Selena > Recent Status Updates

Really enjoying the voice and narrator character

Always so satisfying. (He’s not being so tightly edited in this book I think; by himself or publisher, I’m unsure but the level of author’s self-amusement indulgences has shifted.)

(Audio) I want this book to have been written and published in English. It feels important. I also want to be more engaged in/moved by it — except the filmmaking stuff = great — and to be less disappointed by the style. Maybe I’ve just read (or listened to) too much New Yorker fiction stuff and I’m sick of it atm.

Also: Morvern Callar, Morvern Callar, Morvern Callar

Ah, the thrill of the confessional novel

Had high hopes - have liked a lot of Sri Lankan writing before and intrigued by style. But no. Not for me. Skipped forward and still very same-same so…no.

(Reading and rereading) Loving nearly every piece in this collection, which I heard about on Poetry Unbound with Pádraig Ò Tuama, when he read “When we were 13, Jeff’s father left the needle down on a Journey record before leaving the house one morning and never coming back”. It’s still up there in my top five poems here.

Enjoying the mood and tone, and the setting (temporal and geographical), very much

Really enjoying this. Old faves and new discoveries

Also: it seems I’m on a tree thing now *shrugs*

Loving Gill’s language - the rhythm, the specificity, the economy. Cannot even imagine putting myself through a tree planting day, let alone twenty years of it...but the side-effects of the life—what it might teach about humans, nature, oneself, and then of course the muscles—make it seem strangely compelling.

Kashmir politics I interesting and also confronting/traumatic. Enjoying the specificity and attention to story world/place and character details, and the tongue-in-cheek humour and gentle satire; reminds me greatly of Dickens in these things. Many characters and many threads to weave this layered tale. This is such an enormous feast it must be given big chunks of time - not 5 mins at bedtime.

Pleasing visual style, economical. Accessible. Reading for book club and torn: loving that it’s quick and enjoyable but there’s less poetry to it than I’d hoped for (in line or overall structure).

Really hoping my investment amounts to something by the end.
Also, is someone working on a treatment for a VOTD series? This is so topical, what with all the #metoo show business stuff. Plus prescription drug addiction, sex, money, power plays, rags-to-riches, stars made and unmade, cute babies and bad rich mommies, lesbian sex even... Would rate its pants off (ha haha).