10-1: 40 things* I’ve loved in 40 years
*not people! Read 20-11 and 30-21 and 40-31.
We’ve made it. I’ve been up until 1am for the past 3 nights because of this and I’m a little bit delirious, so let’s assume that things are about to get emotional…
Update: It’s taken me 3 days to write this because it’s December and I’m so. tired.
10. Harry Potter
It’s super annoying when something you’ve loved is tarnished by its creator being a dickhead. HP would probably be higher up this list if JK weren’t so creepily obsessed with trans women, she’s made me feel weird about the whole franchise, but this series was extremely important to me for at least a decade. I read The Philosopher’s Stone when I was 12 and became convinced my Hogwarts letter had just been a little delayed. My focus on the Harry Potter universe was so intense that it led me to my first online fandom experience: Mugglenet. It was an amazing fansite, an early example of digitally-driven content and community. It really peaked just before the release of The Deathly Hallows when they recorded a weekly podcast (Mugglecast) during which the hosts discussed various fan theories about the final book. We (the fandom) read way too much into every minute detail to the point that the finale ended up feeling like a bit of an anti-climax.
I was working at Whitcoulls on Queen Street when The Deathly Hallows came out. I remember there were queues out the door and down the street. I dressed up as a Gryffindor student (who was I kidding, I’m 100% a Hufflepuff), and carried a wand around all day. I took my precious copy of the book home that night and read it all in one go. Finished at 5am. In fact, I’ve only read DH twice in total and both times have been the same — I found it impossible to put down so I just kept reading till dawn.
My favourite book in the series is The Prisoner of Azkaban. I just love it when authors play with time. The films are not as good, but I still loved them. I had a short but very intense crush on the actor who plays Oliver Wood in The Philosopher’s Stone. Sean Biggerstaff (lol). Dumbledore’s intense delivery of the question, “DID YOU PUT YOUR NAME IN THE GOBLET OF FIRE?” In the fourth film is a little in-joke in my marriage.
The audiobooks narrated by Stephen Fry are also amazing and special to me because my husband and I used to listen to them on road trips. One summer day in 2017 we were lying on a picnic blanket in the Redwood forest at the base of Te Mata Peak listening to a chapter when he pulled out his grandmother’s ring and proposed. What a pair of geeks. The cutest.
9. Question 7
Recency bias strikes again. I only read this book a few months ago but it was everything to me. I wrote about it here, saying, “I don’t think I’ve ever been so moved by a book in my life.” So many pieces of this book struck me as profound that I keep finding photos of pages in my camera roll. Here’s one such passage:
What if vengeance and atonement both are simply the lie that time can be reversed and thereby some equality, some equilibrium restored, some justice had? Is it simply truer to say Hiroshima happened, Hiroshima is still happening, Hiroshima will always happen?
Richard Flanagan, what a mind.
I’ve recommended this book to a handful of people in the past few months. I saw my Dad today and he gave me back my copy and said he thought it was too cerebral for him, and he didn’t understand how all the pieces fit together. Fair.
So allow me to explain my perspective: It’s a chain reaction of narrative that created the chain reaction of the atomic bomb that blew up Hiroshima, causing 250,000 people to die but sparing the author’s father’s life, thereby creating the conditions for Richard Flanagan’s own birth. A chain reaction of life and love causing a chain reaction of death causing another chain reaction of life and love.
8. Schitt’s Creek
My love for Schitt’s Creek during Covid is what inspired me to start writing again after a looooooooong hiatus during which I went all in on pretending to be a marketer. Ugh. I’m not actually into marketing at all, I just like to tell stories to clearly defined groups of people.
Schitt’s Creek is a work of subtle subversive genius. The revolutionary intent is so gently delivered that you don’t even notice it. The conceit is that nothing truly bad ever happens to any of the characters. No one is hurt or mocked or bullied. No one is injured. No one is alone. And yet Dan Levy still manages to build tension, bring hilarity, and keep the story unfolding for 6 glorious seasons.
This series is a slow burn. Seasons 1 and 2 are mostly carried by Catherine O’Hara’s genius and Eugene Levy’s eyebrows. It wasn’t until the final episode of Season 2 that it hit me that I was parasocially attached to The Roses.
The arrival of Patrick was when I actually fell in love with Schitt’s Creek — the town and everyone in it. Seasons 3 & 4 are my favourites. Grad night. Open mic. The olive branch. Singles week. I have re-watched those episodes over and over and over. Schitt’s Creek is my safest place. I didn’t realise Simply the Best by Tina Turner was the most beautiful song ever written until this show revealed it to me.
The documentary about the making of the final season also killed me dead. The covid Emmys night with Dan Levy and the cast in a tent in Toronto getting their flowers was the best thing about 2020. I hope he gets another moment like that soon, Dan Levy deserves the world. I have high hopes for Big Mistakes.
7. His Dark Materials
The Subtle Knife. What a title. What a book. What a trilogy. I’m so very philosophically aligned with Phillip Pullman’s world. I love how it’s grounded in science but still deeply spiritual. I love how it frames religion as a place of refuge for those who are afraid to face the moral ambiguity and lack of certainty that defines existence. It feels brave now, let alone in 1997 when it was first published. The story is about children and it pulls no punches. It’s incredibly brutal. But despite the fact he puts his pre-teen heroine through untold trauma, the thing I love the most about Pullman’s writing is his compassion.
I have this sense that he’s a humanist to the core — that he fundamentally believes in our goodness. His faith in humanity seeps into every word. Aside from that, he’s simply a masterful storyteller: the clarity of his world-building, the perfect character development, the way the world expands but the perfectly timed unfolding of each narrative strand keeps you right there in the pocket. All of this is important and deserves an essay of its own, but the thing about His Dark Materials that’s left an indelible impression across the decades since I first read it is the quality of the emotion conveyed. Pullman makes a blossoming romance between two pre-teens from different worlds feel like the most important and believable thing. He makes everything believable, no matter how far-fetched: traumatised polar bears, wronged witches, pious murderers. I’m re-reading his follow up series at the moment, The Book of Dust, and I’m repeatedly struck by the easy flow and confidence of his prose. I envy it.
The TV series with James McAvoy so nearly lived up to the books. The first season was brilliant, and then they fatally rushed it.
6. Formula 1 / McLaren
Here’s another one I’ve already written about, and the only sports entry in the top 40. I had others on my longlist: the Black Caps 2001 1-day tour of Australia (Shane Bond 4eva), the All Blacks, every single Olympics I’ve ever witnessed. But my love for sports has always been fleeting, all wrapped up by the end of the tournament. I’ve loved Formula 1 for 5 years now and that has required a colossal commitment of time and attention. If you read my Lando post you’ll know that’s because I bought into the stories behind the sport.
I’d also put it down to an exceptional social media strategy. Say what you will of Liberty Media, but they’ve really clocked the social game. If I was a young person without commitments or dependents, I would do almost anything to work on socials for one of the F1 teams.
Next year is going to be SO EXCITING, because new regulations means brand new cars and a blank slate. We won’t know who’s got it right until pre-season testing in February. Will Adrian Newey cement his GOATness by building the fastest car for Aston Martin? Will Hamilton return to form with Ferrari and get that 8th title? Will Cadillac limp out of the blocks or come out firing on all cylinders? Will Daddy Vowles prove his worth by taking Williams back to the top of the grid? I honestly cannot wait. The only consolation is that for us, all that lies between now and the season start is our summer holiday. Who’s laughing now, British fans?
One more thing I need to say about Formula 1 which will probably get a post of its own one day: it led me to Matt and Tommy. My favourite podcast. Matt was the one who influenced me to watch K-pop Demon Hunters, so you know, everything is connected. They are hilarious. I love it when fans become creators and then end up building a fan base of their own. That’s when you know you’re working with a catalytic cultural engine (the topic of my thesis).
5. The Chronicles of Narnia
Everyone knows The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, but do you know there are 6 other books? I used to re-read the entire Chronicles every year. I have a set of paperbacks that belonged to one of my beloved aunties, so dog-eared and ratty now that I have to keep them on a high shelf so my kids won’t destroy them. My favourite story changes upon each re-reading. I’d say right now it’s The Horse and his Boy, which is really just an interlude that happens in the middle of the LWW while the 4 Pevensies are High Kings and Queens at Cair Paravel. My enduring favourite has probably always been the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, though, because I love a quest. Edmund, Lucy and Eustace Scrubb enter Narnia through a painting, and sail from island to island searching for end of the world. They encounter all sorts of strange creatures and have wild and sometimes scary adventures. It’s funny and sad, exciting and remarkably moving.
The Chronicles of Narnia were some of the earliest books I remember reading on my own. They introduced me to the escapism and mystery of stories. The framing of Narnia as a world that brushes close to ours made me feel like magic was only just out of reach, and I feel like I’ve been looking for evidence of its existence in this world ever since. Obviously as an adult I can see that it’s religious allegory. I can see that C.S. Lewis’ philosophies on humanity have not all aged well. And yet, the magic remains. I kind of hope my kids find these books one day and love them as much as I did.
4. U2
So this band is interchangeable in my brain with my Dad. Loving U2 is almost unconscious for me because I grew up with their music blasting on every road trip. When a U2 song comes on I know it instinctively. I didn’t actually engage with them as a listener and fan until I was about 20. That was then they started releasing their best-of anthologies. It was around that time they released How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb which is probably their last good album, from my perspective. In 2006, they brought the Vertigo Tour down under and I got tickets. My Dad had loved them for two decades but never seen them live.
On the day of the concert, he and I lined up to get a spot in the front. He must have been 50? We sat on the hard concrete ground with other fans in the hot sun for hours. We made it to the front section. We were like, 4 metres from Bono. That was my first arena concert. The first time I’ve experienced true collective anticipation in a crowd. The noise when the band took the stage was so intense it was like touching an electric fence — a jolt to the heart. Bono’s a showman to end all showmen. He does this bit in their concerts when he thanks the crowd and says, “you’ve given us a beautiful life,” and he looks around at the audience and you have this sense that he can see you. Like he’s looking at thousands of people and fully comprehending that each of them contain a universe.
U2 Go Home - live at Slane Castle, is one of my favourite concert films. It was 2 days after Bono’s father had passed away and it feels like the crowd is literally holding him up at points. When he sings Wake up Dead Man? Chills.
My favourite U2 songs are probably Bad and Red Hill Mining Town, but with this band it really goes beyond any sense of objectivity. It feels like these songs are in me. Under my skin. Inescapable.
3. The Lord of the Rings
I first read the Lord of the Rings when I was 12. What an over-acheiver. It cannot be overstated how much the world affected me. I read all the prequels and sequels: the Silmarillion, the Unfinished Tales. I knew all the lore. I was one step away from learning Elvish. I think it’s the depth of the world building that got me. The way he invented literally centuries of history. It makes it feel so real. It’s such a classic underdog tale, the littlest person being the only one with the strength and moral character to save the world. It’s a quest — I mean the whole story is basically about an epic multi-day hike to hell and back. It’s a love story — Aragorn and Arwen are more important than Romeo and Juliet, for me.
Naturally, being from New Zealand, the creation of the movies was my whole personality for quite a long time. I moved to Australia the year the first film came out which felt so incredibly wrong to me. I was so close to the films during their development— all over the sightings of cast and crew on the streets of Wellington. It made me feel more attached to it all, a sense of ownership that I think many New Zealanders felt. I think I loved The Fellowship of the Ring so much because it was a kind of love letter to my homeland. I went to see it 12 times at the cinema which in hindsight is insane commitment from a 16 year old. I obviously had all the extended editions on DVD, 12 hours worth of content on repeat. I was given the official Location Guidebook for Christmas that year but I still somehow haven’t been to Hobbiton, 25 years later? What an outrage.
LOTR provided me with another online community to engage with: theonering.net. A huge forum of fan-generated content. My first real brush with fan fiction (as a reader, not a writer). The LOTR fandom is extremely creative and geeky.
My wedding outfit was 100% my creative response to all those years of investment in Middle Earth, although I didn’t realise it at the time. I’ve often reflected that it was quite out of character of me to go so maximal. I’m a minimalist dresser, generally, but not on my wedding day. I was dripping in beads and jewels. I had a coronet of gold leaves. I was trying to be an elf queen.
I was in love with Orlando Bloom and Viggo Mortenson for quite a long time. I watched their follow up efforts like Black Hawk Down (Orlando dies in the opening scene), and Hidalgo (brilliant horsiness). The thing I loved the most about the cast was the genuine friendships they forged whilst filming, and their love for New Zealand. I watched so much behind the scenes footage and it all looked so fun that I dreamed of being part of it, somehow. I was never a theatre kid but I wished I was a child actor just so I could have been involved.
I’m getting reflective from the lack of sleep, but maybe all this is about is feeling part of something. Maybe I’ve spent forty years searching for and finding fellowship. In art and in life. Again and again and again. Never enough.
2. BTS
I become a BTS fan only 3-4 months ago and it seems insane to put them at #2 on my top 40, but this fall has been deep. I mean the reason I didn’t finish this blog in one night was because I looked at YouTube and accidentally fell down another BTS reactionverse rabbit hole for 2 hours. There is no end to the content, and there is no end to my appetite for it. My Spotify wrapped tells me I’m in the top 0.6% of global BTS listeners. I don’t do things by halves. More than 3000 minutes, and that’s not counting the amount of time I’ve spent on watching videos.
I am super into the music and the performance and the conviction and genuineness of BTS, but once again it is the friendship of the members that’s really hooked me. Why am I so fascinated by the fact that 7 people who were thrown together as teens actually genuinely seem to get along and want to spend time together? Why does their happiness make me so happy? Extreme parasocial vibes.
When I was 10 my friends and family used to give me Backstreet Boys memorabilia, and a few days ago one of my friends gave me a BTS cushion for my 40th. I was deeply amused but also genuinely stoked. It might be my current favourite object. I stumbled to bed at 2am that night (after falling down that BTS content rabbit hole), and saw the cushion on my bed in the dark and it just made me giggle with glee. Nothing has changed. I’m still 10 years old.
I’m so amped for the BTS comeback in 2026. It’ll be interesting to discover the lengths I’ll go to to see them live.
1. Taylor Swift
It couldn’t be anyone else, could it? I mean I’m mad at her now, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s been the soundtrack to my adult life. Last Saturday night, the night before my birthday, I had too many gins and the kids were mean to me at bedtime. I had a tiny tantrum, went to bed and watched the first two episodes of the Eras Tour documentary on my phone in the dark and cried. I thought, “this is a very me thing to do on my 40th birthday.”
The first episode is super emotional because it’s about her Vienna concerts being cancelled due to a terror threat, and the young girls who were murdered in the UK while at a Taylor Swift dance class. Obviously it’s not hard to make me cry, but with Taylor it’s like she has a direct line to my tear ducts. I think she’s some kind of empathy projectionist, the way she can transmit emotion to others.
Her description of why she created the Eras Tour also kind of feels like the reason I’ve been up 5 nights in a row making this ridiculous listicle.
“When you re-visit something you go back into that world. All this music is so indicative of the time I was in in my life. I feel like reading my old diaries thinking about all the different girls I was until I was this one.”
When she’s on point, Taylor has a way of capturing the essence of a feeling that’s universal, as all the best writers do. She’s done that so many times for me. I’m mad at the Life of a Showgirl because of its lack of awareness and sincerity, but that can’t take away from the two decades she’s spent as the narrator important moments in my life.
I will never ever ever forget the feeling of being at the MCG with 96,000 people when Eras kicked off. No words can do justice to the collective joy.
It’s well past time to wrap this up. So here are my final thoughts.
These 40 things are 40 narrative frames I’ve used to tell my story as it’s unfolded. When I look back at them all I don’t just hear the music or see the images in my head, I see the people who shared these things with me. My sister and I at that Live concert on our 18th birthday. My husband squeezing my hand in the crowd when The National started singing I Need My Girl. My dad’s face when he saw U2 in real life for the first time. My mum and I singing the Encanto sound track in the car. My kids watching K-pop Demon Hunters with me again. My nieces agreeing to be dragged to the Reputation tour so I didn’t have to go alone. My high school bestie and I doing karaoke to Celine.
Art is the frame, but the narrative is people. Always people. And I feel pretty lucky to have so many wonderful people in my story.