Happy New Year’s Eve folks!

I actually wrote this post a couple of days ago as I expect to be incapable of blogging on 31 December. I’m scheduled for minor surgery just before the New Year and expect to be on the good painkillers for a few days. Hopefully after a few weeks of convalescence my shoulder will no longer cause me constant pain. That’ll be nice.

Looking back over December, it was a month of two halves. First half was busy with Christmas parties, get-togethers, shopping and planning. Second half was hospital appointments; keeping myself away from crowds so I don’t get sick before having surgery; and a very quiet chill Christmas at home. My brother joined us for a few days and we ate a lot of very good food.

Staying home more than usual means Tim and I powered through our list of Christmas films. We watched a lot of them, old and new, good and bad. I can recommend A Christmas Affair (1949), Desk Set (1957), The Apartment (1960), Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) and The Ice Harvest (2005). Plus the new Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is great. It’s not set at Christmas but it was premiered on Christmas Day so it’s basically a Christmas film.

I also read a lot this month. I thoroughly enjoyed Butter and Behind You is the Sea, but I absolutely loved This House. It’ll probably be a week before I name my top books of 2024, so here’s a hint: This House will be on the list.

Wishing you all the very best for 2025.

Books read

And Still We Write edited by Publishers for Palestine
Translated from Arabic
An anthology of poems and short essays by current Palestinian authors, most of them from Gaza. Very moving and beautiful and heartfelt. Released free by Arab Lit, a quarterly literary magazine.

Butter by Asako Yuzuki
Translated from Japanese by Polly Barton
Excellent novel exploring womanhood in modern Japan. Journalist Rika starts visiting Kajii, a convicted murderer, in prison. Rika hopes to get an exclusive interview, but while she works on establishing trust, she finds Kajii’s influence changes her life. Kajii is a foodie, a pleaser of men and a hater of women. Great food writing and intriguing characters.

Behind You is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj
Three families of Palestinian immigrants in Baltimore interact in this original, entertaining novel. Each chapter concentrates on a different character from these families, following them closely for days, weeks or even months. There are big time jumps between each chapter as well, so that by the end of the book decades have passed. This does a great job of confronting stereotypes. It made me laugh and cry.

Pure Hollywood by Christine Schutt
Short stories about not-nice people living through the odd moments in their quirky lives. There’s a lot of alcohol and dysfunction. Good on a sentence level but I didn’t love this.

D: a Tale of Two Worlds by Michel Faber
Faber’s only children’s book and it kinda shows. The story is fun but the language a little condescending at times. Dhikilo, a refugee from Somaliland, lives in a fictional English seaside town with her white adoptive parents. Like her teachers, they are nice but mildly racist. One day, the letter D disappears from the English language and Dhikilo seems to be the only person who notices. She decides to investigate and winds up on a quest in the world of Liminus, populated by strange creatures who all hate each other and her. There are tonnes of Dickens references, and the quest is an action-packed adventure. But this didn’t quite hit the mark.

Rife: Twenty-one Stories from Britain’s Youth edited by Nikesh Shukla and Sammy Jones
Very much a product of its time, in 2019 Bristol’s Rife magazine commissioned 21 young British writers. They were asked to write an essay on the topic that mattered to them most. The results are passionate and persuasive, covering everything from Islamophobia and ableism to failures in the British education system. Great to see an early piece from Liv Little here. A fantastic platform for young writers but sad to see how on many of these topics the UK has only got worse in the intervening years.

This House by Sian Northey
Translated from Welsh by Susan Walton
A gorgeous, gentle tale about a woman who falls in love with a house. Which sounds mad but this is anything but. It’s a very real, humane story about old age, grief, friendship and home. Anna is a wonderful main character, stubborn and practical but also whimsical. There are omissions that could be the forgetfulness of old age, or could be Anna deliberately blocking out things she doesn’t want to deal with. I really loved this and I’m grateful to the Good Book Club for sending it to me early in the year.

You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian
A sequel of sorts to We Could Be So Good, this is a sweet mid-20th-century gay romance. Mark Bailey is grieving a partner he can’t tell anyone but his closest friends even existed. He’s assigned to ghostwrite the newspaper column of up-and-coming baseball star Eddie O’Leary, not his usual type of journalism at all. Eddie is having a terrible season with his new team, uprooted from his friends and his beloved mother. Mark is the first person who’s spoken to him kindly in New York and he’s good looking too. This has a little more sports ball than I’m interested in, but overall it’s a fun read that was just what I needed while sat in hospital waiting to go in for my surgery.