vodkafan

Cameras on tripods are sooo last century

All my kids and I just watched the first episode . It was awesome quality TV I was not disappointed. Attention to detail was better than any BBC series I have ever seen.

Let me know what you think of it Kate?

Hi Claire, thanks for your PM and the link to your review. I haven't given up on Ali Smith altogether, I am hoping she will produce another story with the clarity of Boy Meets Girl . Maybe I will give this one another read sometime when I am in a different mood- but it won't be for a long time!

The Victorian House Explained 5/5 Trevor Yorke A slim soft cover reference book that describes the history of the (UK) Victorian period house and all its variations along the social scale. Plenty of photos and the authors own line drawings explain everything simply. As Victorians built houses all over the country this makes it fun to look at what's in your own town and date the houses from their original features. Half the book is about exterior designs and the other half interior fittings and furnishings. I know not a lot of people will be interested in this but I am an anorak. A great little book.

The Paying Guest 4/5 George Gissing (Not to be confused with the new Sarah Waters book of almost the same title) Just when I thought that I must have read the best of George Gissing already I found this little delight. It is one of his lighter stories and is funnier than The Town Traveller. The Mumfords are a middle class Victorian couple living comfortably in a terraced "villa" in suburbia about 1890ish. To increase their income a little they decide to answer an advertisement from a young lady who is looking for lodgings. Despite some doubts about her background they take this girl in. In fact they want to help her and believe it is their Christian duty to steer her away from bad company and "improve" her. Gradually they get sucked into all sorts of goings on and are soon out of their depth. This is very short, just a novella and I read it at work in one day in my breaks.

There But For The 1/5 Ali Smith I am divided about Ali Smith more than any other author I have read. So far I have read four books by Ali Smith. Two of them were great, really very good and two of them were not good. This falls into the latter category. It is by far the worst though. I got all the way to the end and it all seemed completely pointless. Can somebody who has read it actually explain to me what it was about? I am totallly confused by it. Most of it seems to be the thoughts of ten year old Brooke. I think we are supposed to be getting some sort of profound message through her simple way of viewing the world; where she has the answer and all the adults are sort of blind and have lost the plot. Actually the effect is so naive that I lost interest long before the end. Also the author seemed to be getting political a lot of the time near the end. I don't really like that in a novel.

Kylie, the first Mad Max is a very disturbing film. The second one, Road Warrior, is very different and in many ways superior. It has humour in it and a lot of heroism , not just of the main character but also the bravery of ordinary people who sacrifice to help others. It really is a superb film. I think if you watch that one Kylie it would help you get over the first one!

Anybody seen it yet then?

I am having a day off next thursday so I can watch Mad Max at the cinema. The cinema is on the same piece of land as the Virgin gym where I go so I can stay there most of the afternoon into the evening. It is a shame that the Bowling Alley is no longer there; it has been taken over and made into a Matalan shop. In the past the gym, a good movie and a couple hours' ten pin bowling made a nice little trio of activities to fill a day with. Now the corner where Matalan is is full of very loud chavy women in hideous leopard print leggings and huge clumpy platform heels coming out clutching even more almost identical leopard print leggings . Anyway I digress...anybody else planning to watch Mad Max?

There's no smoke without fire

I agree with everything you have written Laura. So glad you gave it a second chance and enjoyed it so much.

Lucy. First half pretty exciting , second half went completely off the rails. Not as good as Limitless, which has a similar sort of basic premise.

Divergent. Involved a big suspension of disbelief. It was OK but wouldn't watch it again and probably won't watch the next in the series.

Do you "do" charity shops Dan? If you hunt around you can build up a huge library for pennies.

Hi Dan I like the way you have got straight into the swing of things. I had to smile at your thinking your TBR will stay small. That's what we all said too. I see one of your targets for this year is to try other genres.

The Women Who Lived For Danger 3/5 Marcus Binney This book is a look at the lives of several very brave women back in the 1939-45 war. These women, all volunteers, were recruited into the SOE (Special Operations Executive) and parachuted into enemy territory as clandestine agents. Some were beautiful, some were good at organising, some enjoyed fighting with guns and blowing up trains. Some were only just out of teenage years. Some were not so good and made mistakes. However, all were very brave and faced extreme danger every day. One of them even had a wooden leg, which in typically British fashion she named Cuthbert. The most famous ones who were tortured and killed by the Gestapo include Violette Szabo and Noor Inayat Khan. The author names all his sources and tries hard to give the reader fact and not fiction. He personally talked to a few of the women who at the time of writing were still alive (one of them jokingly asked if he had came there to kill her!). I appreciated that approach and it made the human aspects of their exploits even more impressive. The book made a nice change and was an easy read.

Welcome Dan! If you like fantasy I would recommend the Lyonesse trilogy by Jack Vance. Definitely lighter than GOT and more humorous, but lots going on. Out of print, but can be picked up on Amazon for pennies.

I am a voice crying in the wilderness......

If its on a sunday that means I will be able to watch it with the kids! My daughter is about to explode waiting to see this.

A Special Relationship 3/5 Douglas Kennedy This was not my usual type of book at all. About a female American journalist who meets a British journalist in a war zone , gets pregnant, married, then settles with him in London. It's about sharing the same language but feeling completely alienated by a different culture. Things start to go wrong. Once the pace starts to pick up I had to keep turning pages to know how it turns out. I liked it. I suppose it would fit in the general genre of more serious chick-lit despite being written by a chap.

Drag Me To Hell. A re-watch, this was an OK no brainer. The Weatherman. Also a re-watch, I found it pretty boring. This and the next two I have since traded in. Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. I had great hopes for this one, but sadly it doesn't even come close to the book, so I stopped watching before the end after the contrived silliness got too much. I started to watch the French version of Lady Chatterley . I have never read the book , although I know that it's about a woman who has an affair with her gardener. Vey early on in the film there is a scene where she undresses for bed and she seems almost surprised that she is a woman and so stands for ages looking at herself naked in the mirror. I thought Oh God it's going to be one of those sort of French films where nobody speaks and they just pose about looking introspective. So that was as far as I got with that one. Accidents Happen. Excellent quirky film with Geena Davis as a tough but damaged mother dealing with family tragedy. What an actress . She is so edgy it's like she can switch from being OK to being frighteningly violent in an instant and is totally believable.

Wow Kell yeah do it.!

There is something interesting called the Bechdel Test which is applied to books and films as a measure of how sexist it is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test

The Apple : Crimson Petal Stories 3/5 Michel Faber A slim collection of punchy short stories about some of the characters in The Crimson Petal And The White. From different points in time, some before the events of the book and some long afterwards. In the introduction the author talks about his decision not to write a sequel to that book, but really the stories in this collection do tell you all you need to know without even reading between the lines. I read the whole thing in a couple of hours.