I was intrigued by the first book in this series so interested to read another, and this one was just as interesting. I can’t quite put my finger on what’s so good about these, but it’s inarguable. It’s sort of standard, a police procedural where there are murders and investigations and troubled detectives and even a suspension as things start getting tricky. But it’s also more than that, there’s something about it that stands out above the rest - maybe the excellent characters, maybe it’s the picturesque and iconic locations, I don’t know. But I’ll definitely be reading more.

At first, I thought the premise of this book was a bit too far-fetched, but actually as I read through it started to make sense. People process grief in different ways, and writing what you know and as a cathartic process to help with your feelings is absolutely normal. I thought the book part of it was going to play a larger role, in reality it was the photos that blew the whole thing wide open, and then the twist at the end made me uncomfortable in a way that seemed to be fully intended. Interesting, not perfect, but worth a look.

I’ve had this book on my to read list for such a long time, and finally got round to it - now I’m annoyed I didn’t read it sooner. I loved it, whipped through it quickly, the plot is intriguing, the twists and turns are fun to follow and unexpected. I wasn’t so convinced by the supernatural parts of it, but that’s kind of the point isn’t it? And you can’t really argue with a ‘we have to try everything’ attitude when it comes to saving a life. Now I’m very interested in watching the TV show, but need to decide whether to read more in the series first!

Keith Urban can pretty much be relied upon to deliver a good relatively modern pop country album. It’s not massively groundbreaking but very enjoyable, and he rocks a good guitar. The one unique selling point he has is his points of reference are different, being Australian, so it’s not all whiskeys and catfish dinners. Can’t go wrong with a bit of bonus Carrie, either!

This new band popped up on the Graham Norton show a couple of weeks ago, and although I hadn’t seen them myself, I got a couple of recommendations to check them out. So I popped on the album and got listening. There’s no doubting the creativity and musical talent here, and it’s so good to hear something a little bit different. But just occasionally it leans into being too clever for its own good. There’s only so many times I can put up with a song completely changing midway through. Mostly enjoyed it though, and will definitely keep an eye on this lot in future.

An interesting book that details why it’s so hard and ultimately fruitless to have conversations about race when there is such a systematic inequality and so many opportunities for distractions and turning the conversation in another direction. It does take a minute to get your head around an entire book talking about race given the title, and there doesn’t really seem to be an overarching point to the book - other than continuing the important conversation and raising awareness of the ongoing issues.

If I’m honest, this was so close to being another casualty of the twenty minute rule, but it had just enough funny moments to keep me watching until the end. It’s crude and not clever and incredibly cheap, but the occasional moment kept things interesting - the magic eye bit was fun, and it was good to finally know what Jay & Silent Bob are. I don’t know that I’m keen to seek out more Kevin Smith movies, but I do sort of get where this one is coming from.

Continuing the 90s nights for as long as Gladiators is airing meant scouring for a good film we’ve not watched already… which is harder than it sounds as we’ve done a lot of good 90s movies. This one was highly reviewed and has two amazing main stars, so seemed to fit the bill perfectly. I feel like I’m definitely missing something, because George and Jennifer are great and Steven Soderbergh is a director I can get on board with… but even though there was a bank robbery and a prison breakout in the first twenty minutes, it was SO boring!

I didn’t have huge hopes for this film, if I’m honest, because you know Marvel is not having the best track record recently. It’s not getting good reviews. To fully enjoy it, you have to have done quite a lot of homework, previous movies and several of the TV shows. And, of course, it’s helmed by three awesome women, so completely understandable that a vocal section of the audience don’t like it. Thankfully, I have done that homework and I love awesome women, and that resulted in a very enjoyable watching experience. I loved the camaraderie between the three, how they learned to work together and use their quirks to the fullest. A high point in some recent Marvel mediocrity.

Another good read from Robert Thorogood, this Marlow Murder club are really starting to gel together and somehow have found themselves caught up in yet another murder. This time they are given permission to do some investigating, even though they do tend to push it a bit far, but at least that gives them some proper authority to ask seemingly random questions that of course have greater meaning later on. I did not guess the killer and was surprised, so that’s always the sign of a good whodunit.

This is a super romantic story, with such a great premise at the heart of it and then plenty of twists and turns along the way. I like that it dips back and forth in time in a slightly less obnoxious way than some books do, and the way the story unfolds is just exactly the right information you need at exactly the right time. What a lovely story, and I could just picture the film adaptation that could be made of this.

I make no secret of my love for the 90s, and often enjoy a bit of culture from that time. However, a certain confluence of events occurred yesterday that meant I somehow went back in time and was living my best 90s life all evening. First, after hearing that Carl Weathers had died, we wanted to pay tribute to him by watching a movie he’d appeared in. Having already completed Predator and the Rocky series, it was left to Happy Gilmore to complete the gap. Happy Gilmore was released in 1996 so kick-started the time travel evening.

So. This is a concept album which already puts it on the back foot a bit. There’s a bit too much talking in there to really make it an enjoyable thing. But on the other hand, it’s Johnny Cash and you just listen when he talks and doubly listen when he sings so it still somehow works. It’s not going to be my favourite Cash album by a long shot, but I do respect the effort.

I didn’t have any expectations going into this album, really, having only seen Tate McRae perform on one TV show at some point. It was pretty good, serviceable pop music, but not really standing out from a lot of other pop artists out there. Actually, it really felt like if you merged Camila Cabello and Olivia Rodrigo together, you would end up with Tate. Good, but not memorable.

Watched this in tribute to Carl Weathers, although the guy falls out of a window and dies in this movie, so maybe it’s not the fondest farewell! I’ve not seen it before and was expecting plenty of Adam Sandler zaniness, but actually it wasn’t as out there as I’d feared. It’s not particularly good, but it has funny moments and has that strong 90s vibe with good songs over training montages and plenty of David vs Goliath moments throughout.

This is a good, well-written legal thriller following the traumatic story of a young mother who is accused of hurting her child, alongside the difficult life of our single mother lawyer. In some ways, it was a bit frustrating - of course the guy was too good to be true - but I didn’t guess what his back story was so the twists and turns were enough to keep me turning those pages.

I read through this so quickly, it was absolutely fascinating. Our heroine finds herself getting a flash of what life will be in five years, after that inevitable job interview question, and the rest of the book is all about how and whether we get there. It’s moving and frustrating and crushing and beautiful in many different ways, and so well written that it just sweeps you along. A lovely read.

I’ve raced through these Camel Club books, especially the last few. This one is the final of a five part story, and I liked it better than the previous one, but not quite as much as the first few. This time it felt like a rebirth for our hero but at the same time it was really frustrating how much he was still keeping everyone at arm’s length, despite how many times they’ve come through for him in the past. There was a mystery upon mystery in this one and it all came to an explosive ending that was very satisfying.

This was a recommended audiobook on Apple Books which I picked up without knowing anything about it other than the small preview clip had me hooked. And it was that way the whole way through. The book is split into very manageable chapters, flipping back and forward in time and from a couple of different points of view. There was a moment in the middle where it felt a little bit drawn out but for the most part I was really keen to find out what happened next. I guessed that the person on the other end of the phone wasn’t who they said they were, but did not guess who or why! And that final twist was like a punch to the stomach!

There’s not too much to really say about this movie, except I just really enjoyed it. Like the previous one, where I could have watched an entire movie of Denzel just being a taxi driver, here I could have enjoyed a full couple of hours watching our hero pottering around Italy and drinking tea. Why is he so watchable?? But there’s a bigger story at work obviously, some hardcore action sequences and gross moments. I like that it’s relatively short, not drawn out, and the bad guys get what’s coming to them. Top stuff.

I haven’t made a podcast in a good few years now but one part of the process I had a love/hate relationship with has been made so much easier by a new Apple Podcasts feature - auto-generated transcripts. I loved creating the transcripts in collaboration with our incredible community because it was an accessibility feature, it meant we could refer back to the text rather than audio to settle future arguments, and it’s always good to see just how much we prattled on in a physical word count.

Madonna really coming into her own here, as she finds her voice and starts to use it. There’s still an element of early pop but the standout songs are great, kicking off with a good few iconic numbers. It doesn’t outstay it’s welcome either, turn on, listen to some great bopping pop and then get out again.

This is pretty much exactly what you’d expect from a Green Day album. The sound is there, that intense rock sound with Billie Joe Armstrong’s iconic vocals, and it’s applied to songs that are railing against the system, hating and loving on the world in equal measure, with an occasional downbeat moment to soothe the soul. Good but not moving the dial for them, I’m sure.

This is such an interesting premise of a book, but I’m not sure it totally landed as intended. I love that we dive straight into the action, things have gone wrong and there are dire consequences giving us a countdown clock of pressure. There are dips back and forward in time and those bits feel drawn out when we want to know what’s happening to the pair now… and then the ending just felt unsatisfactory to me. A good read overall but an odd one.

This took a little while to get going, all the action is in the second half so the pacing felt a bit off. It’s very on-the-nose, not at all subtle in raising questions, showing off the perils of patriotism, and admitting there are no good answers to the horrors of war.

A year ago, I reluctantly watched the first series of Traitors in the UK and was instantly hooked, binge-watching the whole thing in a very short space of time. I, like many others, eagerly awaited the second series which came to a dramatic conclusion yesterday, one finalist walking away with just shy of £100,000.

I didn’t enjoy this book as much as previous ones, although the opening scenes about Hornblower having mixed feelings about a luxurious bath was fun. Obviously more and more as Horatio grows and climbs the career ladder, he’s less hands on, and that’s so clear in this book as he has to send others off to the action and just wait for the results. An interesting personal problem, but not necessarily a fascinating read! But we end on another cliffhanger as Hornblower is clearly very unwell!

The design, horrifying yellow aside, is good. It has that hand drawn feeling and is very intuitive to play. There’s a story to work through and plenty of levels to enjoy as you go on the journey, working your way through an illustrated map starting on the beach. If I’m being brutally honest, though, I found the gameplay quite frustrating. There’s always an element of luck when you kick off a minesweeper game, but then I couldn’t quite get my head around the next steps and it really descended into just jabbing at the screen and hoping for the best.

I’ve never actually watched a Stacey Dooley documentary but often see them popping up on iPlayer, and they seem to be pretty popular. I think if you had seen them all, the book might not be that interesting as it just recaps different topics and talks about the experience of making them. But as I haven’t, it was interesting and harrowing to read about these women going through such awful things and still being resilient and brave to continue fighting on.

It’s been quite chilly in the UK recently, so it was a good time to finish off my latest scarf. This Kallik pattern was such a good knit, super simple but requiring an element of concentration to make sure the pattern didn’t go awry. It’s just four stitches knit, four stitches purl but shifting each row to make the diagonal pattern. At first, I had to diligently read the pattern and count the rows to make sure I was doing it right, but then discovered I was able to read the knitting as it grew to know what I needed to do next. That was a good feeling.

I’ve had a vague draft for a blog post about the warm hug of familiar media for a while now, but as ever Kottke has written about it better than I ever could. In this post, the question is posed: What’s Your Go-To Comfort Media?

Tennis has rolled into a new year and already we are into the first Grand Slam, with the Australian Open under way and as fascinating as ever. As a UK viewer, the last couple of weeks have been pretty disappointing, as Amazon dropped their coverage of the sport via their Prime streaming service and Sky have picked it up instead.

I do think there’s something unique and interesting about White Stripes, they’re ability to make good rock songs with just two instruments is to be commended. But in the end, this album just didn’t do it for me, and I’m not sure that slightly odd White Stripes sound doesn’t sustain for a full record.

On the first listen through this album, the first couple of songs really stood out and I felt like the rest was forgettable. The opening track is just a really good tune, and then the second track with the countup/down of global population is completely haunting and has stuck with me. I thought the rest could be take or leave, but actually on the second listen through it was a bit better, perhaps something of a grower.

The penultimate book in the Camel Club series and I had mixed feelings about this one. It’s well written in that iconic Baldacci pageturner style, but only half of it felt like an actual thriller. The other half was people rehashing what happened in the last book and trying to follow a trail, or follow someone who was following a trail. Ultimately as the threads started to come together it did get interesting, and after the seemingly happy ending, I’m wondering what on earth can go wrong in the next and final book!

This film isn’t particularly smart or clever and it’s derivative of many other movies but it is a fun, easy-going experience with Marky Mark being his effortless charming self. The whole thing feels like a million other movies, and then there are specific moments (fighting with a baby is so Jason Statham, you know?) but if you just switch off your brain and go with it, it’s an entertaining way to spend a couple of hours.

This was much better than I was expecting. It being the first part of a two part story is always tricky, cliffhanger films are no good. Actually it managed that pretty well, there’s more story to tell but the film itself resolved nicely. Which is a good thing because, as it turns out, there may not be a part two anyway!

I’m still working my way through these audiobooks, read by various great names who have been in or are associated with the TV show. This one was read by Adjoa Andoh who did a really great job with the voices and I think inhabited the character of Martha really well. But I didn’t rate the story so much, it felt a bit sprawling, a bit confusing and I found it a bit hard to follow. May just have been me but there are others that are better.

I rate Ben Elton’s irreverant take on modern culture, having been completely obsessed with the musical We Will Rock You as written by him. This book feels like a continuation of some of the themes contained within the Queen musical, and definitely a strong take on things like reality TV and a culture where people think they are always in the right no matter what. I wasn’t sure I was going to get through the whole book but it somehow captured me and I ended up really enjoying it.

I don’t have a good track record with Godzilla movies, I always go into them thinking they’re going to be great and then they disappoint. My shortened review of one of them tells you everything you need to know: So I wasn’t that bothered about the new TV series streaming on Apple TV+ that was a kind of sequel-prequel situation between movies, I’d been burned before. The only interesting thing about it was the clever casting of both Wyatt Russell and Kurt Russell as different ages of the same character. How to get a character look the same across the years? Keep it in the family!

A new year and new films. My count of films watched last year was a little low, partly due to less time but also because the time I did have I used to watch so much amazing TV. How can films compete with such great short-form content? Well, we’ll have to see how this year goes and the next batch might help!

You have to love S&G, they’re so iconic. The thing about folk music is that if it’s not done well, it can be so drawn out, noodly and boring. But this album is basically perfect - every song is a good one, even the instrumental one in the middle. The album is bookended by the stand out singles, and leaving me on I Am a Rock meant it was definitely stuck in my head for a while.

I listened to the first Pink Friday album last week in preparation for this one, and actually I think the first one was better. I’m not really musically smart enough to know why this is a sequel but it was good - lots of great guests, and good beats. If there’s one thing Nicki Minaj does well it’s a sample, some really great tunes and used well here. So a good listen but ultimately preferred the original.

Finally up to date with these Inspector Frost prequels, I don’t know if there will be any more books, I guess we’re butting up against the existing stories now. This was a good read, not quite as enjoyable as the last one but a good contender. The stories wound in and out of each other and it was fun to try and follow - I did find the characters a bit confusing and sometimes indistinguishable which didn’t help - but as always the personal elements of the story drove it all along to a satisfying conclusion.

I’ve enjoyed Celia Imrie’s books before, the series following some ex-pats in the south of France is great. This one follows a different set of characters but still in that fish-out-of-water setting. This time two independent woman end up with their lives intwined… one an actress struggling to find work and ending up on a cruise ship, the other a woman between houses that ends up on the same ship to pass the time. Beneath it all is some awful criminal activity and everything eventually becomes clear. I enjoyed it, it got a bit confusing and chaotic towards the end, the pacing was a bit slow to start and hurried to finish, but overall a good read.

This year my list of new year goals was very short and revolved quite a lot around the Playstation, but actually I have been thinking about areas I can reset and get organised, gaining a little bit of control. The first one is subscriptions. I don’t know about you, but I find that subscriptions to various apps, streaming services, and even physical things, can get lost in the wilderness and build up until you’re more out of pocket than you might have thought.

I want to listen to the new Nicki Minaj album which is reportedly a sequel to the original Pink Friday, so I had to get that one under my belt first. I liked it a lot more than I thought I was going to, what an incredible group of featured and guest artists for a debut album! Not all of it worked for me, the Eminem track was a bit meh, but the good bits were really great so overall a hit.

Rick Astley is the man of the moment having hosted the BBC’s new year celebrations, and his album from earlier in the year seems to have gone down well. Who would have thought it? With the first week of a new year usually quite slow on new releases, I figured it was a good time to check out that album and I’m glad I did. It’s just some really good, harmless, grown up pop, with good rhythms and fun lyrics. If I had one complaint, it’s that some of the songs sound like others… not in a rip-off way, but just in a ‘oop, bit of George Ezra there’ kind of way.

We might be joining in the tradition of watching stand up comedy in bleak January here, with another live special, this time from Kevin Bridges. I’ve not seen a lot of his comedy before, other than the iconic accent recognition piece but always willing to give it a go. Overall, I enjoyed it, but the comedy fell into three buckets for me - one where I didn’t know what he was talking about, referencing people or events I don’t know. The second was just not really funny to me, Covid jokes are still a bit soon, not too sure on the Hitler bit. But the third was where he absolutely nailed it and the bit about your brain waking up as you go to bed spoke to me on so many levels. Mixed results but an enjoyable watch nevertheless.

If I didn’t know that there were still a couple more books in this series, I would think this was the end of a superb political thriller series. This time, all the strands of things that have happened and been revealed over the past couple of books are all coming together for a big showdown. I thought the elements of Harry Finn’s job infilitrating high security places to show weaknesses was fascinating, would like more on that! But ultimately it was the emotion of the piece, rights and wrongs, loyalty and shame, and a lot of grief. Really well done.