Trying to give the garden a bit more attention this year, and the first thing to have popped up is the rhubarb. Yum!

Dannii popped up on a recent 1997 Top of the Pops episode, singing All I Wanna Do and I remembered loving that song, so time to listen to the album. It’s mostly good, 90s dance pop, with Dannii’s great vocals. The song about being underwater is weird… it’s a bit of a downer in the middle of an upbeat album, and I’m not sure what it’s trying to prove, but if you stripped that one out, it would be a fun and very listenable album.

Somehow I’ve never actually listened to any Chesney Hawkes yet, I wonder if it’s a bit cheeky to start with a new album rather than his absolute classics, but here we are. I quite enjoyed it. It’s sensible, heartfelt, grown up pop without being too cheesy - it reminded me a bit of Keith Urban, although obviously less country. The track 13 is something of an outlier, not fun, not too pop, and completely engrossing and heartbreaking in equal measure. Overall, a great album from someone with a lengthy rollercoaster of a career.

It’s just a lovely, warm, funny story about the people fighting to make a dream come true against immense odds - sending those plucky explorers to the moon. There is the fake moon landing stuff but you never really at any point think that’s what happened, even at the end with the cat providing the proof we all needed. It’s a great take on a silly conspiracy, poking a bit of fun but mostly providing a warm and moving story to while away a couple of hours.

This movie is so bad. It did make me laugh in places, definitely moments of humour, but the premise is awful, pretty much all the characters are horrible - to each other and just generally - and you know it’s all going to come crumbling down so the anticipation for that is uncomfortable at best. Josh was such a lovely character and I only wanted what was best for him, so the rest of it was just cringe from start to finish.

A really good entry in Jack Reacher’s canon - finally our protagonist reaches his destination of Virginia but… maybe he shouldn’t have bothered. Arriving at his old military stomping ground causes more problems than it solves, but he does sort of get the girl for a bit anyway, and he solves another puzzle and another fit up job. It was very interesting to see Reacher as a reluctant father figure, albeit briefly, and how he reacts to charges that he doesn’t actually know whether they are true or not. Ultimately, the book ends as they always do and just how Reacher likes it, with the future stretching ahead unknown.

This movie, whilst a different genre and story arc, reminded me a lot of Back in Action - it’s entirely generic and uninspired, but quite fun to watch with a nice little cast of characters. The heist is absolute nonsense, and a lot of the plane detail was inaccurate at best. The plot didn’t always make sense, but if you put the problems to one side, it’s a fun, mindless watch. I loved Magnus and his optimism, and could watch him cracking into a safe all day. Not exactly a stellar piece of cinema but not the worst either!

The critics have not spared a kind word for this movie, but it had to be watched to see what all the (negative) fuss was about. They’re not wrong, it’s awful. But what’s weird about it is all the elements are there. A mis-matched buddy comedy with two great actors (sadly no chemistry), a family torn apart and trying to find each other again, moving moments between man and machine, the big bad villains, and a message about society along the way.

This may have been my favourite of the Saxon Stories so far, with our hero very firmly in the driving seat, full of confidence, and trying to do the right thing even when the odds are against him. There’s plenty of fighting and sailing boats and politics here and there, but of course the bit I found most interesting was the kidnapping, love affair and rescue attempts. So good, interesting and moving. I’m in two minds about whether this series is really grabbing me or not, but this book has turned the tides towards the positive for now.

Sometimes you just need a mindless action movie where the stakes are high but it’s also kinda tame. This is exactly that movie. It’s not at all original, the reluctant ex-spies are forced back into action to protect their family. But it had it’s moments, and it was a great cast, including lovely Andrew Scott. There were plot holes galore but twists and turns along the way, and in the end, a lot of fun.

Every year, I get obsessed with the blossom that blooms as the temperatures finally start to warm up. This batch, appearing on a hedge I walk past regularly, was there for a couple of days only, and then all completely disappeared. Weird.

I really enjoyed this Poirot story, it felt like a pre-cursor or a practice run for the Orient Express that we know is coming in Agatha Christie’s future. A collection of people ride on a train, someone is murdered, and there’s a bigger plot afoot. I like that this wasn’t all about Poirot though, it’s a while before he even turns up, and he’s not the one finding every single clue - although of course he is the one to piece it all together.

There’s so much media around the sinking of the Titanic, an event that continues to captivate so many people - including me. But why does it? This book tries to answer that question, alongside chronicling the sinking in one chapter but more importantly the stories of the survivors in subsequent chapters. Some people warrant an entire chapter to themselves, their subsequent stories are so full and intriguing. Other chapters cover a few survivors and what they did with their lives after making it back to dry land, and it’s just so fascinating to see the shadow of this tragedy looming over them and the different ways of dealing with it. Along the way, the tables are turned on us, though, and pondering why this particular ship continues to garner so much attention.

I loved this, obviously the main standout track is Bitch which is a belter to sing along to. But the rest of the album lives up to the promise. It feels quite a lot like Alanis Morrisette, all rock and angst and guitars, and although Meredith doesn’t quite live up to the greatness of Alanis, it’s not too far off. It’s a shame she didn’t really have too much more success after this album, as I would have liked to hear more.

At this point, Mumford & Sons are indelibly linked with Ted Lasso in my mind, and that’s a good association, a pleasant memory. So I went into this album hoping for some good tunes, but unfortunately I didn’t enjoy it as much as I wanted. It’s slow and depressing and potentially what I thought Mumford always was - dull folk music. Maybe I’ll just rewatch Ted Lasso instead.

I love Paddington as a bit of a palatte cleansar between more serious books. This one was interesting, particularly with the stranger turning up to the gardens and asking our favourite bear a lot of intriguing questions - and getting even more fascinating (and unhelpful) answers. It surprised me when the visitor had a mobile phone as you always consider Paddington being a sort of old school but timeless character, and suddenly I had to think of him in the modern world. Alongside these adventures, Paddington learns about self-playing painos, and gets a parking ticket!

As a quick salve from some of the more meaty reads I’ve had recently, I listened to a quick audiobook of the next New Series Adventure story in the Doctor Who universe. This one was narrated by Russell Tovey who has a great voice and a did a fantastic job with the different characters. I was particularly impressed with his voicing of Sebastian who was an odious character and really done well. It’s an interesting story, a sort of Hunger Games hunt style with a bit of cloning in there for good measure. Very Doctor Who, although I’m disappointed Donna didn’t seem to get too involved in the outcome. Still a fun read.

Alongside powering through the Reacher series, I’ve decided to muscle through the Saxon Stories as well. This is the third in the series and it’s really getting interesting as these characters grow and develop, cross paths and diverge again, and keep popping up in each other’s lives. For an era where it seems like death is literally just around the corner, it’s impressive for the few survivors to keep cropping up again and again. This also had the intrigue of Uhtred falling from grace from a Lord to a slave and back again, with everything that entails in between. The machinations of loyalty and fighting for the right side are complex, but the characters are easy to follow and have respect for. I’ll be reading on!

At first I enjoyed this book - classic Reacher getting picked up as a hitchhiker in a seemingly innocent vehicle that actually ends up with him getting embroiled in a big plot. This one was fascinating, the drivers clearly hiding something and Reacher gradually finding out what it is. I also liked the cat and mouse chase with the detectives not that far behind. But once things started to be revealed, I sort of lost the plot a bit - quite a few different agencies and a lot of different levels of undercover, and I didn’t really care to follow it that much. Ultimately it was an ok read but I’m just happy to move on to the next. Will Reacher ever manage to get to Virginia?

So good. I’m disappointed in myself for not having gotten into Taylor Jenkins Reid’s books sooner but now that I have, I’m all in. This one reminded me at first of Apples Never Fall which I read last month, but only because it’s a large family with a lot of siblings. There the similarities ended and this one tells its own story of woe and hardship, overcoming the odds, and a wide array of characters eventually coming together at a party where everything comes to a head. I really liked that this told a lot of story but you could tell there was still a lot more to happen in these lives, and yet I wasn’t disappointed by the ending either. It wrapped up so well. I did enjoy the bonus crossover mentions of characters, Carrie Soto obviously popping up but also a Daisy Jones mention as well. Can’t wait to read the next one!

I don’t remember why this one popped into the subconscious but it felt like a good opportunity to listen to some 2000s music rather than being totally stuck in the 90s. The highlight of the album is In the Morning, naturally, and the rest of it is okay, listenable but I think it’s pretty forgettable. I do like their sound so it’s not all bad, but will maybe just stick to listening to the singles.

Gracie Abrams has been appearing on various TV clips recently, and she popped up on the Selena album so I dug through the list and found I’d missed this album. I’m not totally sure it was worth prioritising this week, as it’s pretty derivative. It starts okay, but the end tails off quite drastically. The Taytay song is good but ultimately think this one is pretty skippable, which is a shame because I had high hopes.

This Reacher prequel takes us back to the events directly preceding the first book in the series. For some readers, this must have been quite the journey back in time, but for me it was only a few months ago that I was reading that first book so it was relatively fresh in my mind. Reacher, still in the military, is sent undercover to keep an eye on a murder investigation but of course he ends up getting directly involved and disobeying orders to do the right thing. We find out the circumstances behind Reacher’s exit from the army, and it made me quite sad in the end. But that happened so that the series we know and love could exist so on we go!

This is the first Bridgerton I’ve read that hasn’t been made into the TV phenomenon yet, although I’m sure it’s coming. This series is great at bringing a modern perspective to Regency England, and even though the pomp and circumstance is all there, you get to remember that the characters you see in period pieces are humans too with the same thoughts and feelings as modern generations. This one took me a bit longer to get on board with because it’s so blatantly the story of Cinderella adapted to the Bridgerton world, but as always you get sucked into the romance and the glamour of it all and so ultimately I really enjoyed it.

This video popped up recently on the BBC Archives, featuring a short look back in the day over whether people would buy films if they could, rather than renting them. We know the answer to that now, my bulging Apple library is a testament to it, but back then it was DVDs, rentals, and Netflix in it’s original rental-by-mail format was still a few years in the future. It’s so interesting to hear the different viewpoints. Of course the rental guy is going to think that it’s a stupid idea and he’s not going to go out of business anytime soon. And of course the people gunning for the change are saying it’s the way of the future.

I had never heard of The Alarm but they popped up as a question on the Popmaster TV show (‘you are… ten guns out!’). That led to them being the album pick of the week and I wasn’t sure what to expect but I was so surprised. I LOVED it. It’s just great rock, for the 80s it sounds pretty modern, and it’s stacked full of good songs with great riffs. I could listen to this one over and over - always amazing to get a find like this from a band you’ve never heard of.

It’s weird to me that Benny Blanco is credited as a joint artist on this album, as they’ve been working together for ages and presumably it’s only that they are engaged that he has top billing. It’s not a bad thing though for people to get more credit, so I’m in two minds about it. As an album, this is pretty good, it’s very mellow and sounds like Billie Eilish in a lot of places, although there’s a track that Charli XCX would be jealous of in the middle there. Good listen, and even the talky bits weren’t too annoying.

I watched the TV adaptation of this relatively recently, and so it was fresh in my mind the story - Susan starting out in Greece, coming back to London to investigate the cold case of a murder in a hotel alongside the disappearance of a young woman. It’s more of what made the first book great - story within a story, meta references, great characterisation, and ultimately two good murder mysteries, one inside the other. I love Anthony Horowitz’s writing when he gets super detailed and twisty meta like this, so this was another success for me.

This movie popped up as a question on Only Connect - films that had coined terms now in common use. I can’t wrap my head around the fact that Bucket List only came into being in 2007, it feels like such an obvious and natural term to use but of course someone had to come up with it in the first place. As a film, this is a nice and gentle watch, seeing two crochety old guys getting up to mischief and learning lessons along the way, it’s lovely. Not perfect, it’s a slow start and you sort of feel like ‘well sure, if we all had the money to do that’ but it’s charming and you can’t fault Morgan Freeman’s endearing performance in this.

There were some elements of this that I thought might make it a good film - great cast, stylish and fun action sequences, but I just couldn’t deal with it. The first problem was bullets going round corners, you need a real good reason for that to be a thing, and I’m not sure they had one. Secondly, the film-making was so jittery and intense that the car chase sequence was completely nauseating so I don’t think I could have watched much further even if I’d wanted to.

We needed something to watch where you leave your brain at the door, and this popped up as a low cost option. The first movie was okay, cringe and annoying in places but mostly funny, but I have to admit to not having high hopes for the sequel. It was adorable though, very funny and Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand absolutely stealing the show. It’s still cringe and I actually think De Niro’s character is getting worse and less sympathetic, but still, a fun watch.

It took me a while to adjust to this film, partly because I hadn’t quite realised it was a slasher thriller (given the cover, that’s completely my bad) and also because it was billed as a version of And Then There Were None and it’s very very loose. But I did like the way it dipped about in time and backtracked and started pulling everything together. I’m not sure if the dissassociative identity thing is supposed to be a twist but it was pretty well signposted throughout. It was a very interesting thriller though and the end, oof, I didn’t see that coming.

Finished off the trilogy of novelisations with this final book that covers Marty and Doc’s exploits in 1885. It’s very true to the movie, with quotable lines throughout, and only a couple of additional insights. Of the three books it’s probably the one that adds the least, but it’s always fun to be in the Hill Valley universe and I’m glad to have read it.

A prequel to the Ryan series, this was a slightly weird story because we all knew where it was heading and that was nowhere good. It’s weird to know the answer of a mystery book before you really get into it, but equally that shone a light on aspects you may not notice otherwise. This time you’re more attuned to the clues and whether they are being noticed or missed, and that’s an interesting take. Poor Ryan really gets put through the ringer in this one and it’s actually a timely reminder of what he’s been through for when we return to the main series in the next book.

As with the last Danielle Steele book I read, it takes a while to adjust to the style here - arms length storytelling, describing what happens as time passes rather than getting stuck into specific scenes. But the characters are interesting and the story is great, and it feels very soap-like, I just want to know what happens next. This one was a pretty emotional story, too, about a young girl injured in an accident that has to learn how to find herself again, and not only that, realising that who she was before may not be the ideal version of herself as well. A good read.

This probably wasn’t one of my favourite Jack Reacher stories, although I do like that he was feeling the effects of the previous book. Turns out he’s not superhuman after all and can feel pain! But it felt like he was getting involved with something that really didn’t need to be undertaken. He was suspicious of being dropped off, suspicious of a doctor not really doing his job, and sure it all led to a big bad plot (a REALLY bad plot as it happens), it didn’t feel like enough to grab him. But still, it’s always fun spending time with Reacher, particularly as he gets more and more out of touch with the modern world - phones and the internet and the like.

Gina G has quite naturally appeared on our TOTP 90s rewatches, with that absolute classic Ooh Aah taking centre stage around Eurovision time. But I was quite surprised that she kept on coming back, I’d assumed she was a one hit wonder, but there she was time and again with another single. So I figured it was worth listening to the album, and guess what? I loved it! It’s 90s and it’s cheesy but it’s really a lot of fun. Some of it is super catchy, Fresh is living rent free in my head at the moment. One of the songs sounds a bit too similar to Ooh Aah, and then you get the repeat for the last track, but otherwise, I surprisingly really enjoyed it!

I really liked this album. Lady Gaga can be a bit hit and miss for me but this was a big hit. It’s back to good old pop, great to listen to and some real bops along the way. The last song with Bruno Mars, though, that’s not so good and a pretty grim way to end the album. But if you exclude that one, this is a great piece of work.

I really enjoyed this book, a super sweet and simple story about a Londoner struggling to keep up with the pace of city life, splitting from her boyfriend and finding her feet in an unusual place - a retirement village. It reads well and the characters are great, and although there’s the cliche hook of yet another dating app, there’s a lot more to it than that. It reads well and was a joy to return to and spend time with these characters. There’s plenty more that could be told as well! The only problem I had was not really feeling the title fit the story.

The second of the Saxon stories features our intrepid hero getting into more scrapes. I’m always surprised by how young our main character is, he gets up to all sorts. This time there are solo raids and a duel, and then some far bigger battles to attend to as well. A little bit of romance here and there (so sad at times!) but the heart of these stories is about torn allegiances, about not really knowing your identity and trying to find where you fit in the world - ideas that are as relevant now as they were back then in the dark ages.

I saw the TV adaptation of this a while ago, and thought it was an interesting concept so eventually got round to reading the original book. It’s good, great characterisation and the style of it - although it’s a book that dips back and forward in time, there are clear delineations and it serves towards the story rather than being an irritating distraction. Gradually you get to know these people, the layers of the onion are peeled back, and we get to know who they are, what happened, and where they go from here. A good read.

This was an interesting book detailing the perils and pitfalls of living in a dwelling not really designed to support human life, alongside the joy and calm that comes from being that much closer to nature. The housing crisis is dissected in detail here and it’s completely relatable and understandable how Davies ends up living in a shed… albeit not something I would have been able to do. Lots of bureaucratic and political problems are highlighted here but it all boils down to humans treating each other kindly and being able to have some basic human rights. Without that, what are we?

The previous two films were non-starters, so it was a relief to find this one entirely cosy and lovely and watchable. It’s pretty predictable, every plot ’twist’ was sign-posted about a year in advance, and it’s not in any way challenging. But oh, these ladies are absolute legends, excellent friends (tough love!) and living their best lives. It’s just nice to spend some time in their company.

I can’t really put my finger on why I didn’t like this movie, it just didn’t grab me at all. It wasn’t particularly funny, they weren’t particularly nice, and although there was some chemistry between the leads, the banter didn’t quite work for me at all. So I left it.

I liked the first Moana more than I expected to, although it was not without its problem. It popped up on TV one day when I was under the weather and it was quite a soothing re-watch. This sequel is not a patch on the first! So boring, and the couple of songs I heard weren’t great. Couldn’t get past the twenty minute rule at all.

Of course Anastacia was an absolute icon in the late 90s/early 00s, but I hadn’t realised just how many of these songs I recognised from back then. It’s great, boppy pop, sometimes angry, sometimes happy, definitely sing-a-longs. I’m Outta Love will always remind me of Peter Kay’s Car Share, but that’s even more of an honour to be included in that show. A fab album!