I was on the fence about whether or not I wanted to talk about this film. I hesitated because I like to use these ‘Friday Finds’ posts usually to showcase things that you might not have come across. I’m definitely not opposed to talking about big budget Hollywood movies or famous books (regular readers will know that I definitely have in the past!), but I like to shine a light on worthy, slightly lesser known things whenever possible. That’s what the ‘finds’ in ‘Friday Finds’ is all about: finding cool things that are maybe slightly under the radar. And a film with Leo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence could never be described as ‘under the radar’. (Apparently it’s also the second most-watched Netflix film in the company’s history!) That being said, this film has been running through my mind a lot recently because it left me with such mixed feelings. And I’d really like to talk about it!
‘Floating among the stars, that is my objective.’ – Wally Funk
I didn’t know about the Mercury 13 until recently, when I read the sci fi thriller Goldilocks and saw that the book was dedicated to them. I looked them up and learned that they were a group of 13 women in the 1960s who wanted to become astronauts. They aced the same grueling physical tests as the male astronauts, but their careers were cut short before they even began when it was decided (in the USA, at least) that women shouldn’t be astronauts at all. What a tragic story, and equally more tragic when I watched this documentary, Mercury 13, and saw how qualified, capable and enthusiastic these women were.
My favorite book is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I wrote about how much I love this book in a post last year. Those of you who have been reading the blog for that long (thanks!) might recall it! This year, I was chatting with my friend Cameo about Dickens and all of the many film adaptations of A Christmas Carol. She suggested I watch a few film versions and give a verdict on which one was the ‘best’. I thought it was a great idea. So for this, the last ‘Friday Finds’ of the year, that’s exactly what I’ve done.
I am part of the generation that ‘grew up’ with the Harry Potter books. I was roughly the same age as the characters as all of the books came out and remember vividly waiting for the final installments to figure out what happened next. And while the series never meant as much to me as it did to some of my friends (it was a formative series for many people my age), I did really enjoy the books. For years I’ve been curious to revisit them as an adult. I finally took the opportunity and, before embarking on a transatlantic flight, I downloaded a Harry Potter audiobook from the library. I chose the one that I remembered as being my favorite in the series: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. After twelve hours of listening to it on planes, trains and automobiles, in airports and coffeeshops, I can say that it was, frankly, pretty incredible and much better than I even expected.
I think stories – and books, and songs, and movies – should more or less ‘stand on their own’ without any context or explanation needed. I love reading something and forming my own interpretations and impressions of it. When you publish something, be that a book or a single poem, you relinquish control of it and let others take from it what they will. Writers can’t be there standing over readers’ shoulders whispering: ‘Do you see what I did there?’ ‘That’s a symbol! Get it??’ ‘This bit is meant to make you cry. Are you crying yet?’ That would be very annoying indeed.
However, I think that there are certain stories that are really enriched and deepened when we peel back the curtain a little and see what the author was thinking about when they wrote it. For example, maybe it’s an autobiographical novel, or it’s an homage to another novel, or maybe there’s a particularly unique origin story or ‘lightbulb moment’ when the author came up with the idea, or maybe it’s the product of a particular time in the author’s life or a particular historical event inspired it etc. These things shouldn’t be essential to the reading experience, but they can be a really worthy addition. I love reading ‘afterwords’ of historical novels in particular where authors talk about the research done, or their travel to historical sites, all that jazz. As a writer myself and a curious person, it’s super interesting!
During lockdown last year, a lot of people started developing new hobbies. Some of my friends got on board with the baking sourdough bread trend, some got really into watching make-up tutorials on YouTube, or working out, or revamping their gardens. Some bought pets. My ‘lockdown thing’ (which honestly started a bit before lockdown) was Star Trek. I got really, really into Star Trek. Not just watching the TV series (The Next Generation, Voyager, Deep Space Nine…) but also reading some of the companion NOVELS and even experimenting with writing sci fi myself (which I’ll tell you more about later, I hope!). I honestly never thought of myself as much of a sci fi person, but Star Trek really opened my eyes. It’s gently idealistic (what if in the future there’s no money, no wars, and humans are part of a ‘federation’ of other species who explore the galaxy together…), it’s an ensemble show with lots of colorful characters with their own unique stories, it’s cozy and fun, it’s been running forever so it has built this rich and complex world, and, at its best, it’s intellectually engaging and even profound. The best science fiction in general, I think, engages with the most interesting questions of all: what is time? what makes a person? what else is out there? what does it mean to be a part of this universe?
I’ve since branched out into other sci fi shows and books. A friend of mine (who also loves Star Trek) recommended The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, which is the first book in Chambers’ Wayfarers series. It’s a very popular science fiction series, and this first book was published in 2014 (interestingly, Chambers self-published it and it was later picked up by a traditional publisher). I found it a very enjoyable and ‘cozy’ read (more on that in a second). If you are like me and enjoy Star Trek, then I’d say skip the rest of this review and just read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet because there’s a lot of similarities and I imagine you’ll like it too!
This is a book about ordinary people in space, specifically a group of basically construction workers traveling around trying to ‘punch’ holes in spacetime to make wormholes (fast interstellar highways). It features a motley crew of people aboard this one starship – similar to Star Trek – and it’s quite episodic. They encounter little difficulties here and there on their ‘long way’ to complete a big job, but it’s not about big explosions or major political events. There are long scenes of people eating dinner and chatting. It switches perspectives from all of the characters on the ship, and sometimes intersperses this with documents/letters or pages from the galactic equivalent of Wikipedia, which work well to add texture to the world and feed us info in a not-too-obvious way. Chambers’ focus on the small moments between people made me think of what Natalie Goldberg has to say in Writing down the Bones, on the importance of the everyday:
‘We are important and our lives are important…their details are worthy to be recorded. This is how writers must think…Otherwise, if they are not, we can drop a bomb and it doesn’t matter…A writer must say yes to life, to all of life: the water glasses, the Kemp’s half-and-half, the ketchup on the counter’
I love this focus on small quiet moments and small things in The Long Way. It suggests to me that these ordinary people’s lives do matter (which of course they do). And the writing itself was smooth and solid. I don’t think her primary interest is in the prose, it wasn’t particularly lyrical or poetic or inventive on that front, but it was much better written than most of the Star Trek novels I’ve read thus far and the dialogue especially was lively and fun. There was a lot of attention to detail in terms of the setting and how things worked mechanically which I appreciated (it was never boring or dry, but I just felt she’d done a lot of thinking about these things and the science behind them). And overall it was just a rather nice story about people being friends and hanging out in space.
So I’d definitely recommend it if you’re looking to dabble in a bit of sci fi but want something character driven with a big heart, or if you know you like sci fi and you want a gentle story where people are generally decent and tolerant and mean well. At first I wanted this book to be a little edgier or darker than it was, but in the end it was kind of refreshing that it stayed pretty light. (As a side note, I’m halfway through the second book in this series – A Closed and Common Orbit – and it’s very different and definitely darker. And I think I actually like it MORE than The Long Way. I’d recommend it too! It’s about Artificial Intelligence). I plan to read all the books in the series: this is my version of a ‘beach read’! It’s engaging but not stressful and is like a big warm hug (from a giant lizard or a robot).
Have you heard of this series? Do you enjoy sci fi generally? I’d be curious to know your favorites! I’ve just started The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin, recommended by many, so I’ll let you know my thoughts once I’m done with the book which seemingly everyone describes as their ‘favorite sci fi’!
Thanks as always for reading, and hope you have a great weekend!
PS the super cool featured image for this blog is a celestial map from 1670 by Dutch cartographer Frederik de Wit, accessed via Wikimedia. It’s not directly relevant to this book, but it’s got stars and also funky animals and interesting creatures, so I see some overlap.
And here’s an interview with Becky Chambers where she introduces the book and a wee bit more about it if you’re curious!
One of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in my life is a parrotfish. I was snorkeling with my dad on a vacation in Cozumel (we lived in Texas, so holidays to Mexico were frequent). I remember there weren’t many fish that day, and it was quite sandy where we were – just some tufts of brownish seaweed, a couple of little fish darting here and there. But then I saw him. He was huge, with a multicolored, almost neon, body and bright blue lips, like he’d smeared on some crazy lipstick. He was swimming slowly and I remember just staring at him: he looked hefty and majestic, gliding through the shallow water. I couldn’t believe how colorful he was – how big and strange and serene. If you don’t know what a parrotfish looks like, these are the little fellows I’m talking about:
Seeing such a majestic fish was amazing but not rare. Off the beaches of Mexico and the Bahamas, in the clear water, I saw fish of all shapes and sizes, living amongst the colorful coral reefs. It was a beautiful place and I definitely took it for granted it multiple ways. I didn’t know that we lived close to some of the best coral reefs in the world, some of the most sought after beaches. And I didn’t know that, by the end of my lifetime (or much sooner than that), those reefs and many of those fish might be gone.
I cannot believe that I lived in Glasgow for several years without ever visiting The Tenement House.
We decided to make the short (about 50 minutes) train ride over to Glasgow from Edinburgh to tour the house as part of my 30th birthday celebrations (slightly hungover from cocktails the night before!).
Described on The National Trust website as a ‘time capsule of life in early 20th century Glasgow’, this museum exceeding my expectations and made me (an 18th century lover) very, very jealous at how many wonderful, original items you could see there – including a jar of plum jam made in 1929! The house, located in the very cool Garnetthill area of Glasgow (also home to the Glasgow School of Art, numerous excellent coffeeshops, bars and pretty, residential streets). It was once owned by Miss Agnes Toward, who worked as a typist. She lived there from 1911 until 1965, and the house is full of the belongings of her and her mother. Agnes was a bit of a ‘hoarder’ and kept everything, which is to our benefit, since the house really feels like not only a snapshot of a time but also a quirky, personal archive. That makes the site very special. It’s one person’s home, filled with things they loved.
Truth be told, I picked this book because of the title. I found it at a favorite outdoor bookstall that sometimes pops up in a nearby park during the weekends, which always has good finds! The cover wasn’t anything remarkable, but I was (of course) drawn to the title: Women & Ghosts. Because, quite simply, I enjoy stories about women…and ghosts. I hadn’t heard of American author Alison Lurie at the time but several quotes on the back promised that this short story collection was ‘funny’ and full of ‘cerebral irony’. Since, in my opinion, not enough ‘literary fiction’ leans into humor and I love things that are both beautifully written and funny, I picked it up.
The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 killed more people than the First World War – about 3 to 6 % of the entire human race died from the disease.
When Emma Donoghue began writing a novel about this pandemic in 2018, inspired by its 100-year anniversary, she didn’t have any clue that, in just a few years time, a modern pandemic of our own would hit. How could she have known that another disease would similarly cripple the world’s health systems, bring economies to their knees and rapidly change the world? So it really was quite spooky that the year her book – The Pull of the Stars – came out, in 2020, we were in the midst of a health crisis of our own! And while I do think that there are some striking parallels between then and now in the novel, in terms of the uncertainties and fear associated with pandemics, the strongest part of the book is actually not its depiction of flu but of birth and birthing practices. It’s set in an early 20th century maternity ward in Dublin, a dangerous and precarious place where, even at the best of times, life and health are fragile things.
Carly Brown 
