Nine books to open your mind
February was quite the month
Not quite as many books as last month, but February was quite diverse. Ranging from hockey-team orgy erotica to Jane Austen and back again.
The city and its uncertain walls by Haruki Murakami
At 76, the enigmatic Haruki Murakami returns with a new novel - the first in many years. The book is as surreal and bewildering as ever. It’s a remix of one of his earliest works - but it’s also a combination of almost his entire back catalogue. None of the ideas are new, but they’re expressed with refined elegance and poise. But if you don’t like Murakami you’ll loathe this book. However, if you think you might like the idea of a dream city that separates you from your shadow, a library with ghosts and records of old dreams, and a non-verbal teenager who speaks only facts, and a mysterious cat….then this is the book for you. (I made a video about it on YouTube - at the bottom of this e-mail.)
Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks
The new book from Geraldine Brooks is predictably stunning. Brook’s famed husband, Tony Horowitz, suddenly passed away in 2019. This recounting of Brooks’ fractured grief should be heavy and torturous but is beautifully light, compelling and insightful instead. I gave a full review on ArtsHub - but I would broadly recommend this to anyone. It was only released this month and will surely be on many ‘Best of 2025’ lists.
The Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
I don’t need to tell you this, but this romantasy series about a school for dragon riders has become the best-selling adult fiction in twenty years. One of these days, I’ll try and write a whole post about romantasy and the tsunami currently engulfing publishing. I lost my wife for several days to this series. I’ve read the first volume and enjoyed it. It’s a rich, engaging fantasy world with a breakneck plot. I hardly need to recommend it, only to advocate for it’s merit. Countless literary snobs will turn their nose up at what is popular for no good reason. I would argue that Fourth Wing has more literary merit than The DaVinci Code, which de-throned from the top of the best-selling adult fiction pile. But regardless of anything, it’s good, well-written fun.
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
Time travel romance is filled with potentially tired tropes, but Bradley’s taut thriller is fresh. In the near future, the British government has cracked time travel and is bringing people from the past to the present in a bold experiment. Her prose is exquisite and quotable: “Forgiveness and hope are miracles. They let you change your life. They are time-travel.”
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Heard of it? It was my second time reading it, and I enjoyed it much more than the first time when I must have been barely twenty. Fitzgerald’s prose is beautiful, and the novel is bracingly short. Its importance in the literary canon is probably a bit over-stated, mainly because its length makes it perfect for high school classrooms. Fitzgerald’s genius is in his thematic density. Like all good art, Gatsby can be a novel about almost anything: love, class, sex, death, privilege, homo-eroticism, parental neglect, and on and on…
Persuasion by Jane Austen
I had never read this, Austen’s last, most melancholic novel. It certainly has the most character depth of all those I have read. It is also, at times, some of the least accessible - the first fifty pages are rough exposition that I notice most dramatic adaptations skip over. Anne Elliot, the young heroine, falls for Frederick Wentworth. But he is a man of no import, so Elliot’s family persuade her to break off her engagement. Eight years later, he returns a naval captain. Has Anne left it too late? Anne is the most human of all of Austen’s heroines. She looks after her family, is melancholic and insecure, but is also enduringly sensible and mature.
MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios by Jooanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales and Gavin Edwards
A far cry from any censored, glossy, official release from Marvel, this more honest journalistic chart of the MCU’s history is a thrill for any cinema nerd (or any nerd, really). Regardless of your opinion, the MCU’s effect on contemporary cinema and Hollywood business is astounding. It’s even more gob-smacking in its historical context: the studio began as an indie outfit that half-improvised its way through the original Iron Man in 2008. Over ten years, the studio completely innovated the film business. The book stops around 2022, but covers every scandal and bizarre business decision from the last fifteen years of Marvel movies.
What I Ate in One Year by Stanley Tucci
If you’re out of Valium, I suggest the following prescription: find this book on Spotify or Audible, lie down, and listen to Stan narrate the meals and adventures he had through 2023. This is perfect for me - light, dry wit, and an obsession with food. I lust/want to grow up to become Tucci. You have to excuse his glamorous life: casual champagne dinners with Harry Styles and celebrities whiz by. These can be annoying in a, ‘well-its-allright-for-some’ sort of way. But if you surrender, I liken this to getting a massage.
Pucking Around by Emily Rath
I mean…just pure smut. In my ongoing endeavour to learn about the success of contemporary romance, and romantasy, etc, comes this title - a 700 plus page epic about a Florida hockey team physiotherapist who falls for three men at once. The result is a polyamorous relationship. It’s not high art, but I promise it is well-written, reader. The characters, while trope-y, do have depth. There are arcs to this thing, and an honest-to-goodness exploration of poly and non-monogamous relationships where I actually - gasp - learned stuff. Extremely sex-positive, extremely filthy, your satisfaction will vary. But overall, I found it enlightening, good fun.
Killers of the Flower Moon: Oil, money, murder and the birth of the FBI by David Grann
I haven’t seen the movie because I wanted to read this first. I read Grann’s The Wager and found it to be an impossibly good piece of history reading. This is the same. Riveting. A devastating story of bastardy colonisation, and filled with memorable anecdotes and characters and highly recommended. No one does it better than David Grann.
What did you read this month? Comment!