a dictionary of spectral curiosities
Book, movie, exhibition, show reviews.
There is no doubt that Maria Cohut’s Multiple Exposures (Flight of the DragonFly, 2026) is an impressive debut collection. Reading it, I was reminded of David Hockney’s The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire, an ambitious work in which a sequence of images conveys the experience of walking a forest lane through the changing …
Continue reading "Review of ‘Multiple Exposures’ by Maria Cohut"
For the past couple of months or so, if not longer, the media has been awash with rave reviews of Robert Eggers' version of Nosferatu, which was due to be released in the States in December, and was released in the UK on the 1st of January. The push to promote this $50 million-budget film …
Continue reading "Starved for Racism and Sexism? Watch Eggers’ Nosferatu Remake"
These past few years, I've made it a mission to keep a diary of books read per year, and every December, I take great pleasure in looking back on my 12-month reading history. According to my diary, in 2024 I read or reread a total of 43 books - including novels, graphic novels, nonfiction books, …
Continue reading "A Year in Books: The Ones that Stuck, and the One that Didn’t"
It's that time of the year again: the time I look back on what I've read over the past 12 months and reflect on what I loved the most, and what I want to read more of in the year to come. I will have read over 40 books in 2023, many (most?) of them …
I've been sitting on this one for a while, mostly because I couldn't think of who would want to take reading suggestions - about upcomings books, no less - from me. But then again, why not? Maybe there's someone out there who didn't know they needed this particular list. You know, I'm one of those …
Continue reading "4 upcoming books by female authors to buy and read over the next 6 months"
This will be more of a memento than a regular blog post, I suppose. Last week I got a chance to see the art collection at the Nottingham Castle Museum. It was only a brief visit, yet I made a point of jotting down the titles of all the paintings that caught my fancy for …
This post is, in a way, a continuation of this review I wrote some time ago about the social screensaver The Endless Forest and the art of purposeless gaming. I won't go into all the details of how the TALE of TALES project is all kinds of marvellous and then some, but I will go …
Continue reading "The Joy of Purposeless Gaming, or the Art of Doing Nothing"
Please try to ignore my almost fetishistic love for abstract and/or metaphoric titles. This post is about a lovely little art exhibition at the Walker art gallery, Liverpool. I'm talking about The Living and the Dead, an exhibition of some of visual artist John Kirby's paintings and sculptures, which is on until the 15th April …
Continue reading "On the Margins of an Unspeakable “Something”"
Well, this comes right on time for Halloween, I suppose, the best time for reviewing ghost stories. I'll start by admitting that The Small Hand is the first and only book by Susan Hill that I have ever read. I've known about her books for a long time and I've been meaning to read what …
Continue reading "A Review of “The Small Hand” by Susan Hill"
Finally got round to watching Sylvain Chomet's Les Triplettes de Belleville/ The Triplets of Belleville last night. And I must say: if you're in for an extraordinary car chase, then this is the movie to watch! 
First, it has three of my favourite things in it: trains, wicked old ladies and nightmares. Then, it's …
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