Weekly Round-up: 2025 Week 4

My blog posting happens in fits and starts, but I really do mean to be a bit more consistent this year. The scramble to find social media niches that are not toxic for one reason or another is in all probability futile, and wondering/worrying about its efficacy is also something of a distraction. So, while I still value the connexions I can make and maintain on Bluesky and Mastodon, I find that blogging and the blogosphere is a more comfortable fit for the way I write and approach the world. 

So each Monday, I will post a round-up of some of my activities and of interesting items that have come my way (I breezily ignore the irony that not a few of these items will have been brought to my attention on the very platforms that I am attempting to eschew). Here goes…

Reading

Thomas Pynchon's V; short stories by Ted Chiang, including the collection Stories of Your Life and Others; Stephen Oram's forthcoming We Are Not Anonymous (for review); Shane Weller's book chapter 'Beckett and Late Modernism' (for something I'm writing).  

Watching

The Limehouse Golem 
I haven't read Peter Ackroyd's book, and it must have been a tricky adaptation, but got good results. A bit gruesome (I have a low grue tolerance) but clever without being overengineered and layered without being confusing. Looked great, everyone was excellent. 

I also watched a couple of episodes of Michael Gambon as Maigret, which reminded me yet again that I should return to the books.

Links

Mylesiana 
Frank McNally in The Parish Review 'On Thooleramawns, Thullabawns, and Gawshkogues: The Role of Hiberno-English in Myles na gCopaleen’s Lexicon of Libel.'

Woolf and Music
Virginia Woolf was an avid consumer of music, and looked to that art form to inform her pursuit of a new way of writing. To mark her birthday on the 25th, a link to a video of Prof. Emma Sutton speaking to three composers who set Woolf's words to music, and in this recording, some of the music is performed.