If you have enough physical books, enough money, and enough space in your residence to have a “domestic bookroom”, you may well find How Many Books Does It Take to Make a Place Feel Like Home? fascinating: Mr. Byers1 coined a term — “book-wrapt” — to describe the exhilarating comfort of a well-stocked library. The… Continue reading Domestic bookrooms
Month: December 2021
For 2022
On the same principle that lots of us rewatched Soderbergh’s Contagion in the early days of the first lockdown1, HBO stands to do well with an adaptation of Station Eleven: The show, based on Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 international bestseller, follows the survivors of a flu pandemic. Despite the desperate realities of the world… Continue reading For 2022
New On Netflix
Although I dropped my Netflix subscription three months ago I never did remove my RSS subscription to UK New On Netflix, so every once in a while I have the option of reminding myself of what I’m missing out on.1 Among the recent items that New On Netflix UK lists, I find this: Please Hold… Continue reading New On Netflix
Ack! Ack! AckAckAck!
By the time Tim Burton came to making Mars Attacks he was (rightly) pretty darned famous, which explains the cast he could get at the height of his powers: Between 1988 and 1993, Burton made a string of classics: Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Batman, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. So it was no surprise that some… Continue reading Ack! Ack! AckAckAck!
Crows
America is a strange place: A friendly, if somewhat foul-mouthed, crow became a temporary mascot at Allen Dale Elementary School in November when the bird took up residence at the Grants Pass school. […] It turns out, talking crows aren’t just something out of an Edgar Allan Poe poem. And this crow, or possibly and… Continue reading Crows
In miniature
I feel slightly guilty that after reading Kris Howard’s A visit to Moominworld I found myself wishing that she’d written more about one of the early steps in the trip: a visit in Hamburg to the world’s largest model railway, Miniatur Wunderland. The Snook was very sceptical about our destination, a place that I’d been… Continue reading In miniature
Notchmeister
I wish I still had a working Mac so that I could festoon the screen with a Notchmeister. Very silly, but then so is the very idea1 of the Notch. [Via The Tao of Mac] Granted, it’s a stopgap until Apple are either satisfied that their implementation of behind-the-screen sensors and cameras can perform at… Continue reading Notchmeister
Exquisite reading experience. Sub-optimal dining experience.
Some folks have very strange hobbies: We headed to the restaurant with high hopes – eight of us in total, led into a cement cell of a room, Drake pumping through invisible speakers. It was sweltering hot, and no other customers were present. The décor had the of chicness of an underground bunker where one… Continue reading Exquisite reading experience. Sub-optimal dining experience.
Invasion gets renewed
In the wake of the news that Apple TV+ have renewed Invasion for a second season, showrunner Simon Kinberg talks a good game about what he plans to do with the show: […] there’s a lot I want to explore with the aliens in subsequent seasons. I mean, there’s not a ton of alien information.… Continue reading Invasion gets renewed
Firefly Returns
Subtract Joss Whedon and the original cast, and let’s see what comes of the Firefly reboot: […] Disney plans to reboot the series as an exclusive for its streaming platform Disney+. Disney had acquired the rights to the franchise after their 2018 acquisition of Fox. _Firefly_seems like the perfect option to diversify their current line-up… Continue reading Firefly Returns