All I Need For Christmas

Three Great Stories About The Sea

Today marks the end of National Short Story Week and I actually did read quite a bit of short fiction, including two great stories about the sea.

First up, ‘Drawn Up From Deep Places’ by Gemma Files. This is part of my continued read-through of Beneath Ceaseless Skies and is exactly the sort of ‘Literary Adventure Fantasy’ I’ve been searching for. It is part of a series so I’m looking forward to going back to read ‘Two Captains’ as well as future installments.

Next, ‘The Mussel Eater’ by Octavia Cade. I only discovered Cade earlier in the year but she has had a prolific and impressive 2014. ‘The Mussel Eater’ is shorter and sharper than most of the other work she published this year but is wonderful to have. Equally wonderful to have is Book Smugglers Publishing.

As well as reading, I also made a rare excursion outside the house to see Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy at my old local church, St John’s in Hackney. I hadn’t read anything about the gig in advance so was surprised and pleased to see he was joined by Matt Sweeney which meant we were treated to this rendition of ‘My Home Is The Sea’:

Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will

Only one sleep till Worldcon – this is my con anthem.

I’m In Love With Your Brother

‘Pass This On’ by Dan Sartain – my tune of the month. Admittedly the month in question was April but hey, it’s out now. The video might not be a patch on the original but it has a disgracefully low number of views. So I thought I’d post it here.

The Owls Are Not What They Seem

March 2014 is the 25th anniversary of the murder of Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks. I watched the series for the first time last year and it is a gloriously odd. Not just odd in the way we might describe a work as Lynchian these days but often straight up baffling and sometimes simply bad. That goes double for Fire Walk With Me. But when it works, it really works. So I thought I would share my favourite scene from the series, one of the most unexpectedly powerful bits of television I can remember:

The score for Twin Peaks was composed by Angelo Badalamenti and has proved as enduring as the television series itself. This includes ‘Laura’s Theme’ which was a part of my life long before I’d even heard of Lynch via Moby:

Badalamenti describes composing the theme with Lynch at the beginning of this extraordinary Essential Mix by Nicolas Jaar:

(That mix truly is essential, make sure you download it.)

Out On The Wiley, Windy Moors

The paradoxes of being a heavy reader is that you don’t really like to receive books as gifts. “Oh, a book! Wonderful! I’ll pencil that in for 2018…” But, of course, a book is never unwelcome. My wife got me The Breakfast Bible by Seb Emina and Malcolm Eggs (of the London Review Of Breakfasts) for Christmas and I’ve been reading it in bite-sized chunks since then. I have learnt many things along the say but the most important is that to make a perfect soft boiled egg, all you need to do is place a large room-temperature egg into simmering water and then put on ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Kate Bush:

When the song is finished so is the egg.

Essential Selection

Strange Horizons has published its year in review which features – as it does most years -a contribution from yours truly. Mostly I use it as an opportunity to praise the shortlists of last year’s Kitschies (whilst still managing to get a quick dig in) but I also just had space for The Water Sign by CS Samulski. As Kameron Hurley says in the comments, it isn’t a book without flaws but it is bloody exciting. In terms of other reviewers, I think the book that gets the most recommendations is Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. I enjoyed her previous fantasy work, Not The End Of The World , and, to a lesser extent Case Histories so this goes on the list.

In terms of my non-SF recommendations for the year, well, you need to have this:

Yeezus is mixture of the ridiculous and the sublime (usually within the same song), written and performed by a total arse who just happens to be a genius.

Notre Jour Viendra

Romain Gavras directed the ginger genocide video for MIA’s ‘Born Free’. He subsequently expanded this idea into the truly terrible film Our Day Will Come. So let’s ignore that and watch his badass video of MIA’s ‘Bad Girls’ instead:

Let My Baby Ride

Girl Walk

I’ve mentioned my love of Girl Talk before and it hasn’t gone away. ‘Feed The Animals’ and its follow up ‘All Day’ are never off my iPod and are invaluable in the gym. As I have been running along like a hamster in an underground bunker where I am forced to watch Loose Women with the subtitles on, I’ve often thought what a good soundtrack these music collages would make for a piece of contemporary dance. Turns out Wild Combination had the same idea and produced Girl Walk. Here is the first chapter:

So, if you ever see me on the streets of London, that’s what I’m doing on the inside.