December: Merriment ensues
I'm now habitually late with these monthly summaries, I guess I could justify that as wanting to leave the month to marinade a bit before looking back on it, really though it's just because January got off to a pretty busy start.
December was of course all about Christmas, although most of my festivities were front loaded to the first couple of weekends. The old Digital Continuity gang from the Archives got together first with an afternoon of eating cakes (yay for teams made up of bakers!) and a surprisingly good secret santa. Then the following weekend was our house party with somewhere in the region of 20 people turning up and failing to finish the mountain of food that we produced.
Christmas itself was a quiet family affair, mostly spent watching television, chasing cats, eating and clearing out my grandmother's house. That will be the last Christmas, or indeed anything spent in Weston-Super-Mare as the house is now sold and handed over. I feel pretty sad about that, I've been visiting that house multiple times a year since I was born, and with all ties cut to my own home town as well, I feel oddly rootless. Also, although Weston's not exactly amazing, being able to go for a walk along the beach makes a wonderful change from being in London. That said, I can happily wave goodbye to sorting out the house contents - oh the random crap. And dust!
Baking
Christmas party baking was pretty full on. In the space of two days I made over 50 macarons, a chocolate log, a stolen, a blackforest gateaux and a batch of mince pies. The gateaux was considerably less stressful than last time, and I found some cherries in kirsch in the Christmas gift section of the supermarket which solved that problem. I was quite pleased with the mince pies, having followed a friends recommendation and (roughly) followed Paul Hollywood's recipe and added (tinned) mandarin and apple to the jar of mincemeat, making them lighter and fruitier. I also did a couple of batches of cookies and sent them in to my former colleagues at TNA, because I'm lovely, I wanted to bake cookies, I had sprinkles and icing to use up and I wanted to remind them what they were missing out on. Still they got cookies so I doubt they complained.
Films
A bit of a lighter month for film watching it seems, usually Christmas sees an abundance, but I think 'cos we were busy tidying we watched less. I only made it to the cinema once to see the long anticipated The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey which I've already talked about here at length.
I caught up on a few other recent films that I didn't go to the cinema for, John Carter was a lot more enjoyable than I'd been expecting, Shame was even more pretentious and tedious than I'd been expecting, A Dangerous Method had some unexpectedly terrible acting choices, and Men in Black 3 was just as I'd been expecting - sadly lacking in Tommy Lee Jones. All the poor reviews of Nativity 2 made me seek out Nativity! which was indeed a lot of fun if you're in a Christmassy mood. There were a few older films courtesy of Love Film, City Lights was my first Chaplin film and I appreciated the beautiful choreography of some of the sequences, if not the actual plot. The Man in the White Suit and Don't Look Now were both solid, the first a comedy with a couple of chuckles, the second a thriller with sufficient chills but a disappointing ending. Dirty Pretty Things started out brilliantly, but I lost interest as it turned into a crime caper. I rented La habitación de Fermat (Fermat's Room) as a "If you liked Cube you may also like...", but it didn't come close to Cube - not least because the maths was laughably simple.
After reading the book last month, I rewatched The Prestige and was impressed at how it smoothed out a lot of the problems I had with the book. I also rewatched The Muppets as our family Christmas afternoon film which continues to be absolutely brilliant.
Reading
As I mentioned in my review of my 2012 reading, I did hit my target of averaging 50 pages per day, but it came down to the wire and was a real slog in December, partly because I was pretty busy but mostly because I didn't particularly enjoy the books I read.State of Wonder by Ann Patchett lacked the realism and interesting way of looking at things that her previous work Bel Canto had, but annoying repeated the trick of an unsatisfying ending. Mind you it was infinitely more satisfying than Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights where everyone was hateful and the writing style convoluted and confusing. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor started out well, but turned into Twilight half-way through and then left everything hanging to be picked up in the 2nd book of the trilogy.
The most entertaining book I read was Eoin Colfer's Supernaturalists, but even that wasn't as good as his Artemis Fowl series. After a couple of months reading I finally finished David Bellos' Is That a Fish in Your Ear? The Amazing Adventure of Translation, which succeeded in making me more interested in translation and understanding of the difficulties and power it has, but was still rather a slog to get through.
Television
I caught up on a few of last season's shows that are only just making their way through the British television channels. Girls: Season 1 was the most unlikeable bunch of people I've ever seen grouped together on one show and I will definitely not be back for season 2. In contrast, although House of Lies: Season 1 also features some pretty unlikeable characters, I still enjoyed the show and look forward to season 2. Scandal: Season 1 had a lot of potential, but the short season was much too crowded and hopefully season 2 will have more air to breath. I also caught up on the utterly charming and very clever Community: Season 1.
While I catch up on last season, it seems that this year is already coming to an end for some series. Homeland: Season 2 was a completely different show to the 1st season which was frustrating, because in isolation I'd have enjoyed the ridiculous and cheesy plots a lot more. The Killing: Season 3 finished the series on a bit of a slump, with increasingly contrived plots and frustrating characters. I also did a summary post covering the various Christmas Specials - Outnumbered, Loving Miss Hatto, Room on the Broom, Mr Stink, Doctor Who, Downton Abbey and The Girl
December was of course all about Christmas, although most of my festivities were front loaded to the first couple of weekends. The old Digital Continuity gang from the Archives got together first with an afternoon of eating cakes (yay for teams made up of bakers!) and a surprisingly good secret santa. Then the following weekend was our house party with somewhere in the region of 20 people turning up and failing to finish the mountain of food that we produced.
Christmas itself was a quiet family affair, mostly spent watching television, chasing cats, eating and clearing out my grandmother's house. That will be the last Christmas, or indeed anything spent in Weston-Super-Mare as the house is now sold and handed over. I feel pretty sad about that, I've been visiting that house multiple times a year since I was born, and with all ties cut to my own home town as well, I feel oddly rootless. Also, although Weston's not exactly amazing, being able to go for a walk along the beach makes a wonderful change from being in London. That said, I can happily wave goodbye to sorting out the house contents - oh the random crap. And dust!
Baking
Christmas party baking was pretty full on. In the space of two days I made over 50 macarons, a chocolate log, a stolen, a blackforest gateaux and a batch of mince pies. The gateaux was considerably less stressful than last time, and I found some cherries in kirsch in the Christmas gift section of the supermarket which solved that problem. I was quite pleased with the mince pies, having followed a friends recommendation and (roughly) followed Paul Hollywood's recipe and added (tinned) mandarin and apple to the jar of mincemeat, making them lighter and fruitier. I also did a couple of batches of cookies and sent them in to my former colleagues at TNA, because I'm lovely, I wanted to bake cookies, I had sprinkles and icing to use up and I wanted to remind them what they were missing out on. Still they got cookies so I doubt they complained.
Films
A bit of a lighter month for film watching it seems, usually Christmas sees an abundance, but I think 'cos we were busy tidying we watched less. I only made it to the cinema once to see the long anticipated The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey which I've already talked about here at length.
I caught up on a few other recent films that I didn't go to the cinema for, John Carter was a lot more enjoyable than I'd been expecting, Shame was even more pretentious and tedious than I'd been expecting, A Dangerous Method had some unexpectedly terrible acting choices, and Men in Black 3 was just as I'd been expecting - sadly lacking in Tommy Lee Jones. All the poor reviews of Nativity 2 made me seek out Nativity! which was indeed a lot of fun if you're in a Christmassy mood. There were a few older films courtesy of Love Film, City Lights was my first Chaplin film and I appreciated the beautiful choreography of some of the sequences, if not the actual plot. The Man in the White Suit and Don't Look Now were both solid, the first a comedy with a couple of chuckles, the second a thriller with sufficient chills but a disappointing ending. Dirty Pretty Things started out brilliantly, but I lost interest as it turned into a crime caper. I rented La habitación de Fermat (Fermat's Room) as a "If you liked Cube you may also like...", but it didn't come close to Cube - not least because the maths was laughably simple.
After reading the book last month, I rewatched The Prestige and was impressed at how it smoothed out a lot of the problems I had with the book. I also rewatched The Muppets as our family Christmas afternoon film which continues to be absolutely brilliant.
Reading
As I mentioned in my review of my 2012 reading, I did hit my target of averaging 50 pages per day, but it came down to the wire and was a real slog in December, partly because I was pretty busy but mostly because I didn't particularly enjoy the books I read.State of Wonder by Ann Patchett lacked the realism and interesting way of looking at things that her previous work Bel Canto had, but annoying repeated the trick of an unsatisfying ending. Mind you it was infinitely more satisfying than Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights where everyone was hateful and the writing style convoluted and confusing. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor started out well, but turned into Twilight half-way through and then left everything hanging to be picked up in the 2nd book of the trilogy.
The most entertaining book I read was Eoin Colfer's Supernaturalists, but even that wasn't as good as his Artemis Fowl series. After a couple of months reading I finally finished David Bellos' Is That a Fish in Your Ear? The Amazing Adventure of Translation, which succeeded in making me more interested in translation and understanding of the difficulties and power it has, but was still rather a slog to get through.
Television
I caught up on a few of last season's shows that are only just making their way through the British television channels. Girls: Season 1 was the most unlikeable bunch of people I've ever seen grouped together on one show and I will definitely not be back for season 2. In contrast, although House of Lies: Season 1 also features some pretty unlikeable characters, I still enjoyed the show and look forward to season 2. Scandal: Season 1 had a lot of potential, but the short season was much too crowded and hopefully season 2 will have more air to breath. I also caught up on the utterly charming and very clever Community: Season 1.
While I catch up on last season, it seems that this year is already coming to an end for some series. Homeland: Season 2 was a completely different show to the 1st season which was frustrating, because in isolation I'd have enjoyed the ridiculous and cheesy plots a lot more. The Killing: Season 3 finished the series on a bit of a slump, with increasingly contrived plots and frustrating characters. I also did a summary post covering the various Christmas Specials - Outnumbered, Loving Miss Hatto, Room on the Broom, Mr Stink, Doctor Who, Downton Abbey and The Girl