What to Read…

I Deliver Parcels in Beijing by Hu Anyan (2025) Is an incredible read.  This tells us more about work, the “gig” economy, and even running a business in a mall than anything I’ve recently read.  At about age 20, the author starts on his journey of 19 jobs in the next 20  years.  He was a courier, a delivery man on a “tryke” for companies that delivered food, clothes, air conditioners and kettles to nearly a hundred addresses in a day in a city of over 22 million people.  Anyan is a shy person, with social anxiety who doesn’t like talking with strangers and will go out of his way to avoid engaging with customers.  The jobs take up 12 hours a day, six days a week.  From there he worked as a mover, a baker’s apprentice, a security guard and even a writer and an anime artist.  At one point he and an old high school friend opened a lady’s wear store in a six storey mall. There is no talk of social class, or unions or any sort of justice in any of the workplaces.  But what is particularly striking is the fact that these jobs that the author had in China mirror the jobs young Canadians have today.  His lack of power to fight; his exhaustion at long days and the denigration of his creative spirit in the interest of just keeping body and soul together was clear and present.

My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru.  I first read this book when I spent a sabbatical in Bologna in 2012. There was one Feltrinelli bookstore in town that had novels in English, pens with coloured ink and tiny lights to clip onto books; I found the book there.   My Revolutions was written by Hari Kunzru, a prolific British writer and cultural critic. I just re-read the novel.  Mike, in his early 50s, lives a comfortable life with his wife Miranda and her teenage daughter in a well-to-do  town outside of London.  His relationship with Miranda is disintegrating – in part because Mike has buried his true identity for decades.  A radical leftist in the ‘60s, he was involved in protests and “illegal” activities; he served time in jail.  The unravelling of what he did and what wakes him from his dozy life is what the book is all about.  Excellent novel.  

Don’t Stop Talking about Gaza

The critically acclaimed documentary film Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk (2025) you can now watch on Kanopy. A young and spirited Palestinian woman, 25 year old Fatma Hassouna, chronicled events, disasters and people in Gaza since October 2023.  The one thing she asked was not to “go gentle into that good night.”  She wrote on social media 

“If I die, I want a loud death.  I don’t want to be just breaking news, or a number in a group, I want a death that the world will hear, an impact that will remain through time, and a timeless image that cannot be buried by time or place.”

This film is a documentary by Iranian exile Sepideh Farsi about the incredible photojournalism and the terrifying life that Hassouna endured in northern Gaza.  It breaks no secret to say she and six other members of her family were killed by an Israeli missile attack in April 2025.  Twenty-four hours earlier, she learned the film that featured her life and work had been nominated for a prize at Cannes a month later.   She never lived to see the film receive awards and catapult her into her career.  

Britain’s ITV and Zandland Productions collaborated on an excellent hour long documentary Breaking Ranks: Inside the Israeli Army.  It was released in Nov. 2025 and you can watch it on Youtube here.  It opens with IDF soldiers explaining the killing of more than 944 starving civilian Palestinians – 83% women and children – who lined up for food supplied by GHF.  As you recall GHR – the outfit set up by Trump to do an end-run to justify closing down UN food aid.  Watch the whole doc here.

What to Watch…

Cover-Up is a Netflix doc featuring the life, the work and the times of star US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.  Hersh is now 88 and as sharp as ever, tough to work with and not a fun guy.  The film, made by academy-award winning Laura Poitras (CITE) is biting and also discomfiting. Hersh broke story after story – including the My Lai Massacre in 1968, and Watergate in 1974.  As former President Richard Nixon told Henry Kissinger at the time,

“This Seymour Hersh is a son of a bitch, probably a communist agent, but he’s usually right.”

Something Hersh said from a stage in his heyday of investigative reporting in the 1970s was, 

“What we have here in America is not so much censorship as self-censorship by the press.”

And for everyone who has been following Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza (and the West Bank) and who notice the US and Israel’s illegal war on Iran, we know how prescient that statement was.  This is an excellent and unflinching film. Here is the trailer.

Oh one last thing – on Hersh’s Substack the other day, when he returned from London after Cover-Up did not win the BAFTA Film Award for Best Documentary, he lamented,  “I still resent losing while clad in a tuxedo.” 

The End of the Fucking World is a brilliant British series.  Two 17-year-olds, Alyssa a psychopath and James a loner with a traumatic history meet in the high school cafeteria.  They get together – she wants thrills and taunts him; he wants to kill her just to see how it feels.  The theme carries through in two seasons of dark comedy and actual terror.  Well worth watching on Netflix. Here is the trailer.

I watched Alice Darling – it wasn’t bad.  This feature film made in 2022 is about Alice, a woman (Anna Kendrick) in an abusive situation with her boyfriend.  She does not see it as the attacks on her are nuanced, a bit threatening but her boyfriend’s actions are neither violent nor vulgar –as in most dramas of this type.  It was filmed entirely (and recognizably) in Toronto – so I guess it’s labelled Canadian.   It’s on Netflix– here’s the trailer.

Best in Show…

Salvador (2025) is a Spanish series onNetflix. In 8 episodes we see a complex plot that is about the underbelly of Madrid.  A middle-aged doctor is demoted to ambulance driver due to his former alcohol problem.  His daughter, a young woman barely out of high school joins a fascist gang of thugs.  The gang murders her and the police are of little help.  This series is well-acted, has murder and mayhem and at least a spark of political intrigue.  Here’s the trailer.

More to Stream…

The Truth Will Out is a 2018-21 Swedish series – its first season is on Netflix.  Peter is a senior detective who has been off work on stress leave since his brother (also a cop) died in apparent suicide three years previous.  Due to prejudice against cops taking mental health leave, no one on the force really trusts Peter anymore. When he returns to active duty, he is dispatched to investigate cold cases.  He and his assistant Barbro – a middle aged woman clerk with blonde-dyed hair and gaudy nail polish –who turns out to be an excellent detective herself –  are relegated to a cavernous basement with a few dented file cabinets and damaged walls.   In turn, the only other detectives that are drafted  to join his team are a younger woman cop who is an alcoholic and cop in his 20s who is secretly planning to become a real estate agent.   The plot is interesting, but the serious violence is peppered throughout as an afterthought.  Watch on Netflix– the trailer is here.

On Crave, it’s wonderful to watch the Italian series, My Brilliant Friend.  The trailer’s here. Two women have grown up in the slums of Naples.  One, Elena, nick-named Lenu, becomes a translator, a writer and an academic; her best friend Lila becomes an entrepreneur and successful business owner in their old neighbourhood.  The women’s lives are intertwined since age six when they played with their dolls in their poor post-WWII neighbourhood.  The series is based on a quartet of books called the Neopolitan novels by Elena Ferrante.  The novels are wonderful, engaging and full of the anger toward a country that came limping and penniless out of World War II.  This is the story of Italy.  This is a story that was really started in the famous early 20th century novel, The Leopard (which I reviewed here). The Leopard celebrated the uniting of fifedoms to create a modern Italy and the demise of the aristocracy.  I think it is one of my favourite books.  If you are interested in Italy, in childhood, in an enduring friendship – read the four books or tune into.  You won’t be disappointed.   

Enough Said is a 2013 romantic comedy and a piece of fluff.  Not bad, but I tend to steer clear of romantic movies.  Albert, played by James Gandolfino (of The Sopranos) and Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) meet and  start to date.  However Eva, a massage therapist, soon realizes Albert’s ex-wife is a client who has become her friend.  There are harsh words between Albert and Eva, a long stretch of silence and unhappiness–  and then a reconciliation.  Watch it on Netflix;  the trailer is here.   

I just watched A Nice Jewish Boy (2024)on Netflix.  The original French title is Le Derniere des Juifs (Last of the Jews) which I think the moguls at Netflix thought would fan some political flames.  The truth is this feature film is quirky, funny and excellent.  Bellisha, aged 26– and his mother Giselle, both Jewish–  live in a rent-controlled apartment in a Paris suburb.  The area, once home to many Jews, and community resources including a synagogue, a butcher, and various shops have all closed. The Jews have moved out  because French Arabs and Blacks have moved in.  Only Bellisha and his mother remain.   This is well worth watching.  Brilliant, and here is the trailer.

Image at the top: “Handala a Barcelona” by Aniol, July 2025

Graffiti outside a Levantine restaurant in Barcelona; the balloon reads ‘Fuck Abu Mazen’ in Palestinian Arabic.