Archive for December 2010
Lonely Avenue
Posted by: danhartland on: December 28, 2010
- In: albums | music
- 5 Comments
Here’s a good Christmas present: Lonely Avenue, Ben Folds’s latest album and a collaboration with the author of High Fidelity and other popular works of fiction, Mr. Nick Hornby. Anna is a very wise gift-giver. I’m a long-time F0lds fan, and began by wanting to say in this post that Hornby is not as good [...]
Christmas 2010
Posted by: thestoryandthetruth on: December 27, 2010
2010′s been a year of high highs and low lows for us, and Christmas has served as a welcome caesura: a time to pause for breath, relax, and make sense of it all. The good news is that the lows are on the up whilst the highs maintain their trajectory. The build-up to Christmas, all [...]
“Your Beer Should be Excellent If It Is As Good As Your Geese.”
Posted by: danhartland on: December 24, 2010
In a quarter of an hour we were in Bloomsbury at the Alpha Inn, which is a small public-house at the corner of one of the streets which runs down into Holborn. Holmes pushed open the door of the private bar and ordered two glasses of beer from the ruddy-faced, white-aproned landlord. Few festive tipples [...]
“Then Yield Thee, Coward”: Goold and Stewart’s Macbeth
Posted by: danhartland on: December 17, 2010
- In: theatre
- 4 Comments
For one so popular, Macbeth is a difficult play. It has all of those actorly superstitions attached to it, of course: bad luck, on-stage injuries, unspeakable soliloquies. It is also by repute a play about evil and darkness, a singularly merciless piece in which no character really emerges with their goodness wholly intact; it is [...]
They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To
Posted by: danhartland on: December 15, 2010
I was channel hopping the other day, and – as is often the case – ITV3 were showing old episodes of the Brett Holmes. This one, though, was slightly different: the feature length version of The Sign of Four, which seems to have had a significantly higher budget than the hour-long episodes. I didn’t watch [...]
Bookclub: “The Carhullan Army”
Posted by: danhartland on: December 9, 2010
- In: Books | science fiction
- 1 Comment
Sarah Hall was on Radio 4′s Bookclub programme this afternoon, discussing her novel The Carhullan Army. I rather agree with Niall over at Torque Control on the matter of that novel’s quality, although I’m not sure that the readers asking Hall questions were quite so bowled over – at least one just came out and [...]
Separate, But Connected: Sherlock Holmes
Posted by: danhartland on: December 8, 2010
- In: Books | sherlock holmes
- 1 Comment
A couple of weeks ago, I described Escherich, the Gestapo detective in Hans Fallada’s Alone In Berlin, as ‘a fascist Maigret’. At the time, I considered talking about a fascist Sherlock Holmes, but something stopped me. At first glance, and certainly this was the interpretation Tim McInnerny placed on the character in his portrayal for [...]
71 is the number of an apartment we return to regularly in Whinfell Forest, Cumbria. We like it there.
‘We’ are Anna French and Dan Hartland. The Story and the Truth is a sort of inadequate catch-all term for what goes on here: we tend to talk about novels, history, food and fashion, politics and music, but there may also be photographs of soft toys and musicians. Stick around and see.
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Words We Like
The Weird, ed. Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
An astounding work of collecting-as-art, this compendium of 800,000 weird words is easily one of the most consistent genre anthologies I have read. Heterodox yet focused, it is fated to be the canonical text of weird fiction studies for some time to come - and deservedly so. The first-rank stories here - and there are many, not a few - are not excellent weird fiction. They are simply some of the best 20th century writing available in any mode. Not without its faults - but that is, ahem, the nature of the beast. Essential.
Sounds We Like
Sonik Kicks, by Paul Weller
I haven't paid much attention to Weller - an artist who hangs heavy in my musical tutelage - since 2000's Heliocentric, an album of diverse interests which felt like a shot of crisp elegance in that year of Steps and 'N Sync. The records that followed it - particularly Illumination - were enough, however, to make those achievements a distant memory. There have been rumblings of a renaissance - 22 Dreams got great reviews - but only the sounds of Sonik Kicks have brought me back. Energetic, fierce and, best of all, creative, this sounds like a record from a much younger man. Weller has a lesson or two in him yet.
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