SNAPSHOTPaddington is happily settled with the Brown family in Windsor Gardens, where he has become a popular member of the community, spreading joy and marmalade wherever he goes. While searching for the perfect present for his beloved Aunt Lucy’s 100th birthday, Paddington spots a unique pop-up book in Mr. Gruber’s Continue Reading
Eurovision update: Russia out, new artists selected and Australia Decides
It has not been the world’s finest week … and that’s putting it mildly. Even as the COVID pandemic continues to stalk the world, Russia invaded Ukraine after weeks of military posturing at the border, plunging the emerging Western liberal democracy into a hellhole not even remotely of its making. Continue Reading
Book review: This Fragile Earth by Susannah Wise
With so much of life uncontrollable and intangible, people often place great stock in the fact that the physical world around us has a solidity and permanence to it. Sure, natural disasters and pandemics can shake that to the core in profoundly traumatic ways at times, something we all have Continue Reading
Movie review: The French Dispatch
If you are a fan of director Wes Anderson, it will surprise you precisely not at all that there is a great deal of theatrical whimsicality in his latest film, The French Dispatch, or to give it its full playfully long title, The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Continue Reading
Trash-loving BFFs forever: Brett Goldstein (Ted Lasso) meets Sesame Street’s Oscar the Grouch
Watching Ted Lasso in the closing months of 2021, the second grinding year of pandemic, was one of the best things I have ever done. It lifted my flagging, exhausted spirit, reminded in two superlative seasons – season 1 review and season 2 review – reminded me of how great Continue Reading
Book review: The Torrent by Dinuka McKenzie
What truly makes an arresting novel? Answers will likely vary as widely as every reader out there, and their numbers are considerable, but usually most people will agree that you need a gripping narrative, superlatively engaging writing, a beguiling sense of palpable time and place, and a protagonist that captures Continue Reading
It’s a serious pirate’s life for me! Arrrr … or is it? Our Flag Means Death
SNAPSHOTOur Flag Means Death is loosely based on the true adventures of Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby), a pampered aristocrat who abandons his life of privilege to become a pirate. The series also stars Academy Award winner Taika Waititi as Blackbeard, history’s most feared and revered pirate. Our Flag Means Death is a Continue Reading
Book review: Deep Dive by Ron Walters
Much as we like to think of reality as a concrete, palpable thing, immovable and unchangeable, the fact is that it is altered by any number of variables, not least how we perceive the world around us and what our mind accepts as real and not real. It might look Continue Reading
UPCOMING READS: The murderous mystery of “Station Eternity” by Mur Lafferty
SNAPSHOTFrom idyllic small towns to claustrophobic urban landscapes, Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death doesn’t make you a charming amateur detective, it makes you a suspect and a social Continue Reading
Book review: The Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield
Agatha Christie in space! Okay that’s not quite what The Apollo Murders is, and no doubt real-life Canadian author Chris Hadfield, who has made quite a name for himself in recent years with great space-centric non fiction reads, might wonder how you might shoehorn Miss Marple into a spacesuit and Continue Reading