Culture 2024: Round-up

I saw seven stage plays, incl. 2 pantos.

• The Barber of Seville and The Pirates of Penzance at Wilton's Music Hall;
• Nye at the National Theatre;
• Spirited Away at the ENO;
• The Duchess of Malfi at the Trafalgar Theatre;
• Cinderella at the Arts Theatre;
• and Napoleon at Jermyn Street.)

I went to one music concert. (London African Gospel Choir at the Barbican)

I visited art museums and art galleries at least 20 times, incl. 11  temporary exhibitions.  I visited 16 separate venues in 7 different cities. They were: ( Read more... )

Highlights:

• Nye, with Michael Sheen
• Spirited Away
• The Cryptid Factor
• Duchess of Malfi
• Kunstmuseum Moritzburg, Halle
• Albertinum, Dresden
• Entangled Pasts
• Prinzenpalais Oldenburg

Plans for 2025:

• more concerts, especially piano concerti with women pianists
• more author events
• a live opera
• keep up with art exhibitions
• one new-to-me cathedral
• a sculpture park or a sculpture trail

Films 2024: Round-up

 Films 2024

I saw 54 films, most of the with the gang from the Thursday Film Club. Of those, I saw 4 in an actual cinema. (How times have changed.)


I watched 5 series from beginning to end (Vicious with Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi; The Traitors S02; Bridgerton S03; The Twelve with Sam Neill; Apples Never Fall)

Highlights:

• Past Lives, dir. Celine Song
• Legally Blonde, watched for the umpteenth time
• Laapataa Ladies, dir. Kiran Rao
• Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel bzw. Tři oříšky pro Popelku, dir. Václav Vorlíček (1973)
• 12th Fail, dir. Vidhu Vinod Chopra

 

Books 2024: Round-up

Cross-posted from Goodreads:

 In 2024, I read 184 books (compared to 159 in 2023). The increase is mainly due to an increase in non-fiction. My goal was 120. I reached that goal in August (and what? was I just going to stop reading?) I read the most books in October (20). I read the least books in April (10) and December (10).

5-starred books: 29

Fiction: 129
Non-fiction: 53

( Read more... )

Plans for 2025:
• Use challenges to make inroad on books wot i own.
• But do buy exciting new books discovered via challenge research.
• Host my own personal challenges on Storygraph.
• Use Storygraph to track challenges but post all reviews and all books, incl. non-challenge books on Goodreads.
• Read 1 book in Italian. Read 1 book in French.
• Read more books in translation. Aim for 30.
• Read more non-white authors. Aim for 42%. (77 books if I read 184 books again; 50 if 120.)
• Read more books published pre-1900.
• Re-read stuff.
• But mainly: keep on reading for fun! Even if it means ignoring all of the above.

Reading goal for 2025: I set it at 120 but it will likely be at least 157.

Books 2024: Highlights

Fiction:

• Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun 
• Rama Mehta, Inside the Haveli 
• May Ayim, Blues in Schwarz-weiss + Nachtgesang 
• Deena Mohamed, Shubeik Lubeik 
• Vajra Chandrasekera, The Saint of Bright Doors 
• Francis Spufford, Cahokia Jazz 
• Angélica Gorodischer, Kalpa Imperial 
• Percival Everett, The Trees 
• Syou Ishida, We'll Prescribe You a Cat 
• Dora Heldt, Wir sind die Guten 
• Andrew Hunter Murray, The Beginner's Guide to Breaking and Entering (co-host of a fandom twice-removed adjacent podcast of mine)
• Sarah Brooks, The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands
• Sophie Kinsella, Christmas Shopaholic (re-read at Christmas and had tear in my eye)

Non-fiction:

• Shoji Morimoto, Rental Person Who Does Nothing
• Thomas Halliday, Otherlands
• Ramani Durvasula, It's Not You
• Riley Black, The Last Days of the Dinosaurs
• Francis Spufford, Red Plenty
• Souleymane Bachir Diagne and Jean-Loup Amselle, In Search of Africa
• Kristian Nairn, Beyond the Throne (def. fandom adjacent)
• Cynthia Enloe, Twelve Feminist Lessons of War

This was the year of the fab non-fiction books. This was the year of the non-fiction audiobooks, thanks to Spotify including 10 monthly hours of audiobook in my subscription. Five of the above non-fictions I listened to as audio.

I've forgotten how to work this

 So I dutifully type angle-bracket cut angle-bracket and after the cut, I typed angle-bracket forward-slash cut angle-bracket. As far as I can tell, the cut isn't working, and the end-of-cut just shows up as typed.

<cut>
huh?
</cut>

 

ETA: Maybe I have to go to HTML. ( Read more... )

Aha, that did the trick!