I was sort of dreading this one because I’m still conscious of disliking Drake’s album. However, this was a really solid R&B/hip-hop outing, very relaxing and brilliant to drive home to of an early autumn evening.

There are lots of productivity apps and habit trackers available on the iOS store, but I have become partial to Streaks. It’s such a simple app that can really make a difference – although admittedly my streaks have not been so fruitful lately. The app is really easy to use. If you have a goal in mind, something you want to do on a regular basis (most likely daily, but can be adjusted to weekly or monthly if required), you can set it up on Streaks to track your progress. When you complete the goal on any given day, you just pop to the app and tap it as done. You can view your progress, and your statistics with a couple of simple taps, and you can do that for up to six different goals.

It took a while to work up the courage to watch this one, as its reputation as a bit of an odd-ball film preceded it. It certainly did take a minute or two to adjust to the style but once you know it’s slightly surreal, definitely all over the place, and wonderfully humourous when you’re least expecting it, then it’s really, really good.

I know the three main singles from this album but I’ve never really indulged in any extra-curricular Belinda tracks, and I thought it was a really solid album. It’s intensely eighties, obviously, but she has a great voice and it’s got some really catchy stuff in there.

Listened to an older Bastille album just two weeks ago, and it’s interesting to hear the differences. Still a good album, still full of the drums and drama, but with more of an edge to it. Found the radio inserts a bit odd, but enjoyed the album from start to finish.

Loved this. I didn’t actually know the full story of Eddie the Eagle, only that he was an Olympic hero for NOT being very good. Post-film trivia suggests this film takes big liberties with the story, but the fundamentals are there.

Highs and lows in my feelings for this one. The singing scenes were really, really atrocious, so hard to get through. I get that’s the whole point of the story, and it was slightly better when she was attempting an actual song, but that first sequence where she was getting lessons was dire. Almost ’turn it off I can’t bear it’ dire.

I’ve read this one before but could remember very little about it so figured it was about time I reminded myself what it was about. I really enjoyed it just as much second time round as I did the first, following the story of an attempted robbery at a high tech bio-facility, where deadly viruses are stored.

Brilliant album, how could it not be with the remarkable Ryan Tedder? Pop royalty, catchy, sing along, impossible not to move to but equally emotional in places. Loved it.

Totally what you would expect, slightly poppy country music. I so wanted the Backstreet Boys track to be amazing but I didn’t think it was, sadly. There are a good selection of guests on there, but there are no real stand out songs.

Interesting story this one. It’s very much in the same genre as The Hunger Games, as in a dystopian future sees children subjected to horrible manipulated gameshows that could end up in their death, with the reward being a marginally better lifestyle than what they have at the moment.

Here’s the amusing and slightly ironic thing about our viewing of Dirty Dancing. It was a film that was firmly on my side of the camp, I love it and always have done, but it’s very much a girly sort of watch. Mr C had always proclaimed he’d need a little alcohol to get properly into this one.

Really enjoyed the first film in this series, so was interested to see how the sequel would hold up. It follows similar lines to the first - group of slightly obnoxious teens moves in next to a couple who really just want to get on with their own slightly bonkers existence.

I was very intrigued to read this story, which was initially published in a serialised form in a Scottish periodical, but is now bundled together to read straight through as a book. McCall Smith’s usual style of fascinating characters winding in and out of each other’s lives is on full display, and this time centres around a flat share in Scotland Street.

My feelings about this film are mostly not that positive, but here’s a breakdown of some of the main points - the good ones first: I love the concept - repercussions from superhero destruction have been a bugbear of mine for a while so it’s good to see that addressed, and that it causes its own problems as well.

Really enjoyed this book, a different sort of story to those that Nicci French usually produces. The murders at first almost seem incidental, you know that they are connected but it doesn’t seem clear how. Gradually, you can start guessing at who might have committed it, but it’s hard to pin the blame in the right direction.

I’ve not enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes stories that barely feature the man himself, so I was trepidatious about reading this one. However, thankfully, it is still a fascinating book, particularly as Mr Jones was essentially training himself up to be as astute as Holmes, so we still got some of those baffling deductions to enjoy.

Interesting book this, telling the story of three very different women who are targeted by a psychopath killer. I quite liked that it differed from other Nicci French books in that the police were quite significantly involved in the stories, they didn’t just dismiss the problem as they quite often do in these books. Having said that, they still didn’t do a very good job!

I was worried about listening to this because Pompeii is such a storming tune, how can you expand on the brilliance of it? I needn’t have worried, the rest of the album is great too. Whilst it doesn’t quite match up to the opener, it’s still full of drums and drama, intriguing lyrics and the intensity to carry you through to the end.

Great to hear Britney again, although this is a very mixed album – some of it is great but some is quite awful. Private Show, whilst catchy, is probably everything wrong with music at the moment! But still, there are some good songs and taken as a whole it shows how adaptable Britney is, and how she can move with the times.

The film has an intriguing concept and it’s got some great ideas in there, but I didn’t really enjoy it as much as I wanted to. The first half, in particular, was incredibly hard to watch - so much violence with so little provocation, and not a lot of story progression.

Criminal is part of the Radiotopia network, a selection of well-produced shows from hosts that all have wonderfully smooth and captivating voices. I have listened to a few of them over the weeks and months, and Criminal is one of the few that has stuck. They describe themselves as a podcast with a different take on crime. This, from the about page: Criminal is a podcast about crime. Not so much the “if it bleeds, it leads,” kind of crime, but something a little more complex. Stories of people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle.

Dev Patel does a great job with the impatience and frustration of someone who just wants to get his work out there, and I really enjoyed Jeremy Irons awkward but not bumbling characterisation. I can’t believe I’ve never heard of either of these guys, they seem so crucial.

I think Harry Potter & the Cursed Child was the first book that I pre-ordered, waited for midnight for the download to begin, and started reading that very same night. I didn’t finish it in one go, but was done by lunchtime the next day, and my feelings on it veer from one direction to the next depending what mood I’m in. I did love the story, because seeing how the next generation interact with each other is fascinating, and throw in elements of time travel, and I’m on board.

Mr C has been wanting me to watch this for a while but my background in music wasn’t good enough to make it worth while. With my album adventure upping my musical knowledge, we figured now was as good a time as any. I was nervous about the film, as I am with any that I know people have expectations about, but as soon as I realised it was set in Dublin, I was keen.

It’s lovely to read the source material for the film adaptation of this book, but I wonder if it didn’t taint my experience somewhat. I love the film enormously, and the characters are so vivid and wonderful that it was hard to see them split amongst several other characters in the book. There was a more sprawling cast in the book, which left me veering about a little bit.

An interesting one this. I picked it up in a ‘start a new series’ sale and was interested to see how it would differentiate itself from other action and adventure books. It certainly did that! It stands up well in terms of the writing, the characters and the way the action unfolds, but it didn’t quite hold together for me.

I knew nothing about this book when I picked it up to read, I suspect even it might have been the cover that tempted me to buy it. I’m so glad I did, though, because it’s an intriguing little mystery of a book full of bizarre but fascinating characters.

Good album, I love Jay-Z’s style and he’s surrounded himself with a good variety of guests here. The Justin Timberlake track is a stand out one for me, but otherwise I’m not sure this is a total classic. Quite a lot of Beyoncé squeezed in, too. Good listen overall.

You have to love Dolly Parton, she has a voice that is both powerful but also stacked with emotion and oftentimes seeming quite vulnerable. There’s just something about her voice and her songs that draws you in. The album also features her full set from Glastonbury, as sort of a second half, so that’s an absolute bonus!

We haven’t seen the original Cloverfield film, and having seen trailers of it, the found footage nature of it doesn’t really appeal to me anyway. This one, however, seemed much more interesting so we were keen to give it a go. John Goodman doing a turn as the creepy guy in a bunker was brilliant and terrifying at the same time. And I absolutely loved how kick-ass Mary Winstead’s character was, resourceful and clever, brave without being irritating.

I wasn’t expecting much from this Olympics, I’ll be honest. It felt like there was no way Team GB could live up to their amazing performance at the home games in London, there was so much talk of drug cheats and athletes being banned, several athletes opting not go due to potential Zika/health problems, and on top of all that the concerns that Rio would be able to pull it all off without a hitch anyway.

I listened to the audiobook of this, read by the excellent Rory Kinnear, who embodied the spirit of Bond really well. The clipped way the story is told is at first a little jarring but it soon gets you into the protagonist’s head - Bond has to live his life like that, constantly surveying, assessing danger, short, sharp movements to stay alive.

At the start, there were a lot of people to try and place, link together, and keep track of, so it felt like it was going to be hard work. But the main bulk of the film only requires a handful so it’s much easier to follow. I loved that it was, for the most part, playing out in real time, which added proper tension and drama to the situation. Quick decisions were required, and you could feel the vital seconds ticking by as discussions continued.

Danny Wallace’s novels follow the pattern he set for himself as a non-fiction writer, in that characters go on bizarre adventures and learn meaningful life lessons along the way. Charlotte Street was about following the clues from a set of photographs, Tom Ditto is about following people themselves.

The continuing saga of the Clifton and Barrington families this time took on a more vicious vibe, as it was revenge and retribution all the way. Having discovered the outcome of the last cliffhanger, it was clear we were just going to wend our way towards another, and naturally the events in between each were of the page-turner variety.

An interesting idea for a book, this. It’s simply a collection of interviews with Scottish crime authors, transcribed to provide insight into their motivations, their writing processes, and what they think of the genres their books are considered to be in and out of.

Loved this album, it was so wonderfully of the 90s. It also reminded me of the scene in Ted where he talks about the vowel songs of that era. A-E-I-O-U! Fab stuff anyway, mostly upbeat pop rock, catchy lyrics, right up my street.

I listened to this purely because they made an appearance on Nashville, and found it to be just a bit too country for me. However, there were some good songs on there (and some not so good, what is up with Ship-faced?) So many alcohol references, too, I felt drunk just listening!

I recently stumbled across an old note I made, after listening to an episode of Inside Science from the BBC. It’s a fantastic space quote about setting up lunar fuel depots, discussing the prospect of solving the problem whereby you need to take off from Earth with all the fuel to get where you’re going. If you can break that barrier, more remote areas of space become possible. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

This book followed in the same fashion as the previous Clifton Chronicles, and was just as gripping - following the fortunes of various family members as they dip in and out of each other’s lives. It was fun reading about the squabbles of siblings, although I was less interested in the machinations of Giles attempting to retain his seat as MP.

The second in the Clifton Chronicles trilogy picks up exactly where the previous book left off, and follows a similar pattern: tracking the movements of each character before moving onto another, revisiting some previous events before moving the story along.

Was worried about listening to this one, it’s so highly regarded. Luckily, I quite liked it although some of the tracks verged into too much screaming, which I can’t stand. The more sedate tracks are brilliant, though, and there’s a clear and moving talent there.

More pop than indie rock, I really enjoyed this album. Although there’s a similarity to other bands, it stands out because of its nostalgic feel – the first half of the album is very 80s, and the second half sounds like it has been plucked straight from the 90s, and both are a lot of fun to listen to!

I was looking for a fiction book about ballet and this one popped up at exactly the right time. It traces the interweaving lives of several ballet dancers, male and female, plus their extended friends and family. The book moves forward through time quite rapidly, but then dips back again and again, so that each time you learn more about events.

It felt like the film grew and grew on me as we watched. You have to really stick with it at the start because she’s not a nice character at all, even knowing what happened to her. But, just as she herself goes on a journey, she drags you along with her and I grew to love the character and the story, and really started rooting for everyone involved until I was super caught up and emotional about the whole thing!

It was a good story, but missing some elements (in an unfortunate coincidence with the title), which were then fleshed out with areas of too much detail. Where the kidnapping and underlying plot are great modern situations, there didn’t seem to be quite enough peril, enough haste, much of anything standing in the way of the good guys getting to the answer. There was little doubt over who did it and he quite literally led them to the answers.

It’s exactly because of the recommendations given to me for this book series that I have been reluctant to start - a proper page turner that you can’t put down, is how it was described to me and boy was that an accurate description.

I am confident that someday in the future The Rock, who was once a professional wrestler, will run for president of the United States, and I think that he will win. I have seen with my own eyes the power of The Rock. The Rock is a uniter, not a divider. When the BOP showed Walking Tall, the turnout for every screening all weekend long was unprecedented. The Rock has an effect on women that transcends divisions of race, age, cultural background – even social class, the most impenetrable barrier in America. Black, white, Spanish, old, young, all women are hot for The Rock. Even the lesbians agreed that he was mighty easy on the eyes.

I haven’t read a book in this sort of summer-time holiday read genre for a long time but seeing it was written by the wonderful Celia Imrie, I thought I’d give it a go. I suspect it is aimed at women slightly older than myself, but that didn’t stop it being a fun read - sort of the novel equivalent of the Best Marigold Hotel film.