Phone cords

You know how you go into someone else's house or office or whatever, and for whatever reason they have a landline phone, and it's got one of those coily cables for the handset (which are great, by the way, a fantastic design). But somehow, through some horrible misuse, they've tangled it. Maybe it's just a single twist halfway along the cable, maybe it's wrapped around itself and twisted, or maybe they've just fucked it up completely.

A Battle For the Ages

My opponent was fast and cunning, and all through the evening he goaded me ceaselessly. Twice I got up to confront him, only to find him vanished, nowhere to be found. I let him escape for the time being.

This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2)

If you read John Dies at the End (or watched the film) and liked it, read this one as well. Once again David and John blunder around like idiots and end up saving the world by accident. It's creepy and funny and brilliant.

Veins

I normally like Drew's stuff (Toothpaste for Dinner, Married to the Sea, Superpoop, The Worst Things For Sale), but I don't even know what's supposed to be likeable about this. Is it meant to be funny? Are we supposed to be laughing at MR? That just seems cruel. Is it not supposed to be funny? I don't know, I didn't get it at all.

Death in the Clouds (Hercule Poirot, #12)

Not one of the better Poirot books. A little annoying how long it takes him to start investigating some pretty obvious leads, and the solution suffers for that, because it makes it feel a lot less clever than some of the other ones, but still enjoyable.

One Deadly Sister

This is a terrible book.

The Patchwork Girl of Oz (Oz, #7)

One of the better Oz books, some good characters and some interesting stuff happens, although as usual the problem is solved without any real input by the protagonist, but that's just how these book are.

The Count of Monte Cristo

This book is really good. About a third of the way through it jumps ahead a bit and you feel like you're supposed to recognise some old characters with new names, and I thought I was going to have to go look some stuff up to keep up, but just keep reading because it all comes together really well.

My only real complaint is that I would quite like to know a bit more about what happened to some of the characters, specifically Baron Danglars, Eugénie Danglars, Louise d'Armilly and Albert de Morcerf after the book ends, but that's OK.

My favourite character though is Château-Renaud, just because he keeps showing up all the time and never does anything. He's always there just so some of the more involved characters have an extra person to speak to, but he doesn't influence the plot at all and nothing happens to him, he just carries on unaffected the whole time. He's great.

Home: A Uniquely Horrible Adventure in Tedium

Home is sort of a game in that you have to press keys to make things happen on the screen, but there's really no challenge or much interactivity to it. It basically seems to bill itself as a game because if it were a short film it would be way too obvious how shitty the story is. Spoiler alert from this point on.

Chronicle

Chronicle is a movie about three teenagers who discover a mysterious thing that gives them the power of telekinesis. They soon discover that they can do some pretty impressive stuff with it, including flying and moving very heavy things.