After a great transition from May to June with Capital Crime, I spent the rest of the month of June (a birthday month for me, my younger son, and many, many of my friends) in rather unproductive, self-indulgent decadence.
Events
I was planning to go out more and do more things, but the trains have been very problematic, so in the end I only saw the stage version of Spirited Away at the London Coliseum (the second part especially was magical!) and went to Oxford for the always interesting and motivating Translation Day. I also really enjoyed the Expressionist/Blue Rider exhibition at Tate Modern. I’ve always dreamt of having a group of artistic friends living together in a village over the summer and indulging in our creative pursuits during the day, giving each other support and feedback, and having glorious meals on the terrace in the evening. OK, those are not the most obvious critical points to make about the Blaue Reiter group, but it’s what I love about them.
Closer to home, I attended a monthly Royal Borough Writers’ Group meeting – which I haven’t been attending all that regularly recently. Not quite Blaue Reiter, but it made me a little sad to think that once I move I won’t be joining their sessions of feedback and fun writing prompts anymore.
The other great joy is that university exams are over and my younger son is back home at last. He’s inherited my more ‘mature’ tastes in food and drink, much to the surprise and mockery of his student friends, so we’ll be indulging in cheese, salmon blinis and cocktails until the older son comes home on the 10th of July.
Reading
For the first time ever in my life, I can understand why some people don’t read as much as I do, because this month I’ve only read six books and struggled to finish even those, although I quite enjoyed them. They were all set in different places and I’ve written about three of them (Poland, Hong Kong and Japan). I wrote a reader’s report for Das Herzflorett by Marica Bodrožić, a coming-of-age story of a Croatian girl joining her immigrant parents in Germany. Chinatown by Thuan was part of our London Reads the World Book Club, set in Vietnam, Russia and France, with a hypnotic, repetitive prose that irritated some of our book club members, but which I found oddly soothing (but did NOT like reading on Kindle, especially when my Kindle died while I was reading it and it took a week or more to replace it). I got Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshanathan from the library a week or so before it won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and, although it took me several weeks to finish it, I’d have to agree that it was a deserving winner: a family saga with a lot of emotional and social/political history, educating me about the civil war in Sri Lanka. But my appetite for reviewing was even lower than my appetite for reading, so that’s as much as you’ll get about this book.
Five books by women authors, three in translation – not a bad proportion, when the numbers are so low.
So what have I been spending my time on?
I’ve been spending a fair proportion of time getting the house surveyed, decluttering and getting ready to put it up for sale. But, to be perfectly honest, I’ve been continuing my unprecedented TV bingeing. So yes, I can see why people who watch Netflix or other streaming services so much (I rarely did before April) have little time or energy left for reading.
I did this partly because I knew that once my sons came back, I wouldn’t have the time or desire to watch TV much, other than perhaps some films or anime that they might enjoy too. However, it’s mostly because I discovered the gorgeous Korean actor Kim Jae-Wook in Her Private Life and then even younger and more gorgeous in Coffee Prince. So, just like I go down into a rabbit hole and read everything when I find a favourite author, I fell down into the rabbit hole of trying to track down as many of his films and series as possible. He seems to choose his roles carefully, to give himself as much depth and variety as possible, rather than playing the conventional leading man. I particularly recommend Butterfly Sleep, a Japanese film directed by a Korean director, a poignant meditation on ageing, dementia, loneliness and love, but he lights up the screen wherever he appears – that natural rather than manufactured charisma which I associate with Hollywood in the 1930s-1970s. He was previously a model and lead singer in a rock band as well, his hobby is reading and one of his favourite films is In the Mood for Love – so what’s not like, eh?
Of course, after a while, all Korean dramas start to feel the same, with accidents leading to coma, rich chaebol families fighting for succession, would-be lovers failing to talk to each other properly, lots of scenes of drunkeness where one’s true feelings finally come out, dominant and interfering parents (but with an emotional scene of mutual understanding and forgiveness) and a high percentage of orphans being adopted by families in Germany or the United States. Oh, and did I mention that the male protagonists are often portrayed as aloof or arrogant at first, but then utterly committed and caring, endlessly loyal and faithful? I’d have thought it’s obviously a case of wishful thinking, but apparently some women around the world start believing this might be true and travel to South Korea looking for love. This article explodes this myth: and convinces me that my strategy to admire the beauty on display from a distance is the correct one.
Luckily, just in time to avert complete obsession with Jae-Wook, I discovered another versatile and magnetic actor Woo Do-Hwan, in the Valmont-type role of a loose adaptation of Les Liaisons dangereuses called Tempted. I would have liked to see the TV series being more dangerous and dark, but Do-Hwan did a nice line in sinister brooding which the camera just lapped up. Apparently, he is more like an enthusiastic, smiley puppy dog in real life.
Just in case you thought I was completely wasting my time though, all this Korean drama watching has also given me the idea for a new novel: a sort of tongue-in-cheek fanfiction type thing to start off with, but then getting deeper and darker, as it tackles issues of ageing, loneliness, obsession, being unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality, celebrity culture and online trolling. Not quite like Baby Reindeer though, which I just couldn’t bear to watch to the end.
However, I don’t really need excuses for self-indulgence, as I don’t believe in ‘guilty’ pleasures – they are all just little pleasures that harm no one and make our lives a tiny bit more pleasant amid the collective wreckage.
Plans for July
Time to get back on track with reading, writing, publishing, translating and home improvements this month, as well as spending time with my sons. Harrogate crime festival beckons, and Corylus will be publishing the fourth novel by our best-selling author Solveig Palsdottir. Shrouded is delightfully creepy without being too gory, and it also addresses issues such as ageing (again! do I detect a theme this month?) and preying on vulnerable people, so do consider pre-ordering it if you think you might be interested.
Stu will be hosting the Spanish and Portuguese Lit Month in July, so I’m planning to read mostly from those languages (and Catalan) over the next two month (because August is Women in Translation Month anyway). What do you think of my choices below? I just hope I regain my reading va-va-voom.
findingtimetowrite 