Stuart MacBride - Dying Light

I wondered why I felt so miserable and negative this morning - could be from an overdose of the grit and realism, serial-killers, arsonists, and drug-dealing thugs in this book , along with a reader of crime-thrillers, who isn't quite clever enough to frame her hated neighbour for her cheating husband's murder.

Yes, well-written, yes atmospheric, but somehow I started to feel complicit and a voyeur, and that ain't nice.

Hot Fuzz

Crazy, hilarious, full of over the top violence, referring to various other films on the way. I wouldn't expect it to be my kind of film, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Sheer escapism, in spite of the blood and gore, which was so far out as to meet itself coming back.

Stephen Booth - Blood on the Tongue

I'm a sucker for books set in the Peak District, and for crime novels, so this has to be a winner.

Edendale is apparently based in Hathersage, as seen from Surprise View, but the place has something of the atmosphere of Matlock , to my mind.

The events in this book take place around the Snake Pass and Bleaklow area. Irontongue Hill, (an invented name) is the site of a World War 2 air crash. Investigations of suspicious deaths in the area sixty years later involve the descendants of two of the crew, the only survivor from the crash, and a man who had witnessed the scene as an eight-year-old. There is interesting information on the Polish community, too.
Booth's main police characters Ben Cooper and Diane Fry and the tensions between them hold the story together tightly.

Shrek 3

Oh dear - another film I used as an excuse to doze off in front of the TV. Very sweet, very moral, and not the fault of the film that I couldn't keep my eyes open. We were all puzzled by the fact that Prince Charming looked so much like the 'real' prince, but no plot twist was created from this.

Andrew Kennedy and poems

At Uppingham again. They really bring some high quality performers in here. Both the singer, Andrew Kennedy and his accompanist, Iain Burnside were outstanding. They bounded on the stage like over-enthusiastic puppies, but their music had nothing amateur about it.



I generally find baritones easier on the ear than tenors, but this one could convince me. The songs, from around 1900-1930 were varied, although I would have liked to see the words - I can never disentangle words from music when something is sung. AE Housman's poems with their contrast between lyrical pastoralism and the horror of war.

I'm still in the process of seeking some of the words out, and I shall need to find the songs too.

La Vie en Rose

Absorbing story of Edith Piaf's life. Superb visually -reminded me of various painters A lot of the inside scenes had the dark colours and lighting effects of Degas, Cezanne, Van Gogh , even the poster colours of Toulouse Lautrec. I'm thinking of the scene where Titine and the child Edith are wearing clown-style lipstick. A few beach scenes rather like Monet's Normandy paintings.

Edith herself had a wretched background. She was abandoned by her mother, dumped on her grandmother who ran a brothel, torn away from there by her father who was a circus acrobat and contortionist. She started her career as a singer on the Paris streets. She had a daughter who died of meningitis. As she became famous and successful, she continued to abuse alcohol and drugs. The love of her life, boxer Marcel Cerdan, died in a plane crash. In the end she seemed totally trapped by her role as the suffering star.

Marion Cotillard acted the part superbly, bringing out the pathos and the self-centred arrogance.
I did start to lose concentration during the long deathbed scene with flashbacks, but it's a film I could easily watch again.

The Englishman who went up a hill..

Well, here's another film I didn't manage to stay awake for. It isn't the film's fault. It's simply that when I sit down in front of the TV, my brain seems to think that if I'm not tapping at a keyboard, or doing something more active, then it's a good time to switch right off.

I rather enjoyed the scenery, and the locals, and the whole set up, but it's going to go on my list of films to finish watching. Like Breakfast at Tiffany's, I guess. Oh dear.

Catching up with myself.

Edith Sitwell - I found a book by her in the cottage at Melmerby. The Queens and the Hive. Read only a tiny bit though.

Old Curiosity Shop - I have now finished reading. Take it slowly and don't rush to follow the plot seems to be the key. Enjoy the diversions, the characters and the scenes.

Tiffany's - of course I shall have to re-read the book now - Truman Capote.
Seems I need a wander round the local and not-so-local secondhand book shops, or possibly just search online. Though that's less interesting.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Oh, the annoyingness of Holly Golightly in this film. So pretty, so impulsive, so unwilling to let her free spirit be tied down.

At the end I rather wanted her to go lightly into her lonely future, but instead all was well, and she was reunited with the soggy ginger cat she'd pushed out into the rain, and with her reliable writer Paul.

I confess I need to watch this sometime when I am not drifting off to sleep after a three hour drive earlier in the day.