Pun based title, when I think of one

The Western Wind is set in the Middle Ages, in an obscure village in Southern England. At first sight it's a murder mystery, told in the first person by its protagonist John Reve the village priest, who is set to unravel the truth about the death of Thomas Newman , the one man in the village with wealth and substance. He has been steadily buying most of the land in the village, largely from Oliver Townshend , the previous man of substance who has had to trim his cloth due to unwise schemes and the general poor fortunes of the village. Their attempts to build a vital bridge across the river have failed yet again, and Newman seems to have disappeared into the river during a spell of torrential rain, while inspecting the latest collapse. As much as the intrigue suggested by Newman's death, the reader's attention is immediately caught by the character of the village and the villagers. The lives of most of these people is one of never ending oppressive toil, and the grindi...

I'm having to scratch my head a bit about any culture I enjoyed in 2019. One overarching factor was British politics which seemed to infect life with more and more depression as the year went on. We've just had an election which seems to have at last broken the parliamentary deadlock, but may prove to be a false dawn, once they get back to talking to Brussels. Me, I voted Green anyway, knowing full well that it doesn't force anybody to do anything. This is a safe Conservative seat. I'm one of those who think climate change is far more important than Brexit. I simply wanted to give a minuscule bump to the Greens' national percentage. I saw four films ! Stan and Ollie , Apollo 11 , Transit and The Irishman . Yes I certainly like going to the cinema but for circumstantial reasons that means organising a day around a train journey into Manchester. Especially because that's where the most prominent arthouse cinema is. All four films were good, and very differe...

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...