(courtesy YouTube (c) AppleTV+) EPISODE 4: “The Tunnel”You can understand why humanity is sitting on a high at this episode opens since it’s blown seven alien ships out of the sky thanks to coordinated nuclear strikes – go Mitsuki Yamato (Shioli Kutsuna) and your weird alien conversing ways and eerily Continue Reading
Books
Book review: Death to Anyone Who Reads This (A Found Novel) by Hugh Howey and Elinor Taylor
Apocalypses are, as a rule, not exactly places of merriment and jollity. The human race has been decimated, if it survives much at all, zombies/aliens/malevolent viruses/ naturally violent phenomenon stalk the land and civilisation are we know it is toast and likely to remain so in one of those evolutionary Continue Reading
Book review: The Porcupine of Truth by Bill Konigsberg
(courtesy Arthur A. Levine books) If a book has a quirky title, it’s a better than even bet than this reviewer will pick it up, hold it close and not yield it to anyone, save for the person at the bookstore (you know, because paying for things is good, not Continue Reading
Book review: Viewer Discretion Advised by Angus Stevens
(courtesy Shawline Publishing Group) For something so hyped and lauded and revered, life certainly fails to deliver much of the time on its great promise. We all enter it expecting the absolute best and on an epic scale that defies imagination and hands over the keys to all the good Continue Reading
Christmas preview book review: The Gingerbread House at Mistletoe Gardens by Jaimie Admans
(courtesy Rakuten Kobo) By their very nature, books set around Christmas are supposed to be extra specially magical and joyful, a sizeable step away from the grim sheen of reality, festooned with sparkling lights, awash in mulled wine and festive-coloured candy with the air filled with the expressively happy tones Continue Reading
Book review: The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt
(courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing) Is it ever too late to turn your life around? All too often we think it is, figuring far too much water has flowed under the bridge and we haven’t got a hope of diverting it or purifying it and that who we are now is whom Continue Reading
Book review: Love Match by Clare Fletcher
(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) Being your real life is not as easy as it’s cracked up to be. Sure, there is a slew of movies, books, poems, TV shows and all kinds of other media dedicated to merrily and inspiringly advancing the idea that there’s nothing better than outwardly displayed, Continue Reading
Rot begins at the edges, long before it reaches the heart: Foundation (S2, E6-8)
(courtesy YouTube (c) AppleTV+) Episode 6 – “Why the Gods Made Me”You get the impression that when Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) first devised his maths-based theory of psychohistory that he must have bloodlessly and impassionately put it all together, convinced that while he was saving humanity, the actual affairs and Continue Reading
Where the real world and imagination meet: Winnie-the-Pooh & the Hundred-Acre Wood
(courtesy Wikipedia) SNAPSHOTIn this video, we’ll look at the story of how Winnie-the-Pooh pays so much attention to place, and how the map of the Hundred-Acre Wood, drawn by E.H. Shepard, allows us all to visit childhood for a little while. (courtesy Laughing Squid (c) Great Maps Explained) One of Continue Reading
Book review: The Legend of Charlie Fish by Josh Rountree
(courtesy Tachyon Publications / cover by John Coulthart) If you believe the adage that good things come in small packages then you are going to love the perfectly formed succinctness of Josh Rountree’s slim but powerful The Legend of Charlie Fish. Set at the turn of the twentieth century with Continue Reading