The first newsletter of 2024, and it's a quiet one, I'm afraid. I hope to have some more publishing news to share with you next month, but -- as tends to be the way when you're plugging away at the middle of a long project -- right now there's not much to tell.
On top of that, the day job has been pretty busy, and I've spent more time than I'd like in bed nursing migraines, so I don't even have a little essay or a review to share with you this month. Hopefully I'll be back on more interesting* form in February!
*YMMV, and so on
What I've been reading
I finished Vajra Chandrasekera's
earlier this month, and it's lived in my head rent-free ever since. It's a smart, richly-imagined fantasy novel that melds fabulist strangeness with a stinging critique of power and manages an audacious rug-pull toward the end that would be gimmicky in lesser hands, but instead made me want to yell with delight.
What I've been watching
I've ended up catching a lot of older movies at the local cinema lately, but one of the recent ones I've managed to check out was
Poor Things
. Yes, okay, its feminism is 101-level, but visually it's stunning, and Emma Stone's charisma carries the whole thing without a missed step.
What I've been listening to
I managed to catch
at Clwb Ifor Bach last week. They were charmingly raucous as ever, and as a bonus, support came from Newport's very own
, who are well worth looking out for.
That's all from me for this month. 'Til next time!
JL