Already past mid-August, and I haven’t written down my July books yet! Time flies etc. It’s terrifying how quickly they disappear from my mind: I always need to consult my Kindle (and book case for physical books) to remember what I’ve read.

Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway: entertaining. I don’t know why I was expecting more - maybe because I’d been impressed by the elaborate structure of Gnomon, the only other book I’ve read by Harkaway. Angelmaker has some nice bits, I liked the visual flash, the order of craftsmen monk, the automatons, the spy’s asian adventure. That being said I felt the characters were one-dimensional. The protagonist had an unlikely development, and the love interest was a love interest. But it was fun, very quotable, and it felt like a pastiche of a 70s bond with some baroque curlicues added in.

Station Eleven: book of the month for me. It’s a pandemic story, with almost nothing about the pandemic itself, but threading through the life before and the psychological aftermath for those who survived. Poetic and melancholy, navigating between people about to die and people mourning their past and civilization, it is still hopeful, painting people as ultimately decent and ending on an optimistic note.

Lady bird: a coming of age movie we’d had on our list for a while. Lady bird is young girl living in a small town in California, and she can’t wait for her life to start, and dreams of going to an Ivy League college on the East Coast. It’s exceptional in that nothing dramatic happens, and it’s all very believable: the insecurity, the fumbling first loves, the jockeying for position in high school, the friendships.

We finally watched the last episode of Brooklyn 99. We’ve watched the whole show in dribs and drabs over the last year or so - it ended being the house cheerer-upper. Short, dependably funny, well written, always ending well, cast of characters with repeat humor.

And … that’s all! What happened last month? I don’t know, I guess work started again, and took a fair bit of time and energy.