little bits of everything

My review as a Librarything early reviewer : The first thing to talk about with this book is the form. Normally it doesn't make much difference, but this is a cellphone novel turned into a book turned into an ebook (I read it in PDF). So small chapters are turned into nicely laid out pages which are then put onto a screen. I think it would be nice to own the paper book. As the chapters are so short I think it's a good coffee table book which you can leave lying around and pick up to read bits and pieces from. I read it in several bigger chunks and I found the pace of reading quite intense. There are a lot of line breaks, rather than longer paragraphs, which I took a while to adjust to. The story itself takes a couple of unexpected turns and then follows a fairly predictable path, though you do need to keep reading to see if what you think might happen actually does. I couldn't really relate to some of the things the main character did, though perhaps it's because...

(The lowercase e is mandatory.) Inspired by their nomination for the Mercury awards I thought I'd write the review of "Build a rocket boys" that's been rolling around in my head for a while now. Their previous album, Seldom Seen Kid, is currently my favourite album of all time, so this one had to do quite well to overtake that. It doesn't. However I'm glad I've got it. This one is to SSK as Ommadawn is to Tubular Bells. (At one point I had an idea that I'd write series of semi-serious, semi-not-serious-hoping-to-be-funny reviews of albums, making sure in each one that I'd compare it to ELO's Mr Blue Sky. This idea came from the bit in the Brady Bunch film where Mr Brady designs a series of commercial buildings, all incorporating that crazy paving exterior wall and other features from his own home. If I write any more reviews they may contain references to Tubular Bells. Or not.) So it's not so commercially appealing. There are a number of...

Since I was a child Radio 4 has kept me company on sick days. I still remember as a child under 10 listening to the news and hearing pretty much every hour about some famous person dying, I forget who. I always loved the Today programme with its fast moving mix of topical stories. One day however a couple of years ago though I got fed up with it when they had a story near the end of the programme about a singing statue of Perry Como. Maybe it was just because I was unwell, but that was just a waste of my time hearing about it (not that I've got anything against Perry Como). So instead I spent the day listening to XFm and thinking that although it wasn't much fun being ill, listening to this lovely indie rock was not a bad way to spend the day when you're not up to anything else. Last week I was ill again and Radio 4 came to the rescue. Coincidentally I've been reading Radio: A True Love Story by Libby Purves, about her career in radio. She concludes, talking about...

I went to see Amazing Grace at the weekend. It's a good film. It seems to start in the middle, but then there's a lot to cover. As well as being true, and worth knowing, it was also a good story. I wonder in 200 years time what thing we'll look back on now and wonder why we ever tolerated it.