april 2024
hello again mes amis! here are some things i enjoyed this month.
read: Death in the Spires* by K.J. Charles. i’m a huge fan of charles, who predominantly writes historical queer romance novels, often with a dash of mystery. this was her first attempt at flipping the script and writing a murder mystery with a dash of queer romance. it was not, she warned us, a romance novel. what it is, however, is FANTASTIC. set in the late 19th century, it follows jem, who attended oxford on a scholarship and seemed bound for mathematical greatness until his closest friend was murdered. years on, jem is back and determined to solve the mystery, even if it means ruining his old friends’ lives. delicious.
read: Exquisite Dreams: the Art and Life of Dorothea Tanning* by Amy Lyford. before reading this, i knew tanning as the artist of “Birthday,” her surrealist self-portrait, and the woman who married max ernst after he moved on from leonora carrington, which i think would have made me part of the problem that lyford was aiming to address with this book. she seeks to hold tanning up on her own merits, away from ernst and the surrealists, and celebrate her many other artistic accomplishments—in abstract art, and sculpture, and film. she zooms way in on a few specific works, which i think tanning herself would have approved of.
view: La Chimera (2023). what can i say about this movie. i loved it so much, i have thought about it every day since i watched it. i wrote a long review here, but in short: this is a movie that makes strong aesthetic choices and does not explain itself. i love both of those things, and if you do as well then i highly recommend it.
visit: Fallingwater (1936-1939). i am extremely not a fan of frank lloyd wright, but as i am a fan of modernist houses and a work trip was taking me very near it, it seemed a crime not to stop and visit Fallingwater. to my chagrin, i loved it. a frequent problem with early modernist houses was their lack of livability, and maybe it’s down to lloyd wright’s apparently positive relationship with the owners, or the fact that the same family owned it and used it for the 50 years it spent as a private home, but it feels supremely livable. i wanted to slip my shoes off and walk right down the stairs leading up to the living room and go for a swim in the river, and it felt like the house wanted me to do it, too.
read: A Botanist’s Guide to Parties and Poisons* by Kate Khavari (2023). i borrowed this in audiobook form to listen to on a drive, and looked no further than 1) was it a mystery, and 2) was it immediately available. this was both, but i was pleasantly surprised to enjoy it on its own merits, as well. it’s a murder mystery in the golden age form set in the 1920s and follows a young woman botanist determined to clear her mentor’s name, even if she has to poison herself (for science) to do it.
music: Evergreen, Volume 2 by The Stone Poneys (1967). i love folk rock and i love linda ronstadt, so it was only a matter of time until i found my way to the stone poneys. i have their first album on vinyl and love it, but this one definitely feels more mainstream. no surprise it was their biggest hit.
game: Ghost of Tsushima (2020). i didn’t know anything about this game except that it was beautiful when i came across a used copy at my local game shop, but it’s exactly the kind of game i love: story-heavy, emphasis on exploration, the occasional puzzle, and combat i can turn the difficulty way down on because i’m actually so bad at video games. it’s also really beautiful and interesting in other ways, which i wrote about here.
visit: Carnegie Museum of Art. while i was in pittsburgh, pennsylvania for work this month, i had a chance to visit the carnegie museum of art. i loved it. it was between special exhibitions and the bulk of the decorative arts collection was off-view for some reason, so i saw the museum far from its best, and i still loved it. i loved the way the permanent collection was presented, i loved how proudly and loudly pittsburgh itself was represented, and i simply loved what was on view. i was also a big fan of the cardamom latte i had in the cafe. wish i was having it right now.
dog:
and introducing…
cat:
À bientôt!
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