posts

For Ingrid’s birthday, we went to see The Nutcracker performed by the Moscow City Ballet at The King’s Theatre in Southsea.

Given that I gave up on writing album digests for a bit this year, I thought I would at least do a proper top ten list of my favourite albums. There are quite a few albums that I did not have room for and I might try to revisit those later. In the mean time, let’s crack on. (To save time, I have in some instances pasted my original review from the appropriate album digest.)

I am writing a long post that I will either publish as one long post (about five or six thousand words) or as about seven smaller ones each closer to the average post length of about eight hundred words. I have to get it out-of-the-way soon as my mind needs to focus on my health economics essay.

Last week Underworld reissued their excellent second album “Second Toughest In The Infants” in various formats including a four disc super deluxe edition. I wrote about this album in my understated classics series and I want to share some thoughts on the reissue. I love this album so I was excited to hear the remaster and the additional material.

As much as I wanted it to, Satin Island by Tom McCarthy did not win the Booker Prize. Having read it all I realise it was a long shot. However it is an interesting book that deserved consideration, even if it does have some flaws.

As it is Halloween, I’m writing about a spooky understated classic. Liars’ second album “They Were Wrong, So We Drowned” is a concept album about witches. It was the first of their albums that I owned having heard their name mentioned among those in the New York Post-punk revival scene at the start of the 00s.

In my review of the book I mentioned that a film adaptation of The Martian was on the way. I’m not sure why but it got released earlier than any of the dates that I’d seen and so on Saturday I found myself watching The Martian on the big screen. Could the film version deliver the same level of entertainment as the novel? Could Mark Watney (Matt Damon) get off Mars alive?

“Satin Island” is my pick for the Man Booker prize, announced tomorrow. I’ve not managed to read all of it yet. Also, I’ve only glanced at the others on the shortlist.

Time and Time Again is a ridiculously stupid novel by Ben Elton. A shadowy sect (established by Isaac Newton no less!) recruits a soldier to go back in time and prevent Franz Ferdinand’s assassination in Sarajevo in August 1914. I wonder if it all goes to plan and everyone lives happily ever after with no weird timey-wimey after-effects?

Y-12 is the United States’ most secure weapons-grade Uranium storage facility. It is known as the “Fort Knox of Uranium”. In 2012 it was infiltrated by three elderly peace protesters, sparking a major scandal about the safety of US nuclear sites. “Gods of Metal” by Eric Schlosser tells the story of that break-in alongside a history of both the anti-nuclear movement (in particular the Plowshares movement) and nuclear security in the United States.

It’s difficult to write honestly about your feelings. It’s difficult to write about your feelings consistently, for a living on a regular basis. It’s difficult to write about your feelings when the world constantly intrudes with inanity, insanity and hatred. It’s difficult to write under those conditions without seeming frayed, without coming loose at the edges.