September - freedom!
Oct. 2nd, 2012 04:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sulkyblueblogSeptember was a full month of glorious freedom! I had absolutely no intention of looking for work so spent the whole month doing precisely what I wanted to do, which was pretty much nothing. (Well I would quite liked to have done some other more exciting things like travel the world and whatnot, but just 'cos I was footloose and fancy free didn't mean anyone else was.) The first half of the month was packed solid with trips to the paralympics, and I'm really happy that the timing worked out so I could really make the most of the opportunities to go.
The second half of the month settled into a rather more sedate pattern of watching films, baking and taking baked goods to various friends. I also kept up my regular Friday pub lunch with colleagues in Kew and took the opportunity to spend a lot of time in the beautiful and relaxing Kew Gardens, it's been suggested that I should start a new blog "benches of Kew" gradually evaluating every bench... I'm not sure I can stay out of work for that long!
Books
Without dedicated reading time on a regular commute I'm struggling to hit my 50 page a day target and ended up 53 pages down over the month. On the plus side though after 3 months I did finally finish Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman! There's a lot of fascinating stuff packed in, that really could have been better spread over several works, but it's reasonably readable relative to academic papers at least, but is still rather a slog.
On the fiction front, I was disappointed by Flow My Tears the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick which I thought lacked the elegance, coherence and readability that I found in the other books of his I read. The Midnight Palace by Carlos Ruiz Zafon was unremarkabley bland. The Invisible Ones by Stef Penney was a solid murder mystery which dragged on a bit too long and wasn't nearly as good as her first book The Tenderness of Wolves.
Films
A bumper month for films, Love Film is the gift that keeps giving to the unemployed! Man of the Year is an interesting and very funny political satire, with a perfectly cast Robin Williams. Africa United on the other hand is full of first time child actors and is a touching and entertaining look at life for kids in Africa. Chronicle takes a completely original look at what teenagers with superpowers would really be like. We Bought a Zoo is cheesy as anything, but rather lovely. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen was a bit on the cheesy side but also very funny.
Less good things - I didn't find 21 Jump Street funny, Safe exciting or The Fast and the Furious particularly good at all. Mind you, they were just mediocre, unlike The Iron Lady which I found borderline offensive for its approach to the material. After two more Woody Allen films (Midnight in Paris and Hannah and Her Sisters) I'm officially declaring that I don't like Woody Allen films.
The only film I saw in the cinema was Take This Waltz which was okay, but suffered from an annoying central character and too many arty/indy tropes. Martha Marcy May Marlene is another recent indy film which has the same problems of being wallowy and slow, but was tolerable up until the ending (or lack thereof).
Rounding out the month's viewing were The Muppets Take Manhattan (classic, joyous muppets), The Weather Man (depressing but good), Me and Orson Welles (charming but unremarkable), Wilde (Stephen Fry is great, the film drags a bit), This Means War (frivolous fun) and The Thing (utter classic).
Television
September is round-up time for television, looking back at the previous year's offerings before the new seasons kick off in October. I watched 39 television series this year (!) and it was no easy task to single out my favourites, the ones I thought were best (not necessarily the same thing) and some of the actors I thought did outstanding jobs. Broadly speaking, I thought it was a pretty good year. I also did a quick review of what I thought of this year's new shows. I watched 36 pilots and followed 13 through for the full year, which is a a hefty percentage and says a lot about the originality and quality.
I polished off a few more seasons from the 2011-2012 season:
Baking
Most of the baking I've been reporting on day by day, big hits being the messy, traumatic but very tasty Black Forest Gateaux and a collection of tasty biscuits. My Great British Bake Off challenge continued with reasonably successful were Crème Caramels and Treacle Tart but ground to a halt when I wasn't interested in the next couple of challenges. I rounded off the month with a very tasty improvised nectarine and cherry pie, the pastry tasted wonderful, but the melt in mouth crumbliness made it impossible to get out of the dish! At some point if I'm going to keep this up, I need to learn how to take decent photos of food!
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The second half of the month settled into a rather more sedate pattern of watching films, baking and taking baked goods to various friends. I also kept up my regular Friday pub lunch with colleagues in Kew and took the opportunity to spend a lot of time in the beautiful and relaxing Kew Gardens, it's been suggested that I should start a new blog "benches of Kew" gradually evaluating every bench... I'm not sure I can stay out of work for that long!
 |
 |
 |
 |
Books
Without dedicated reading time on a regular commute I'm struggling to hit my 50 page a day target and ended up 53 pages down over the month. On the plus side though after 3 months I did finally finish Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman! There's a lot of fascinating stuff packed in, that really could have been better spread over several works, but it's reasonably readable relative to academic papers at least, but is still rather a slog.
On the fiction front, I was disappointed by Flow My Tears the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick which I thought lacked the elegance, coherence and readability that I found in the other books of his I read. The Midnight Palace by Carlos Ruiz Zafon was unremarkabley bland. The Invisible Ones by Stef Penney was a solid murder mystery which dragged on a bit too long and wasn't nearly as good as her first book The Tenderness of Wolves.
Films
A bumper month for films, Love Film is the gift that keeps giving to the unemployed! Man of the Year is an interesting and very funny political satire, with a perfectly cast Robin Williams. Africa United on the other hand is full of first time child actors and is a touching and entertaining look at life for kids in Africa. Chronicle takes a completely original look at what teenagers with superpowers would really be like. We Bought a Zoo is cheesy as anything, but rather lovely. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen was a bit on the cheesy side but also very funny.
Less good things - I didn't find 21 Jump Street funny, Safe exciting or The Fast and the Furious particularly good at all. Mind you, they were just mediocre, unlike The Iron Lady which I found borderline offensive for its approach to the material. After two more Woody Allen films (Midnight in Paris and Hannah and Her Sisters) I'm officially declaring that I don't like Woody Allen films.
The only film I saw in the cinema was Take This Waltz which was okay, but suffered from an annoying central character and too many arty/indy tropes. Martha Marcy May Marlene is another recent indy film which has the same problems of being wallowy and slow, but was tolerable up until the ending (or lack thereof).
Rounding out the month's viewing were The Muppets Take Manhattan (classic, joyous muppets), The Weather Man (depressing but good), Me and Orson Welles (charming but unremarkable), Wilde (Stephen Fry is great, the film drags a bit), This Means War (frivolous fun) and The Thing (utter classic).
Television
September is round-up time for television, looking back at the previous year's offerings before the new seasons kick off in October. I watched 39 television series this year (!) and it was no easy task to single out my favourites, the ones I thought were best (not necessarily the same thing) and some of the actors I thought did outstanding jobs. Broadly speaking, I thought it was a pretty good year. I also did a quick review of what I thought of this year's new shows. I watched 36 pilots and followed 13 through for the full year, which is a a hefty percentage and says a lot about the originality and quality.
I polished off a few more seasons from the 2011-2012 season:
- Veep: Season 1 - Armando Iannucci fails to recreate the magic of The Thick of It.
- Luther: Season 2 - Idris Elba is brilliant, but the supporting actors and storylines aren't in the same league, and the shortness of the season (just 4 episodes) crippled it.
- The Newsroom: Season 1 - I'm too conflicted over this show to summarise in a sentence, go read the review!
- Once Upon a Time: Season 1 - original and lovely. A real standout.
- Supernatural: Season 7 - still good, but so epically depressing that I lost the will to watch
Baking
Most of the baking I've been reporting on day by day, big hits being the messy, traumatic but very tasty Black Forest Gateaux and a collection of tasty biscuits. My Great British Bake Off challenge continued with reasonably successful were Crème Caramels and Treacle Tart but ground to a halt when I wasn't interested in the next couple of challenges. I rounded off the month with a very tasty improvised nectarine and cherry pie, the pastry tasted wonderful, but the melt in mouth crumbliness made it impossible to get out of the dish! At some point if I'm going to keep this up, I need to learn how to take decent photos of food!
