What I read & watched while ill: May 2024

Making the most of a pretty dull week.

Dear Reader

Well, I had completely different plans for the weekend just gone and as such, this post. Alas, as winter looms for us southern folk, I found myself struck down by a sickness that has been doing the rounds.

Confined to bed or couch if a change of scenery was demanded and bored out of my skull, I took the opportunity to hammer through at least some of my TBR pile.

When I could read no more, when the words on the page turned to gibberish that my illness-addled mind could no longer process, I turned to the telly for comfort. Didn’t fancy bashing my way through a TV series, so decided to while the hours away with mindless movies.

Consider this your guide to getting sick, in a way, or at least what to do when the body is weary but the mind is in need of some sort of entertainment.

What I read

It had been awhile between dog photos. Far too long.

How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang

I talked about this in last week’s newsletter, and now having read it, can confirm it’s both really well-written and very horny.

Pheasants Nest by Louise Milligan

Similarly, managed to strike this off the TBR while convalescing in bed. I read this in two sittings, completely enthralled. Milligan’s journalism is among the best in the country and her fiction reads just as pleasingly. One thing I enjoy about journalists writing fiction, is how sparse and to the point the copy is. No purple prose to be found, here! Milligan also nailed something which I find annoying when done incorrectly – setting a book in Melbourne, without it becoming obnoxious.

How to Think Like a Woman by Regan Penaluna

This poor book has been languishing at the bottom of my TBR pile for quite some time; to add insult to injury, I was already halfway through it when I picked it up again over the weekend (it’s not its fault; I’d been caught up in soon-due library books, book club picks and the like).

It’s an interesting mix of biography and memoir, as Penaluna takes us through a history of philosophy that doesn’t exclude women from its pages; alongside noting how this philosophical thinking has in turn, influenced her own life. Worth picking up if you wish to know more about the groundbreaking thinking of women like Mary Astell, Mary Wollstonecraft, Damaris Cudworth Masham and Catharine Cockburn.

Beach Read by Emily Henry