Pun based title, when I think of one

I've been out to the cinema very little this year, despite a new Everyman opening up near me, and in general every inclination to see several good ones which came and went. The Irishman really wouldn't have been on my list, not that I thought it'd be bad, certainly not, but the thought, "Not another Martin Scorsese gangster epic??" Anyway, I went along with this choice, some other friends had recommended it and, what the hell. Some context for my half heartedness: no matter how honest these mafia films are about these characters and the world they inhabit, I feel the very fact that they are so well made gives them undue glamour. A case in point is Scorsese's  Goodfellas which I thought was a truly great piece of cinema, but which still featured somewhat sympathetic characters and made them look cool. I can't think that about The Irishman . With this film, Scorsese has stripped away all of the false glamour which might have attached to the mafia li

Holy Ceremony by  Harri Nykänen is my first slice of 'Nordic Noir', from Finland. The narrative goes straight in on the first page with our detective contemplating the body of a young woman  laid out in an apartment. Her back is inscribed with a biblical text, prompting immediate assumptions about this being one of those cultish ritual stories. I'd think if you were one of today's very many noir murder mystery addicts, you'd be putting this scenario into a certain familiar box. Myself, I've only read the Stieg Larsson trilogy, but it feels as if I've read many more of this genre, because so many have been televised. So, does Holy Ceremony stand out in any way? Is it worth one's while to read? Well, Nykänen does subvert some of those initial expectations, and he does surprise the reader now and again. A nice detail in that opening scene is that when the medical examiner comes in, he immediately declares that he was only examining this self s

Anu Partanen  is a Finn who moved to the US in 2008; in this book she examines the ways in which the country looks after or doesn't look after its citizens in comparison with the Nordic countries. Having become acquainted with Finland since 2006, though I've only paid occasional visits, and attended Finnish School, I'm naturally very interested to understand better the impressive social systems which I've previously only vaguely understood. Partanen is very methodical; her research and narrative is based on personal experience and interviews with friends and acquaintances both in the US and in the Nordic countries (ie. not only Finland); but above all on a vast array of academic surveys and studies . In fact although I've now finished the book, I was very far from the end. After the acknowledgements, there are substantial sections of footnotes, bibliography and index. I'll spare you any more than a brief summary, because the thought of an in depth analy

Transit is a German language 2018 film from director Christian Petzold . It's about wartime refugees, principally Georg who is desperate to get out of France while the invaders advance. We see him first in Paris; he's about to head South to Marseilles with a badly injured friend, and then hopefully a boat to freedom, but first he's asked to take a letter to another would-be refugee, a famous writer . When he gets to the man's lodgings, he finds he's too late - the writer has committed suicide. Unsure what to do, he scoops up the scattered papers and heads for the railway tracks where he hops into an empty freight cabin with his ailing companion; who sadly dies as they arrive in Marseilles . He narrowly escapes the guards. Those two deaths seed the rest of the narrative. He becomes involved with his departed friend's family , the widow - who's deaf and dumb - and the son. He knocks about a football with the boy, and though it might have been no time

A thriller. Short sentences. A page turner. A quick read - for me, a holiday novel. This is a Jack Reacher novel, the one before the latest which is I believe the 23rd. He's a modern incarnation of the medieval knight errant; he can never settle but he travels randomly from place to place and rights wrongs. Yes, the series is totally formulaic but it has to be, Reacher's fans depend on getting the same satisfying read each time. I hadn't read one of Lee Child 's books before, and only knew Reacher from one of the two Tom Cruise films. It was good enough to nudge me into choosing this book but I'll be honest, the cover's attractively deep shade of blue may have been just as instrumental. As I approached the plane some doubts flickered across my mind. 450 pages. Two weeks. I'm really not a fast reader. But those doubts washed away during the two hour flight. Even with all the usual distractions of organising my drinks and snack, I got through sixty pages

This seemed such a slight tale, barely over 100 pages; but it worked its way into my imagination and finally left me with a renewed appreciation of Joseph Conrad as a writer. There's a curious side to my reading this. I read a bunch of Conrad's novels when I was a student; I was especially taken with Victory , and then hugely impressed by Nostromo ; and the clincher was the ever so sombre and downbeat The Secret Agent . I ended up electing to do a 'special paper' on Conrad for my literature degree. It won a decent grade, though if I'm honest I didn't have anything new or particular to say about the author. I think I simply wanted to indulge myself, writing about him. The odd thing is that Conrad was always generally known as a writer of tales about the sea , yet none of those books, or the others I read at that time, fell into that category. So, after all this time, I read The Shadow-Line , which most definitely is a story about life at sea. To sum up, whil

We've had another less common visitor to the pond up the hill. Three of them. Not that they're rare or anything, but I can't recall seeing them here before. I have to admit I didn't identify them straightaway, to the extent of thinking they were 'light phase' versions of the resident mallards. I really wasn't paying proper attention, because they're goosanders , members of a small family we know as mergansers, which have differences from 'normal' ducks I should have noticed. Below is the first picture I took, yesterday ie. 13.2.2019, when I went up there with my new smartphone . I haven't had a smartphone before, and this was an exercise in taking a picture and straightaway mailing it to a bird-watching friend, to see if she could confirm they were what I thought they were. Yes, she had the common sense to realise I wasn't referring to the coots in the foreground. I went into the nearby Starbucks (I know, I know) to have a coffee