Tag: Consumption

Book review: The Magic Cottage

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Magic Cottage: NTWThe Magic Cottage by James Herbert
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I recently spent some time in hospital, and thought this work might make a good companion. From the blurb, it suggested a zippy, not thoroughly taxing read. Fair enough, I thought: I’ll zip through it while waiting for day surgery and that will be that. Popcorn consumed.

So somehow, it’s ten days later and I’ve only just finished it. And why? Because I kept feeling like I had to flog myself onwards toward a finish line that wasn’t really worth it when I got over it.

Ugh. Continue reading “Book review: The Magic Cottage” →

Borderlands and breaking ice

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This post may contain spoilers for Tales From The Borderlands and Cryostasis. If you’re planning on playing either of those you might want to read this later, perhaps. 

I’ve recently finished playing Borderlands 2, a 100-odd hour epic jaunt which I mostly enjoyed. While I had reached my fill of that game’s mechanics, I was not quite ready to leave the world that had been created, so I decided to whip through Telltale’s episodic Tales From The Borderlands adventure game to get my fill of Handsome Jack action. (Jacktion? Ew.)

Continue reading “Borderlands and breaking ice” →

Book review: List of the Lost

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List of the LostList of the Lost by Morrissey
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Oh, Manchester. So much to answer for.

Look, I’m not going to lie. I’m a Morrissey fan. A big Morrissey fan. I wasn’t for a long time, but then something suddenly made sense, and I was all in on the guy. Smiths, solo, everything. I thought his Autobiography was compelling, and in places a lot more sweetly honest than any observer of the artist’s turn of phrase could have expected.

And now, this. It’s a novella, once again on Penguin, ostensibly about a team of runners in 1970s Boston. Who accidentally kill a vagrant-appearing demon and then are cursed.

Wait, what? Continue reading “Book review: List of the Lost” →

Book review: Girl in a Band: A Memoir

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Girl in a Band: A MemoirGirl in a Band: A Memoir by Kim Gordon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The title of Kim Gordon’s autobiography is a neat reduction of how she’s been interpreted by media outlets and observers for years: the girl in the most apparently sausagefesty of bands, the fringe-and-pedals, truculent beast that was Sonic Youth. It is, naturally, reductive, a fiction pushed by those who’d copy to file, or those whose musical penates was the Kim and Thurston power couple.

The quote on the back of the book – pulled from its instant-in first chapter – best describes the artist’s feelings of being observed, categorised.

Onstage, people have told me, I’m opaque or mysterious or enigmatic or even cold. But more than any of those things, I’m extremely shy and sensitive, as if I can feel all the emotions swirling around a room. And believe me when I say that once you push past my persona, there aren’t any defenses there at all.

Of course, I’m guilty of this reduction. I like to defend this with the acknowledgement that Sonic Youth are a band I seem to ‘get’ more now that I’m older: I had some albums when I was growing up, but I always seemed to miss something, that there was a big secret that I couldn’t understand, an enjoyment others had that I couldn’t grasp. I couldn’t get a read on Gordon: she seemed like she took no shit, from my limited pre-internet knowledge, and that probably frightened me, as teenage-terrible as I was parsing women. Continue reading “Book review: Girl in a Band: A Memoir” →

Farewell, Handsome Jack!

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Today was the day I finished playing Borderlands 2.

Well, let me clarify. It’s the day I finished the main story and reached the New Game Plus mode. It’s a point I’ve reached after playing on and off since before Christmas, and according to Steam’s inbuilt counter, I’ve spent just over 100 hours reaching this point.

That’s four-and-a-bit days straight. Continue reading “Farewell, Handsome Jack!” →

Book review: Levels of Life

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Levels of LifeLevels of Life by Julian Barnes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This, a short book in three parts, is as accomplished a work as you’d expect from a long-term, much-awarded novelist such as Julian Barnes. It’s a meditation on flight (ballooning, in particular), photography and grief, and while the first two sections of the book focus on historical figures’ experience of those areas, the final third is about Barnes’ own grief, over the death of his wife.

The first two sections, detailing loves and legs lost in the pursuit of amour and altitude – with a cast including Sarah Bernhardt, Fred Burnaby and Félix Tournachon – are well written but also somewhat disconnected from the final chapter. They fit together well enough, and the lack of a complete mesh is forgivable given that this is writing informed by deep grief, but sometimes the paths from start to end seem a little forced. The turn of phrase are still effortlessly polished; describing his wife’s illness as “37 days from diagnosis to death” is brilliantly economical, indicative of the rapidity with which death can make itself known. Continue reading “Book review: Levels of Life” →

Book review: Hebridean Sharker

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Hebridean SharkerHebridean Sharker by Tex Geddes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Tex Geddes is very well-spoken. At least, his written voice is well-spoken. I suppose that I’d somehow expected him to write in a kind of Irvine Welsh-style rendition of accent, partially because his story is a deeply Scottish one – cold beauty and rough elemental life – and partially because he was, as far as I can ascertain, a mad old bastard. As you’d expect from a man who spent a lot of time shark-fishing, game-stalking, and convincing the British government that as the Laird of Soay, he needed a postal service goddamnit.

This link will take you to a write-up of his life on wikipedia, but I think it’s important to highlight the fact that he died while returning home from a bagpiping competition. Continue reading “Book review: Hebridean Sharker” →

Dirty Three: State Theatre, Sydney

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Tonight’s sold-out Sydney Festival show brought one of Australia’s most shambolically brilliant (and beloved) bands to the ornate surrounds of the State Theatre as part of a lightning-quick visit back home. It’s the first time the band have played Sydney in four years – to be fair, they do have a pretty packed playing-with-other-people schedule – and excitement is high, judging by the amount of people who’re already seated for the first act. Continue reading “Dirty Three: State Theatre, Sydney” →