Week 1
My New Years resolution is to nurture the things, and the hobbies, I already have. I barely touched this blog in 2024, except to remove things - and in June, I paid to keep my domain and SqaureSpace subscription. But much like the red and hot pink rollerblades I dusted off a week ago, I’m ready to start focusing on maintaining this blog.
By putting this intention out there, my friends will cruelly remind me each week if I don’t upload a post. I’ll be embarassed, and thus shamed into maintaining this expensive hobby.
The first week of 2025 has been… Fine. Slow. I’ve had the benefit of time off of work, and therefore more time to start and finish books. I’ve spent a stupid amount of time asleep, and I’ve drunk a stupid amount of decaf tea. I’ve started a 5 year One Line a Day diary with my sisters. I’ve started listening to music again, after an empty and mute December. I’ve done some yoga, and it is simultaneously not fun (read: it is challenging) and very fun (read: it feels good).
Kala by Colin Walsh
Kala is a mystery-thriller-contemporary novel about a group of friends. One friend dies, mysteriously, and her death isn’t solved. The book flips between the past and how they met, to the present and how they navigate their lives around this dead-friend shaped hole.
I think I enjoyed this. The start was painfully slow, but for good reason, because the end was quicker than anything. I enjoyed the characters and their different internal monologues, their different perception of each other and the events in their lives. I enjoyed how much I hated certain characters and how much I loved others.
I think, ultimately, I don’t enjoy mysteries or slow paced books that much. I was around 60% in the book when I felt like I understood the plot. And even then, it felt like there were things I didn’t quite understand. I think this is because of the pacing at the end of the book - and maybe this is just a trope with mysteries and I’m unfamiliar with it. But I can’t say it made this book better.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Will I Ever Have Sex Again by Sofie Hagen
I feel slightly embarrassed to post about this one - only because my friends noticed it on my Goodreads and it reminded me that both my sister and a boy I met who doesn’t quite know me well enough follow me. How to explain that I just find the topics of sexuality (including asexuality) interesting?
Anyway - this book is interesting. Sofie Hagen hasn’t had sex in years, and she wants to explore the why? more. The book goes through Hagen’s own experiences. She reaches out to professionals and people she knows, and puts events of her life under a microscope to really examine them. And I have to say, I really enjoyed Sofie Hagen’s writing. I enjoyed her anecdotes, diary entries, how much of herself she put out there. I also enjoyed that the book balanced Hagens’ experiences with the experiences of other people who aren’t the same as her. Some books can do one or the other very well, but this book did both well.
I think, though, the book was ambitious in it’s scope. It brushes on a lot of topics. They are all important, but sometimes I felt like I was no longer reading about the very topic I had set out to read about - why isn’t Hagen having sex?
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
I read this on a recommendation from a TikToker. They’d previously recommended their followers read The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (a book I recommend to everyone, and have accidentally heckled Lauren Graham about - sorry Lauren!), so I felt in safe hands as I collected this from my local Waterstones.
Say Nothing is all about The Troubles in Northern Ireland. I have a very brief understanding of this history, based on a term of year 8 history lessons, before I really understood what history was about. I knew that there were 2 sides and that Britain had a part to play. That was about it.
I feel like I know, and understand, a lot more now. This book is astonishingly neutral, and reads nothing like history. It’s written as a narrative, focusing more on the influential figures of The Troubles, rather than the strict timline of events. The book starts with the murder of Jean McConville, and then flips to the childhood and lineage of Dolours Price, for examples. It’s well written in a way that exceeded my initial expectations. I would write a question down to Google later on that evening, and find that I would scribble it out because the book anticipated my question and answered it perfectly. It covers, not everything, but a lot, in a way that never downplays severity and seriousness, but keeps the reader afloat in their understanding.
Rating: A well deserved ★★★★★
A Year of Nothing by Emma Gannon (Book 1 and 2)
These books are difficult to recommend because they’re only made available in December from The Pound Project. However, they’re small, fit in my pocket and were worth every penny. Gannon is a good writer. I don’t think we have a lot in common, and she has a lot of privilege that I don’t have (which she recognises), but there was something so perfect about reading her words after coming out of a rough month.
A Year of Nothing is exactly what it says. Gannon suffered from severe burnout in December, and took a year off to recover. She slowly re-opened herself back to the world, changing her approach to life and nurturing the things that felt to right to her. She started swimming, dressing in brighter colours, stopped trying to force things to happen, actually rested instead of trying to have “productive” rest. I loved reading this so much. Like I said, not all of it felt like it was directly relatable to me - I can’t, for example, take a year off of work. But reading about someone rebuild their sense of self from the bottom was comforting to me at this time of year. Bravo, Gannon!
Rating: ★★★★★
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
I went into this book not knowing what to expect. Except, everyone I respect in the book world recommended this to me. And therefore, I had to read it.
I’m glad I did. Orbital doesn’t have a plot, but that isn’t a bad thing, even for someone who loves a plot driven book. Six astronauts are in space, constantly orbiting Earth. They’re recording information about Earth from above, taking pictures, experimenting with the limitations of being in space long-term. And as they orbit Earth, constantly, they reflect on what Earth is exactly. As they orbit Earth, they reflect on their relationships, on how they view the world they are completely detached from. They reflect on the losses, the things they can’t do, the effect of space travel on their bodies.
This was exceptionally written. I find it hard to pinpoint the reasons why because, truthfully, I started and finished it today, and usually I have longer to really digest what I enjoyed and what I didn’t enjoy about a book. I just found it gripping and beautifully written. Harvey’s prose is so excellent, it’s unlike anything I’ve read in a while.
I’ve rated it 4 stars, though, again, I’m not entirely sure why. I do think there was something to make me rate this book 4 stars, but not necessarily that there was a problem with the book.
Rating: ★★★★☆