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The End of Oak Street

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I like this particular poster for The End of Oak Street . At a glance, it's just a typical drone shot of a suburban street. Then you notice some damaged roofs, scarred lawns, and a footprint...  Film makers have always wanted to contrive ways to bring dinosaurs and humans together on screen . Especially if the odds can be evened out a bit; after all, dinosaurs are going to lose in the end if we humans have any access to modern weaponry . In the early days, when not every last bit of the earth had been explored, the standard approach was to find dinosaurs surviving in remote spots, ' lost worlds ' etc. Moving on - and taking inspiration I think from a famous Ray Bradbury short story - Hollywood (and other science fiction writers) would often employ time travel as a way to meet dinosaurs, usually by going back in time, but sometimes by bringing them into ours. Science moves on, and as genetic science and awareness of DNA came into prominence, Michael Crichton did the inevi...
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The Odyssey

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Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey , seen in Manchester a day or so after it opened in the UK. And then again, a week later, because a friend wanted to go and see it. I loved it . Might as well be open about that, since it's been so weirdly divisive among commenters online.  I'm mainly referring to YouTube, now flooded with an exceptional number of highly opinionated posts. Even before most people had actually seen the film. Apparently it's been very successful . Perhaps it makes a difference that, unlike the earlier critics who might not have seen the film but were familiar with the story and had scanned the cast list etc., most of the audience were at best hazy about the particulars of the story. Though a fair portion would have reckoned themselves to have some knowledge of its background, having seen the recent similarly star-packed film Troy, not that long ago. The Odyssey is indeed a sequel to the story of the Trojan War, told originally by the same semi-mythical...
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Hyperion, by Dan Simmons

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You'll find Hyperion by Dan Simmons on most YouTube Top Ten lists of the Greatest Ever science fiction books. I must admit that this was the main reason for my buying this book. I agree, it's not the best of reasons; the internet is full of lists, in fact it's the medium's predominant writing form (allow me some slight exaggeration). However, amongst all the various YouTube science fiction channels there are a decent number of intelligent critics and commentators, and these persuaded me to investigate. I suppose I'm hinting at a little reluctance. This is because I was aware of the basics of the book's structure, from previously reading synopses; and because I did myself study English Literature at university. If the title, Hyperion , means anything to a reader, it might be from Greek Myth or astronomy; but for myself it straight away alluded to Hyperion , an unfinished epic poem by John Keats , the English Romantic poet (capital 'R' there, because th...
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2025 > 2026: music especially

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I was just looking at one of those music lists , best albums of the year and so on, on the BBC web site. They'd viewed the year via aggregation of lists from all over, including entities like Rolling Stone magazine in the US. To their credit, also a French and probably other non-Anglosphere sources. So, some interesting artists mentioned, some I'd heard of, some I hadn't. But no one I spent any time listening to in 2025. I'm generally decades out of date. Of course, nothing dates you more like your taste in music. New music I do like - which I'm going to mention here - isn't of any consequence in current music media. Sometimes because it's Finnish, often because it's by the sort of rock band who do their very exciting thing live, but isn't much liked by image orientated tv. Though Die Spitz ought to be, as attractive young women. This (right) is the first full album, just out this September, Something to Consume . I love it, especially how heavy i...
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11 - talitiainen

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The talitiainen , parus major , is the great tit in English. The picture's a bit blurry, taken through glass and greatly cropped, of course. But I'm pleased with it, given that I was only using my little Canon compact camera. It's quite well disguised, against those autumn colours, don't you think? This isn't in Finland, but I gather the colours of the British subspecies is close to that of what is found in Finland; it seems to have a slightly wider black chest stripe than the Finnish variety. The species is widespread across North West Eurasia; my old (1996) Finnish bird guide/lintuopas tells me there were - a very broad estimate! - between 600,000 and a million breeding pairs in Finland. Current Wikipedia says 2 million. More in winter. Taking those numbers with a pinch of salt, you'd still have to think it's a successful species and is flourishing. As we keep having to acknowledge, winters in Finland, certainly in the South are gradually becoming less s...
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10 - valkoposkihanhi

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Valkoposkihanhi translates literally as 'white cheeked goose'; in English it's the barnacle goose. Supposedly there was a belief in the Middle Ages that they hatched from barnacles. Crazy, and I suspect they knew that perfectly well. But if they did come from barnacles, they must be fish, right? So you could eat them on Fridays. There's a happy coincidence (not for the geese). I've just enjoyed a rare summer trip to Finland, and I encountered this group of birds in a park while walking along the shoreline of the lake at Lahti . My first thought was, 'Those aren't Canada geese...' No they're not, in fact I think they have quite attractive markings. I haven't been to Lahti before - it doesn't have a major women's ice hockey team - but it's yet another very pleasant Finnish city. Internationally it may be best known as a winter sports centre . Two huge ski jumping towers are visible on the city skyline. It also has a notable Motorcycle ...
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Armadillo, by William Boyd

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I so hate this cover. The cover of this edition of Armadillo , a novel by William Boyd from 1998. I confess that for these book reviews, to save time, I often filch an image from Google. Always of the same edition as the book I actually read. I was interested to see there have been a huge number of different cover designs, hence many different editions, for no doubt a very successful book. However, despite Google displaying a fair number of variations of this particular cover , none looked quite right. This execrable colour scheme seemed to have defeated everybody. So I've taken a pic of the actual copy I read. My rendering here is quite faithful, except for the shift from the shade at the top to the lighter one below. I'm perversely pleased with the visible stains (not perpetrated by me).  It was the last book remaining from a recent batch lent by a book swapping cousin . I have found her taste and judgement very good, and discovered many good new writers thanks to her....
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