It’s coming up to Christmas and I’m starting a new series – The 12 Days of Christmas. There’s going to be book reviews, movie reviews, thoughts on the best Christmas movies and some Christmas present suggestions. Up until about two weeks ago I hadn’t really started …
Archives for December 2011
Almost 4 million British children don’t own a book
7 December 2011 by Leave a Comment
Of all the news stories I’ve read recently, this is undoubtedly the most depressing. According to a survey by the National Literacy Trust almost 4 million children in Britain do not own a book. This represents almost one third of the kids in the UK, a massive rise from one in ten in 2005. I find this really quite upsetting, I think back to my own childhood and how many books I had and the magical lands that they took me to…
Independence Day
7 December 2011 by 3 Comments
My husband has been away on a training course for a few days and I’ve been left home alone. I always have such civilised plans – good food, classic films and reading serious books. It never works. I usually sit up until 2 in the morning eating Super Noodles and watching mindless blockbusters…
Les Mis – Some Good News
6 December 2011 by Leave a Comment
As regular readers know I am half excited and half terrified by the forthcoming movie version of my favourite musical, Les Miserables. The recent announcement that rising star Eddie Redmayne had been cast as Marius was a real relief, I couldn’t have stood it if Nick Jonas had got the role. More good news came this week from director Tom Hooper who has confirmed that filming would be in 2D rather than 3D
The Ghost
6 December 2011 by 3 Comments
There are some authors whose books you take to straight away – for me those authors include Jilly Cooper and John Grisham. There are others that can take a little more time to get used to. It took me a while to get into Ian Rankin, now I count him as one of my favourite crime writers so I generally find it worth persisting….
Hot Fuzz
5 December 2011 by Leave a Comment
In Shaun of the Dead Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost brilliantly parodied zombie movies, while at the same time creating a damn good film which fits nicely into the list of great horror films. The follow-up, Hot Fuzz…
Top Ten: Movie Presidents
2 December 2011 by 4 Comments
He’s the most powerful man in the world. Makes the decisions that will affect us all – no matter which country we live in, has his finger on the nuclear button and is often the target of assassination plots. He is called upon to save the world…
“Biography” of cancer wins award
1 December 2011 by Leave a Comment
The Emperor of All Maladies, a biography of cancer by oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee, has won The Guardian First Book award and the £10,000 prize. Mukherjee’s book beat four novels on the shortlist including Booker nominated Pigeon English. Started as a small journal attempting to answer patients’ questions about their illness, the book grew…
The Greenhouse
1 December 2011 by Leave a Comment
Last year, along with my husband and a couple of friends, I embarked on a challenge we called EuroFifty. We intended to visit all 50 countries in Europe within one year. Unfortunately we didn’t quite manage to visit the entire continent…