Katherine Hepburn films, and I do not believe this is ever a bad choice.

We did watch Soul on Christmas Day - which was really lovely and the story it has to tell about living your life feels quite quite apropos for the pandemic life (I really like the idea of ‘jazzing’), but it didn’t blow me away like either Inside Out or Coco did (I’m not sure Coco gets enough love. It’s glorious, get on it).

In the pile for next month

Choices will come from some of the following:

• Christmas delivered me Maaza Mengiste’s The Shadow King, Isabella Hammad’s The Parisian, and Charlie English’s The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu (because I needed more reasons to want to go to Mali).

• I blew January’s book budget before January on Courttia Newland’s A River Called Time, Sathnam Sangehera’s Empireland, Dan Hicks’ Brutish Museums, and George Saunders’ A Swim in a Pond of Rain

• I really want to re-read Zia Haider Rahman’s In the Light of What we Know, which I think is one of the very best books of the last decade, and also Nick Harkaway’s The Gone-Away World (for the thrills), and John Le Carre’s A Perfect Spy , which I was slightly too young for the first time I read it.

A photo from the last month

I decided to try and opt-in for some feeling of ye olde feelings and darkness in Advent, and took some after dark walks around Cambridge (cue my mother: ‘is that safe?’ / me: ‘ I mean, it’s Jesus Green at 5pm…).

Orion is one of the first constellations I learned to spot as a kid, and I still enjoy finding him in the night sky.