Question for ILB (when it returns): how much of a book do you need to read before you can say you have read it?
(inspired by flippant qn in Orange list comments)[…]

Those Mean Girls posts not quite in full. I have written and discarded three posts about Mean Girls, which suggests that I think this might be the most important film of the year. It is not. It is instead a rather good, smart teen comedy which happen[…]

The Orange Prize for fiction compiled a vote of the living library of top 50 essential contemporary reads.
To be in, you needed to be well thought of by bookish sorts (the survey was undertaken during the Hay festival) and not dead.[…]

Most of the work in Tom Friedman’s current show at the South London Gallery is entertaining enough without being breathtaking, or even especially exciting. Much of it consists of plays on perspective: several boxes of Cheerios spliced to form t[…]

In a priceless interview with Pete ‘Just Researching’ Townshend about what a bully he thinks Michael Moore is, the following priceless line is thrown out.
“…he’ll have to work very, very hard to convince me that a man w[…]

I don’t read books by comedians (anymore). Oh I used to, there was a terrible phase in my late teens when there seemed to be a connection between live stand-up and novels written by said stand ups. Only later did I realise that said connection […]

Good old Barnet, back again with the great fundraiser from last year. Bid the highest and play for five minutes against Arsenal. Now the cynic in me would say (and did say) that this is surely an ideal time for a Spurs/ Manyou/ Cheslea fan to come up[…]

The British Film Festival is something I’ll return to after I’ve visited Cambridge’s own this weekend, but meantime Edinburgh has announced this year’s line-up. I’ve gone the last two years but can’t really afford […]

Vice Photo Issue.
With all of the good things that I have said about McGinley, he is sure a shitty editor–one of the good things about Vice used to be the imagery and this time he has almost failed to deliver. Of the 75 examples of what are su[…]

“Why do people go on Wife Swap???”: this is my despairing cry every week. It’s despairing because I know the answer. It’s not just because they want to be famous, really – that’s a harmless enough ambition for all […]