Recently read 2

Posted on February 17, 2011 by blogmywiki

Time to dump my overlong ‘Recently Read’ sidebar cruft into a post…

The Dead by Charlie Higson. Prequel to The Enemy – everyone over the age of 14 is dead or a zombie. Excellent stuff. Eldest son quite rightly loved this. Slow work though, because I don’t want to take the autographed hardback to work, and even I do not like reading this just before sleep!
Moab is my Washpot by Stephen Fry – another £2.84 Kindle bargain. I learned that Mr Fry is neither quite as clever nor as likeable as I’d imagined.
The Snowman by Jo Nesbø – my first paid-for Kindle book, a snip at £2.60. Fantastic. Chilling.
Monstroso by Charlie Higson. My 8-year-old loved this and it got him reading. Respect!
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz. I love it so much. Too much. Can’t decide to whether to give up writing or use this as inspiration.
The Redbreast by Jo Nesbø A bit trickier to follow than The Redeemer. Got a bit bogged down in WW2 in the middle. Still good though.

The Haçienda: How Not to Run a Club by Peter Hook. Utterly depressing. Not what I expected. Actually glad I never set foot in the place now.
The Enemy by Charlie Higson. Excellent. Kept my eldest son awake at night!
The Redeemer by Jo Nesbø – just STUNNINGLY good. Fantastic, multi-layered Scandanavian police procedural / thriller. So much better than Stieg Larsson.

The Last Kestrel by Jill McGivering.
Silverfin – The Graphic Novel by Charlie Higson and Kev Walker. Excellent, hope this helps encourage my younger son to read more.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest by Stieg Larsson. Top tip: read the Nora Ephron parody instead and save time!
Doctor Who: Nightshade by Mark Gatiss – free on Stanza but prob shouldnae be.
The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson. Okay, so Blomqvist shags the 1 woman he missed in book 1 – then it turns in to some sort of thriller or something.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. I am the last person on my train to read this. Not the book I was expecting. Not a sophisticated multi-layered Wallander kind of thing. And, oh dear, is there any woman who won’t drop her knickers for Blomqvist?

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RIP Trish Keenan

Posted on January 14, 2011 by blogmywiki

I’m so sad and stunned that Broadcast singer Trish Keenan has died of pneumonia following swine flu. Her voice was so haunting and beautiful and – to be selfish for a minute – I never got to see Broadcast perform live.

I always imagined a film of my book Constance Breakwater would have a lot of her voice on the soundtrack. One of the chapters was named after a Broadcast song – Ominous Cloud. Colour Me In and Lunch Hour Pops would be in there too.

And, again selfishly, I wish my flu jab were sooner. Another few days away.

I just listened to The Little Bell. In this context the lyrics are even more heart-breaking than ever:

The little bell lies on the ground
Although it tries it cannot sound
It used to ring across the air
Its sweetened tone would linger there

But from a careless hand it rocked
Its shell is only made of crock
Although it lies there split in two
It still tries to ring out to you

Now deep inside my wooden clock
There is a tick but not a tock
Although into the room it chimes
It only tells me half the time

Why do you leave me so confused
I’ll miss my bus, my job I’ll lose
Oh what is wrong my wooden clock
It breaks my heart to see you stop

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Why I don’t get Instagram

Posted on January 11, 2011 by blogmywiki

Circuit diagram & spares insideMaybe I’m too old, maybe even I’m just getting a bit jaded with the faded faux Polaroid aesthetic – but I really don’t get Instagram.

Instagram is a suddenly fashionable iPhone camera and social networking thing that aims to snatch Hipstamatic’s crown. I love Hipstamatic – I think it’s an insanely clever bit of programming, design and marketing. I wish it tweeted and could geotag Flickr uploads, but aside from those small niggles I love it to bits.

Instagram has quite a neat camera, but to get to the camera you have to sign up and sign in – yes, welcome to yet another social network.

The social side of Instagram baffles me (probably no surprise to anyone who knows me). You can browse popular photos and popular people, but this seems like another self-fulfilling, self-perpetuating party of the kind I just don’t get invited to. It’s Flickr Explore only worse – as it’s the only marketplace in town. I want to browse the UNpopular photos, find the billy-no-mates who might have some hidden gems.

Instagram seamlessly integrates Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Posterous, Foursquare – and of course the Instagram social network. So I guess it’s great if you use lots of those and have loads of contacts who also have Instagram – but I only use Flickr and Twitter and I have precisely one contact with Instagram (hello Clare!).

Still, made a few ok pictures with it. I just wish it was just a camera.

Nagra dials

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6 great albums you’ve never heard

Posted on December 29, 2010 by blogmywiki

Inspired by the NME’s ’100 Greatest Albums You’ve Never Heard’, here are my six nominations.

Giant by The Woodentops (Rough Trade, 1986).
They suffered from the Curse of Morrissey: Mozzer would namecheck a band, have them support The Smiths on tour… and then they would sink without trace. But Giant is an amazing slice of frenetic, life-affirming guitar pop. It’s not without its darker moments too, and like all good music it’s hard to say exactly what this sounds like or what Rolo McGinty had been listening to.

Happiness by The Beloved (WEA, 1990).
Not a perfect album by any means – there are duff tracks – but another life-affirming pop record: electro-pop this time. Beautiful melodies, synths and beats and words that make me swoon and feel happy to be alive. 

Consequences by Godley and Creme (Mercury, 1977).
As curator of Mr Blint’s Attic, a website devoted to this album, I have to choose this. An extraordinarily bloated, over-blown, over-ambitious triple concept album. Weaved between a play written by Peter Cook (and mostly performed by him in a variety of roles) are some hauntingly beautiful songs written by Godley and Creme as they split from 10cc to show off a new musical instrument they had invented: the Gizmo, which bows the strings of a guitar.

Mummer by XTC (Virgin, 1983).
That difficult sixth album. The band was falling apart, they were ditched by their US record label, they changed producers, changed studios, nothing was going right. Yet amidst it all they produced a beautiful piece of English pastoral music, highlights including the sublime ‘Love on a Farmboy’s Wages’, ‘Ladybird’ and Colin Moulding’s lovesong to church graveyards, ‘In Loving Memory of a Name’.

Reading, Writing and Arithmetic by The Sundays (Rough Trade, 1990).
It’s the lyrics. It’s just Harriet Gavurin’s mad, mad, bloody wonderful lyrics. I won the war in the sitting room… in a dress dress dress I’ve been sick on. And around this time, My Finest Hour really was the time I found a pound on the Undergound.

Reproduction by The Human League. (Virgin, 1979).
I can’t explain why I love this so much but it’s probably always going to be my very favourite album ever. Utterly bonkers. A late 1970s futuristic, and yet medieval, vision of… something. Oh and there’s a cover of ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’. Not a duff track on it. Genius.

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Blink, always with the Blink…

Posted on November 5, 2010 by blogmywiki

A while back a friend said to me “You Moffat-ites are all the same, you all cite Blink… yeah, yeah, time travel, big deal…”

Well, yes we do cite Blink. I think it’s not just the best episode of Doctor Who ever, it’s one of the best bits of TV ever.

Blink was on BBC Three tonight. Again. We all watched it. For probably the 17th time.

I love it more than ever. Yes, the great lines: “What’s so great about sad?” “It’s happy – for deep people.” “Why does nobody ever call the police?” “Life is short and you are hot.” “It’s a phone number. Not a promise. Not an IOU.”

Yes, the music and shots of the angels at the windows of Westerdrumlins are spooky and Diana-Rigg-era-Avengers-worthy.

Yes, Sally Sparrow is the greatest assistant the Doctor never had. But Sally Sparrow is gone.

Tonight the sheer pathos of the line “Life is long and you are hot” hit me, delivered by Billy later on the same day that Sally first met him, but – literally – a lifetime away for poor Billy.

And then it struck me. And I am probably going to regret this. But part of the thing about Blink was that it was, at the time of first transmission, the first rampantly heterosexual episode of Doctor Who in some time.

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