I really loved this. Firstly, I love a memoir-style book based on a challenge and reading 12 self-help books in 12 months definitely falls under that genre. Marianne decided to see if some of the most popular self-help books would help revamp her life and threw herself headfirst into the task of actually doing what the books say rather than just reading them from the comfort of your sofa and expecting your life to change.

I recently decided I wanted slightly more control over my news intake than occasionally looking at a news site, randomly perusing Apple News, or constantly being a day behind on Twitter. I thought, ah remember the good old days when you could subscribe to whatever RSS feeds you liked and follow the news straight to your RSS inbox? Why not try that again? Turns out, it’s really difficult. People don’t really do RSS anymore, and if they are doing RSS, they’re not talking about it. Only a handful of websites actively display a link to an RSS feed, otherwise it may as well not exist – because how do you find it?

I rated Infinity War a 1 out of 5, and this movie gets a 2 because it left me slightly less despondent and down in the dumps about everything. But only marginally. There was more to like in here. They did the time travel thing I like of revisiting existing activities from a different angle (seeing Starlord dancing outside of his headphones was hilarious), only slightly tinged by not being able to remember it all from first time round.

I’ve seen this film once or maybe twice a long, long time ago and I knew that I loved it. I’ve been waiting, not-so-patiently, for it to appear anywhere, pleeeease, and finally it popped up on Amazon Prime. Hooray! Thankfully, it lived up to my nostalgia and the hype I’d given it within our household. Funny, with interesting characters, doing twisty-turny type things and leaving you guessing. I really wasn’t keen on Gene Hackman’s character, and I suppose his story felt a little unfinished, although of course it ended with the most final act of all."

I can’t quite remember how we hit upon this album to listen to, other than a little bit of wine and lots of fun music discussions. I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to it, only knowing of Jump - and only that because of the Friends With Benefits and Pitch Perfect references.

Loved this album! There weren’t too many brand new choices out, so I looked back to last year to see something I might have missed and was flabbergasted to realise I hadn’t listened to Janelle Monáe! Make Me Feel is obviously an absolute Prince-style classic, but the entire album lives up to the hype.

This maybe wasn’t the rom-com I was hoping for, it was far more serious than the current breed of comedies. But it was still good and raised a lot of interesting questions about love and friendship. It was quite nice, as well, that there was no real bad guy, although Vince did the best he could to be hated. It was just people falling in and out of love and doing their best to deal with it.

A visit by the Thames, and good use of the Spectre app.

I loved this and I’m not ashamed of it - it’s exactly what you think it’s going to be. A group of Disney teens running around singing, dancing and getting into scrapes both romantic and otherwise. It took a minute or two to adjust to seeing all the baby-faces, and let’s be honest there are a lot of flaws in the way the story comes together. But it’s fun, and it’s musical, and everyone is friends by the end of it. What’s not to like?

Hmm, a very quick read this one, it was an easy thriller that kept me turning pages but I do have to admit that I guessed the twist early on. It was well written in the sense that it kept you wanting to see what happened next, but at the same time there seemed to be an endless amount of Russian Dolls and it felt quite drawn out.

I don’t always like comedy fiction because it can be quite hard to get the right tone coming across in the written word. This book, though, grabbed me straight away with relatable and funny characters getting themselves into all kinds of mishaps. Quite quickly, you realise that someone has been shot with an arrow at a holiday park, and then we spend a lot of time seeing how events led up to that, whilst also keeping an eye on the police investigation into what happened.

It was really good! In the category of rom-com, although the rom is mostly happening to our protagonist’s brother, it tugged at a lot of feelings for me. I did not enjoy school either, kids are mean, so it was interesting to see what it might be like to be confronted with someone from your past like that.

Hmm, conflicted on this one. Overall, I think liked it but that comes with a heck of a lot of caveats. The good is that the acting was top notch, it was a well crafted movie, and the story revealed itself quite well. I can see the hand of Gillian Flynn all over it. Everything that happened was important to the story, nothing was throwaway. But there were a few things that annoyed me.

Add this app to the pile of really useful things that I didn’t know I needed. Hindsight app’s sole goal is to give you a countback timer from the last time you did something. So it might be that you are trying to break a habit – the last time I smoked a cigarette – or that you are trying to keep to a goal – visit my friend every two weeks – or simply that you want to have a way of being accountable for something – last time I stacked the dishwasher and forgot to switch it on.

Very interesting book, this one. A relatively short young adult novel set in what at first appears to be a utopian future but gradually the rose-tinted glasses are taken off. I like that it’s a gradual process to understanding that this seemingly perfect world is not all it’s cracked up to be. That we go on the journey of discovery with Jonah who has his own issues to deal with as well. I thought the end felt a bit rushed, Jonah suddenly flipped and decided to do what he did, and of course it doesn’t come to a satisfying conclusion at all. But, for me, it’s not really about that, it’s about the topics broached within.

If I’m being honest with myself, I’ve already drifted away from Strictly Come Dancing. There was a time where I would blog about my thoughts several times through each series – at one point the BBC included a link to one of my posts on their website. That saw views skyrocketing, let me tell you. But last year, I didn’t watch the show at all. None of the celebrities particularly grabbed my attention, and boy that show eats up a lot of your time if you get invested properly.

What a journey I’ve been on listening to this album. At first, I was excited. I love Busted, who doesn’t? Then I was surprised. I know more of these songs than I expected. In fact, I know all of them! I must have owned this album when it was first release. Hoorah! And then I really listened. And you know what? This is one of those pieces of art that is actually kinda problematic the more time that passes.

I’ve been looking forward to this for ages! Pretty much every song Mabel has released has been a hit for me so gathering them all together in an album sounds like heaven. And it works! It’s exactly what I was expecting from Mabel, a handful of the singles interspersed with some new songs, all of which fit together nicely.

This is a fantastic collection of essays, in a variety of formats, from women across all walks of life - actors, broadcasters, writers, poets, activists. The only thing they have in common is feminism, and this book aims to share some of their thoughts with you. What I love about it is that it’s not a manifesto, it’s not a guide to being a feminist pointing out all the ways you’re doing it wrong. It’s just people and their thoughts on the struggles of feminism, from using the word itself to throwing yourself into the cause 100%.

Dark Mode has been available on macOS for a while now but Apple are bringing it to mobile devices when iOS 13 is released in September. In preparation for this, I’ve added support for Dark Mode on this blog, and it’s soooooo pretty! This is a huge step for the site, not just because Dark Mode is a nice feature, easier on the eyes, and a great option to have for reading content on the web. But also, because I’m no longer beholden to Wordpress to make it available, or to the theme makers to enable it.

A short while ago, for a temporary period only, I was in charge of these little fluffies. The responsibility was crippling but the relentless cuteness helped ease the burden.

Tennis tournaments quite often gather their sports stars together to do small promotional stunts to promote the event. You know the kind of thing, holding koala bears in Australia, or visiting the Great Wall in China. The Rogers Cup in Canada has a different take on this - getting a selection of WTA players to try and guess which of four cups is proper maple syrup. This seems like a totally unfair challenge, partly because actual Canadians are taking part who must have an advantage, and also because they’ve got honey as one of the options and honey and maple syrup are pretty similar.

The end of this book is designed solely to get you hooked on reading the next one. There’s a kidnapping/murder mystery at the heart of the novel, and two believable, courageous and mostly likeable protagonists to try and unravel what’s been going on and who’s behind it. I quite liked the twists and turns although it felt a bit weird that we knew all along who it was and that is who it turned out to be. Also, the fact that Timmy was kidnapped was not even slightly a shock, I don’t know if it was meant to be.

So I know the two main songs from this, obviously, and they are both outstanding but that doesn’t always mean the rest of the album is going to follow suit. Thankfully, it does! I loved it. Lauper has that great punky but poppy sound that I like, and it’s a relatively short album that packs a powerful punch. Plus, and it bears repeating, Time After Time is SUCH a good song.

Loved the last album so was looking forward to this one and was not disappointed. Of Monsters and Men deliver a slightly new sound, although it’s still reminiscent of where they were before. I did find myself thinking of The XX quite a lot as I listened, but there’s nothing wrong with that as it was all good and exactly what I was hoping for.

I really loved this. I can totally understand that this is going to be a film that you either love or hate, but I loved it. It’s just Winona and Keanu bickering for 90 minutes, and it was brilliant. Although at times things got a little bit wordy and it started to feel you were watching a high-brow play, but whenever that happened, one of them would just let slip an insult that brought you right back down to earth.

My overwhelming thought after watching this was simply that it was not at all the film I thought it was going to be. Perhaps I should have expected it because whilst John Hughes does good teen comedy, he’s not averse to sneaking in some serious content and thought-provoking issues at the same time. So whilst this was a fun romp about a cheeky teen having a day off school and the unlucky headmaster going overboard trying to catch him out, there was a lot more to it.

This was a bit of a weird one, and I wasn’t sure I was going to like it but in the end it won me over a little bit. I thought it was going to be more like Space Balls, more of an actual farce, but whilst it did poke fun at the sci-fi world, particularly Star Trek, it still had its own original story - and one that I got quite invested in.

Made an unfortunate typo in the url for this photo, but actually it’s kinda accurate, so I’m leaving it as it is.

How have I not done this film yet? It’s genuinely one of my favourite films of all time, I’ve seen it over and over and could probably watch it every day for the rest of my life. It’s short and sweet, with a banging soundtrack. A glimpse into the lives of two super optimistic friends, who have a great outlook on life, and go to their reunion to learn a few lessons and to teach us viewers a thing or two.

This was not the film I was expecting it to be, although in hindsight, knowing it came from Ron Howard, I probably should have been thinking along these lines. It gets off to a slow start and the brothers are very frustrating to the point you just want to bang their heads together. There’s a lot of testosterone flying around and the women aren’t particularly treated very well. Lots of punching and ego and blah.

A domestic thriller, this book charts a turbulent time in a family’s life, when someone they trusted turned out to be… well, a psychopath. There are a lot of interesting concepts in this book - firstly, whether to trust and how long to trust for when you start to have suspicions, whether the backstory is true or not or whether it is all in our villain’s imagination, that the protagonist is no hero and made plenty of mistakes herself.

This is the autobiography of Martine Wright, one of the survivors of the 7/7 bombings in 2005 - when a terrorist attacked the tube and bus links in London. The book starts on that very day, and has a unique style to begin with - hearing from many of the people who feature in the memoir, Martine’s doctor, a policewoman who found her, her husband and family. It’s a stark and visceral start to the book as it places you right in the scene but also gives you great insight into the panic and distress that everyone else was feeling as well.

I liked the women in the movie, Poison Ivy is an excellent foe, basically channelling Mother Nature who wants her revenge. Her backstory was good. And Alicia Silverstone kicked ass, which is always fun. Unfortunately, these upsides were offset by the endless misogyny and all that pheromone nonsense. Boo. Also, what on earth was Elle’s character about? She was just kinda there and then she just kinda wasn’t.

I liked the slightly more comic book approach, it suited Jim Carrey because he’s basically a comic book character in himself. Val Kilmer was probably the best of the three Batmen. Two-Face was good, and they were great as a duo together.

I’ve sort of lost track of Christina Aguilera these days, but I did like her early stuff and this is a great album that showcases some of her best work. It’s long, which is my only real complaint, but even so it grabs you and takes you on a journey. I like that it’s not an album that tails off, although I have to admit the last track was probably my least favourite.

This is such a weird album. There are real oddities on there, of course, Dark Ballet being a particular example of that. But actually some of the songs are quite good individually, it’s just a wonder how they are all on the same album. It doesn’t flow at all, skips around amongst feelings and sounds, and is generally something of a fever dream.

I said it above in the notes but it bears repeating: What the hell is this film? How is it by the same people as the last one? They took the comic feel and ran with it so badly that none of it makes any sense and it is ABSOLUTELY ridiculous. My biggest complaint with the film is that for a Batman movie, there is very little Batman. He’s barely in it in the first half an hour, and he’s very slow to react to all the emergencies.

It hasn’t aged particularly well, but somehow was still very entertaining. Funnier than I had expected. I loved Keaton’s portrayal of Batman/Wayne, kinda nerdy, and really not a superhero - very much just a guy in a suit with some fancy gadgets. It was relatable. If you had lots of money and an unfeasibly loyal butler.

As I started reading this, I suddenly wondered why it all felt familiar and then I realised, I’d seen the TV show. I genuinely can’t remember if I’ve read this before, but as I started turning the pages, it all started to come back to me. I like the format of the book, bringing the story along through the eyes of a different character for each part, each adding their own viewpoint and problems to things.

I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to this movie, what with it being a sequel (eek) to a very popular action movie. But hey, it was surprisingly good. Not as good as the first, but decent, amusing in places, tense in others. Good characters, an interesting story, and it got to that fabled point - how on earth are they going to get out of this one? Well, the answer is: terribly.

When choosing an album to listen to each week, I often end up pondering what are the rules of the game and does the potential offering fit? As Monica will tell you, rules are good, rules control the fun! Most of the rules of my album adventure have been in play since the beginning – one album choice each per week, old versus new, no greatest hits, etc, etc.

I don’t specifically remember listening to this album before but it all felt very familiar and it was wonderful. Obviously the two main songs stand out, Indestructible is a particular favourite but the rest of them all have that soft floating but fun pop feel that makes a distinctive vibe the stretches through the full album.

I listened to it and I loved it! Fantastic collaborations but before all that they are some great songs. Catchy and funky, it’s Ed at his more hip-hop best, there’s definitely rapping involved (so steer clear if you’re upset by him doing that, I think he’s pretty good).

This is an interesting read because it’s not your standard comedian-writes-memoir book but instead a stream of consciousness from someone who clearly has a lot of thoughts and research to share on a particular topic - that topic being the human body, particularly female. That topic then stretches to include consensual and non-consensual sex, bodies growing and changing, and of course the more general feminism and equality that comes with the territory.

What a weekend of sport that was! I’ll admit my focus was pretty much exclusively on Wimbledon, but it was hard to miss the fact we were doing well in the cricket, and there were a handful of motorsport events to also catch the eye. But the tennis held me in thrall for the full weekend. I’m not a huge fan of the men’s game anymore, it’s too whippy and too long, but I couldn’t help getting invested in the Federer/Djokovic rematch. I’m sort of in the camp that thinks it’s a bit disappointing to end up with the same names in the finals all the time. Djokovic, Nadal and Federer, if it’s not one it’s the other. But you can’t take anything away from the fact that these guys are incredible, and that’s why they’ve managed to sustain such success.

I have a vague memory of Skunk Anansie from the 90s but I don’t suppose it was my kind of music back then. I quite enjoyed this album, it’s a strong, proud and emotive rock from a superbly powerful front-woman. It did cross, occasionally, into the realm of being slightly too angry for my tastes, although by the sounds of it she has every right to get a bit shouty.

I really wanted to like this. I’ve enjoyed a few of Dave’s singles and his performance at Glastonbury was excellent. This album just didn’t work for me. It’s a concept piece, featuring Dave in a therapy session, and so the songs weave in and out of difficult moments from his life.

I’ve talked about Zac Efron’s YouTube channel before because I do applaud people opening up and sharing their workout insights - and it’s fun to see Zac win and lose against his celebrity friends. In his most recent video, he pairs up with Alexandra Daddario and they have a mega workout with medicine balls and generally kill their cores. One bit that stood out to me was Zac admitting the following about his Baywatch body: