01 10 Days Offline
Digital detox from xmas to January 4. Turns out you can still consume a lot of content - just not online
Each year around xmas, I embark on my 10-day digital detox. This involves deleting apps from my phone, such as Bluesky and TikTok, not looking on Reddit, and ensuring that any online tasks I need to complete (purchasing movie tickets) are completed before this day.
This year, my focus was on continuing my fiction reading, chatting with friends on the phone or Signal, and a heap of spring cleaning. I also realised I was sleeping a lot - obviously needed.
Here are the things I loved…
BOOKS
Here were my favourite books from 2025. I started reading more fiction in December.
Australian Gospel by Lech Blaine
This is an engrossing true story about a guy from Toowoomba (just outside of Brisbane, Australia) whose biological parents brought up four children from self-proclaimed religious prophets as their own, something their blood parents were never happy with. This guy has had an incredible life. Not just this history of his family and the unconditional love his parents had for him and his siblings, but he was also in a car accident where two friends died, two were in a coma, and he walked away from it (Car Crash - another to read book). I couldn’t put this book down and read it in a few days, and the characters haunted my dreams.
As Paul Gowling says in ArtsHub: this is a
“…collision between two set of parents whose values clash. The Blaines’ love for their children is simple and unconditional; the Shelleys’ love obsessional and all-devouring.”
Walter Marsh from The Guardian did a lovely writeup:
“Blaine’s working-class Queensland family represented everything Michael Shelley hated about Australia. The only problem was his children were Blaines”
A Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
I have realised I love historical fiction, and this is a great example of the genre. Geraldine is an Australian journalist who has covered many war-related crises and has written nonfiction previously. When she was in England, she saw a small sign, “Plague Town”, which led to Eyam, a village self-isolated from the black plague. She couldn’t get this idea of an isolated town out of her head for years. When she realised there wasn’t enough historical evidence to tell the tale of the village, she created a story from one truth: the priest and his housemaid both did not succumb to the plague, while most others did. From this, she wrote her first novel, which tells a wonderful story of isolation, superstition vs. religion, loss and learning, disease and renewal. I started and finished this book on xmas day.
On her website, it states:
Year of Wonders is an international bestseller, translated into more than 25 languages and currently optioned for a limited series by Olivia Coleman’s production company.
Exciting!!
Create Dangerously by Albert Camus
Consisting of three speeches on art, friendship, and physical vs intellectual labour. These essays question the roles that artists and intellectuals played in people’s recovery from the threat of fascism.
Create Dangerously (1957): We need creativity to be aware of its own potential. True art sees into the future as well as gives as much “truth” to the physical and emotional reality of life as it can.
Defense of Intelligence (1945): He asks the students to
“not to give in to guile, to violence, to inertia”
whenever intelligence becomes unwelcome and disrespected by governments - that’s when it must be protected, precisely due to the danger in people thinking for themselves.
Bread and Freedom (1953): Human freedom and justice are both needed. There is only a distinction for the privileged few.
“If freedom is regressing today throughout such a large part of the world, this is probably because the devices for enslavement have never been so cynically chosen or so effective.”
MUSIC
During my digital detox, I was using my iPad to listen to music already downloaded from Bandcamp and iTunes.
I was mostly listening to my albums of the year, especially INJI, who I saw on Saturday night. I also listened to Sean Michaels’ Said the Gramophone Best Songs of 2025 (downloaded when released at the beginning of December). I have playlists on Bandcamp and iTunes for artists and would listen to them on shuffle while cleaning.
Saw INJI live at The Brightside in Brisbane, which seems to be the place to host electro-pop (female) artists. I saw Ninajirachi there in 2024 for her Dark Crystal 3.0 rave show (my first rave!), which was sold out this year, but I’m going to her sold-out show at the Princess Theatre in July. Also saw Blusher, another Australian act, in December. All great and such a good crowd and vibes at these shows.
Here’s one of INJI’s songs, U WON’T live:
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MOVIES
Most years on Boxing Day, I go to the independent cinemas for a day at the cinema. This year I watched three (two is probably a better maximum) at Palace Cinemas, James Street, Brisbane.
Rental Family (Japanese)
110 minutes
Lovely film starring Brendan Fraser. This movie is a great visual of the act of playing pretend and why people do it. It has a lot to say regarding human connection and loneliness. In the film, they say the Japanese do not talk about mental health issues, so it’s easier to pretend and “save face” (more of a Chinese phrase). Thus, this movie showed how Brendan and other characters ended up being hired to play roles for people they don’t know: a partner, parent, journalist, mourner at a funeral, and, most of all, someone to take the blame.
My Brother’s Band (French) aka En Fanfare or The Marching Band
103 minutes
(SPOILER ALERT)
Another lovely film about an orchestral conductor who has leukaemia and finds out he’s adopted when his (non-blood) sister is not a suitable donor for a bone marrow transplant. He has a (blood) brother who also loves music and plays in a community brass band for the mining company that most of the small town he lives in works for (that’s being closed down). It’s a wonderful expression of self-loss, lost potential, and the contrast between success and true family love and acceptance. There’s a beautiful finale where the brother and his band end up playing alongside the conductor at a prestigious performance. It was so heartwarming and beautiful that someone in the audience got up and clapped as though we, too, were at the live performance! I love cinema interactions!
The History of Sound (American)
128 minutes
Two wonderful actors, Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor, star in this beautiful movie adapted from a short story. The actors meet at a music school and bond over their love of folk songs from rural areas. They become lovers, but WWI leads to Josh’s character being conscripted, and Paul’s character going home to his family’s farm in rural Kentucky. They reunite on a journey through Maine, using wax cylinders to record rural folk music from whoever will allow them. Paul’s character explaining how sound works to a group of children is gorgeous.
Thus begins the first of many times I will mention that MOST films do not need to be more than 90-100 minutes. A hill I will die on.
The History of Sound was a great film, but not as good as the other two. All three films had a few moments (mostly at the end) that I didn’t think contributed to the overall story and could have been edited out. For example, Paul’s character could have been given the box when he first went to the house, not years later. More emotional climax than story progression?
TV SERIES
Amadeus
Sky TV & 🏴☠
5 episodes
Such a fun series with sharp and witty writing. The show is based on the play of the same name, which (like historical fiction) takes an element of truth (Mozart and the court’s composer, Salieri) and creates another potential truth around it (that Salieri was trying to take Mozart down due to jealousy)
I love Will Sharpe, and it makes me interested in Mozart.
Heated Rivalry
Crave & HBO & 🏴☠
6 episodes
It’s always great to watch and communicate about gay joy. No gays were killed off, and sex was explored in an open and consensual way. I was obsessed with episode five - I thought it was such a great depiction of how to show up and lead by example (especially men in sports). The last two episodes felt rushed. Good to chat to friends (both gay and straights) about this show.
This from David Rooney at The Hollywood Reporter:
“The sexual candor, hot bodies and steamy action are the main attraction. Duh. But what sneaks up on you is the sweetness with which Heated Rivalry captures a transitional time in gay men’s lives, a time that can be terrifying or freeing, isolating or joyfully communal — or sometimes all those things at once.”
I also watched Murdaugh: Death in the Family, The Rainmaker (both American), and Trespasses (Irish)
I’m grateful for 10 days offline, in-depth chats with old and new friends, spa days, Palm Beach and DOLPINS with my sister and family.