Hokusai (Sarah E Thompson; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

I've seen a lot of the pieces in the book before, and many are still vivid in my memory from the NGV exhibition a few years back - there's a magic to Hokusai's work, through whatever combination of intrinsic qualities, art history-contextualised resonance and personal associations.

James McMurtry - The Horses and the Hounds

Real heartland rock. Guitar crunch, story-telling, a nice sense of humility.

Bullet Train

Flashy and fun. Brad Pitt anchors it. Underachieves slightly maybe, but not offensively.

American Hustle

Didn't land with the same impact as the first time round. But still, good.

Jessica Au - Cold Enough for Snow

This is a marvellous short novel, as controlled as its narrator, composed through careful use of language and precise observations; similes proliferate, sometimes multiple times in a sentence, while metaphors are all but non-existent; details are described in a way that's straightforward and cumulative.

In its combination of an intensely observant interiority with a psychology that is largely cloaked - including, perhaps, from itself - it reminds me of Rachel Cusk's Outline books (which I continue to love like few others, if love is the right word), but it has its own compelling specificity, some of which is particularly recognisable to me in terms of Asian-Australian experience. 

There's a sense of depths cautiously stepped around, in the narrator's interactions with her mother during their Japan trip, and in the way she navigates her own memories and past experiences. Like in many novels I admire, meaning is right there on the surface - in Cold Enough for Snow, especially in the recollections, stories and dreams that take up roughly equal space as the contemporaneous trip - and at the same time elusive and never over-determined.

The Weather Station - How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars

Kind of lovely, but too quietly tasteful for me. The only reason I kept trying with it was how brilliant Ignorance was.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

So involving and richly imagined and realised.

(first time, a lot of years ago)

Julia Jacklin - Pre Pleasure

Neither fish nor fowl (rock/pop, electro/organic, melody/dynamics) and doesn't quite come together for mine though there's plenty of craft and personality evident. Maybe it's just that I liked the vibe of previous album Crushing more, most closely replicated here on the guitar-y, new wave revival-ish "I Was Neon".

Margo Cilker - Pohorylle

It was released this year, the production is warmly contemporary, she says "fuck" a bit - but the link back to older style country and roots is real. Not an outstanding record, but strong.

Muna - Muna

I don't think it's jaded of me to say that I've pretty much heard this all before; also relevant is that this isn't music primarily for me. Which isn't to say I don't like it - I do, it just has a familiar sound. "Silk Chiffon" especially flirts with the minor transcendence that this kind of electronically touched pop can attain.