Author: Kate Gardner

I live in Bristol and I like to read books and share what I thought about them here. I read mostly general or literary fiction, with pretty much every genre making an appearance from time to time. I love to receive comments, whether you've read the same books or not!

It’s hard to resign ourselves to making money out of those we love

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To Leave With the ReindeerTo Leave With the Reindeer
by Olivia Rosenthal
translated from French by Sophie Lewis

I quite like books that are strange and hard to categorise, but I found this a little too weird, or at least too minimal in actual story. It’s certainly ambitious and I’m sure will have its fans.

A second-person narrative describes a woman from early childhood, trying to break free from her mother’s stronghold. One winter she fantasises that after Christmas she will leave with the reindeer, to wherever it is that they go after they have assisted Santa with his work. She desperately wants a pet, a wish that is never fulfilled. When she grows older this becomes a desire to work with animals. Her romantic relationships flounder until she figures out how to complete her separation from her mother.

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K-drama review: Itaewon Class

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Itaewon Class poster
In Itaewon Class Park Saeroyi is a warmhearted man filled with revenge. He’s complicated.

This was a good series, leaning into some K-drama cliches while thoroughly confronting others. I chose it after only getting halfway through another K-drama (Record of Youth) before I had to give up on it for being homophobic (I also wasn’t especially gripped, possibly because I find its star Park Bo-gum wooden in everything). In response to that, I looked up a list of K-dramas with good LGBTQ representation.

Itaewon Class (2020 Showbox/JTBC/Netflix) takes a couple of episodes to get going, because it is heavily loaded with backstory. We meet Park Saeroyi (played by Park Seo-joon) on his first day at a new high school, where he stands up to the school bully only to find himself expelled for the trouble. The bully turns out to be Jang Geun-won (Ahn Bo-hyun), the oldest son of millionaire CEO Jang Dae-hee (Yoo Jae-myung) of Jangga Group, Korea’s largest food corporation. By coincidence Saeroyi’s father works for Jangga Group and his job is now under threat.

The Jang family’s abuse of power does not end there. Saeroyi’s father is killed in a hit and run in which a Jang is implicated, but the police turn a blind eye. When Saeroyi realises who is to blame he takes justice into his own hands, and winds up with a prison sentence for assault.

So when we next meet him he is a high-school dropout with a prison record and a need for revenge. He visits his old friend and first love Oh Soo-ah (Kwon Na-Ra) in her new home in the Seoul district of Itaewon, which he is instantly attracted to. It’s depicted as youthful, international, LGBTQ-friendly and buzzing with a party atmosphere. But before he can build a life here, he has a 10-year plan to earn enough money to implement his father’s dream of opening a pub.

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Best of 2020, books edition

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Kate and BeckettI read 63 books last year, which is a better total than I feared it would be. Some of them were amazing books, some stretched my perspective, some purely entertained. Like many people, I am ashamed to say, 2020 was the first year when I put real effort into my anti-racism education, and I am now determined that will continue in my reading and in the rest of my life.

Of those 63 books, 40 were written by women and 12 were works in translation. A small change this year is that 17 of those books were non-fiction and only three were SF. But the real point of this post is my favourite reads of 2020, so here we go.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Loving Sabotage by Amelie Nothomb

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

We That Are Young by Preti Taneja

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge

Circe by Madeline Miller

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Giant Days Vol 13 by John Allison

The Smallest Lights in the Universe: a Memoir by Sara Seager

Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas by Maya Angelou

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December 2020 reading round-up

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December reads

It’s been a cold, wet, grey end to a difficult year. Which means we’ve spent most of the last week curled up indoors with blankets and hot drinks. I think even Beckett is feeling the cold, despite her double fur coat, as she’s been cosying up to us more than she had for a couple of months. It’s either the cold, or she’s just grateful to have more of our attention while we’re not working for a week and a half. Next week could be stressful for her.

This month I finished seven books, which is pretty high for 2020, though it should be said that includes two books I started last month and one that I started in October. I blame Christmas and my dead/dying laptop for my not having written a book review despite having had a week of holiday.

I think I badly needed to unwind this past week. And the quantity of TV that I’ve watched suggests I’ve not done too badly at that. I have watched and thoroughly enjoyed both seasons of Home For Christmas, a Norwegian romcom about a nurse who lies to her family on 1 December that she has a boyfriend who she will be bringing to her parents’ on Christmas Eve, and then spends the next three weeks trying to find a suitable man. It’s not cheesy or simplistic, the characters are all interesting and varied, but it’s still fun and very Christmassy.

I also watched the first season of Dash & Lily, another show set in the run-up to Christmas, this time set in New York and based on the books by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. As there are multiple books I’m guessing they hope to do another season, but they probably couldn’t shoot it this year so the teen characters might look rather older when next we see them! This one was also enjoyable but quite cheesy and fluffy, and I am starting to get a little annoyed by the trope of the bubbly, happy-go-lucky girl being paired with a sulky, constantly negative boy.

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Merry Christmas

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Beckett enjoys the wrapping paper

My annual Christmas post is very belated this year, because my laptop died last week. While trying to connect to a Zoom call, so that was helpfully dramatic. So I will give you my usual Christmas greeting – merry Christmas! – alongside a quick summary of my holiday so far.

Tim and I have bubbled with a close friend, so we spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day as the three of us, plus Beckett. The dog was thoroughly spoiled – including a couple of hours of tearing apart all our wrapping paper – and we all ate too much. It was glorious. Which at least partly makes up for the hideous weather we’ve had the rest of the holiday season.

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November 2020 reading round-up

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Beckett in frost
Beckett enjoyed her first frosty morning.

November was a tough month. I didn’t think I would mind a second lockdown but it’s actually been hard, particularly in combination with the short days and bad weather. At least Beckett doesn’t seem to mind the cold.

On the plus side, I have continued to find excellent films to watch on streaming. Highlights include Animals, Sorry to Bother You and Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse (which we’d seen and loved at the cinema; still love it second time around).

TV-wise, I watched the BBC drama of Normal People immediately after reading the book, and it was excellent. I’ve also been thoroughly enjoying season two of His Dark Materials. And because I have spent a lot of evenings too tired/in a funk to concentrate on something new, I have also been rewatching Gilmore Girls for the thousandth time. It’s really comforting.

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I have to make do with a hollow heart full of holes

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The Memory PoliceThe Memory Police
by Yoko Ogawa
translated from Japanese by Stephen Snyder

This was chosen by my work book club and I would have loved to join that discussion, but sadly I was in a reading slump and didn’t finish the book in time. It’s a high-concept dystopia but it’s still very readable.

On the island, things disappear. En masse. And their disappearance is policed. Residents wake up knowing that something has to go that day – hats or bells or stamps, for instance. They destroy the items under the watchful eye of the Memory Police and their memory of the thing quickly fades, so that if the word is spoken it no longer has any meaning.

So far so strange, eerie even, but the scary part is that some people remember – and the Memory Police are hunting them down, taking them away.

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October 2020 reading round-up

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Reading Lowborn at lunchtimeI don’t know if it’s the onset of winter weather or the prospect of a second lockdown, but I am struggling a little again with reading. I am finding it a little easier to read and reflect on non-fiction at the moment but I have only written one book review all month and even the synopses below took me a few days to put together.

Most of our film-watching this month has been of the super cheesy variety (though I will admit I had forgotten the high calibre of cameos in Blues Brothers) so I will instead recommend two TV shows that I have very much enjoyed, both on BBC iplayer: I May Destroy You – a powerful piece about friendship and sexual assault – and Ghosts, which is silly and funny and I am grateful to the multiple friends who recommended it.

Walking Beckett has been really lovely as autumn deepens into winter. She’s the best.

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K-drama review: Two Cops

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In Two Cops, Jo Jung-suk (left), Lee Hye-ri and Kim Seon-ho form a love triangle with a difference.

The last few K-dramas I watched didn’t really hold my attention, but this one was a big success. Two Cops (MBC 2017–2018) is a crime-solving, body-swapping (sort of) action romantic comedy drama with supernatural elements thrown in for good measure.

Cha Dong-tak (Jo Jong-suk, probably my favourite Korean actor, who I loved in Don’t Dare to Dream and Oh My Ghost) is a Seoul detective in the violent crimes unit. He’s a little rough around the edges, a skilled martial artist and hyper-focused on solving the murder of his former partner, despite attempts from his superiors to get him to concentrate on current cases instead.

One suspect in this case is Gong Su-chang (Kim Seon-ho), a smooth-talking small-time crook. When circumstances conspire to land Su-chang in a coma, his spirit is left roaming the world and has the ability to possess Detective Cha’s body. But a medium tells him he has to find a way to resolve his unfinished business within 49 days or he will die. He has to find a way to work with the detective despite their very different personalities and careers.

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