Over on Instagram I have a little old account that haphazardly tracks some of the books I read. It’s called booksinourhands and it’s a love letter to the joy of holding books, smelling them, feeling their pages, and spending time curled up in armchairs, away from screens. The thing I love most about it is when people occasionally use the booksinourhands hashtag to share what they are reading with me. If you’re over on Instagram, please feel free to use it and tag me (or comment below).

I’ve stumbled across many a monthly reading post on Substack, which motivated me to trial extending the #booksinourhands vibe over here.

Let’s get started. Here are the books I read in February.

#booksinourhands: February

1. Swimming with Seals by Victoria Whitworth | I enjoyed this quiet book. This book is about the sea and cold water swimming, but also about history, folklore and story. Whitworth dots her narration with extracts from her real-time social media posts describing her ocean swims which added extra texture to this story. I loved the nature, the chill of the ocean, the wildness of Orkney, the repetition of place, the soft grey faces of the seals (selkies?) and their personalities. At times I felt the narration lingered too long in historical tales that, while interesting, I felt could have been edited back a little. Still, a beautiful and contemplative book.

   A few watery stories to read about here.

2. Juice by Tim Winton | I’ve taken a long time to write this post, just skimming in on the last day of March, largely beecause of this book. I was hoping that during the weeks following finishing Juice, I would come to a greater understanding or have better ability to put into words what this book is. In an interview (I’ve forgotten which one!), Tim Winton talks about sitting in a cinema after the end of an incredible film in a kind of stunned state, and that is still where I’m at with Juice - sitting in Juice’s empty cinema stunned and for a little while there, I felt a bit listless.

   The book is set in north western Australia, in a distant future where humans must bury themselves away underground during the harsh summers, and survive as best they can within or without communities during their months above ground. Our unnamed narrator is travelling with a child, and while investigating a potential safe place they are captured by a man with a crossbow. Throughout the book, the narrator tells the story of his life to this man, in an attempt to connect on a human level, to connect to his buried humanness. Whether he achieves that is up to us in the end.

   We learn that this is a world where a number of climate and societal collapses have occurred. As a young man the narrator is recruited to secret organisation The Service, the aim of which is to elimate the descendants of those who were responsible for the various climate atrocities that in turn created the world as they know it. The books spans the narrator’s life, and throughout it we learn a lot about the world and just how closely it could align to our own very real potential future on this planet.

   Juice was a lot. But weeks later, I no longer feel the listlessness I felt upon finishing the book. That listlessness has transformed into a confirmation of my value system, of my beliefs, and of the changes I believe we need to see in the world (metaphorically speaking of course, not in anyway, shape or form am I endorsing the fictional violence in the book). In that way, this book was affirming.

   I highly recommend this interview with Tim Winton and Ebony Bennett to get a comprehensive grasp on this most excellent speculative work after my cryptic half-thoughts on it above.

   
   I’m sure you’ll also love this and this.

3. Gliff by Ali Smith | I was a little bamboozled by this book. There are beautiful descriptions of horses, in which you can literally feel the hard, flat furred nose of a horse under your palm. The characters are strange and intriguing. But for the most part, through the quirks and the horses and the canned food and the abandoned school and the dead end roads, I’ll admit, I had no idea what was going on. For me this book was like reading through a fog; I just couldn’t grasp it. The reviews are brilliant and I sense Ali Smith to be an incredibly popular author, so, I’ll say the fault lies with me and leave it there.

What did you read during February?

I’d love to hear about it, either here or on the gram.

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