Read
Miami Blues by Charles Willeford
Willeford wrote like a dream and filled his crime novels with wonderfully off kilter characters.

March Violets by Philip Kerr
I could see that this is well written and […]

I’d like to add Bad Company to the list. Set during the civil war it centres on a young man who is escaping the draft and falls in with a gang of youthful criminals. The gang start out excited by the adventure […]

Enjoyed this podcast very much and thought I’d add my own two pennies worth.

I can’t remember the first Bond movie I saw – possibly Dr No on the telly in the mid 70s. The one I really remember was Goldfinger. […]

Haven’t posted for a while, so this is a bit of catch up of the last couple of months.
Read:
The man who came uptown by George Pelecanos.
Pelecanos serves up his usual, reliable combination of chewy, a […]

Hats – Blue Nile
Brotherhood – New Order
Joshua Tree – U2
Songs of Faith and Devotion – Depeche Mode
Out of Time – REM

Bubbling under
Tunnel of Love – Springsteen
Goodbye Jumbo – World Party
Of the […]

Read
IQ By Joe Ide
This LA set, modern take on the Sherlock Holmes story riffs on the Hound of the Baskervilles. The book is populated by a cast of weirdoes including a drug addled rapper, his coterie of hangers […]

Read
Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky – I rarely read SciFi but this one piqued my interest. In a near future, bioengineering has created militarised versions of animals that are being used to fight wars ( […]

Read this at the weekend (in a sci fi novel about bio engineering, of all things).

“Change hurts, but it hurts most those who shackle themselves to the past.”

Seemed apposite to Gill’s commentary about those […]

There are plenty of films that I would happily sit through on multiple occasions, but they aren’t on the telly very often.

Of the ones that seem on hard rotation on ITV / film 4 I can easily get caught up […]

Does ‘Hats’ by The Blue Nile count?

D’oh!
Wishful thinking I guess.

Seen
I’m enjoying The Good Place; a high concept sit-com in which an admin error results in a feckless woman being sent to heaven by mistake. Weird, imaginative and inventive with writing credits by Dylan M […]

Got the heads up from Goodreads. I knew the book was on its way this year and was looking forward to it – so went to the sneak peek expectantly.

The summary and the excerpt were meant to whet the appetite but […]

I liked when Baker launched into a game of hand shake poker (i.e. who is the most famous person you have met) and threw down his hand – the Beatles. Which I guess he uses to bulldoze most rooms.
Then Lineker said […]

And ‘we fear change’

Danny B mentions the show regularly on the podcast he does with Gary Lineker. Recently talked about how Alan Sugar had plod come round his house to threaten arrest (Danny had been telling […]

Shiny Happy Monsters, the version they recorded on Sesame Street is pretty special, though. Even super serious Stipe cracks a smile.

Another Spurs fan – born in the hospital just down the road. All mum’s family from that neck of the woods and all Spurs fans. I had a season ticket for about 10 years – which started with Klinsmann and the […]

True, the plot is transparent and the jeopardy part is resolved in moments. But that’s OK as I thought that the heart of the film was the grief that the family was feeling after its terrible loss. And that Mary […]

Seen
A Star is Born got some rave reviews but I found it a little too melodramatic for my tastes. Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga had a nice on screen chemistry, the concerts were well staged and the final scene […]