Everything I Didn’t Plan For

I’ve collected a lot this year—books, links, music, clips I return to. Most of what’s stayed came to me by chance, not research: secondhand bookshops, giveaway boxes, discovered corners of the Radio France catalog. None of this was curated. It just stuck in my memory. I’ve linked a few of the better pieces below—films, essays, stray recordings I hope you’ll discover too.

These all stuck with me this year.

Happy to discuss.

TL;DR:

Thoughts of things that stuck with me this year: books, music, movies:
• French jazz & Mingus live in Paris
• Orwell, Galeano, Calvino, Cortázar in thrifted translation
• French TV (TF1, Plus belle, Bureau des Légendes)
• Favorite crime films: Le Samouraï, L’Argent, Les Diaboliques
• Radio France’s modern classical vortex
• French rap via Rockin’ Squat

Another Year Elsewhere

I’ve collected a lot this year—books, links, music, clips I can’t stop watching. Most of what’s stayed with me came through side doors: secondhand bookshops, give-away boxes, weird corners of the Radio France catalog. I’ve linked to a few favorites below—films, essays, whole catalogs I hope you’ll wander through too.

And then there were the storks.

I accidentally swam in the Loire this spring—capsized my kayak while watching them overhead. Truly an amateur error.

Not a rare stork. Just a stubborn one in a scrubby patch of riverbank. I tipped sideways and hit the water in full clothes as my shirt and everything kept me plunged under for an awkward moment. Thanks to the folks I was out with, I was back on top of my kayak in less than 2-3 minutes.

The water was warm, or not as freezing cold as I expected. But I got some great video before.

storks, before my swim

That’s been the year, mostly. Learning to live with what I don’t prepare for. Wanting order but finding clutter, constantly seeing to calm it down, tripping over furniture, or language, or paperwork. Or all of it.

With all of that, I have been reading, writing and listening and this is a big list of things that have stuck in my mind this year, along with links to tons of good resources. Hope you like.

K

Books

A few books stuck with me—though most weren’t planned. I read like I shop here: secondhand, impulsive, mood-driven. Most of my reading this year has been found in charity shops and give away book boxes in London and France.

Been deep into Orwell again. Not the big obvious stuff, but the strange essays—the ones about toads and tea and petty cruelty. Burmese Days and Homage to Catalonia have incredibly relevant commentary for today’s political environment, sadly.

Also re-reading Open Veins of Latin America, which offers incredible perspective from Eduardo Galeano, one of the few authors where I could recommend their entire catalog.

Italo Calvino’s short stories have been a quieter joy and I’ve been re-reading Cortazar’s short stories. The way both of them turns a small moment of nothing into a transcendental myth is clearly influential to my own writing.

These authors create worlds built from digressions, cities shaped by memory, stories that double back on themselves like staircases in a dream.

Weird, funny, awkward.

The strange feels inevitable.

Music

Music-wise, this has been a Mingus year & a big electronic disco year.

But Mingus — big chaotic horns of the live albums especially. Mingus at Carnegie Hall, 1974, has a raw controlled chaos that is peak Mingus for me.

But to connect it to French stuff, the concerts in Paris & Belgium in 1964 are amazing.

Live in Paris Charles Mingus (1966)

Other music in rotation:

Cheat Codes (Danger Mouse + Black Thought— masterful), and dipping back into Rockin’ Squat’s catalog, which I keep meaning to write about. French rap from a guy who’s been intensely influential to the genre in the whole of the francophonie.

…and then there’s the bottomless classical music archives on Radio France — I stumbled on a late‑night block on France Musique’s classical stream that played only atonal and modern piano works for an hour. It sounded like a nervous breakdown in cathedral acoustics, and I loved it. You can explore more of those sprawling broadcasts over at the France Musique classical page.

Movies & video?

I tried watching Plus belle la vie, the thousand-episode French soap that aired forever. I gave up after three episodes. It felt like attending a high school reunion for a school you didn’t go to.

I also watched the first seasons of Le Bureau des Légendes, but I had to stop. Intense, but kind of depressing. But it changed French TV.

If you need somewhere better to start with French cinema:

I’ve been exploring TF1 online, France’s big mainstream TV channel—a free membership and a big selection for free.

I got into a few films this year, half of them just for vintage looks of the cities they took place in.

Like Paris:

• Le Samouraï (1967) — all mood, no waste. Set in a washed-out, ghostlike version of the city, mostly Montparnasse and the métro.
• L’Argent (1983, Bresson) — spare and brutal. Unfolds across everyday streets and shops, with tragedy creeping the casual corners of the city.
• Les Diaboliques (1955, Clouzot) — a masterclass in quiet dread. Set in a provincial boys’ boarding school near Saint-Cloud.

What stuck with you this year—book, song, film, stork-related incident? I’d love to hear it. Drop it in the comments, especially if it’s weird or forgotten or thrifted.

—K

Musical accompaniment

Fallait pas écraser la queue du chat — Clothilde (1967)

This is peak yé‑yé weirdness. They’re not all beautiful retro gems, but also some odd sparse videos with a dubbed over self-duets(?): bright, bouncy, and a little unhinged. Clothilde (Élisabeth Beauvais) had a brief moment in 1967, and this was her defining single. The title—“You shouldn’t have crushed the cat’s tail” is the lyricist’s odd metaphor.

A modest hit in 1967, it aired across France and parts of Europe, and is just a cult yé-yé artifact. Chirpy, cute, & odd - the genre at its most sugar-coated and sharp.