As I sit down to write this, I'm looking back on this blog and how long I've had it. Next year will be the 10th year of The Amber of the Moment but it really doesn't feel like it's been that long. When I started this blog I was continuing a neverending compulsion to write... I've been blogging online since 1999 with various different (now defunct) blogs, but this current blog is now the longest-running one I've ever had. Unbelievably, I've managed to keep it (mostly!) focused on just one or two things (predominantly, the teaching of English and History) with only a few digressions here and there.
So here we are and 2023 is now coming to a close. I've just finished my first full year working as a Learning and Support Teacher, and it's honestly been one of my most rewarding years as an educator. I didn't get to read as much this year (just over 40 books I think) but I did watch a whole bunch of great films. I've kept my film list mostly to my Instagram and I might put together a top films list on here in a bit. Depends how much time I get over the Summer.
Below are my 11 favourite books that I read this year, in no particular order.
With Tarantino's announcement that his next film will be his last, it's nice to know that he still plans to stay immersed in the world of the cinema, albeit as a critic. This collection of essays mixes memoir with recommendations of the director's favourite 1970s films. The combination of Tarantino's cinematic knowledge and his behind-the-scenes connections means that he can offer a unique perspective on film analysis that few can rival. Case in point, Tarantino writes about Steve McQueen (pictured on the cover) whilst offering up information about the screen legend gleaned from his personal conversations with those who knew him. Tarantino's direct access to actual film legends means that his expertise has that edge over many other film fans, making this a must-read for anyone who's a fan of cinema. It also introduced me to some films I'd never seen that I've since watched and loved.
2. The Promise by Damon Galgut
This sprawling epic of a post-Apartheid South Africa presents four decades in the life of an Afrikaner family. As members of the family navigate a shifting socio-political landscape from 1986 to 2018, they fail by varying degrees to make the moral leap into 21st century South Africa. Haunting and hypnotic, Galgut's prose hovers just above the characters' perspectives and effortlessly pulls the reader across a literary landscape both large and intimate. I found myself particularly fascinated by Anton, a truly memorable and oddly charismatic character who sits at the centre of the narrative like a repellent magnet.
3. Sombrero Fallout by Richard Brautigan
I only discovered Brautigan about 3 years ago, and I'm grateful that this has happened later in my life as I'm almost finished reading all of Kurt Vonnegut's books and needed someone else hilarious and crazy to replace him. It's difficult to describe what makes Brautigan so brilliant, I think you really just have to experience his work firsthand. I read this one in a single walk - it presents two (very loosely) connected narratives; one about a writer who has just lost his girlfriend, the other about a sombrero that randomly falls out of the sky and causes a chain reaction of exponential chaos in a border town. A bizarre and one-of-a-kind book.
4. The Lost Man by Jane Harper
This is my fourth foray into Harper's crime fiction. I think The Lost Man rivals her popular debut The Dry in terms of being tightly constructed, surprising, and unputdownable. Harper is able to evoke the bone-dry hell of the remote outback whilst dipping in and out of several interconnected plotlines. The characters are finely-observed and ring true, and the thematic core of the book resonates beyond the trappings of the murder mystery genre.
5. Around the World in 80 Trees by Jonathan Drori
I picked this up after finishing the magnificent Pulitzer-prize winning tree-themed novel The Overstory. I simply hadn't had enough trees. I wanted more trees, and this delivered on that front. I don't know how you'd even classify this book - it's not quite scientific, though it is written by a scientist, and it's not quite mythology, though it is replete with fascinating sociological and folkloric miscellanea. I read this while walking underneath beautiful trees in the Blue Mountains, and I learned lots about amazing trees from around our planet.
I'm hesitant to put this in my list because it left me feeling depressed and experiencing an existential crisis of sorts. I have included it on my list because the quote on the front, 'Devastatingly beautiful', is such an apt description for this powerful WWII novel. Dorrigo Evans, a womanising doctor from remote Tasmania, wrestles with the twin demons of a pre-war affair and his time as a POW on Japan's ill-fated Burma-Siam railway project. Flanagan's novel is kaleidoscopic and incisive, funny and tragic, and relentlessly brutal. It's a book that has sat heavy in my consciousness in the months since I finished it.
7. Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
Kuang takes a hot topic - cultural appropriation - and skewers it in the biggest possible way with an outrageous racial satire for our times. I won't say too much about Yellowface as it would spoil its many twists and unexpected developments. I'll just say that I read this super quickly and was both highly amused and more than occasionally shocked. My only quibble is that I think the ending could have gone further!
I saw this at the start of the year while in a Kiama bookstore, flicked through it, and then put it back down again. It's a coffee table book filled with magnificent photographs of ocean pools, and in the following weeks after I let it go I couldn't get the idea of it out of my head. It became a romantic dream that obsessed me, and I began checking bookstores everywhere back in Western Sydney. Eventually I found it in a Big W in Richmond and I took it home to digest slowly, staring at one or two pools a night. I'm not even that much of a swimmer, there's just something idyllic and old world about these semi-wild pools that sit on the edge of the continent, facing the elements and holding little fragments of history from their coastal communities. I found 'reading' this book to be weirdly therapeutic.
9. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
I read a non-fiction book called The Bookshop Book where its author visited amazing bookstores all over the world. In the course of her travels, various people recommend to her The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, a charming and arresting tale about a retiree who does exactly what the title says. The endorsements intrigued me so I sought the novel out. In it, hapless Harold goes to mail a letter to a long-lost friend and decides on a whim to hand-deliver it instead, walking over 600 miles from one end of England to the other. It's a journey that takes the reader along too, and its hard not to fall in love with poor Harold as he begins to transform and heal.
10. Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
I can't quite put my finger on why I liked this. It's been a smash-hit all over the world and it's such a quirky, strange, disjointed novel. Imagine if you could visit a cafe that allowed you to time travel but, and this is a big 'but', there are several rules in place that heavily restrict the parameters of this travel. I won't tell you what these rules are as part of the joy of this book is the revelation of each of the ridiculous strictures and the ways in which they shape the individual stories of those who would time travel. As I said, it's all a bit strange.
Drnaso's highly-anticipated follow-up to the astonishing Booker Prize-nominated Sabrina is an equally mesmerising look at modern disaffection. Enigmatic and unsettling, Acting Class is Drnaso's most ambitious graphic novel yet, pulling together multiple characters as they're taken through a series of amateur acting lessons. The way this text builds tension through its exploration of the lost and the lonely leads to a burbling sense of terror that's both visceral and thought-provoking. Don't be fooled by Drnaso's deliberately bland drawing style - it fosters a sense of disorientation in the reader that's hard to shake and helps to create a strikingly memorable tone that feels like our feared tomorrows are already here.
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