A Genteel Black Hole

Ally's bookish (and other assorted) rambles

  • Bookish Ramble: Watership Down

    Ally

    Title: Watership Down
    Author: Richard Adams
    Year: 1972
    Country: UK

    Format: Paperback
    Pages: 472
    Read: 19 – 31 January 2026
    First reading

    Fiver, the runt of his litter, has visions. When an ominous man-made object appears in a nearby field, Fiver foresees the destruction of his warren—but the Chief Rabbit refuses to evacuate. Led by Fiver’s brother Hazel, a handful of plucky rabbits flee the warren and set out to make a new home on Watership Down. Along the way they cross hazardous streams, roads, predators, snares, and—worst of all—a ruthless, despotic rabbit called General Woundwort. It will take all of Hazel’s cunning, Fiver’s foresight and Bigwig’s courage to survive.

    Watership Down is notorious for its power to traumatise young readers. This is a story about rabbits, but it’s a world away from the cute and cosy tales of Peter Rabbit. It’s part epic quest, part war story… it just happens to star rabbits. Richard Adams keeps the tension consistently high. During the whole thing I felt almost as highly-strung as those nervous bunnies! But the really upsetting, gruesome moments are carefully spaced out. One rabbit’s encounter with a snare is the only bit that truly shocked me—I read those paragraphs through tears. I can easily see how it would be Too Much for a preteen reader.

    The story has a mythological quality, not least because the rabbits have their own folklore and language. Their name for the Sun, their God, is ‘Frith’. (As a fan of the experimental musician Fred Frith, this particularly tickled me!) The rabbits also boost their morale by sharing stories of El-arairah, a legendary trickster rabbit. These touches, along with the use of Lapine language, make the book rather immersive. It’s set on downland not far from my house, but it felt like another world entirely. By the end, those strange Lapine words had become second nature to me, so that I didn’t need any translation for Bigwig’s war cry: “Silflay hraka, u embleer rah!”

    There’s a lot to love about Watership Down. It’s a thrilling story, engagingly told, with memorable characters and strong commentary about mankind’s relationship with the natural world. The structure is very satisfying: Each obstacle teaches the rabbits a valuable lesson (wood floats in water, rope can be chewed through, etc) which helps them defeat the next. My only real complaint is that it’s maybe a little too long. I enjoyed it and admired it, but by the end I was ready for it to be over. I’d still definitely recommend it though… as long as you’re not too squeamish!

  • Bookish Ramble: Excellent Women

    Ally

    Title: Excellent Women
    Author: Barbara Pym
    Year: 1952
    Country: UK

    Format: E-book
    Pages: 304
    Read: 20 – 30 January 2026
    First reading

    Mildred Lathbury is one of life’s “excellent women”, those ladies who devote their lives to Good Works and consequently get taken for granted. They make life run smoothly for the men around them, but never set anyone’s pulse racing. But Mildred’s humdrum life is suddenly complicated by the arrival of her new downstairs neighbours; anthropologist Helena Napier and her charming husband Rocky. The couple’s marriage is on the brink of collapse, and Helena pines instead for her anthropology colleague Everard Bone. Mildred finds herself drawn to the dazzlingly handsome Rocky, but remains wary of his (probably empty) charm—not to mention the impossibility of an affair with a married man.

    I loved Barbara Pym’s debut novel, Some Tame Gazelle, so much that I picked up her second book almost immediately. The two books share much in common; they’re both bittersweet comedies of manners about spinsters who seem more comfortable at a safe distance from romance. One character from the first book even makes a cameo in this one! It definitely scratched my itch for more Pym, but I can’t help feeling I should’ve waited longer to read it. You can have too much of a good thing, and I think I read too much Pym in quick succession. As a result I didn’t enjoy this book nearly as much as it probably deserved. I still want to read more Pym, but first I’ll give myself a chance to start missing her.

  • Project Glowing Rectangle: Almost Famous

    Ally

    Day 33 of Project Glowing Rectangle, in which I try to divert some of my daily doomscrolling time back towards a more nourishing oblong: Cinema.

    Title: Almost Famous (The ‘Untitled’ Cut)
    Director: Cameron Crowe
    Writer: Cameron Crowe
    Year: 2000
    Country: USA

    Format: 4K Blu-ray
    Length: 161 minutes
    Seen: 3 February 2026
    Rewatch

    Almost Famous (2000) follows fifteen-year-old William Miller (Patrick Fugit), an aspiring rock journalist who goes on tour with the fictional band Stillwater. William befriends band members, roadies, and fans alike—including the famed “band aide” Penny Lane (Kate Hudson)—and witnesses firsthand their decadent rock and roll lifestyle. Meanwhile William’s strait-laced mother (Frances McDormand) grows increasingly concerned as she waits for him to come home.

    This film is a heartfelt tribute to the music of Cameron Crowe’s youth, inspired by his own experiences as a teenage rock journalist. It’s a film powered by nostalgia; and it was a huge favourite of my teenage self, meaning I now have my own nostalgia for it. I first saw it when I was around William’s age, and probably just as wide-eyed as he was. Rewatching it today was a potent emotional experience. My favourite scenes still hit deep: ‘Tiny Dancer’ had me in floods of tears just like it did 25 years ago. And I love the scenes with Philip Seymour Hoffman as William’s mentor, Lester Bangs.

    “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we’re uncool.”

    Is it a perfect film? Probably not. Did I love every second? Absolutely!

    (Fun fact: I once watched Almost Famous as an in-flight movie. Considering the climactic electrical storm scene, this was probably not a great idea…)

  • Project Glowing Rectangle: The Life of Oharu

    Ally

    Day 32 of Project Glowing Rectangle, in which I try to divert some of my daily doomscrolling time back towards a more nourishing oblong: Cinema.

    Title: The Life of Oharu
    Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
    Writer: Kenji Mizoguchi, Yoshikata Yoda
    (based on stories by Saikaku Ihara)
    Year: 1952
    Country: Japan

    Format: Blu-ray
    Length: 136 minutes
    Seen: 29 January 2026
    First viewing

    It’s been a disruptive few weeks, but things have finally settled down enough for me to watch a film: The Life of Oharu (1952), a period drama directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. Kinuyo Tanaka stars as the eponymous Oharu, whose life is one of ever-increasing misery. We are introduced to her as a fiftysomething prostitute, walking the streets and struggling to find a client. She takes shelter in a Buddhist temple where the statues’ faces remind her of figures from her past. What follows is the heartrending story of how she fell from a life of nobility to one of such hardship.

    First an affair with a lowly retainer (Toshiro Mifune) ends with her lover executed and her family banished. Then her father sells her, first to a Lord as a mistress to bear him a child, and later to a pleasure district as a courtesan. From there things only get worse for Oharu, almost always due to circumstances beyond her control. But the film does end with the faintest glimmer of hope… at least if you subscribe to Buddhist philosophy.

    You’re bought and paid for. You’re no different from a fish on a chopping board. We can serve you up any way we like.

    This was my second Mizoguchi film: Ugetsu (also starring Tanaka) was a highlight of last year. Both films are beautifully directed, very gripping, and intensely emotional. But while Ugetsu is a spine-tingling, supernatural tale, The Life of Oharu is horribly realistic. Oharu’s suffering comes not from personal hubris or ghostly tricks, but from the cruel treatment of other people—mainly men. Throughout the whole film I found myself bristling at the sheer injustice of it all.

    Kinuyo Tanaka is brilliant in the title role. I’ve seen her in several films recently, each one displaying a different facet of her talent. (She was also one of Japan’s first female directors, so I’m excited to explore that side of her work too.) As far as Mizoguchi goes I definitely preferred Ugetsu, but I can’t deny this film’s power—it left my heart feeling, like a fish on a chopping board, rather battered!

  • Bookish Ramble: Moominvalley in November

    Ally

    Title: Moominvalley in November
    (Moomins #9)
    Author: Tove Jansson
    (Translated by Kingsley Hart)
    Year: 1970
    Country: Finland

    Format: E-book
    Pages: 160
    Read: 11 – 19 January 2026
    First reading

    Moominvalley in November is the final book in Tove Jansson’s Moomins series. The Moomin family themselves don’t actually appear, having moved suddenly in the previous book to a remote lighthouse. Instead this book follows a disparate group of visitors who are disappointed to find the Moomin family home abandoned. The visitors (including Moomintroll’s mercurial bestie Snufkin) stay for a while, hoping for the family to return, while gradually learning how to be comfortable with each other… and with themselves.

    Snufkin padded along calmly, the forest closed round him and it began to rain. The rain fell on his green hat and on his raincoat, which was also green, it pittered and pattered everywhere and the forest wrapped him in a gentle and exquisite loneliness.

    The Moomins books always did have a streak of melancholy, but in this one it’s more pronounced than ever; most likely influenced by Tove Jansson’s grief at the loss of her mother. The Moomin family’s absence is keenly felt, especially by the young orphan Toft, a storyteller who yearns to be adopted by Moominmamma. Then there’s Grampa-Grumble, who has decided to make the most of his dementia by deliberately forgetting his family; and Fillyjonk, who struggles with anxiety after a near-death experience.

    These are troubled characters—and they don’t always understand, or openly express, their troubles. The whole book (apart from its quietly hopeful ending) is shrouded in sadness, loneliness, and unspoken loss. I can’t guess how younger readers would react to such a book, but my melancholic inner child (and my equally melancholic adult self) found it a moving and absorbing read. I love that Tove Jansson never patronises her readers. She trusts them to understand what remains unspoken.

    I’m sad to have reached the end of the Moomins series, but it certainly ended on a high note—albeit in a minor key. I still plan to circle back and read the very first book, so my personal journey through Moominvalley isn’t quite finished. (And the comic book series is starting to look mighty tempting too!) Ever since I read Comet in Moominland back in April of ’25, I’ve fallen completely in love with the Moomins. I fully expect to reread the whole series in the coming years.

  • Bookish Ramble: Rocannon’s World

    Ally

    Title: Rocannon’s World
    (Hainish #1)
    Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
    Year: 1966
    Country: USA

    Format: Paperback
    Pages: 112
    Read: 11 – 18 January 2026
    Reread

    Rocannon’s World is Ursula K. Le Guin’s debut novel and the first in her loosely-connected Hainish series. It follows Gaveral Rocannon, an ethnographer for the League of All Worlds. When anti-League rebels attack and destroy his ship, Rocannon is stranded on the alien planet of Fomalhaut II. The planet is home to multiple intelligent (but technologically primitive) species, each with their own unique social structures and customs. Rocannon, aided by a diverse group of Fomalhaut natives, goes on a dangerous quest to contact the League and end the rebellion.

    Rocannon’s World is ostensibly a sci-fi novel, but the whole thing is steeped in fantasy. Rocannon comes from a hi-tech world of interstellar travel, ansible communication, and weapons of mass destruction; but he’s stuck on a planet of feudal lords and heroic quests. I’m not opposed to such a blend of genres, but I don’t think Le Guin quite pulls it off here. The book establishes many of her enduring themes, but with little of her best work’s profundity or poetic brilliance. It didn’t take her too long to hone her skills, but Rocannon’s World is very much A First Attempt. As an established fan, I enjoyed it the same way I enjoy listening to early demos by my favourite bands: It’s interesting in context, but I wouldn’t recommend it for first-time readers of Le Guin.

    My favourite part of the book is the prologue, which was first published as a separate short story. In fact the story, Semley’s Necklace, was included in Le Guin’s anthology The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, which I read just a few months ago. It was fascinating to read the story both as its own thing and the introduction to a longer work. That gave me some insight into Le Guin’s creative process—glimpsing the seeds from which she grew an entire universe.

    I read Rocannon’s World as part of a group reading project led by my BookTube friend Gareth (Books Songs and Other Magic). We’ll be reading all of Le Guin’s Hainish books during the year, discussing them in the group chat as we go. It’s been a great experience so far—my fellow readers have shared some valuable insights into the book and Le Guin’s career as a whole. Gareth also plans to host live-chat videos about each book, so be sure to tune your ansible devices accordingly!

  • Telly Ramble: Enterprise

    Ally

    Title: Star Trek: Enterprise
    Year: 2001-05
    Country: USA

    Format: Blu-ray
    Seasons: 4
    Episodes: 98
    Seen: 9 August 2025 – 16 January 2026
    First viewing (mostly)

    Captain’s Blog: Back in August of ’25, a few weeks before I started Project Glowing Rectangle, I also started a months-long telly-watching project. On days when I don’t have the time, energy or inclination to watch a film but I still need something to lure me away from doomscrolling, my main Thing To Watch has been Star Trek: Enterprise. It has seen me through some rough times and big changes these past five months. And yesterday I watched the final three episodes.

    I had seen a handful of Enterprise eps when they originally aired—T’Pol made a big impression on my adolescent self! But this was my first time watching the entire series. Overall I enjoyed it… but it did play everything very safe. Maybe this is inevitable for a prequel series; it had to slot into the existing Star Trek continuity, so it could never take big swings. The riskiest aspect of the whole show was the theme tune, a godawful country power ballad that I ended up skipping for most of the run.

    The cast is decent but mostly pretty bland. Being something of an outsider myself—let me count the ways!—naturally I’m most drawn to Star Trek’s outsider characters. I was spoilt for choice with Deep Space Nine, but there’s slim pickings on Enterprise. Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula), a dog dad and water polo fan, is easily the least interesting of all the pre-streaming Star Trek captains. The standouts for me are the two alien crew members, science officer T’Pol (Jolene Blalock) and Dr Phlox (John Billingsley), but even they don’t get to shine as often as I would like. I also enjoyed the recurring character Commander Shran (Jeffrey Combs), an Andorian who keeps trading favours with Archer. Jeffrey Combs’ many, many guest appearances were a highlight of DS9, so I was happy to see him again here.

    Enterprise has none of the truly atrocious episodes that make me yell at the telly, ‘WTF was that?!’ (I’m looking at you, Sub Rosa…) Equally there are none of the stunning, profoundly moving stories that make me rejoice to be a fan of Star Trek. There’s nothing here that approaches the level of Darmok, The Inner Light, The Visitor, or Far Beyond the Stars. But maybe it’s unfair to ask lightning to strike twice. Or even once!

    The high point for me was season 2, episode 2: Carbon Creek, in which a Vulcan crew—including T’Pol’s great-grandmother (also played by Jolene Blalock)—is stranded on 1950s Earth. It’s quite telling that the best episode was one that didn’t involve the regular crew at all, aside from the framing device of T’Pol relating the story over dinner. But if you watch only one episode of Enterprise, make it this one.

    I also enjoyed the third season, a completely serialised story about the Xindi plot to destroy Earth. This was something unique for pre-streaming Trek, and I think they pulled it off. After that, the final season reverted to more episodic storytelling; not in itself a bad thing, but a lot of these two- or three-part stories felt like desperate fan service. There’s a two-parter devoted to explaining why Original Series Klingons had smooth foreheads. Give me a break!

    The final episode, These Are the Voyages…, is notoriously detested by fans. The whole thing is a holodeck simulation run by Riker, taking place in the middle of a Next Generation episode. As a finale to Enterprise, it doesn’t really work. As a celebration of Star Trek in general, it… doesn’t really work either. I didn’t hate it like the fandom seems to, but I agree the preceding two-parter is a more fitting and emotionally resonant finale to Enterprise.

    So yeah… all in all, a pretty middling iteration of Star Trek. Not much I hated, but not much I really loved. It felt like a show that could never fully decide what it wanted to be. But it was nice to see some new-to-me Trek with a substantial number of episodes per season. Enterprise has been a good companion to me these past five months, for which I’m grateful.

    Up next, a rewatch of The Original Series.

  • Bookish Ramble: At Swim-Two-Birds

    Ally

    Title: At Swim-Two-Birds
    Author: Flann O’Brien
    Year: 1939
    Country: Ireland

    Format: Paperback
    Pages: 228
    Read: 4 – 13 January 2026
    First reading

    At Swim-Two-Birds, the debut novel by Flann O’Brien, is actually three books within a book within a book. (Eat your heart out, Charlie Kaufman!) At the outermost layer it follows the beer-soaked, puke-stained exploits of its nameless narrator, an indolent student. The Student lives in Dublin with his uncle, whom he despises.

    Description of my uncle: Red faced, bead eyed, ball bellied. Fleshy about the shoulders with long swinging arms giving ape-like effect to gait. Large moustache. Holder of Guinness clerkship the third class.

    The Student spends most of his time either drinking and bantering with friends, or lazing in his bedroom. But he’s also working on a book; a surreal work of modernist metafiction in which an author, Dermot Trellis, loses control of his characters. Trellis’s characters, plundered from disparate sources—Irish folklore, Western novels, Dublin pubs—spring to life spontaneously in his reality as he writes them. These characters start to disobey Trellis, living their own lives whenever he’s asleep. Eventually they conspire to rewrite Trellis’s manuscript, torturing him with his own creation.

    I found this an extremely challenging read. Last year I enjoyed Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, itself a bizarre and disorienting book, but At Swim-Two-Birds is even weirder. Luckily I buddy-read it with my friend Mark, who was able to explain some of the more “aggressively Irish” aspects. I found the sections about the folk hero Finn MacCool especially hard-going, full of aggravating repetition and droning lists of made-up birds. Maybe it’s funnier if you were brought up with those folk tales, but for me it was a slog!

    However I did appreciate the book for its surrealism, its bawdy humour, and the sheer inventiveness of the metafictional story. In places it struck me as an unlikely hybrid of Duck Amuck and James Joyce. (Or at least my impression of James Joyce, who I must admit I’ve yet to read. Dubliners is going straight on my wishlist after this.)

    At Swim-Two-Birds is an enigmatic book; the meaning of the story doesn’t make itself immediately apparent. The different layers of fictional reality start to influence each other, gradually revealing some truths about the Student’s life… if you read between the lines. This is where buddy-reading really came into its own. Discussing the book with Mark helped us both get a handle on it, and our chats were sometimes more fun than the actual book—certainly the Finn MacCool bits!

    In fact, we plan to have a video chat about our ‘Flannuary’ experience later this month on Mark’s YouTube channel. We hope to see you there, perhaps with pint in hand. A pint of plain is your only man!

  • Bookish Ramble: Some Tame Gazelle

    Ally

    Title: Some Tame Gazelle
    Author: Barbara Pym
    Year: 1950
    Country: UK

    Format: E-book
    Pages: 252
    Read: 30 December 2025 – 9 January 2026
    First reading

    “Some tame gazelle, or some gentle dove:
    Something to love, oh, something to love!”
    ~ Thomas Haynes Bayly

    Some Tame Gazelle is a comedy about two fiftysomething spinsters, the not-especially-venerable Bede sisters, Belinda and Harriet. For the last thirty years Belinda, the older and dowdier of the two, has been carrying a torch for Henry Hoccleve, the village’s married Archdeacon. Meanwhile Harriet, the more glamorous and outspoken sister, repeatedly rejects the advances of the melancholy Italian Count Riccardo Bianco, preferring instead to dote on a series of young curates. But when new guests come to stay with the Archdeacon, will they upset Belinda and Harriet’s comfortable life together?

    We really ought to love one another, she thought warmly, it was a pity it was often so difficult.

    This was my first time reading Barbara Pym and it certainly won’t be my last! Some Tame Gazelle is so good, I find it hard to believe it was her debut novel. I’m a big fan of bittersweet comedies and funny dramas, so it really hit the spot for me. Pym’s wry observations of village life made me chuckle and smile with recognition. (I grew up in a small Oxfordshire village myself, so it feels very much like my childhood home, albeit a few decades before my time.) There are several running gags that get funnier each time—especially “the Apes of Brazil.” But Pym balances this humour beautifully with pathos. My heart ached for poor Belinda, with her constant self-doubt and her comfortably hopeless crush on Henry.

    Belinda gave a contented sigh. It had been such a lovely evening. Just one evening like that every thirty years or so. It might not seem much to other people, but it was really all one needed to be happy.

    Nothing much actually happens plot-wise. Like a sitcom, the status quo is temporarily upended, then restored. The Bede sisters reject some unexpected suitors, then continue to focus their affections on people who either can’t or won’t love them back. The characters don’t grow or change; they confirm exactly who they always were. In the end, Some Tame Gazelle is a story about how having “something to love, oh, something to love!” is so much easier and more comfortable than allowing yourself to be loved.

  • Project Glowing Rectangle: The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice

    Ally

    Day 31 of Project Glowing Rectangle, in which I try to divert some of my daily doomscrolling time back towards a more nourishing oblong: Cinema.

    Title: The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice
    Director: Yasujiro Ozu
    Writer: Kogo Noda, Yasujiro Ozu
    Year: 1952
    Country: Japan

    Format: Blu-ray
    Length: 115 minutes
    Seen: 7 January 2026
    First viewing

    Today’s film was The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice (1952)—yep, it’s another Ozu family drama! He was my most-watched director of 2025, and I fully expect him to be somewhere near the top of the list this year too. I just can’t get enough of this stuff.

    Shin Saburi and Michiyo Kogure star as Taeko and Mokichi, a middle-aged couple in a loveless marriage. Mokichi resents her husband’s apparent simplicity, referring to him among friends as Mr Bonehead. She assumes that he doesn’t call out her frequent lies because he’s too stupid to even notice. Their relationship is on the brink of dissolution, but will they confront and reconcile their differences? Meanwhile their niece Setsuko (Keiko Tsushima) tries to avoid an arranged marriage, not wanting to follow the example of her unhappy aunt and uncle.

    This film has a reputation as A Lesser Ozu, but I bloody loved it all the same! The scene where the couple reconcile over a late night meal of green tea over rice, Mokichi suddenly coming to appreciate Taeko’s simple, unpretentious ways, brought a happy tear to my eye. It’s a bittersweet, heartwarming story told in Ozu’s typically quiet, subtle, complex way. Just what I needed today.

    (Also, I had a good chuckle when the characters visited a restaurant called Calorie Hut!)