The love of a good person.
Friends to keep me sane, and to tease me when I need it.
Food on the table.
A roof over our heads.
Employment I love and am good at*
The ability to read and access to books and other reading material.
The ability to enjoy music.
Access to visual stimulation: art, film, television.
It's a good life.
* On a good day, I do recognise these things. In a low mood, I think I'm rubbish.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Rolling my eyes at the "I write like..." meme
Okay: first up I put in the review I wrote for Maureen Carter's "Death Line".
Turns out I write like Edgar Allan Poe.
Then I put in my review for the recent Doctor Who season finale.
Turns out I write like David Foster Wallace.
Then I tried my review for 'The Silence'.
Seems I'm H.P. Lovecraft.
I tried my piece on reading and not reading.
I'm actually Cory Doctorow.
If I put in the Big Session 2010 review...
I'm back to being H.P. Lovecraft again.
So here's the thing:
How many famous authors is it actually drawing on to be able to 'define' writing styles? There is a nice critique at Tea Berry-Blue which neatly quizzes the 'analyzer' with extracts from a variety of authors - including a range of female writers.
Who'd have thought? Turns out they mostly write like white male authors.
An interesting exercise, but perhaps not one to take too seriously.
Turns out I write like Edgar Allan Poe.
Then I put in my review for the recent Doctor Who season finale.
Turns out I write like David Foster Wallace.
Then I tried my review for 'The Silence'.
Seems I'm H.P. Lovecraft.
I tried my piece on reading and not reading.
I'm actually Cory Doctorow.
If I put in the Big Session 2010 review...
I'm back to being H.P. Lovecraft again.
So here's the thing:
How many famous authors is it actually drawing on to be able to 'define' writing styles? There is a nice critique at Tea Berry-Blue which neatly quizzes the 'analyzer' with extracts from a variety of authors - including a range of female writers.
Who'd have thought? Turns out they mostly write like white male authors.
An interesting exercise, but perhaps not one to take too seriously.
TV Review: The Silence BBC1 Monday 12th July-Thursday 15 July 2010
I'd wanted to review the recent BBC drama 'The Silence' quickly. However, thanks to a temperamental work-based computer defying my efforts to write a review at 8.30am on Friday, I'm now having to complete this review on Sunday.
Nevermind. My thoughts are still fresh.
It's a shame that, at the moment at least, there are no plans to release the 4 part story on DVD. I'd certainly watch it again - and not just for lovely Douglas Henshall's delicious Scottish accent and visual appeal.
Interestingly, I'd say the key highlight was the performance and depiction of the central character: not Henshall's furiously angry and harrassed policeman Jim, but rather Genevieve Barr as his niece Amelia.
Amelia is caught between the hearing world (she has recently had a cochlear implant) and her more familiar world of silence, and credit must go to everyone concerned for making her such a rounded character. The use of sound, and silence, and all the guff of noise in-between, was beautifully conveyed. More importantly, not all the behaviour Amelia expresses was (just) about her being deaf. When she yells at her mother (Gina McKee) that "You're the problem!" it's done because Amelia is a teenager, with all the furious righteous indignation that virtually all teenagers express. Amelia smokes, drinks and flirts, likes clubbing (getting high off the speaker vibrations). She's certainly up there fighting out top spot as this year's best Amelia.
Though the series maintained a fairly consistent audience (4.7 million to start, 4.3 million on the finale) reviews have been erratic, and I can understand why. The Radio Times - in a fierce burst of independence from praising BBC programming - absolutely hated it, finding it slow and dull. However, Cloud and I remained gripped across the week - indeed positively giddy about the episodes as the story unfolded (a nice bonus for me which meant I didn't have to feel bad about indulgently watching Henshall). Even so, I can see how the positively insane level of coincidences upon which the frontline narrative depended would have turned off many potential viewers. As Euan Ferguson in today's Observer points out, the frontline 'plot' - Amelia sees the murder of a cop and can identify those responsible - isn't especially great. The bad guys come with signs on their faces saying 'bad guys' (the clue is in the facial hair) whilst the good guy (her uncle Jim) is suitably angst-ridden and anxious. But the delight was in the detail.
If there was anything else that was open to criticism, it was also the ending - which was, shall we generously say - oblique. Check out the debate on CiF at the Guardian which followed up a deaf writer's comments on the first episode with a series of comments about how the narrative progressed. Personally, there was something to be said for a 'less-than-neatly-tied-up' ending with the bad guys being dragged off for punishment, but this was perhaps more disturbingly inconclusive. I'd possibly forgive them for it if I knew there was a follow-up...
Anyway, for those wanting to know more about Genevieve Barr, there is a nice piece Barr wrote for the BBC about making the transition from teacher to actress.
Other reviews:
Telegraph
The Arts Desk
The Herald
Nevermind. My thoughts are still fresh.
It's a shame that, at the moment at least, there are no plans to release the 4 part story on DVD. I'd certainly watch it again - and not just for lovely Douglas Henshall's delicious Scottish accent and visual appeal.
Interestingly, I'd say the key highlight was the performance and depiction of the central character: not Henshall's furiously angry and harrassed policeman Jim, but rather Genevieve Barr as his niece Amelia.
Amelia is caught between the hearing world (she has recently had a cochlear implant) and her more familiar world of silence, and credit must go to everyone concerned for making her such a rounded character. The use of sound, and silence, and all the guff of noise in-between, was beautifully conveyed. More importantly, not all the behaviour Amelia expresses was (just) about her being deaf. When she yells at her mother (Gina McKee) that "You're the problem!" it's done because Amelia is a teenager, with all the furious righteous indignation that virtually all teenagers express. Amelia smokes, drinks and flirts, likes clubbing (getting high off the speaker vibrations). She's certainly up there fighting out top spot as this year's best Amelia.
Though the series maintained a fairly consistent audience (4.7 million to start, 4.3 million on the finale) reviews have been erratic, and I can understand why. The Radio Times - in a fierce burst of independence from praising BBC programming - absolutely hated it, finding it slow and dull. However, Cloud and I remained gripped across the week - indeed positively giddy about the episodes as the story unfolded (a nice bonus for me which meant I didn't have to feel bad about indulgently watching Henshall). Even so, I can see how the positively insane level of coincidences upon which the frontline narrative depended would have turned off many potential viewers. As Euan Ferguson in today's Observer points out, the frontline 'plot' - Amelia sees the murder of a cop and can identify those responsible - isn't especially great. The bad guys come with signs on their faces saying 'bad guys' (the clue is in the facial hair) whilst the good guy (her uncle Jim) is suitably angst-ridden and anxious. But the delight was in the detail.
"Jim juggled brilliantly, got more right than wrong, yet everyone at one stage hated him. Par for the course in the average week for every fortysomething Scot. Henshall was just the very dabs here, always perfect and often magnificent: he looked so tired, and nearly-bearded, by the end of this successive four-night run, it was as if he'd stayed up all nights in between, waiting for us to return.
Which we did. Not for the plot, not even for Henshall, but for Amelia. Genevieve Barr's quite absurdly enthralling portrayal made this entire week's viewing. Forget the "real" plot: the story here, all four nights, was of the drama playing inside deaf Amelia's head: whether she "accepted" deafness, used her lip-reading skills and got the hell on with it, or persevered with the cochlear implant, and the bizarre terrors of learning – while not a baby, in the innocent and correct days when we can – of learning suddenly to hear, and make sense of it. She had done so much growing up and then, hearing, had to do it all again. The intrusiveness, the pomposity, the meanness, the tensions, the game-playing, of words, and shouts, and implications. Her character, Amelia, often preferred the thump of the bass in nightclubs, the tinglings and tremors, to the actual music, and chose to go back to deaf. When people argued around her, stupid go-nowhere arguments, she tugged out the implant's ugly grey antenna. "It felt like having a dirty room inside my head." She needed to escape. I know exactly how she feels.
Genevieve the actress – honestly, she was fabulous, wise, difficult, mesmerising, in 10 years' time I'll be able to have her as a pin-up beside Joey Lucas from The West Wing, if I was going to have a wall of pics of clever deaf actresses, which would be only a little worrying – has said: "When I was 16, the boy I was going out with said to me, 'Stop staring at boys' lips, it makes you look like you want to kiss them.'"
If there was anything else that was open to criticism, it was also the ending - which was, shall we generously say - oblique. Check out the debate on CiF at the Guardian which followed up a deaf writer's comments on the first episode with a series of comments about how the narrative progressed. Personally, there was something to be said for a 'less-than-neatly-tied-up' ending with the bad guys being dragged off for punishment, but this was perhaps more disturbingly inconclusive. I'd possibly forgive them for it if I knew there was a follow-up...
Anyway, for those wanting to know more about Genevieve Barr, there is a nice piece Barr wrote for the BBC about making the transition from teacher to actress.
Other reviews:
Telegraph
The Arts Desk
The Herald
Thursday, July 15, 2010
The Racist Fringe of the Tea Party
Thanks be to Shakespeare's Sister - and specifically Melissa McEwan - for this gem of a line:
Racism, they [the founders of the Tea Party] claim, exists only on the fringe of the Tea Party movement. Sure it does. The Tea Party movement just has more fringe than the costume department for a community theater production of Hair.BWAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
On reading - and not reading
Thanks to Norm I got directed to Karen over at Cornflower books, pondering a life without reading. I think Norm's thoughts - that it would be about missing the ability to enter other worlds, ways of thinking, is very true but I wanted to add my own thoughts on this.
Short term, I would manage by revisualising and recalling favourite quotes, passages and the pure texture of books (I love the hard copy and as much as I love my iPod I wouldn't want to feel I hadn't got the physical object of anything - too tactile I guess).
But long-term loss of reading: that's a harder one to envisage managing. I would miss the sight of book spines, the pleasure in taking one down, browsing, scanning, remembering where I first read it, when I bought it and why (or, if a gift, who bought it for me). The physical object of the book, turning of pages, the shape and size of fonts and layouts, all of these things mean something to me -- and that's before we get to the actual content: the words, the narrative on the page.
I'd be devastated to not have words in my life: would I manage if there were other means of 'reading' available? Audiobooks, text-readers? I don't know - maybe. But I would still miss my interaction with the written word.
Short term, I would manage by revisualising and recalling favourite quotes, passages and the pure texture of books (I love the hard copy and as much as I love my iPod I wouldn't want to feel I hadn't got the physical object of anything - too tactile I guess).
But long-term loss of reading: that's a harder one to envisage managing. I would miss the sight of book spines, the pleasure in taking one down, browsing, scanning, remembering where I first read it, when I bought it and why (or, if a gift, who bought it for me). The physical object of the book, turning of pages, the shape and size of fonts and layouts, all of these things mean something to me -- and that's before we get to the actual content: the words, the narrative on the page.
I'd be devastated to not have words in my life: would I manage if there were other means of 'reading' available? Audiobooks, text-readers? I don't know - maybe. But I would still miss my interaction with the written word.
Mac advice/help wanted!
I have a lovely mac mini. But I want to gets its hard drive expanded (I can get this organised).
At present I have an external drive which backs up 'time-machine' stylee all my stuff.
If I get the hard drive expanded/replaced, how does it work to get the stuff transfered back to the newly expanded mac mini?
And how would all this change affect iPods registered to my mac mini once its had its hard drive expanded/replaced...?!
Answers please!
At present I have an external drive which backs up 'time-machine' stylee all my stuff.
If I get the hard drive expanded/replaced, how does it work to get the stuff transfered back to the newly expanded mac mini?
And how would all this change affect iPods registered to my mac mini once its had its hard drive expanded/replaced...?!
Answers please!
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Missed posts
Sorry folks: I meant to blog honest I did. I meant to post about us going to cricket at Worcester - but Cloud has all the pics on his camera. Still we had great sun that day, the lovely view of Worcester cathedral (which we also did a visit to before the match) AND the company of good friends (and thanks to a friend of a friend, sat in the member's section). A good day.
But now, the lovely - if draining - sunshine we've had has promptly disappeared. Poor George and Sonia and plus 1 turned up only to find the Vic beer garden freezing and a distinct drizzle of rain; Helen found Stratford to be raining AGAIN; and I have even been reduced to buying a handbag sized pink umbrella.
Bring back the sun!
But now, the lovely - if draining - sunshine we've had has promptly disappeared. Poor George and Sonia and plus 1 turned up only to find the Vic beer garden freezing and a distinct drizzle of rain; Helen found Stratford to be raining AGAIN; and I have even been reduced to buying a handbag sized pink umbrella.
Bring back the sun!
Monday, July 05, 2010
Theatre Review: Simon Callow is 'The Man from Stratford' - Sheffield Lyceum Saturday 3 July 2010
As a bonus to HLW and I going away to Sheffield, we found that Simon Callow's one-man show 'The Man From Stratford', about William Shakespeare, was on at the Lyceum.
Both Shakespeare fiends, we booked in.
Jonathan Bate, professor at Warwick, has written the play, drawing on his own scholarship and expertise about Shakespeare but also including quotations from the works of WS where illuminating of human nature and 'the seven ages of man'.
The show is still due on for approximately 3 nights per venue at Windsor, Brighton, Malvern, Taunton, Richmond and eventually Edinburgh (for most of August). According to Jonathan Bate's own Warwick site, the play will then run in London (Riverside Studios 2-12 Sept), Cardiff (15-18 Sept) and Glasgow (21-25 Sept), with possibly more dates after. I'd definitely see it again if I get chance - Neil, watch out!
Well worth seeing, if only to cross off how many quotes you recognise.
Both Shakespeare fiends, we booked in.
Jonathan Bate, professor at Warwick, has written the play, drawing on his own scholarship and expertise about Shakespeare but also including quotations from the works of WS where illuminating of human nature and 'the seven ages of man'.
The show is still due on for approximately 3 nights per venue at Windsor, Brighton, Malvern, Taunton, Richmond and eventually Edinburgh (for most of August). According to Jonathan Bate's own Warwick site, the play will then run in London (Riverside Studios 2-12 Sept), Cardiff (15-18 Sept) and Glasgow (21-25 Sept), with possibly more dates after. I'd definitely see it again if I get chance - Neil, watch out!
Well worth seeing, if only to cross off how many quotes you recognise.
Retro Post: Sheffield's loveliest hotel
Last weekend - Friday 2nd July to Sunday 4 July - Helen Lisette and I stayed in Sheffield. Helen took over booking a hotel and by gum, she yet again proved her worth with finding the most lovely hotel in Sheffield.
The Leopold Hotel
Exterior of the hotel
A sample photograph of a bedroom
Sample bedroom twin - similar to what H and I had
Even the corridors are lovely
Overall, I could HIGHLY recommend this hotel as the staff were lovely, the environment charming and the rooms an absolute treat.
The Leopold Hotel
Exterior of the hotel
A sample photograph of a bedroom
Sample bedroom twin - similar to what H and I had
Even the corridors are lovely
Overall, I could HIGHLY recommend this hotel as the staff were lovely, the environment charming and the rooms an absolute treat.
Thursday, July 01, 2010
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Season Fnarg finale reviews: Doctor Who a-go-go
Wanna read the sort of reviews that shame my own?
Try some of these:
(And as if you needed another repetitious warning: SPOILERS)
Behind the Sofa
Stuart Ian Burns - for once NOT quite the most effusive episode review on BTS
Frank Collins - moderately critical with positive undercurrents
Paul Kirkley - positive, very positive
Neil Perryman - thought about it too much in advance but nearly talked himself around
Our local usual suspects
Jane Henry - converted
Medium Rob - pretty pleased, but would like less sexism and more emotion (plus the season review question of the week)
Additional reviews
Between the Hammer and the Anvil - pretty positive
Den of Geek - "Perfect? No. Genius? Oh yes."
Try some of these:
(And as if you needed another repetitious warning: SPOILERS)
Behind the Sofa
Stuart Ian Burns - for once NOT quite the most effusive episode review on BTS
Frank Collins - moderately critical with positive undercurrents
Paul Kirkley - positive, very positive
Neil Perryman - thought about it too much in advance but nearly talked himself around
Our local usual suspects
Jane Henry - converted
Medium Rob - pretty pleased, but would like less sexism and more emotion (plus the season review question of the week)
Additional reviews
Between the Hammer and the Anvil - pretty positive
Den of Geek - "Perfect? No. Genius? Oh yes."
Book Review: Maureen Carter - Death Line
There are many pleasures to be had in attending the Lowdham Book Festival: not least of these is to pick up an annual fix of crime fiction (note: I read it the rest of the year too, but I always KNOW I can get some goodies at Lowdham).
Chiefly, this comes via the regular appearance of Creme de la Crime, the publishing house that has been attending Lowdham for several years now - and to whom I run for my annual intake of Bev Morriss-ness. This year I had the bonus of author Maureen Carter speaking at the conference, in conversation with Lynne Patrick (a core part of Creme de la Crime) and new fiction novelist Chris Nickson whose book 'The Broken Token' I am very much looking forward to reading!
Anyway. Regular readers here will know my love for Maureen Carter's flawed lead character Morriss: she has so far appeared in Working Girls, Dead Old, Baby Love, Hard Time, Bad Press and last year, Blood Money. This year's Death Line is another page-turning volume. Whilst each are self-contained stories, suitable for new readers with sufficient background to fill in previous plotlines, those who read the tales in order - who develop their connections to characters - will be richly rewarded for their attentions.
Though Carter specialises in gritty narratives (Lawrence Block's 'Burglar' series is rare in driving a crime narrative with humour, though I'm up for other recommendations), at least Bev is no longer quite in the horrifically dark descending pit she was in Blood Money. By end of this novel though...
I'm torn at this point because I would love to say more about how the novel made me feel, especially by the end. Because it is one hell of an ending. In common with the previous six novels in the series, Carter constructs a tightly woven narrative where the reader is given tantalising glimpses of additional information to see inside character's behaviour - and it isn't always clearly the perpetrator. Carter always holds enough back to keep us guessing, but carefully feeds her readers' paranoia and puzzlement. Never one to shy away from harsh realities (whilst equally never gratuitous), Carter can turn a metaphorical knife into her readers within a few lines. And she certainly does that as the novel reaches its climax.
One of the real rewards of reading a series - and part of the reason why the ending of this novel cuts so deep - is that Carter is so scrupulous in constructing three-dimensional characters; each of the recurring characters especially are beautifully fleshed out as the ongoing arc of Morriss' career continues. Characters who you are initially led to feel dismissive of develop before your eyes, making you far more interested in them than you thought possible; others are brought in, but they always feel as if they can be seen and heard effectively. And always at the heart there is...
I'll leave you to read them now, catch up if you haven't read any already. But for those who have been following this through the previous volumes, get ready.
Chiefly, this comes via the regular appearance of Creme de la Crime, the publishing house that has been attending Lowdham for several years now - and to whom I run for my annual intake of Bev Morriss-ness. This year I had the bonus of author Maureen Carter speaking at the conference, in conversation with Lynne Patrick (a core part of Creme de la Crime) and new fiction novelist Chris Nickson whose book 'The Broken Token' I am very much looking forward to reading!
Anyway. Regular readers here will know my love for Maureen Carter's flawed lead character Morriss: she has so far appeared in Working Girls, Dead Old, Baby Love, Hard Time, Bad Press and last year, Blood Money. This year's Death Line is another page-turning volume. Whilst each are self-contained stories, suitable for new readers with sufficient background to fill in previous plotlines, those who read the tales in order - who develop their connections to characters - will be richly rewarded for their attentions.
Though Carter specialises in gritty narratives (Lawrence Block's 'Burglar' series is rare in driving a crime narrative with humour, though I'm up for other recommendations), at least Bev is no longer quite in the horrifically dark descending pit she was in Blood Money. By end of this novel though...
I'm torn at this point because I would love to say more about how the novel made me feel, especially by the end. Because it is one hell of an ending. In common with the previous six novels in the series, Carter constructs a tightly woven narrative where the reader is given tantalising glimpses of additional information to see inside character's behaviour - and it isn't always clearly the perpetrator. Carter always holds enough back to keep us guessing, but carefully feeds her readers' paranoia and puzzlement. Never one to shy away from harsh realities (whilst equally never gratuitous), Carter can turn a metaphorical knife into her readers within a few lines. And she certainly does that as the novel reaches its climax.
One of the real rewards of reading a series - and part of the reason why the ending of this novel cuts so deep - is that Carter is so scrupulous in constructing three-dimensional characters; each of the recurring characters especially are beautifully fleshed out as the ongoing arc of Morriss' career continues. Characters who you are initially led to feel dismissive of develop before your eyes, making you far more interested in them than you thought possible; others are brought in, but they always feel as if they can be seen and heard effectively. And always at the heart there is...
I'll leave you to read them now, catch up if you haven't read any already. But for those who have been following this through the previous volumes, get ready.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Spoilers for a thing of great beauty: Doctor Who 2010 series finale - The Big Bang
Spoilers.
BIG FAT SPOILERS
MORE SPOILERS THAN YOU COULD WISH FOR.
MORE SPOILERS THAN YOU SHOULD READ.
BUT...
In case you can't guess....
I LOVED IT!
Episode review and thoughts on the series.
(Not seen 'The Pandorica Opens' yet?
Then take your time: you really need to see that before even trying to get your head around the finale)
The penultimate episode ended with bleak with extra bleak on top.
The TARDIS exploding; River inside in, looking out the doors to... stone? The companion (Amy) dead; dead at the hand of her would-have-been husband (Rory), now reincarnated as as a Nestene duplicate [that's Auton to most of us]. The Doctor trapped; locked in a prison by every baddie he's encountered* thanks to some timey-wimey manipulation of Amy's memory enabling them to bring the Doctor to them.
It all looked pretty hopeless. Would it just be fixed by a Rusty-esque big reset button? A Pond ex machina?
Well, kinda.
Except: somehow it just FELT better.
I've already watched this episode twice and to be honest I'll happily watch it plenty more before the iPlayer takes it away from me (boxset here I come).
There was so much to love: more Amelia Pond, the fez, using a well-known wedding verse and making it just SO uplifting, two companions in the TARDIS.
I could go on: Rory staying around 1,894 years; River in a time loop (and the Doctor turning up with the best use of 'honey, I'm home'); the calcified Dalek begging for mercy (not quite getting that River Song doesn't DO that short of thing); Rory saying 'how could we forget the Doctor?!'.
And I hopefully, probably, was not alone in nerd-land in grinning when the Doctor rewound back to the Flesh and Stone setting to reassure eyes-closed-Amy with his jacket on.
Satisfied sigh.
Sure, the Pandorica escape was a bit too straightforward: given how much some doctors wave the sonic around - no sniggering - you'd have thought the collected minds of the villains would have thought about setting a prison that DIDN'T open with a bit of sonic-ing. So much for the deadlocks...
But, it didn't matter. Not to me at least.
And to top it all, have you SEEN the current issue of Doctor Who magazine? Get that plastic bag cover off with its Doc and Amy pics and promotional text and marvel at the thing of beauty the design team have produced.
It may be matt, but in the words of another much loved series: shiny.
Truly, it matches the majesty of this current series for keeping it all on track.
It has been a rollercoaster ride - one that I am sure many did not expect to enjoy so much following the departure of Tennant. But many have rightly been won over. How could we have doubted you Moffatt?
From The Eleventh Hour onwards, the series has rarely took a wrong step (merchandise Daleks and inevitably Chris Chib aside). It has been 'magic': properly family entertainment. The weather may have thrown spanners in the works, and the footie hasn't helped, but I still managed to schedule curtains closed watching of the ep on time. Hilariously, two friends were both committed to be out Saturday night - neither are late-nighters. Yet BOTH texted me between 11.30pm and 11.45pm having stayed up especially to watch before they could cope with going to bed. Such excitement.
Thank you everyone: roll on Xmas and the next special!
* Or rather every baddie that the Mill and Paul Kasey could manage to recreate on the BBC's new multi-coloured shoe-string budget. It's rather like any other shoe-string budget but with the artifice of extra whistles and bells being available...
Friday, June 25, 2010
28 hours to go! Doctor Who Season Fnarg finale
Will it live up to expectation?
Having thrown the sink and every possible bleak plotline at the penultimate episode (RTD-stylee but somehow worth so much more), how will things work out?!
I don't know - having ducked all the spoilers and trailers so far. But once I run away from Lowdham book festival tomorrow to get home for 6pm, we will find out!
YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Having thrown the sink and every possible bleak plotline at the penultimate episode (RTD-stylee but somehow worth so much more), how will things work out?!
I don't know - having ducked all the spoilers and trailers so far. But once I run away from Lowdham book festival tomorrow to get home for 6pm, we will find out!
YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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