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Baxter Dury recommended Blond by Frank Ocean in Music (curated)

 
Blond by Frank Ocean
Blond by Frank Ocean
2016 | Alternative, Pop, Soul

"My son listens to Frank Ocean, so I started listening to this through him. I started with listening to Channel Orange and I thought that was fucking amazing. At first I was displaced by the thin-sounding R&B American-ness of it, but when you get into it you realise it’s brilliant. What I like about it is the nature of what Frank Ocean’s singing about, his little introspective vanity subjects. He doesn’t go outwards, like ‘the big wave’s gonna crush us, save the animals’, he just talks about vain things. It’s good. It’s brilliant actually. He’s just a really weird guy singing about weird subjects. There’s that tune ‘Super Rich Kids’, which is just fucking brilliant. ‘Too many bottles of this wine we can’t pronounce’, there’s little moments of discomfort like that, turned into a chorus. I much prefer that to someone’s big treatise about, I don’t know, Assad. Or the coronavirus."

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Swimming Lessons
Swimming Lessons
Claire Fuller | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry
6
6.8 (9 Ratings)
Book Rating
Great series of letters let down by monotony
Claire Fuller's writing is poetic and haunting in this novel especially as we read a series of letters left by a wife who has been missing for 12 years.

The story surrounds Ingrid, and her horribly destructive relationship with her writer husband Gil. Her youngest daughter Flora has to come to terms with these revelations, after idolising her father for so long.

My only concern is while the back and forth narrative between Ingrid's letter and the present day is well laid out, the story itself becomes lacklustre and the epilogue is a little misleading leaving a question mark over her death. Good writing but plot could be more rich.
  
TD
The Distance Between Us
Kasie West | 2013
7
8.5 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
3.75 stars.

I liked a lot of this book; the romance and friendship that Caymen had with Xander, Skye and the band and strangely the doll shop and it's shoppers. The thing that knocked it down a quarter star was their preconceived bad feelings toward the rich without their being an explanation for most of the book.

Nevertheless I still liked the book a lot. Xander and his family were so down to Earth and he grew on me so much throughout this book. I thought Caymen was a little stupid to try and resist him because he was pretty amazing.

I look forward to reading more books by the author in the future.
  
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Sacha Gervasi recommended Withnail and I (1987) in Movies (curated)

 
Withnail and I (1987)
Withnail and I (1987)
1987 | Comedy
8.3 (4 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"Well I guess my first one has to be Withnail and I, the 1987 Bruce Robinson classic. You know, the plot is one that would get you laughed out of any Hollywood studio: Two unemployed actors go on a holiday, drinking, to one of their uncle’s cottages for the weekend; but it’s one of the most deeply rich, brilliant, tragicomic tales of male friendship. I actually remember seeing it when I was a kid, and walking out of the theater in London — and by the way, it did not do well at the time it was released; it was a tiny little film — but I remember thinking that I wanted to become a filmmaker after that."

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