Breathing Just a Little

This is a thought-provoking, chillingly plausible dystopia about a near-future in which technology, AI and data surveillance combine to strangle individuality, freedom, and justice. It's also a critique of profiling as a policing strategy, and a trenchant attack on the incarceration industrial complex where for-profit detention encourages the treatment of prisoners as money-making resources, and incentivises imprisonment rather than tries to avoid it. At times I found it slightly heavy-handed, but overall, it was compelling. I had to take a couple of breaks in reading it because it was so convincingly Kafkaesque and oppressive, but it was well worth persisting. It is the story of Sara Hussein, an archivist, wife and mother of infant twins, who is detained at LAX on her return from a business trip to London. Sara's "risk score" has risen to what is deemed an unacceptable level, and she is told she will be subject to a 21-day period of detention for "assessment...

  “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” ― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird I've been ruminating (again) this week on the ethics of creating art that is clearly and identifiably about living people, especially when that art is scathing, revelatory, or born from a place of pain.   The immediate catalyst of this thinking has been listening on repeat to an album that will end up being one of my top albums of this year for sure: Lily Allen's West End Girl. If you are unfamiliar, the album charts the catastrophic breakdown of her marriage to Stranger Things actor, David Harbour, and zero punches are pulled. Allen is explicit, raw, and so clearly hurt by what she says Harbour did, that IF the album is an accurate or even semi-accurate narrative, the conclusion is clear - the Harbour who emerges from the connected web of songs is an irredeemable shit. Of course, there is (as always!...

November is already one-third done, my goodness (the end of year season is pressing hard at our heels already!) It's been a moderately, but not excessively, busy month thus far, and it has encompassed the consumption of five books - two in print, but three in audiobook. The audio format has really opened up a world for me; I'm loving the opportunity to absorb more stories even with other commitments are high. Each of the three audiobooks I have listened to have been good in their own way, and one was a close to perfect banger. See notes below. I have been told by many people to read this one for ages, but I hung back because memoir isn't my bag, and I especially don't jive usually with entertainment industry memoirs, so I thought this would be a bit dull. My kids watched iCarly back in the day (although not the spin-off show) and I remember vaguely thinking it was pretty trash. If you had ever told me back then that one day I would be laughing and crying my way through ...

Well, I see in my previous quarterly post (in July) that I had intended in my mental schedule to do this a month ago, but what can I say - life has been busy! This self-appointed Monday off before a public holiday seemed like a good opportunity to catch up. This quarter, which now extends til 30 October, has been packed for everyone in my household. There haven't been any disasters, but there have certainly been stressors, sad things, and irritations. Overall it's been pretty good though. I personally have been well for the quarter, although two of my daughters had pretty dreary bouts of flu. My gallbladder recovery is complete, which is helpful, and my dietary capacity has returned to normal, with the caveat that I still need to be careful with dairy food. Interestingly, I have not gained any weight as a result, but my steady weight loss (driven by a very restricted diet) has also stopped. It seems my perimenopausal body has found its comfort level in the "chubby little H...

Last night I finished a book that I not only loved, I have Big Thoughts about, so naturally a review was inevitable :-) I thought I would also take the opportunity to share some impressions of the previous book I finished, which I also really enjoyed. This books could not be more tonally different, but both were very high on engagement and both used the tried but true Late Reveal technique perfectly. I think both are excellent reads - or, rather, listens, as I consumed both as audiobooks (which I think added very positively to the first, but had less impact on the second). First up, the book I finished first - Ann Patchett's Tom Lake. I had never previously read anything by Patchett, which now strikes me as an odd omission (the good news being there is a long backlist to dive into!) This work, narrated by the wonderful Meryl Streep, was a perfect introduction to the Patchett oeuvre. Tom Lake is, loosely, the story of Lara Nelson (nee Kennison), told from her secure and happy mid-li...