Reading things

I have a goodreads account, where I blab on about books. And I will add a button linking that account to this blog as soon as I can be bothered figuring out how to do that.

In the meantime, here’s a link to my latest review, of Rosemary Mahoney’s aesthetically excellent yet ethically troubling account of Ireland in the ’90s, Whoredom in Kimmage. I enjoyed it, then felt guilty for enjoying it, just like with cheap meat or free porn. Hey, maybe her publishers could put that on the cover of her next book: “Mahoney’s writing has been described as “meat porn” by a strange woman on the internet.”

Meat porn. You just know that exists somewhere.

I’m back in Montréal now, where my cat is giving me the silent treatment, it is minus 10 outside, and my ex-partner and I are trying to figure out how to move out of our apartment. I feel relieved to be out of 2016, the year in which worst case scenarios continually transformed themselves into gut-wrenching realities, leaving me uncharacteristically worried about every phone call from a loved one, every tardy friend, every morning’s perusal of the papers.

On the journey home, there were problems with my visa at Heathrow, but they got resolved just in time. My flight was almost diverted to Boston, but was granted access to a snowy Montreal runway just as we circled south-east. I’m reading these averted mini-disasters with hope. No more prohibitory symbols at least – just obstacles to jump, bruising landings, and picking yourself the fuck up and getting on with it.