October Roundup

Ten things I’ve been reading, watching and listening to this month — put together in this list, just for you on a lazy Sunday with a whole extra hour’s sleep to enjoy.

With love, Rosie xxx

Books

1. Tell Me Everything — Elizabeth Strout

I wrote about my love of this book in last week’s Substack so I’ll give you a shortened version here. This book is set around three of Elizabeth Strout’s favourite returning characters: Olive Kitteridge, Lucy Barton and Bob Burgess. Reading this novel (and anything by Elizabeth Strout) makes me feel as though I am being sat down and read to by a kindly and wise woman who has seen just about everything, and knows just about everything there is to know about life, heartache and regret. This book is no exception. Sadness creeps up on you, but then always, always hope: in humanity, and in people’s extraordinary capacity for survival. These novels are profound and ordinary all at once, and I never finish a book by Elizabeth Strout without feeling better about the world.

2. Parable of the Sower — Octavia E. Butler

This book is a re-read, and a bold one to have chosen in 2024. Parable of the Sower was written in the 1990s and set in a fictional California 2024: one beset by climate collapse, chronic water shortages, and a society that has descended into anarchy. An authoritarian president, whose campaign promise is centred around ‘making America Great again’ will, in the second of Butler’s Earthseed novels, take office. To say the novel is close to the bone is an understatement, but it is genuinely brilliant. Butler is fundamentally quite pessimistic about society’s tendency to organise itself into hierarchies and its desire for security (or its illusion) at any cost, but she is, I think, optimistic about humans as individuals. Her novels are filled with heroines who take risks, step out of the crowd, and make difficult and brave decisions for the sake of their survival and others. Personally, I feel in need of such heroes, and this novel — like many of Butler’s novels — provides just that.

3. Abolition Geography — Ruth Wilson Gilmore

This book is my current read, a collection of over three decades of works by prison abolitionist an academic Ruth Wilson Gilmore. Gilmore’s argument is that prisons are capitalism’s answer to the ‘problem’ of people and environments considered surplus to requirement. Gilmore is a geographer by discipline, and geography is her framework for explaining how, where and why prisons function the way they function, who profits and who suffers. I really like this about her work because to me, geography feels more concrete and tangible than say, economics or ethics (which are of course still relevant), and this book goes a long way to demystifying a lot of the arguments around incarceration. I haven’t yet got to the part where she offers an alternate way of doing things, but I’m excited about it.

4. At The Existentialist Café — Sarah Bakewell

I’ve had this book on my reading list for a really long time and it’s only this month I’ve got round to reading it. This brilliantly readable book is the story of twentieth century existential philosophy, told through the lives of its foremost proponents. Set before and during the Second World War, this is the story of an extraordinarily influential philosophy that was formed in response and resistance to, and sometimes collusion with the rise of fascism in Europe. The interlocking lives of Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, their peers and their ideas are brought vividly to life. A fantastic book that made complex ideas feel accessible, and which transported me to the smoky cafes and bars of 1930s Paris.

5. The Start of Something — Holly Williams

This novel is a story of modern romance, told through ten interlocking stories that are brilliantly intertwined: each story is a collision between two lovers told from one side only, and in the story the follows we hear from the other perspective, and the story of a new romance and a new collision. This novel as brilliantly plotted and excellently well written, for anybody who is dating (or maybe despairing about the state of modern romance) this is an excellent book to make you feel seen, but to also make you feel comforted by the generally good intentions of humans who are mostly just seeking connection and love, even if they are a little lost. I inhaled this book.

6. Monsters — Claire Dederer

Another rather heavy book, I’m afraid, which I have been revisiting, in part in light of the stories emerging these last months about P Diddy/ Sean Combs and in part because it’s relevant to what I’m writing about at the moment. That old question — what do we do with the art of people who do terrible things? — is here interrogated and recast beyond those tired old back-and-forth arguments about whether it’s possible to separate the art and the artist. Dederer digs into the questions of what it means to consume art, what it means to be a consumer generally, what it means to designate the ‘other’ as a monster, what it means to look at what is monstrous within ourselves. It’s an excellent piece of cultural criticism and one I’m sure I will continue to return to.

Listening

7. “Octavia Butler: Visionary Fiction” from Throughline

I love this podcast, which traces contemporary media stories back to their historical roots. Because The particular episode I’m recommending is Throughline’s history of Octavia E Butler, who I am currently reading and thinking plenty about. Butler is an inspiration for any writer, who lauded persistence and consistency far above talent (she is, of course, undeniably extremely talented), and whose self-belief and dedication led her to create visionary stories, worlds and characters through her fiction.

8. “Influencers” from You’re Wrong About

Sarah Marshall is a journalist who, every week, reconsiders a person or event that's been miscast in the public imagination. The episode I listened to is with author Taylor Lorenz and is a fascinating dive into the history of influencer culture, which is essentially a history of the first twenty years of the internet. I loved this episode because it was fascinating to think about the economics of influencer culture, and it was both nostalgic and somewhat terrifying to consider that there was in fact a time before selfies existed.

Watching

9. The Outrun — based on the book by Amy Liptrot

I went to see this film in the cinema and, if you can catch it while it’s still running, I really highly recommend that you go. This is that rare adaptation that transforms and amplifies the themes of its source material — this film, the story of a young woman whose struggles with alcoholism cause her to leave London and return to her native Orkney, is visually absolutely stunning, and its soundtrack is magnificent. The film transposes the book’s themes of isolation, stillness and self-acceptance into an extraordinary spectacle that had me entirely absorbed and genuinely truly moved. A beautiful, beautiful film.

10. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Reading back this list I’m wondering whether I might be just a little bit under it this month because everything on this list is definitely quite heavy. So, here’s a little levity (though I did cry at the end of this film) — I’m watching back all of the Harry Potter films on Netflix and it is truly joyous. Disappearing into a world of magic, simplistic morality and magnificent Scottish castles for a few hours of an evening is a truly spectacular escape, particularly as the nights draw in, Halloween approaches and the clocks go back. Really cannot recommend highly enough.