Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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HBO Max and Paramount+: What It Might Mean For Sports
Today the deal was done, and Paramount took over Warner Bros. Discovery in a massive deal that has much of Hollywood quaking. There were some last minute wrinkles with a deal being struck a couple of weeks ago with a group of US Attorneys General, with the general view being that they folded and didn’t…
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When Things Go Wrong: aka Thank Goodness for Amazon Drive
I have a NAS drive, and it holds all my worldly digital goods. That is, it has all my photos, videos, documents and other things. I still haven’t found a cost-effective off-site backup solution beyond the NAS drive, although I do need one. Something that I can back up, upwards of 6TB of data. Amazon…
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The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
This is a review of both Neil Gaiman’s novel, but also of the theatrical production that recently began at the National Theatre. The Ocean at the End of the Lane, published in 2013, is said to be the most autobiographical of Gaiman’s work. The plot starts in the present day as an unnamed man returns…
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The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
The Hunting Party is very much a traditional whodunnit, but updated to 2019. The plot includes: A remote location with no way in or out A limited list of suspects A group of friends who on the surface all like one another, but that hides some seething resentment between some of them An appealing locale…
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Keep Him Close by Emily Koch
Two mothers: one with a dead son, and one with a son who has admitted to killing the other. Keep Him Close jumps back and forward between Alice and Indigo (as well as occasionally other characters), as they try to understand what happened on a night out in the city when Alice’s son Lou fell…
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Pattern Recognition
I have a confession to make. I’m way behind on William Gibson, despite him being one of my favourite writers. I was recently talking to a friend of mine about William Gibson and his 2003 novel Pattern Recognition. It was a book I loved, except… I hadn’t read it. Instead, I heard a Radio 4…
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Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley
Starve Acre is a chilling little book – perfect to be read at this time of year, when the long dark nights are upon us. Starve Acre itself is the name of a house sitting somewhere in the wild Yorkshire moors, miles from anywhere. It’s not a farm, although the land does include a large…
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Blue Moon by Lee Child
I’ve never read any of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels, and I felt it was about time to put that right. He’s one of the bestselling writers in the world, and although I’ve never read him, I’ve seen and heard him interviewed on multiple occasions. What little I know of Reacher comes from the two…
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Cassandra Darke by Posy Simmonds
I’ve had a copy of Cassandra Darke sitting around for about a year, without having really picked it up to read until now, and there’s absolutely no reason for this. It’s great. Posy Simmonds is the author of a series of literary themed graphic novels with perhaps Tamara Drewe (a retelling of Far From the…
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The Premier League in an SVOD World – Running the Numbers
This week, Amazon Prime in the UK has begun the first of its streaming-only games offered to Prime subscribers. You will recall that during the last UK round of Premier League TV rights, a package comprising of the entirety of one mid-week “matchday” and all the Boxing Day games was offered. In the end Amazon…
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Space for Audio: The Internet and Streaming Radio
Yesterday I was a speaker at this year’s Radio TechCon conference, and took part in a “debate” about the future of broadcast radio. If there had to be one platform for radio in the future, which would it be? DAB+, broadband or 5G? Obviously this is not a true representation of the options. Nobody is…
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The Night Fire by Michael Connelly
As sure as night follows day, there’s a new Michael Connelly each autumn, and this time around we get a novel that features his three key characters: Harry Bosch, Mickey Haller (the “Lincoln Lawyer”), and Renée Ballard. There are several stories going on at once in this book, but the two key stories are the…
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All the Rage by Cara Hunter
There has been a brutal attack on a girl in Oxford. She was fortunate that the attacker was scared off by a passing police car, but the victim was viciously assaulted. DI Adam Fawley is on the case, with the victim not keen to really come forward for reasons which become clearer later. In the…
Hadrian’s Wall
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