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Rebel Heart (Dust Lands, #2)
Rebel Heart (Dust Lands, #2)
Moira Young | 2012 | Young Adult (YA)
8
7.5 (4 Ratings)
Book Rating
I didn't like this as much as the first. I wanted more Jack!

That being said, it was another riveting adventure across the hard world they live in and I enjoyed it.

Meeting back up with old friends and making new ones was cool. The Free Hawks are a great bunch and seeing Maev and Ash again was nice. I cant quite remember Creed but he made it all a bit more light-hearted with his flirting.

Lugh has been annoying me since he came back at the end of the last one and he didn't endear himself to me at all in this one, though at the end of the book I understand his feelings but that doesn't excuse him for the rest of the story.

DeMalo was also a little strange. And Saba's decision about two thirds through the book annoyed me too. Why would you do that?!?!

Jack got mixed up in trouble as usual but I still love his and Saba's relationship and I so hope they get some sort of HEA in the third book.

P.S. What's happening with that heart-stone??
  
The Best Man (Wilde's, #1)
The Best Man (Wilde's, #1)
L.A. Witt | 2010
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
For that bit near the end I have to say: GO LIAM, GO LIAM, GO LIAM!

As for the rest of the story, I loved the connection between Liam and Jon. It was instantaneous and I knew that something good was going to happen between them. We didn't even have to wait that long for it to happen, within the first 10% or so. I had goose-bumps!

I think that Jon was a little blind to Liam's behaviour. From before the half way point I could tell that something was happening in his life and it didn't take too much thinking about to figure it out.

That showdown at the end was really good though, hence my little cheer at the top. I'm so proud of Liam!

One thing that made me mark it down a little was the amount of sex in the book. Don't get me wrong, I love them together as a couple and some of the sweeter moments between them happened in bed but I can only read so many sex scenes before I get a little bored...

Other than that I really liked it!
  
The Sharpest Needle
The Sharpest Needle
Renee Patrick | 2021 | Mystery
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Blackmailing a Star
It’s August 1939, and silent film actress Marion Davies has been receiving poison pen letters from someone calling himself Argus. The letters threaten to reveal something from Marion’s past, something that could ruin her current relationship with William Randolph Hurst. When she turns to Lillian Frost and Edith Head for help, Edith can’t help but think there is more to the situation than there first appears to be. Then a dead body turns up. Can Lillian and Edith figure out what is going on?

There is so much to praise in this book. The plot is strong and always keeps us engaged. It does get a little convoluted as we reach the climax, but as long as you pay attention, you’ll follow what is happening. Real people and fictional characters rub elbows seamlessly, and they all appear fully formed to us. I love watching for cameos. The news of the day impacts the character, and therefore us. Yet we also have talk about the films coming out during that time, which I enjoyed. This is more than a Hollywood mystery. If you enjoy historical mysteries, you need to read these books today.
  
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Peter Sarsgaard recommended The Hunt (2012) in Movies (curated)

 
The Hunt (2012)
The Hunt (2012)
2012 | Drama
8.5 (2 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"The Hunt. It’s a Danish movie about a guy (Mads Mikkelsen) and he’s been accused of molesting a kid. The other thing that’s great in that movie is he’s got a very noble quality as a man who believes in himself. He’s the kind of guy that if it were to happen to him, the self-righteous indignation, at first, completely f***s him. He rejects it so hard and then he looks guilty. The self-preservation is… He’s not trying to explain himself at all because it’s so insulting: a great quality to act. And that’s like what’s great is that the actor in that film helps solve the puzzle of the movie. If an actor played it differently… What’s great is his flaw; his character flaw is what makes the whole storyline happen. If he could just be a little more direct and not so disdainful, more kind of humble and understanding, it wouldn’t have all gone down. It’s just because he circles the wagons way too quickly; he gets angry too quickly and just makes himself look guilty. So, yeah. I love films like that where you find yourself yelling back at the screen."

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Neil Gaiman recommended If... (1968) in Movies (curated)

 
If... (1968)
If... (1968)
1968 | Crime, Drama
7.5 (2 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"""The first one would be Lindsay Anderson’s If… It’s a film that I love because it allows me sometimes try and explain what it was like to be a kid at an English Public School — I was a scholarship boy in the early 1970s — late ’60s where you were in — even though it’s set earlier than that and was made earlier than that — you were in a culture that hasn’t changed. I remember just watching it and suddenly feeling understood. Which was a completely new one for me. I’d be, you know, This is my world. It was like, OK, here is something Malcolm McDowell–starring, the idea of kids — while we didn’t actually shoot up the school in rebellion, it was the kind of strange stuffy environment that needed to come tumbling down, and I’d never seen that before depicted on film. For years I wondered about why some sequences were in black and white, and many years later I was reading an interview with Lindsey Anderson and discovered it was because they ran out of money for color film, so they just went over to black and white stock, which works in several places through the story."""

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Brett Anderson recommended Scott 3 by Scott Walker in Music (curated)

 
Scott 3 by Scott Walker
Scott 3 by Scott Walker
1969 | Pop, Singer-Songwriter
7.0 (1 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I got to Scott Walker quite late. I got into him because I read a lot of comparisons between Dog Man Star or 'The Big Time', the B-side to [Suede's] 'Animal Nitrate', and him. I knew The Walker Brothers of course, but I didn't know his solo stuff. What I like about Scott Walker is that it's millimetres away from easy listening, but is still not easy listening. There's the occasional little detail or bar that he puts in there that makes it not easy listening. Scott 3 for me is an amazing record. The first few songs on that, especially songs like 'Big Louise', are such powerful pieces of music. He's one of the greatest singers ever. It's amazing to see how powerful a voice can be, I don't mean in a macho sense, but how if the voice is doing something fascinating how minimal the music can be. I love the way he's still making strange records, like The Drift and Tilt. You've got to admire him for marginalising himself, and still doing interesting stuff at his age, because it's quite rare isn't it? You wonder where he's going to go next."

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Cee-Lo Green recommended Raw Power by The Stooges in Music (curated)

 
Raw Power by The Stooges
Raw Power by The Stooges
1973 | Punk, Rock
8.4 (9 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"Iggy reminds me a lot of me. And it's all in that name; it's all in the title of that album. It’s raw power, you know? I like the funk that David Bowie was able to get behind Iggy. Believe it or not, I first saw an image of Iggy Pop at church, and they were talking about secret messages and backward masking - and they had [a picture of] Iggy Pop looking crazy. I didn't get into it until later, but I think how I was introduced to it was 'I Wanna Be Your Dog'. And what I like about Iggy is it's just genuine raunch. And the album seems like it’s all done in one take. 'Let's do that one, leave it, just try something else'. With his energy on stage, it seems as if the studio was just destroyed after that album - or at least you'd like to believe that. I just read an interview with him in which he said he wrote a lot of it in Hyde Park sitting under a tree wearing pyjama's too, which gave it a cool twist as well. I just love 'Search And Destroy' and 'I Need Somebody' as well."

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All-Time Greatest Hits by Fats Domino
All-Time Greatest Hits by Fats Domino
1990 | Rock
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"’Blueberry Hill’ was one of the first songs that made an impression on me as a child. I remember hearing it at my parent’s friends’ house, along the road where I grew up on. I would have been very young, but my ears immediately pricked up. “I was brought up with lots of music, but this song captivated me and I asked to hear it again. It was just one of those songs that was a catalyst for me getting into, I guess you could say soul music, in a way. “My love of this track comes back to the melody, which to me is the most important thing; both the melody and the delivery of the melody. I can’t really fathom the words to describe what it was about this song, but it was always going to feature. From my early childhood, it was either going to be this or ‘Green Onions’ by Booker T. & the M.G.'s. I heard those two songs on the same day and they have stayed with me as benchmarks for what you can do with melody and relatively few instruments."

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Tyondai Braxton recommended Liedgut by Atom TM in Music (curated)

 
Liedgut by Atom TM
Liedgut by Atom TM
2009 | Dance, Electronic
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"Both of Atom TM's records on the Raster-Noton label are some of my favorite electronic records ever made. Liedgut was his first one for the label. It feels cinematic without being pandering. Inventive and beautiful. Being that it’s electronic, and just that it in its own particular style, it’s a lot more having to do with texture and sound design. But then there’s this weird kind of melodic framework that goes in and out throughout the record, that’s very “hypermelodic”. Very consonant. It almost sounds like… you know those snow-globes that have a twisting belt? Like a music box. It’s texturally focused sound design. And he’s able to go back and forth here in a way that’s really compelling. And again, you can tell it’s very intuitive - he’s just going where the music takes him. In a world of forward thinking electronic music, where anyone can pick up a computer and do this thing, his voice is so unique. I'd be able to pick him out of a thousand records – his own distinct voice. I really love his records, especially the ones he did for Raster-Noton."

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Karl Hyde recommended Untrue by Burial in Music (curated)

 
Untrue by Burial
Untrue by Burial
2007 | Electronic
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"There are a lot of parallels between this record and the roots of Underworld’s inspiration. Film music. Taking sounds and songs and melodies from other tunes and fusing them together with other music in a completely different key. And it just has this dusty, beautifully dirty quality – like film noir through a dirty window. I absolutely love it. We took it to Chile with us, Rick and I, and played it in our hotel room and decided it was the best thing we’d heard in years. It inspired us to start writing there and then in our hotel room – music that went on to be part of the download-only records we did. It encouraged us to be a little less produced. It’s an amazing soundtrack for what’s going on around you. There’s a link between these first three records – especially with James Blake – the way that the voice is treated. It was very exciting to hear the voices on the Burial record treated in such an unprecious way. Taking vocals as oscillators, as we’d always seen them, like another synthesiser that’s capable of generating incredible noises. That in itself was inspiring."

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