A fun fact from Disney’s behind the scenes of the recent Loki series is that the God of Mischief has been on the big screen for less than two hours out of the fifty or so available in The Infinity Saga. Two hours across ten years, and yet this character is so incredible popular. I saw one of those weird bracket competitions on Twitter for who was the MCU’s best villain and it came down to Thanos vs Loki.

You can tell that this book wasn’t fully formed before Fleming died. It was published posthumously and was going through the editing process at the time, and by all accounts Fleming wasn’t very happy with it. So it’s not a surprise that it doesn’t have quite the same impact as other stories. It feels shorter, less complete, and there’s a lot less depth in certain areas. But it has all the elements a good Bond novel should have - a bad guy to chase, a thrilling action sequence, plenty of intense personal danger, and a leading lady or two.

I think I might have started reading this before, because it felt very familiar. But I think I got distracted and wanted to write my own Big Brother style book, which never got past 100 words but obviously meant I never went back to the book. I had no idea whodunit and how it was going to end, so it was fascinating to travel through the mystery with the contestants and detectives. The tale dips back and forth between past and present, so you can follow how the contestants entered the house and got to know each other through the prism of how things ended.

I remember reading this before, and I actually blogged about it at the time. This book was released as an app, and it was one of the first reading experiences I had on a phone. As a book, I said it was fine, a bit predictable, a super quick and easy read (obviously, being part of the excellent Quick Reads initiative), not challenging but doing the job well. I pretty much agree with that although I think I enjoyed it more this time round as I was just reading the book rather than thinking about the whole app concept as well.

So it was a hot day, and it felt like the right thing to do, watch a movie set in the frozen north to try and feel a little bit cooler by proxy. It might have worked too, but I didn’t notice because I was so busy goggling at this movie. What is it? I was sort of expecting your regular disaster movie - big trucks crossing ice that they have no business being on. But it turned into something quite different, a rescue mission against the odds with the addition of an industrial sabotage plot.

I knew a lot more of this album than I thought, I guess at the time I was really interested in what Mel would do post-Spice Girls. It’s a really good album, with lots of catchy pop songs, but I do think it feels like a hotch-potch collection rather than a coherent album. Like Mel was properly experimenting with all genres - dance, latin, modern pop, classic pop, a little bit of everything. I enjoyed listening to it though, and there are some classic songs on there that will stand the test of time.

I really liked this album. I think I heard a track a while ago and was keen to hear more, and that was before learning the lead vocalist is Bono’s son. That just adds to the intrigue. Listening to the full album, it struck me first that it sounds like the kind of music you’d imagine U2 making if they were just starting out now, and secondly the vocals do sound quite similar to Bono. But not in a way that is copy-cat, more in a way that is continuing the family line… a positive thing. I loved it!

This is such a lovely book. I listened to the audiobook so I could have Lenny’s dulcet tones tell me his story in own voice and it was a wonderful experience. It’s not a ‘first-I-was-born-then’ memoir, but it does focus on Lenny’s experiences growing up and his very early career. The whole way through it sounds as though that’s a deliberate act and we may or may not get a part two with some of his later exploits as well.

Reading this book was a very similar experience to watching the movie - it was a somehow riveting and tense read but at the same time just highlights how dangerous and ultimately fruitless these endeavours are. Why are so many fishermen doing this? Regardless, though, the book is great. Piecing together the events of the storm from interviews with survivors and family members, from a variety of boats and rescue crews. Unlike the film, there’s no definitive ending to the story of the Andrea Gail, no one knows what happened, so Junger pieces together his best guess given the information we do have.

After ditching the last movie, we ended up with the original intention of watching Scary Movie. It’s better for trying to spoof only one or two films, funny where it needs to be, a bit dated in places but actually comes up with its own great twist at the end that I didn’t see coming.