On Screen On Page: April 15, 2025
The new Colum McCann; that Facebook expose; Michael Lewis on public service; The Leopard.
Potentials (should I buy them?)
Adrian Tchaikovsky is prolific, splendid at worldbuilding, and a fine stylist. I can’t keep up with his full output but Shroud (February), a strange story of alien contact, appeals.
The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue by Mike Tidwell (March) is a climate crisis story with a difference: one year of reportage on a street’s trees in the Anthropocene era.
A seafaring novel, different to his latest: Colum McCann’s recent Twist.
Who can forget the magnificent Parasite from the talent of Bong Joon-Ho. Now an ambitious sci-fi film Mickey 17, about someone hired to keep dying on contract, starring Robert Pattinson, has slipped through onto Netflix. Of course I’d love to see this but I’m unsure if any of my movie clubs will attempt it, and if not, time is a key constraint. We’ll see.
Should I read the Facebook tell-all that the company tried to strongarm but that then became a bestseller? Sarah Wynn-Williams’s March book, Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work.
Parallel Lines by Edward St. Aubyn will be published in June. Something has held me back from reading this distinguished novelist.
A twisty time travel novel: Nicholas Binge’s Dissolution.
Of the six shortlisted books for the International Booker Prize, the one that appeals most is a strange futuristic novel, Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami.
Shouldn’t I read this? Stephen Witt’s The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip.
Purchases for my bedside table
Against my better judgment (how much of this stuff can I watch?) I’m into Bosch: Legacy, the third and final season.
I had only vague memories of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard novel until halfway through the first episode of the sumptuous Netflix six-part series The Leopard. Look forward to the rest.
Anything by Michael Lewis is a must-read. Who is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service (published a month ago) is edited by him but he writes a couple of the chapters, and others are written by a stellar flock of authors including Geraldine Brooks, John Lanchester, and Dave Eggers. Snapped it up.
Into Reject Bin
We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate by Michael Grunwald.
A Different Kind of Power: A Memoir by Jacinda Ardern.
Yiyun Li’s Things in Nature Merely Grow.
Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane.
Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell.
Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory by Yaroslavl Barsukov.
I’ve vacillated over Paul Hawken’s Carbon: The Book of Life but in the end decide this is not a topic talking to me right now.