Quite. The apocalyptic wish for a giant asteroid, sure, does reflect emotions I find it hard to let go of about 2021; however, it sort of spins off one of the most hopeful things all year which has just occurred, namely the launch of NASA's fab new space telescope. Some will nitpick forever about projects like this, especially the money, but it offers a prospect of discoveries even more wildly amazing than Hubble, and that can retire happily with all that it achieved for human knowledge.
So, despite an inclination to get down about what I 'only' managed this year, let's talk about some worthwhile cultural things which I did or enjoyed, despite some tough stuff which happened.
I actually saw two films in the
cinema. This isn't enough to pretend to comment on 'the year in film' or anything like that, but it meant a lot to me, having that experience which I enjoy a lot. I saw
Dune in one of the new little boutique cinemas, the sort where they bring food to your seat etc. Dune is of course huge in scope, one epic vista after another, but I found it didn't suffer too much in that venue; the screen was still much bigger than my telly at home :) And the sound very much better. This version - only
'Part 1' - is by
Denis Villeneuve, who made
Blade Runner 2049 which I loved. This was as well made, and if I didn't 'love' it quite as much it's because the story and its themes don't reach to me quite so much. I have a long history with
Dune, first reading it over the course of a week's guard duty in a railway van (holiday job), then seeing and enjoying David Lynch's film version. Maybe because of his creepy visceral touches, maybe just for fancying Virginia Madsen, I'm a fan. But Villeneuve's version is immense and I look forward to
'Part 2'.
The other film was the last Daniel Craig James Bond. What was it called, No Time to Die? Glad I saw it, all the familiar Bond action and Daniel Craig is the best Bond I would say. One small annoyance was that it was in Manchester, hence a train journey, and I've sort of 'lost the habit', hence cocking up timings and ending up having to go for my train home a few minutes before the end. Later I discovered that its ending went exactly as I'd imagined(!).
I've read a lot of books this year. As before, a healthy variety of fiction and non-fiction, some intellectually challenging and some definitely for putting the brain in neutral. But I definitely need to change some bad reading habits, having started 2022 in very unhealthy fashion. I got up after midday thanks to being absorbed in my latest Jack Reacher thriller (actually the 2nd in the series, Die Trying) past five o'clock in the morning. Oh yes, that's the way I partied in the New Year.
Much of the non-fiction was strongly written and for various reasons made a great impact on me. Operation Jedburgh by Colin Beavan was bound to: it's about the liaison teams which dropped behind enemy lines around the time of D-Day in 1944, to co-ordinate with and supply the French Resistance; our Dad was in one of those teams and is mentioned a few times in the book.
A very(!) different piece of non-fiction was
'The Boy Looked at Johnny.' by
Julie Burchill and
Tony Parsons. It's been neglected (apart from its picture gallery) on a low shelf ever since I bought it, not long after
punk was over; and that's what it was about, published in 1978, which you might call the perfect point. I mean, it's funny to read their very brief comments on some artists who were background to punk, pub rockers really, almost insignificant when they wrote but who were about to become huge, like Elvis Costello. It's mostly about the
Sex Pistols, but nobody at all escapes their scathing analysis, except where they lapse into their personal uncriticised favourites, Poly Vinyl and Tom Robinson. The book manages to pull off the feat of presenting punk as a cultural car crash, and yet making us feel that it was exactly the rush of adrenalin which music needed. I was about to say 'jolt in the arm', but then remembered how much of the story features extensive use of
drugs. Never mind. I can't help the
nostalgia factor, I was around at the time ie. 1976-77, but in a difficult place as they say; in effect, I blinked and I missed it. I loved New Wave stuff of course. Punk has been much written about over the years, but in less than 100 pages Burchill and Parsons pretty much give it the history it needs. It's funny, it's almost like a Heisenberg Principle thing; you can stand back as we do now, and observe punk as a fixed historical event, but if you try to examine it for what it was actually like, to understand it as an experience, it seems to vanish before your eyes.
Otherwise, I'll mention
Trail of Tears by
John Ehle - I've already done a
post about that - which relates the removal of the Native Americans of the South East to the West, in particular the Cherokee. I fnd that history compelling, but it is a tough read, because essentially it's a history of genocide. Another slice of history, just as interesting to me, was
The Royal Navy's Air Service in the Great War by
David Hobbs. It's true that its editing/proof reading left something to be desired, but the story and its illustrations were fascinating, in the way that largely forgotten worlds tend to be. Another book I
posted about!
As far as fiction is concerned, I seem to have been reading a lot of books from series. I finished
Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun, reading the last three books of that this year. By way of contrast, a couple of
Tove Jansson's Moomins books. They're great! Maybe weird to adult eyes, but probably not to a child :) I read one of
Christopher Shevlin's Jonathan Fairfax books, and want to read more. Another
Jackson Brodie (ie.
Kate Atkinson). More of the aforementioned
Jack Reacher (
Lee Child). A
Iain M. Banks Culture book. And maybe most prominently, lots more
Mick Herron, mainly from the
Slough House series. One of them
Spook Street is my favourite out of them so far. I have two more to go of the core series published so far. Pity I won't be able to see the tv series about to hit the screens of streaming subscribers, but, "the book's always better".
As far as giant asteroids are concerned, it's apt that 2021's last book was Comet in Moominland, which was a lovely read. Scientifically inaccurate, but heart warmingly wise about human nature.
PS - Oh yes, my annual 'Christmas Card poll': robins ran out the easy winners.
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