(1) Things which I have read and enjoyed.

Back when I was reading all the time for my PhD I read so little of anything else… I’m in that state of being again right now. Fortunately there’s no viva at the end now. Anyway…

I read J.G. Ballard’s High Rise for book club, and I really enjoyed it. It’s a great book club book because there’s loads to dig into and it’s impossible to not have a thought about it. I found the premise intriguing and I really enjoyed the way he worked it out. Moar Ballard in the TBR pile.

I also read Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, which I rolled through at a very enjoyable speed. I can imagine some of this future… I wonder where the first high-rise trailer park will grow.

Currently I’m reading Aatish Taseer’s The Way Things Were, which is about India, history and identity. It’s fairly slow, but very evocative and I feel like it’s making me ponder some things as I, which I like.

(2) Things which I have watched and enjoyed

I saw Spotlight, which I thought was very good and very well done. Though I’m not convinced it was the best film of the year or even my favourite on the Oscar’s list, I’m glad it won and The Revenant didn’t.

Deadpool, which was a ball. I loved the way it set its stall out early and just kept going with it, even if I didn’t love all the gags. There’s was more than enough meta-snark about the X-Men to amuse me and I loved Negasonic Teenage Warhead (and her yellow X-Men uniform!). I also appreciate the relative lack of urban desctruction. Good work.

At the Royal Ballet I saw their Christopher Wheeldon Triple Bill (After the Rain/ Strapless / Within the Golden Hour) and loved it. Strapless, his new work, was probably the one I liked the least, but I still found it an interesting piece and I really enjoyed Natalia Osipova in it - she’s never really won me over before.

I also saw David Mitchell and Kazuo Ishiguro in conversation about all sorts of things, and it was utterly freaking delightful.

(3) Things which I wrote

Basically, I wrote a lot about the Coen brothers. You can find links to them all in this final overview.

(4) A photo from the month gone by

(5) In the pile for March

I’m going to finish The Way Things Were first, and then I’m picking up War and Peace for a re-read (I have a week’s holiday). I’m also hoping to get to Binet’s HHhH. Then I need to scoot through Far From the Madding Crowd again quickly for bookclub, I’m very very excited to see Hail, Caesar and High-Rise - and I will probably end up going to see Superman v Batman (or Man/Man as it’s known around my way)