Reading // December’21 -January’22
A quick roundup of some of the things I enjoyed reading, watching and listening to in December ‘21 and January 2022
Fiction
Published posthumously, Silverview by John Le Carre has some flashes of the brilliance for which he is famous. Even on a bad day, he’s a better writer than most.
Announced as the next Denis Villeneuve project after Dune, Arthur C Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama came highly recommended by a friend. You quickly appreciate what has drawn the director to this story - it offers a world rich in scale, colour and texture - the hallmarks of his visual style.
Non-Fiction
Tom Shone’s Nolan Variations was an interesting portrait of filmmaker Christopher Nolan. Anyone familiar with film theory and criticism will recognise almost immediately that the author builds his narrative in such a way as to position Nolan within the ‘great pantheon’ of directors we commonly call ‘auteurs’.
Linked to the above, I revisited Andrew Sarris’ seminal Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962. This article was one of the first that I read when studying film at University.
Ahead of the RA’s exhibition launching, I enjoyed Jonathan Littell’s essays on artist Francis Bacon. Triptych: Three Studies After Francis Bacon contains three interesting pieces, all of which encouraged me to see Bacon’s paintings in a slightly different way. I’m looking forward to the exhibition a lot.
Charlie Porter’s What Artists Wear is a lovely, informative and interesting take on what the clothes artist’s choose to wear tells us about them, their work and their worldview. The chapters on Basquiat, Hockney and Hepworth were especially notable.
Non-Fiction (work related)
I spent a lot of time with stuff by Jeremy Bullmore, following conversations at work but also a blog post on why he’s pretty much the oracle on all things advertising and communications…. More Bull More contains all the greats and I’ve grazed on this for much of the month. Posh Spice and Persil is a joy.
I didn’t really reference Stephen King a huge amount in the blog post I wrote on Bullmore. I went back to his Timeless Works and within this, the essay Has Marketing Failed or was It Never Really Tried? For my money, these two were light years ahead of everyone else. The essay referenced above is as relevant today as it was when first published - it’s legitimately brilliant and one of the pieces I think about most.
Nick Kendall’s compendium of IPA Excellence Diploma essays also came down off the shelf for a blog post too. Special mentions for Sarah Morning’s Hey, Whats the Long Idea?, Simon Robertson’s I believe that brands should embrace the dark side, Matthew Phillip’s piece on shifting from Vanity to Value and John Willshire’s Communis Manifesto (which sparked a thought that is currently being worked up for a post coming soon)
Films
Tried and failed to get through Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog. Did enjoy revisiting The Imitation Game
Because I have a 4 1/2 year old. Encanto. We very much do talk about Bruno (no, no, no) in this household.
Music
The Black Dog’s Ambient Selection playlist of Spotify is basically the soundtrack to everything I do at the moment. Next year’s Wrapped could be interesting.
