January 24, 2026 – SparklyPrettyBriiiight

What an extraordinary story. As you reach the end of Outlaw Planet by M. R. Carey, one of the finest contemporary voices working in science fiction and fantasy, you will be consumed by the idea that here is one of the very best and most human stories you have ever Continue Reading

Book review: Outlaw Planet by M. R. Carey

Songs, songs and more songs #131: A Thousand Mad Things, Haute & Freddy, The Anahit, Robyn and Hatchie

(via Shutterstock) I love disappearing down rabbit holes. Not actual rabbit holes, of course; that’s best left to the family Laporidae I think; rather, the digital version where one discovery leads to another leads to another, usually on YouTube for me where so many songs and trailers and clips await. Continue Reading

Book review: Run for the Hills by Kevin Wilson

This book was read at Kalimna, Yeranda cottages, near Dungog in early January 2026. At first glance, a novel premised on the idea that one man, moving across America over some decades, managed to start, and crucially, abandon, four families, who then seek to unite many years later via a Continue Reading

Comic strip review: Unsupervised: A Crabgrass Comics Adventure by Tauhid Bondia

This book was read at Kalimna, Yeranda cottages, near Dungog in early January 2026. Ah, the carefree joys and fun of childhood. As adults, we all look back to that time of our life, or we are supposed, with a wistful, sigh-laced nostalgia, having lost all of the playfulness and Continue Reading

Journey to Laika’s Wildwood where magic takes flight

(courtesy Laika Studios) SNAPSHOTStep inside Laika’s Wildwood, where a powerful golden eagle commands the skies and magic takes flight. Wildwood – based on Colin Meloy’s illustrated book series – will see Prue McKeel leave behind her home of Portland, Oregon, venturing into Wildwood on a dark quest to save her Continue Reading

Book review: Bookish by Matthew Sweet

This book was read at Kalimna, Yeranda cottages, near Dungog in early January 2026. In the usual course of pop culture back and forth, a TV or streaming show would be watched in that medium, and then, the eager viewer would turn, if they were so inclined, to the book Continue Reading

Movie review: Rental Family

(courtesy IMP Awards) People are not very good at bring authentic. We talk a big name about laying your heart on the line or wearing it on your sleeve, and to be fair sizeable number of people do just that, but by and large, many of us play pretend about Continue Reading

Book review: The Naked Neanderthal by Ludovic Slimak

This book was read at Kalimna, Yeranda cottages, near Dungog in early January 2026 It is perhaps inevitable that we filter everything we see through our well-entrenched worldview. Try as we might to look beyond what we intrinsically know and understand, and it is to course possible to do that, Continue Reading

Weekend movie poster art: Character posters for GOAT

(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTFrom Sony Pictures Animation, the studio behind Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, comes GOAT, an original action-comedy set in an all-animal world. The story follows Will (voiced by Caleb McLaughlin), a small goat with big dreams who gets a once-in-a-lifetime shot to join the pros and play roarball Continue Reading

Movie review: Marty Supreme

(courtesy IMP Awards) It is a rare thing indeed in this information-saturated, preview-addicted, spoiler-suffused, endlessly-reviewed digital world of ours that anything subverts and surprises and blows expectations well and truly out of the water. Marty Supreme, starring recent Golden Globe winner Timothée Chalamet as the titular character, Marty Mauser and Continue Reading