#1 Doctors & Nurses by Lucy Ellman
#2 The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves by MT Anderson
#3 Journey Into Space by Toby Litt
#4 The Final Solution by Michael Chabon
#5 Astrotruckers by Mikael Niemi (translated by Laurie Thompson)
#6 You Don't Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem
#7 Fools' ( Read more... )

I watched 103 films for the first time this year, substantially up on last year's 69. The reason for this is that I took out a subscription with LoveFilm. This meant I saw lots of very bad films but I also saw some very good ones indeed. Full list:

1) Hancock - An astonishing bodge job of an brilliant premise. Half fun, half shit.
2) Quantum Of ( Read more... )

I watched 69 films for the first time this year, exactly the same as last year. These were all logged over at 52filmchallenge and my end of year film awards are over at my blog. Full list:

1)Knocked Up - I had to put my hands over my ears and eyes for large parts of this film. I liked the bit with his dad though.
2) Curse Of The Golden Flower - Epicly overblown ( Read more... )

#1 The Glass Books Of The Dream Eaters by GW Dahlquist
#2 House Of Meetings by Martin Amis
#3 On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
#4 How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
#5 SFWA European Hall Of Fame edited by James Morrow and Kathryn Morrow (Strange Horizons)
#6 Put The Book Back On The Shelf
#7 The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall
#8 The Pesthouse by Jim Crace
#9 ( Read more... )

My review of The Red Men by Matthew de Abaitua is up now at Strange Horizons.

If you are interested SH also published their review of 2007 on Monday. This contains the usual interminable blather from grahamsleight, smartarsery from pikelet and common sense from ninebelow plus contributions from many more.

And the lists keep coming ( Read more... )

1) Spongebob Squarepants The Movie - Starting 2007 as I mean to continue. Awesome on a stick.
2) 24 Hour Party People - Another fine installment in Michael Winterbottom's career that again shows interesting links to his other works.
3) The Da Vinci Code - Competent thriller.
4) Casino Royale - Pretty much everything I was hoping for, although ( Read more... )

It must be the twelth night or so and as such I am retiring the santa hat icon. Cheers despotliz, until next year.

Okay, I did books and films. I utterly failed to track my music on box_set, as I'd planned but you can always use the "music" tag. I might try to probably keep track of music again this year.

Anyway, Strange Horizons did their annual year in review ( Read more... )

It was books yesterday and today it is films. Every film I watched for the first time in 2006:

1) Two For The Money - Very talky Al Pacino flick. Interesting Oedipus love triangle beset by typical sports story cliches and McConaughey's smarminess.
2) Thumbsucker - Another film about being young and fucked up but a worthwhile addition to the canon ( Read more... )

Right, I am blatantly not going to read any more books this year so I thought I would do the traditional list now.

Demonology - Rick Moody
Generation Kill - Evan Wright
Saturday - Ian McEwan
Maze Of Death - Philip K Dick * (SF Site)
Learning The World - Ken MacLeod
Black Dust And Other Stories - Graham Joyce
Accelerando - Charles Stross
9Tail Fox ( Read more... )