january 2025
hello and welcome to 2025! is it “happy”? so far, not really! a new year to us all, anyway.
catch-up: here are a couple of things i meant to write about in november and december and forgot but still think are worth highlighting. the first is 5 to 4’s series on the federalist society. it’s three parts and starts here. it’s an incredibly good look at how the united states courts have become increasingly radicalized. the second is This Bed We Made (2023), a game in which you play as a hotel maid in 1950s Montreal and solve a series of mysteries, which ultimately lead to a murder. i loved it, and highly recommend it to fans of mystery games and queer history.
read: The Cornish Coast Murder by John Bude (1935). the book opens on Reverend Dodd and Dr. Pendrill at their weekly meeting, wherein they discuss the murder mysteries they read the previous week and unpack the newest shipment of books. i loved this. it’s always a treat for me to get a sense of how the denizens of the golden age regarded mysteries (although i’m sure bude was biased). this is a very technical kind of mystery—lots of trial and error and problem solving, all played out on the page. not for everyone, but definitely for me.
game(s): Murder on the Orient Express (2023), Dredge (2023), Frog Detective (2023), Duck Detective: The Secret Salami (2024), Strange Horticulture (2022). i played all of these this month, mostly during the week when i had no running water and couldn’t go to work (because neither did anybody else) and was bored out of my mind. i reviewed them all here. Dredge was the standout for sure.
film: Perfect Days (2023). i didn’t know anything about this movie until i saw a friend put it at the top of her list of the best movies she saw in 2024. and thank goodness for that, because who knows how long i would have gone without seeing it otherwise? Perfect Days is a meditation on finding beauty in the ordinary. it’s a film that shows rather than tells, which is my favourite kind of film. highly, highly, highly recommend it. more here.
read: Half Moon Street by Alex Reeve (2019). Half Moon Street follows Leo Stanhope, a transman in Victorian England. when the woman leo loves is killed he realizes that the only way she’ll genuinely see justice is if leo investigates the crime himself. there’s a lot more going on in this book than murder mystery, and reeve’s genuine interest in probing the reality of what living as a trans person would have been like at the time is the strongest thing about it. really good book. warning for sexual assault.
film: Anatomy of a Murder (1959). i bought the Duke Ellington score of this movie on vinyl last month, and then had the chance to see it in the cinema this month—obviously meant to be. this is a fantastic courtroom drama, starring james stewart as a semi-retired former district attorney who takes on a murder trial for the defense. it’s a clear precursor to My Cousin Vinny and a grand time. it’s long, but feels like it earns the length. and duke appears in it!
read: Thus Was Adonis Murdered (1981), The Shortest Way to Hades (1984), and The Sirens Sang of Murder (1989) by Sarah Caudwell. Hilary Tamar is an Oxford don of the law who loves to avoid doing work, and so frequently takes themself off to London (hilary’s gender is never given) to join one of their former students and his friends in drifting between their offices and a wine bar. the lawyers all specialize in tax and estate law, and they discuss it all the time. door, you may be saying, that sounds boring as hell. well! you’re wrong: it’s the funniest stuff i’ve read in ages. the language of these books is Wodehouse in the 80s. the baby lawyers are queer and horny. there are hijinks and murders. i have never had so much fun.
game: Star Wars Outlaws (2024). got this at an incredible discount when it came out and then forgot about it?? but it was so fun, i had a great time. you play as Kay Vess, a fuck-up thief from Canto Bight who ends up on the run. your only companion is Nix, a catlizard little guy who’s great at picking pockets and pressing buttons. the game is about getting in good with the various criminal syndicates and staying alive. i LOVED how the game treated the rebels—Kay ranges from deeply suspicious of to eye-rollingly irritated by them. the game is packed with interesting women, and does a lot with alien races that other star wars properties have barely touched. video games are my only interaction with star wars these days, and i can’t say i mind it.
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