What I was reading (and doing) 10 years ago: August 2016

This is the fourth post in my occasional series of archive posts in which I look back ten years. (See others here.) Being the school holidays, It was a good month of reading – 18 books finished, 5144 pages, and I posted eleven reviews on the blog, more at Shiny New Books. They included 4 YA novels, all with mental health themes and all very readable. At this stage I was still reading YA novels as my daughter was a mid-teenager. I also read, 4 titles for that year’s #WITMonth, of which Marie by Madeleine Bourdouxhe and The Nakano Thrift Shop by Hiromi Kawahami were the stand outs for me, but all four were excellent.

One of my interittent projects of 2016 had been making a rainbow of coloured book spines, colour by colour. That had finished, but with the 2016 Olympics happening, I did a ‘medal edit’ pile of gold, silver and bronze ones.

My reading also included not one, but two re-reads for Book Group: The superb Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (read for July’s book, reviewed August) and the equally superb but totally different historical novel John Saturnall’s Feast by Lawrence Norfolk for August’s book, reviewed Sept). We were picking our books by theme keywords at that time – ‘Noir’ and ‘Food’ respectively.

Several others read were reviewed in later months too including Jane Thynne’s 4th Clara Vine book and Shopgirl by Steve Martin.

However, my reading highlight was my discovery of Becky Chambers through the first volume of her ‘Wayfarers’ novels – The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. What a treat this was! Intelligent SF with a heart and humour. It is full of alien species – ‘sapients’ mostly living in relative harmony with each other. The Wayfarer is a tunneling ship, a patchwork vessel whose job is to create and stabilise wormholes in between space to make travel over great distances possible and safe. The novel follows new crew member Rosemary, a human from Mars, and introduces us to a colourful cast of humans and aliens onboard. All of the crew have depth and well-rounded characters, and form an inclusive bunch in the best Star Trek tradition (additionally, the Galactic Commons are the equivalent of the Federation and the Toremi take the place of the Cardassians in this narrative). However, the story is told with Red Dwarf’s sense of humour which keeps things light-hearted and optimistic even in the darkest moments.

Finally on the books read front, the prize for best cover of the month goes to The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J Church. An academic romance of sorts, set in the Manhattan Project’s rarefied atmosphere, with some birdwatching on the side.

I also got to the theatre twice in August.

Firstly to the Old Vic to see Groundhog Day – the musical, with book by Danny Rubin who wrote the original screenplay, and music & lyrics by Tim Minchin. Largely following the film, this was so well done, with loads of visual effects to allow all the permutations of events to happen. It only had a limited run at the Old Vic, not transferring into the West End, but it won a slew of awards at the Oliviers and on Broadway. Andy Karl (left) who played Phil Connors was amazing! A huge standing ovation from the audience at the end.

Secondly, I managed to find a good seat at short notice to see Kenneth Branagh as Archie Rice in John Osborne’s The Entertainer at the Garrick. Scenes alternate between the Rice’s home and Archie’s stage act. What is immediately clear is that Archie can’t turn it off – his life at home is another act. 

Right from the start, Branagh made it obvious that he wasn’t in thrall to Olivier. He and his director Rob Ashford, wanted to show more of the hoofer side of Archie, the song and dance man comic. In a wordless intro, Branagh comes through the back door in his vest with a towel around his neck, practising his tap dancing. Nothing fancy, a few shuffles and kick ball turns sort of thing – a gentle warm-up but with a heaviness to it that warns of angst to come. Meanwhile his four chorus girls prance around him in their dressing gowns. Then Branagh disappears, the girls pull forward a few bits of furniture and we’re in the Rice residence. Always a pleasure to see Branagh on stage.

So August 2016 was a great month for reading and theatre for me. Can you remember what you were doing ten years ago?

See also: Eleanor’s post here – do feel free to join in too!