@cosmias

saw japanese breakfast in london last night (for the 3rd time!) after work yesterday. i didn't want to go at first but tom did, and he had a ticketmaster voucher that needed spending, so that was the end of that! i don't actually really like the new album, but it was lovely hearing a few of my all-time favourites live (namely, "road head," "the body is a blade," and "posing in bondage"). "honey water" also sounded amazing but i am still not sold on the album overall.

in other news, we are currently watching lovejoy, a BBC series that ran from the late 80s to the early 90s staring ian "i don't even like antiques" mcshane as a charmingly rakish antique dealer. i read about it in camilla grudova's newsletter on substack and thought it would fill the void left in me since finishing the beiderbecke affair. lovejoy isn't as well-written as beiderbecke but it's suitably delightful and also makes me want to "live in Suffolk in the 90s and go to pubs which serve trout and sherry."

i went from not touching my sewing machine in over a month to suddenly signing myself up for 5 new projects, 3 of which have time-sensitive deadlines. today, i will try to finish the skirt i intend to wear to my friend's bachelorette party. i have already cut out the pieces and the instructions seem easy enough but we shall see.

yesterday tom and i went brewery hopping (that is, we went to 2 indie breweries in town). tried in vain yet again to get into beer — the most tolerable of beers still tastes like bitter pomelo mixed with something slightly savoury that i can't quite put my finger on (maybe, like, shaoxing wine or olive brine or both). had a really nice time though. came home and fell asleep at 10:30pm! we're truly old now.

finished Leaving the Atocha Station last night. really enjoyed it. i'd already ordered up 10:04 and The Topeka School before i was even at the halfway mark. those will be arriving next week.

in the meantime, i have picked up Giovanni's Room from the library. i found a James Baldwin book (Another Country) at a charity shop the other week but when i tried to read it, my attention kept drifting elsewhere. it's fine, though, because i think i would prefer Giovanni's Room to be my first Baldwin.

yesterday, molly woke us up at 5 in the morning. after a failed attempt to fall back asleep we went out for a walk in the nature reserve by our house and finally saw the cetti's warbler after weeks of only being able to hear its [taunting] call. in the evening before going to bed we went out again on the same walk but it got dark very quickly so we didn't see much apart from rabbits, a few blackbirds, and a song thrush.

there's supposed to be a thunderstorm tonight — our first one of the year i believe. can't wait for it to wash away the sticky heat and pollen

recent reads:

• “In Gaza Nothing's Impossible” by Selma Dabbagh
• the plot summary for The Shards on wikipedia so as to liberate myself from the chore of finishing the book. BEE is terrible, idk what i was expecting.

going to have a go at digitizing some of the vintage ladies magazines and sewing patterns gifted to me by my MIL this weekend!

finally tidied up my code after putting it off for weeks! i was fighting for my LIFE in that stylesheet omg...

have been thinking about Male Authors™ quite a bit lately, so was pretty excited to stumble across this essay in The Point about “the white male middlebrow canon.”

speaking of white, male, and middlebrow, i have now started reading The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis, which is actually far trashier than i had originally anticipated. i also find the frequent reeling off of LA street names & neighborhoods to be almost unbearable.

finally finished Beware of Pity. i have mixed feelings about it — it's melodramatic and overwrought (in good ways and bad) and i found Zweig's overuse of storm metaphors and pathetic fallacy to be grating after a while.

also read a few essays this week, but nothing particularly inspiring.

took a break from Beware of Pity on the train home from Bath* yesterday to read Michael Hofmann's ruthless takedown of Zweig in the LRB. Beware of Pity is my first Zweig, and i'm kind of ambivalent about his writing, so i mostly just found Hofmann's irreverence & violent hatred towards the guy to be amusing (“Stefan Zweig just tastes fake. He’s the Pepsi of Austrian writing” and also: “When Zweig moved to England in 1934 [...], it was taken semi-jocularly in many literary quarters to be a major item in that ongoing ‘punishment of England’ [...] that had been on the German agenda since 1914” ouch!!!).

*it was also through Hofmann that i learned Zweig briefly relocated from London to Bath in 1939. turns out we were quite near his house that day we got lost trying to find Prior Park.