Last week, Tess and Claudia surprised Strictly Come Dancing fans and the rest of the world by announcing this series would be their last. It was shocking, obviously, because they are part of the fabric of the show, and also because it came out of nowhere - I hadn’t heard any serious rumblings of them leaving and no one had leaked the announcement before it happened. Instead it was just a simple video released by the pair confirming their intentions.
I thought I had read all the Paddington books in my collection but then this one popped up. It’s a bit disappointing really, although the main character and his adopted family are as lovable as ever. It just felt like there weren’t any new ideas in there - I’m sure there’s one story that doesn’t really do anything, except set the scene for the next one. And there’s one that revisits lots of things that Paddington has done before. Paddington has lots of greatest hits to choose from, no doubt, but I was expecting a bit more from the book, considering how grand the title is!
I’m not sure why this album popped into my consciousness but I was so happy to listen to it. That early to mid-00’s sound of guitar bands, usually called something starting with ‘The’ although not in this case. The first few tracks on this are iconic, and really go down well, and thankfully, the rest of the album doesn’t disappoint. There’s not too much in the way of highs and lows, here, but if you like what Orson are selling then you’ll enjoy the whole thing.
It’s fair to say I was expecting great things from this album - in 2022, Sam swooped in right at the last minute and topped my list for albums of the year. This one is different, Sam’s changed record labels and is upfront about trying to change the sound he’s putting out there. So it’s not quite at the levels of Space Man for me, but it’s still really, really good. Great vocals and intriguing songs, if no out and out bangers. It’s definitely one that I’ll listen to again, although I might still reach for Space first.
I’m a late convert to Alice Roberts but am becoming more and more of a fan the more I watch and consume. This book features stories from the past, not only in terms of the pre-history that is being uncovered, but also in terms of archaeology over the ages and how techniques and accountability has grown. It’s a fascinating look back over the history of the topic, with a backdrop of what we do and don’t know when digs turn up these ancient bones. Alice writes clearly and easily, and I love how open she is about where we have bias, where we have to be careful not to apply our modern sensabilities to things, and constantly warning us to try and keep an open mind. A great read.
I stumbled across this whilst looking for a short fill-the-gap style read. It’s interesting, although I’m not sure it entirely lives up to the premise. So little is known about the Megalodon that much of the story is filled in with general information about sharks and fossil history, and humans interest, fear and interactions with the same. But what we know is interesting, and actually what we don’t know is also fascinating, and it’s all told really well so this book does the job nicely.
This is such a classic and spawned so much in the horror genre, not only the sequels and adaptations within the Halloween franchise, but also inspiring so many others. It’s really good - short, sharp, horrific - but it’s not perfect. There are some moments where you just think, what are you doing? She dropped the knife, she stood in the doorway for a breather while he was right there, it’s just… frustrating. But some of that comes from knowing so much about horror tropes, of course. The bit at the end, where you look over the balcony, of course I was expecting him to be gone, but how creepy must that have been when this was first released? A really great classic film.
It took me a minute to realise this was, of course, based on The Haunting of Hill House. I’ve read the book and seen the Netflix adaptation, so was very intrigued to see how the film version played out. I really liked it - you never see anything particularly scary, only the building up of tension which is cleverly done, and the wickedness of humans to each other. It’s creepy and tense and just feels like a ghost story being told to you, wherein you have to use your imagination to fill in the blanks. Very enjoyable.
The author opens up about his own experiences with depression in a book that doesn’t really try to help or prescribe solutions (other than sharing what has worked for him in the past), but really exists to show that you are not alone. I haven’t had this level of depression before, but have definitely experienced some of the moments where the world is overwhelming and you need some kind of coping mechanism to get on with it. This is a great, encouraging book to read, if only to know that this too shall pass.
I love the film adaptation of this and Nick Hornby does write a good novel, so this was an easy choice to read. I listened to the audiobook and Stephen Mangan was doing the narration which made it next level, he’s great. The story is fab, too, really delving into the heart of mental health, depression, how awful it can be when you don’t fit in at school, and when you grow up as well, plus trying to navigate relationships at all ages. It’s funny but also heartbreaking, and ultimately a really good, challenging but somehow also cosy, read.
No theme this week, no extra guest mentors, no messing about, we’ve got a full house and a collection of dancers who are ready to prove what they can do. So let’s just get on with the show!
Karen & Carlos - Quickstep The training VT made this look great, and it was fab on the floor too. The frame slipped on a few occasions, but it was a lot of fun with plenty of style and sass. Very fast, and the tiny slip at the end, but who cares? It was great!
I’ve just recently finished watching the second series of Platonic and it was absolutely incredible, even better than the first one. It doesn’t look like I wrote anything after watching the first series which is a surprise because it was an excellent set of ten episodes. Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen star as best friends who had fallen out for a while but end up reconnecting and getting wrapped up in each other’s lives again - in comedic but completely platonic fashion.
Ace of Base popped up on the Top of the Pops replays, although quite a lot later - 1998 and Life is a Flower. I suddenly realised I hadn’t listened to any of the band’s albums so here we are, with this most excellent collection of songs. I LOVED it. Obviously the hit songs are classics, but all of it was great, upbeat synth pop music that is right up my street. I’m slightly furious I haven’t listened to this sooner!
I’ve been looking forward to this album, mostly because of the excellent title. It’s really good, great grown up pop, particularly the single Freedom of the Night. It’s got that great pop, slightly disco, vibe that lasts all the way through. The only very minor problem with it is Sophie’s excellent but iconic voice - by the end of it, you’re sort of like, okay, that’s quite a lot of this one thing, might need some variety now.
This was a really interesting story featuring King and Maxwell - at first they were investigating different things apart as we got a great side-story for Michelle Maxwell looking after her mental health in an institution. Meanwhile King is sent on a mission at the US version of Bletchley Park and there is so much interesting and intriguing about where he ends up and what’s going on there. I don’t want to say too much else in case of spoilers, but the twists and turns were really exciting, and I can’t wait to read what develops in the next book.
I continue to love this series, and at this point the characters are like old friends, so it’s always a treat to spend a bit more time with them and find out what’s going on next. I do feel like this book wasn’t as strong as some of the others, though. The plot didn’t feel as deep, situations were resolved relatively quickly and easily, and there wasn’t too much in the way of subplots for our extended Ryan family. I’ll keep reading though, like I said, it’s always worth a dip back into this world.
This book was one of the best so far, with a great intro that grabs you and throws you straight into the action. As always, there’s lots of characters and situations and things happening that I don’t always follow, but what I do get, I like. We also got to learn more about Finan’s past, and he’s such a great character (a fan favourite apparently), I was entranced by those sections. Uhtred continues to lead us through the various battles and situations and although you can tell he’s getting older, more world-weary, there’s still a lot of fight left in him!
I used to love Mark Austin and watch his ITV news reports quite often, but not for quite a long time. I don’t watch the news anymore for self-preservation reasons so I didn’t even realise he’d moved to Sky. Anyway, this memoir covers his time at the BBC, at ITV and more recently at Sky, and all the various things he’s covered, including the difficult situation of his own daughter’s illness. I think the book veers slightly too much towards reporting rather than personal insight on occasion, but it’s really well written and easy to read and overall worth a look.
As with all the other books in this series, I really loved it - great dark humour, completely relatable moments alongside rather terrifying serial killer stuff. It’s got depths, really trying to understand the humanity of these extreme situations. I wasn’t sure about the kidnapping, did it make sense? But as things started to draw to a conclusion, I thought it worked well enough and put the puzzle pieces in the right place to come to an end, so I was happy enough with it. It seems like this might be the last in the series, which is a shame as they’re so fun to read, but if it is, it’s been a heck of a ride.
It was nice to be back in the Strictly party watching sort of live on a Saturday rather than a day delayed, and what better way to celebrate than with Movie Week! Hooray! The best part of this is guessing the movies as the celebrities walk down the stairs, and then by extension what song they’re going to be dancing to. We really will make a quiz out of anything.
Two years ago, I wrote about the emergency hot water bottle cover I knitted and how proud I was of the result. It was a super easy pattern that came together really well and quickly, and I went on to knit a couple more covers for family members so that we could all have that extra bit of warmth and protection.
They’re all pretty well used now, those original covers, and some of them have stretched a bit, so it seemed like a good time for a refresh - with a new winter approaching rapidly. I wanted to play around a bit with colours, and put a bit more thought into it, so I bought a selection of chunky yarn and mix and matched to come up with the below.
I always love going to the coast, and what’s better than combining a trip to the seaside with a spot of musical theatre at the same time? Weymouth Pavilion was the setting for this adventure, a glorious theatre that is right on the seafront, overlooking some choppy waters. They were definitely choppy when I was there as the wind had picked right up. As the winter night drew in, the multi-coloured lights on the theatre came on and it was a sight to behold.
You’ll have seen it by now, I’m sure, when Eugene Levy met Prince William as part of his travel show The Reluctant Traveller. This Apple TV show began life by putting Eugene out of his comfort zone, as someone who didn’t really like travelling or care much about broadening his horizons. Three series in and his outlook has changed, so each episode is more just an exploration of a different place, a different culture, with Eugene’s thoughts layered on top.
Worms has that nostalgic feeling for me, even though I wasn’t hugely obsessed with it previously. I’ve played the game and it’s kinda fun making these worms bounce around and try and inflict carnage wherever they go but the main problem is I’m just not very good at it. But this is a new evolution in the game available via Apple Arcade.
I would not have looked twice at this game if it wasn’t free to me on Apple Arcade, because I’m not a massive fan of the Jeopardy! format. I can see why people like it but it infuriates me. Having to make the answers into a question is impossible to remember when you just want to shout out the answer. And the answers they show in no way answer the question you have formatted. It just makes me mad.
Oh this is an excellent album. The Beautiful South in any of their various forms are right up my street and this has some real classic songs on it. You Keep It All In is a proper favourite, but it starts out well with Song for Whoever too. All the songs have that unique story-telling you associate with this band, and they have a variety of voices to choose from in this era, so you always get the best that suits each song. Love it.
The last few Taylor Swift albums have not been to my taste, slow and boring and best avoided. Hearing this one had the involvement of Max Martin again made my hopes rise a bit and… yay! It’s good. We’re not talking the heights of 1989 and Reputation, my two personal favourites, but this is so much better than the last few years. More upbeat, more interesting, there’s a lot going on, a lot to take in, a LOT of words, but it’s overall back in business.
Another cracking read from Liane Moriarty, stacked with interesting characters and thought-provoking events. The big twist in this one is heart-breaking, and I was very surprised the direction things went in towards the end. But as always, you just can’t help but get invested and be desperate to know what happens next and whether they will end up with a happy ending or not. A great read.
I ended up watching this show late, picking it up on Sunday instead of the usual Saturday night party. It was weird, but did mean that I could go straight from the live show into the results show, so that was fun! This was the final time we’d see all fifteen couples competing, with the first vote, the first dance off, and one person facing leaving the competition at the first hurdle.
On the surface, this is your standard rom-com style book, with three women loosely connected dealing with their own difficulties and eventually overcoming them for a happy ending. It’s not massively sophisticated, but for some reason, it really got under my skin, these three women - particularly Gemma who goes through so much and is really strong and resourceful all the way through. A really good read!
This popped up as a 20th anniversary re-release, which does nothing if not make you feel old. But it was a good listen, a handful of the great singles are on there, but the full album works. The band have great vocals that blend together well but stand apart where they need to. The real complaint is the way the whole thing ends, the Racy Lacey song is weird anyway, and it’s such an abrupt stop, it’s jarring. But a small complaint on a classic album.
Listening to this album so quickly after Jade’s means it’s impossible not to compare and contrast the two. They’re both brilliant, excellent pop records with impeccable vocals and production. This one is a lot closer to the Little Mix sound, although there are also songs that sound a bit like other people - Pink, Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift etc. But it’s great, and fun, and my favourite is Absofuckinglutely.
I was a bit miffed to start with as the early pages are from the point of view of Uhtred’s son. I didn’t think he was dead from his wounds last book, but I also didn’t particularly want to hear the story told by anyone else. We’ve come this far with Uhtred, he’s the one we want to hear from! It does eventually switch to our guy, and things pick up from there. The search for the sword is interesting and the result surprising, but the best moments are Uhtred dealing with his daughter Stiorra, reconciling the prevailing views of women at the time and his understanding that she’s a strong powerful character in herself. What will happen next?
The Secret Seven are too hot in their current meeting place so they build a new headquarters up a tree (as you do). You wouldn’t think a mystery would come right to their tree-shaped door, but it does in the form of a misused boy and a poor kitten. What I thought was interesting about this book is the gang very clearly go to the parents for help, something the Famous Five barely ever did, but they are shot down. Now they have to investigate themselves and so they do! A good read.
This was a really great book, particularly if you love David Mitchell’s style of humour. He delves into the history of the ruling families, up until the point where the monarchy has no real power any more. I did feel like you sort of have to power through the start a bit, David himself says it’s all a bit of a murky mish-mash of stuff so far back so I’m surprised there is quite so much time spent on it. But the style is so fun, so engaging, and everything is explained really well, you barely notice that you might be learning something along the way.
Strictly’s first live show of the year and we are back in action baby - technical gremlins and all. The show opened with a rather self-indulgent but still lovely dance through the decades, and then we were introduced to our judges (still insisting on doing the dance and shimmy over to the chairs despite the fact they never manage to get their on time, I’m looking at you Shirley). Our couples took to the floor, with the exception of Dani Dyer who has to sit this year out due to injury and is replaced by last minute super-sub Amber Davies.
It’s been a while since I read the first Secret Seven book, and although I always preferred the Famous Five, I thought I’d get back into it as a bit of a palatte cleanser. I do think seven is too many kids to keep track of, particularly as that is plus a dog rather than the dog being one of the gang. But this is an interesting mystery, a robbery takes place and the gang investigate, there’s a circus and stilts play a bit part in it. Just old school fun.
My dad mentioned that I hadn’t listened to any Dr. Hook so I quite quickly added them to the list of albums to work through and here they are! I know a couple of songs, on this album it’s track 7, When You’re in Love With a Beautiful Woman. I’ve read that Dr. Hook are a bit hit and miss, some people think they’re cheesy and I can sort of see why, but I think it’s just the right side of credible, a unique blend of slow and smooth rock. It’s very listenable!
I was really looking forward to this album and it’s definitely a good one. I think I had just built it up a bit too much in my own head, particularly because of how much I love After Laughter by Paramore. But this is its own thing and it does the job really well. It’s good, edgy alternative pop, with Hayley’s great vocals and deep thoughts to share. It didn’t blow me away like I wanted it to but it’s a really quality album overall.
It took me a while to get into this story, the family tree was quite confusing and it’s quite an out there idea. But of course, as with all Liane Moriarty books, you get drawn in by the complex and well-rounded characters, and you just have to know what’s going on, what the big twist is, and what’s going to happen. There was such desperate sadness throughout this, families abandoned or depression discovered or a longing for love, and you can’t help but need to see how it all turns out.
Now I’ve finished powering through Jack Reacher for a while, it’s time to head back to David Baldacci and his excellent thrillers. I enjoyed this one, someone is copying lots of different serial killers and it ends up being up to King & Maxwell to figure it out. There are lots of twists and turns as you might expect, but I wasn’t anticipating the ending where everything hit a lot closer to home than you might imagine. Very interested to read the next one in the series!
Having watched the movies that were based on this book, I was intrigued to find the source material still available to read. It’s completely different to the comedy in the movies but it’s no less interesting. It’s a lot more focused on how the father deals with life in such a big family, and actually the vast array of children don’t have too much impact other than when it fits in with a story about the dad. Interesting though, and well worth a read - it’s almost impossible to imagine such a big family at such an intriguing time in the past.
This time last year, I wrote about how I was heading into the new series of Strictly with mixed feelings. There had been endless bad news coming from the Strictly camp and the selection of celebrities didn’t have me jumping up and down with enthusiasm. I said:
Guess how long it was into the launch show before I was giddy and clapping and bouncing around the room? About ten minutes, if I’m being modest, five minutes if I’m being truthful
I had missed the BBC’s dramatisation of the Brinks-Mat gold heist when the first series aired in 2023, but when the second series came around, there was so much talk of it (and my love for Jack Lowden had grown so much) that it was impossible to ignore. What an incredible TV show, based on an even more incredible story. The scale of this crime and the ongoing repercussions are incredible.
