(courtesy Ultimo Press) Good lord but I love books which go deep and hard and yet which still manage to feel light and accessible too. There’s a real art to investing huge amounts of meaningful heart and drama into stories with a fantastical airy premise and it’s clear pretty much Continue Reading
Yummy baked scary delights … or are they? Is It Cake? Halloween 2026
(courtesy Showbiz Junkies (c) Netflix) Cake is something that you presume you will be far happier munching on than evaluating since surely all the pleasure is in the creamy, gnashy, fondanty taste and not the look, no matter how artistic and hyperealistic. But it turns out that watching people bake Continue Reading
Peanuts Halloween special review: The Snoopy Show: The Curse of the Fuzzy Face
(courtesy Halloween Specials Wiki) While Snoopy remains as culturally ubiquitous as ever and Peanuts is still one of the most popular comic strips out there, that has more to do these days with the number of specials and TV shows that keep popping up on AppleTV than anything else these Continue Reading
New releases October book review: Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus
(courtesy Allen & Unwin – Australia) It’s an interesting exercise diving into the sophomore follow-up to the debut effort of an author which was globally super popular and a phenomenon on all kinds of levels unto itself. For a start, millions of people around the world have been waiting eagerly Continue Reading
Float away and save the planet with Cloud Girl
(courtesy Animation Magazine) SNAPSHOTCloud Girl tells the story of an 11-year-old avid reader entrusted with a magical quill that can grant any wish it writes. When she wishes to fly and for her guinea pig, Airbag, to talk, the duo embark on a dangerous adventure to save the planet. The Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #146: U2, Bash Croft, The Linda Lindas, New Constellations + Lykke Li
(via Shutterstock) The glorious thing about music is that you’re constantly finding and discovering new artists to add to the ones you’ve known for ages and ages, all of them mixing together into a lifelong playlist which soundtracks who you are every step of the way. In this post’s selection, Continue Reading
Want some hilariously hellish hospitality? Thoughts on Haunted Hotel returns S2
(courtesy IMP Awards) It may come as a surprise to those seeing a blog full-to-bursting of Halloween posts this October that this reviewer is not one for horror. That may seem to be a small and niggling liability in a season devoted to horror, both its manifestation and banishment, but Continue Reading
Halloween picture book review: The Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt by Riel Nason (writer) and Byron Eggenschwiler (artist)
(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) There is an inestimable delight to opening a picture book and falling into a story which delivers imaginative and poetic wordplay and vividly arresting, often gorgeous illustrations; it doesn’t matter whether you are reading them to endlessly eager nieces and nephews (in my case) or simply Continue Reading
New release October book review: Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) We live in an age where people are, with a few notable exceptions, divorced from the natural world, or what’s left of it, around them. We catch our trains, eat at our favourite restaurants and live our concrete-clad, digitally buttressed lives without any sense of the Continue Reading
The Halloween short and the short of it: The haunting impact of Night of the Living Dread
SNAPSHOTWhen a power cut ruins Ruby’s bedtime routine, she finds herself haunted by some unwanted guests. The only way for Ruby to get a peaceful night of sleep is to confront her visitors. (courtesy Laughing Squid) What’s scarier than zombies and vampires and aliens and ghosts and werewolves and any Continue Reading