Mitski - The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We

I've been listening to this short record on and off for the better part of 9 months and basically it's good, sinuous and sulkily melodic, but for whatever reason (timing, probably) it just hasn't grabbed me like her previous ones did.

Frances Hardinge - A Face Like Glass

Creativity to burn and layered in a way that transcends the all-too-obvious central metaphor. I would read more by Hardinge and am impressed by how much is crammed into this single, stand alone novel.

Rebecca Solnit - The Faraway Nearby

The Faraway Nearby is certainly about things, but just what those things are isn't so easily said. 

The stories we tell ourselves and which shape our lives, most obviously - a trite subject nowadays but explored by Solnit with great deftness and grace, in cascading sections that offer their insights in part through the paths they follow to reach their conclusions.

Solnit's difficult relationship with her mother, and with herself, and how this is brought into a different light by her mother's old age and mental deterioration.

The nature of the self, and its relationship to story and physical world. 

Illness.

Iceland.

It's a marvellous, beautiful book.

Dune: Part One & Part Two

One thing you can say for both these films, and maybe especially the second one - they have a vibe. They work as spectacle, which is to say that the visuals are spectacular and coherent with the tone and substance of the film as a whole (emotionally, narratively, thematically), so these movies unquestionably work on that level. Despite that though, and for all of the hefty thematic throughlines - colonialism and empire, religion and cultism, white saviourism, and their intersections - I can't shake a faint feeling of dissatisfaction. I'm not sure whether that's because these films partially (and deliberately) deny us the pleasures of conventional closure, there's a thinness in their story and characterisation, or both.

(Part One previously)

Waxahatchee - Tigers Blood

There are some nice songs that stand out on Tigers Blood - "3 Sisters", "Evil Spawn", "Right Back To It", "Crowbar", "365" - and there are some nice-sounding songs that don't. The sound is nice - cleanly metropolitan Americana. But, like Saint Cloud (which it seems everyone also loved) albeit stronger, I'm finding it overall a bit nondescript, 'country' music for people who maybe are more wired for pop-rock and what used to be called alternative ... but with enough of a quality to it that maybe it'll grow on me.