Search
1000 results for “chrissie_artist”
-
#Delhi sizzles at over 45°c today.
It is too hot to go out for a smoke.
So, this Lady with a #Huqqa stands in a Window to enjoy a smoke.This c1780 CE #Pahari #IndianMiniaturePainting from #Nurpur #HimachalPradesh / #Punjab Hills from the collection of Toby Falk was auctioned by Christie's Inc on 27th Oct, 2023 for £1890
#Art #IndianHeritage #IndianHistory #Painting #Heritage #History #HeritageOfIndia #HookahTime #Artist #artoftheday #MastoArt #Histodons #Entertainment #Paintings #India
-
A Blind Man's Bluff or, Hide & Seek!
I remember playing this game during my childhood days. Do you?
In this c1775 AD #Pahari #IndianMiniaturePainting from #Kangra #HimachalPradesh by a master #Artist of the 1st Generation after #Nainsukh #Manaku of #Guler #Punjab Hills #India 'Lord #Krishna Plays it with Fellow Cowherds'
Sold by Christie's on 22 Sept 2021 for US$ 75,000
#Art #IndianHistory #AncientIndia #MastoArt #Paintings #IndianCulture #IndianHeritage #Religion #Hinduism #Hindu #Painting
-
A Blind Man's Bluff or, Hide & Seek!
I remember playing this game during my childhood days. Do you?
In this c1775 AD #Pahari #IndianMiniaturePainting from #Kangra #HimachalPradesh by a master #Artist of the 1st Generation after #Nainsukh #Manaku of #Guler #Punjab Hills #India 'Lord #Krishna Plays it with Fellow Cowherds'
Sold by Christie's on 22 Sept 2021 for US$ 75,000
#Art #IndianHistory #AncientIndia #MastoArt #Paintings #IndianCulture #IndianHeritage #Religion #Hinduism #Hindu #Painting
-
A Blind Man's Bluff or, Hide & Seek!
I remember playing this game during my childhood days. Do you?
In this c1775 AD #Pahari #IndianMiniaturePainting from #Kangra #HimachalPradesh by a master #Artist of the 1st Generation after #Nainsukh #Manaku of #Guler #Punjab Hills #India 'Lord #Krishna Plays it with Fellow Cowherds'
Sold by Christie's on 22 Sept 2021 for US$ 75,000
#Art #IndianHistory #AncientIndia #MastoArt #Paintings #IndianCulture #IndianHeritage #Religion #Hinduism #Hindu #Painting
-
Photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879), “Julia Jackson,” 1867, albumen print, mounted on board, this print 9 7/8 x 7 7/8 in. (24.9 x 19.8 cm.), listed at Christie’s 2 Apr 2019. #vintagephotography #darkroom #PhotographyHistory #womenphotographers #womenshistory
From the lot essay: “The present lot shows Julia Margaret Cameron’s niece, a young and recently-wed Julia Jackson, modeled as an example of Victorian purity and grace. As a steady fixture in Cameron's work, Jackson appears in more than fifty portraits by Cameron, her natural beauty embodying the artist’s pursuit of ideal reality. The measured lighting of Cameron’s photographs demonstrates an intention to confront the unadorned beauty of her subjects; this particular example relies on Jackson's natural countenance to depict austere elegance. The present lot is a fine example of the manner and intention of Pre-Raphaelite paintings that informed and inspired Cameron’s work.“
-
Portrait of Jalal al-Din Mirza, attributable to Abu’l Hassan Ghaffari Sani’ Al-Mulk, Qajar, Iran, 1859, oil on canvas, 49 x 35in. (124.5 x 88.9cm.), photo: Christie’s London, 21 Apr 2016. #arthistory #persianart
From the Christie’s lot essay: “Jalal al-Din Mirza (1827-72) was a son of Fath ‘Ali Shah Qajar (r. 1797-1834). He was a Qajar historian and freethinker and the author of the Nameh-i Khusravan, one of the earliest examples of modern Iranian historiography in the Qajar period…
The work of Abu’l Hassan demonstrates a change in the aesthetic of Qajar painting in the mid-19th century (Julian Raby, Qajar Portraits, exhibition catalogue, London, 1999, p.53). The artist began his career as a pupil of Mehr 'Ali, but none of his early works survive and it is therefore unclear as to whether his painting began in a style more typical of Fath 'Ali Shah's reign. He was appointed the naqqashbashi (chief painter) of the court of Muhammad Shah in 1842 (Yahya Zoka, op.cit., Iran, 2003, p. 21) and was sent to study in Italy and Paris, a factor which began to manifest itself in a European-influenced realism in his work that was new to Persian painting. The expressive power of his portraits - as demonstrated here - led Abu’l Hassan to the art of caricature and he became the illustrator to the court newspaper, Ruznama-i vugayi-i ittifaqiya. Alongside the more traditional depictions of Qajar nobles, he showed a capacity for the merciless caricature of their attendants and the religious classes (Julian Raby, op. cit., p.53).”
-
Just binge-watched Season 2 of The Sandman. I wasn't going to, and it's now well past 1 AM, but boy, was it worth it! The writing was immaculate, and the production was amazing. The scenes of Orpheus in the Underworld were just beautiful, worthy of a master artist. The ending ... there were tears.
Tom Sturridge WAS Lord Morpheus! Gwendoline Christie's Lucifer Morningstar was genius. Loved Mason Alexander Park as Desire. Esme Creed-Miles was awesome as Delerium.
Did Dream spend most of the show being a dick? Too right. But he got better :-)
Yeah, I liked the show.
-
At 48°c #Delhi was the hottest place in #India yesterday! 7°c above normal
#climatecrisisWe can only pray to #SuryaNarayan (Sun God) to show mercy on us
#Surya, with the characteristics of Lord #Vishnu sits here in a Golden Orb representing Radiating Sun in this c1740 CE #Pahari #IndianMiniaturePainting from #Basohli #Jammu or #Guler #HimachalPradesh sold by Christie's on 2 May, 2029 for £22,500
#Art #IndianHeritage #History #Heritage #IndianHistory #Artist #Painting #MastoArt #Histodons
-
At 48°c #Delhi was the hottest place in #India yesterday! 7°c above normal
#climatecrisisWe can only pray to #SuryaNarayan (Sun God) to show mercy on us
#Surya, with the characteristics of Lord #Vishnu sits here in a Golden Orb representing Radiating Sun in this c1740 CE #Pahari #IndianMiniaturePainting from #Basohli #Jammu or #Guler #HimachalPradesh sold by Christie's on 2 May, 2029 for £22,500
#Art #IndianHeritage #History #Heritage #IndianHistory #Artist #Painting #MastoArt #Histodons
-
At 48°c #Delhi was the hottest place in #India yesterday! 7°c above normal
#climatecrisisWe can only pray to #SuryaNarayan (Sun God) to show mercy on us
#Surya, with the characteristics of Lord #Vishnu sits here in a Golden Orb representing Radiating Sun in this c1740 CE #Pahari #IndianMiniaturePainting from #Basohli #Jammu or #Guler #HimachalPradesh sold by Christie's on 2 May, 2029 for £22,500
#Art #IndianHeritage #History #Heritage #IndianHistory #Artist #Painting #MastoArt #Histodons
-
At 48°c #Delhi was the hottest place in #India yesterday! 7°c above normal
#climatecrisisWe can only pray to #SuryaNarayan (Sun God) to show mercy on us
#Surya, with the characteristics of Lord #Vishnu sits here in a Golden Orb representing Radiating Sun in this c1740 CE #Pahari #IndianMiniaturePainting from #Basohli #Jammu or #Guler #HimachalPradesh sold by Christie's on 2 May, 2029 for £22,500
#Art #IndianHeritage #History #Heritage #IndianHistory #Artist #Painting #MastoArt #Histodons
-
#Delhi sizzles at over 45°c today.
It is too hot to go out for a smoke.
So, this Lady with a #Huqqa stands in a Window to enjoy a smoke.This c1780 CE #Pahari #IndianMiniaturePainting from #Nurpur #HimachalPradesh / #Punjab Hills from the collection of Toby Falk was auctioned by Christie's Inc on 27th Oct, 2023 for £1890
#Art #IndianHeritage #IndianHistory #Painting #Heritage #History #HeritageOfIndia #HookahTime #Artist #artoftheday #MastoArt #Histodons #Entertainment #Paintings #India
-
#Delhi sizzles at over 45°c today.
It is too hot to go out for a smoke.
So, this Lady with a #Huqqa stands in a Window to enjoy a smoke.This c1780 CE #Pahari #IndianMiniaturePainting from #Nurpur #HimachalPradesh / #Punjab Hills from the collection of Toby Falk was auctioned by Christie's Inc on 27th Oct, 2023 for £1890
#Art #IndianHeritage #IndianHistory #Painting #Heritage #History #HeritageOfIndia #HookahTime #Artist #artoftheday #MastoArt #Histodons #Entertainment #Paintings #India
-
#Delhi sizzles at over 45°c today.
It is too hot to go out for a smoke.
So, this Lady with a #Huqqa stands in a Window to enjoy a smoke.This c1780 CE #Pahari #IndianMiniaturePainting from #Nurpur #HimachalPradesh / #Punjab Hills from the collection of Toby Falk was auctioned by Christie's Inc on 27th Oct, 2023 for £1890
#Art #IndianHeritage #IndianHistory #Painting #Heritage #History #HeritageOfIndia #HookahTime #Artist #artoftheday #MastoArt #Histodons #Entertainment #Paintings #India
-
Cuando el arte se pierde, perdemos todos
Listen to this articleA lo largo de la historia, innumerables obras de arte han desaparecido, han sido destruidas o han sufrido daños irreparables. Desde conflictos bélicos hasta accidentes fortuitos, el arte ha estado siempre expuesto al riesgo. Tras episodios como la Segunda Guerra Mundial, la conciencia sobre la necesidad de proteger el patrimonio cultural se intensificó notablemente a través de seguros.
La historia del arte no solo se construye a partir de obras conservadas, sino también de aquellas que se han perdido y han borrado parte de la memoria cultural de la humanidad.
Cada pérdida ha dejado una huella: no solo emocional o simbólica, sino también en la manera en que hoy protegemos, aseguramos y gestionamos el patrimonio artístico.
Hoy, esa protección no solo depende de museos o instituciones, sino también de herramientas más discretas, como los seguros de arte.
El valor del arte: más allá del mercado
Desde el punto de vista de la Historia del arte y del patrimonio, una obra no es solo un objeto: es un testimonio cultural. Su valor no se limita a cifras económicas, sino que incluye aspectos como su contexto histórico, la autoría, su estado de conservación y su relevancia dentro de una corriente artistica.
Sin embargo, el mercado necesita cuantificar ese valor. Instituciones como Sotheby’s o Christie’s convierten ese significado en cifras, lo que permite, entre otras cosas, establecer pólizas de seguros.
El historiador Alfred Weidinger ha acreditado la autoría de Gustav Klimt en el Retrato de un príncipe africano (1897). El cuadro se perdió tras la Segunda Guerra Mundial y en 2023, un coleccionista lleva la obra, en muy mal estado a una galería de arte para su valoración, donde se descubre la autoria.
Aquí surge una tensión interesante: ¿puede el valor económico representar realmente el valor cultural? El valor económico no representa plenamente el valor cultural, pero sí lo traduce a un lenguaje operativo dentro del sistema actual.
El mercado pone precio a las obras; la historia del arte les da sentido. Y rara vez ambas cifras coinciden exactamente.
Riesgos invisibles: la fragilidad del patrimonio
Las obras de arte están expuestas a múltiples amenazas: daños durante el transporte, cambios de temperatura y humedad, restauraciones inadecuadas y robos y vandalismo.
Durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, Europa sufrió uno de los mayores expolios artísticos de la historia. Miles de obras fueron robadas por el régimen nazi, destruidas en bombardeos y ocultadas y trasladadas de forma ilegal. Este contexto impulsó políticas internacionales de protección y restitución que siguen vigentes hoy.
Más allá de robos o catástrofes, muchas obras de arte se deterioran por factores silenciosos y acumulativos. Son los llamados riesgos invisibles, y constituyen una de las mayores amenazas para el patrimonio.
Estudio Caballo Sforza. Leonardo Da Vinci hizo fue un molde de arcilla enorme, a tamaño real, de la estatua, que media unos siete metros de altura. Según Vasari: «Todos los que vieron el gran modelo de barro aseguraron que era la más excelente y magnífica obra que habían visto nunca.» Pero cuando Milán entro en guerra con Francia se fundió todo el bronce apartado para la obra. Después se destruyó el molde de arcilla, perdiéndose una de las obras maestras de la escultura del Renacimiento.El paso del tiempo hace que ninguna obra sea inmune al envejecimiento (los pigmentos se alteran y los soportes se debilitan). Y la conservación ayuda a ralentizar estos procesos, que no se detienen nunca.
Incluso en entornos controlados, el riesgo nunca desaparece. Por eso, organismos como el Consejo Internacional de Museos insisten en la importancia de la conservación preventiva. Los seguros entran aquí como una capa adicional de protección, no física, pero sí estratégica.
Grandes pérdidas y siniestros en la historia del arte
Cada obra desaparecida, cada colección destruida o dispersada, introduce un vacío que condiciona nuestra comprensión del pasado. En este sentido, los grandes siniestros no son meros episodios trágicos, sino momentos que redefinen la relación entre patrimonio, memoria y protección.
Uno de los ejemplos más determinantes se sitúa en el contexto de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, cuando el arte europeo fue objeto de un expolio sistemático. Miles de obras fueron confiscadas, trasladadas o destruidas en medio del conflicto. Muchas de ellas nunca han sido recuperadas, mientras que otras han protagonizado largos procesos de restitución que aún hoy continúan. Este episodio no solo supuso una pérdida material incalculable, sino que marcó un antes y un después en la conciencia internacional sobre la necesidad de proteger el patrimonio cultural en situaciones de guerra.
En esa historia menos visible de pérdidas, encontramos casos especialmente reveladores. Uno de los más conocidos es el del Retrato de un joven de Rafael, desaparecido durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial tras formar parte de la colección de los Czartoryski. Considerada una de las obras más importantes del Renacimiento perdidas, su ausencia sigue siendo una de las grandes lagunas en la historia del arte europeo.Sin embargo, no es necesario un conflicto bélico para que el arte se vea amenazado. A comienzos del siglo XX, el robo de la Mona Lisa del Museo del Louvre por un trabajador del propio museo evidenció hasta qué punto incluso las instituciones más prestigiosas podían ser vulnerables. Durante dos años, la obra más famosa del mundo permaneció desaparecida, generando una atención mediática sin precedentes. Paradójicamente, aquel robo no solo puso en jaque la seguridad museística, sino que contribuyó a consolidar la fama global de la pintura, transformando su estatus dentro de la cultura visual contemporánea.
En tiempos más recientes, los desastres han adoptado formas igualmente devastadoras. El incendio del Museo Nacional de Brasil en 2018 arrasó con millones de piezas, muchas de ellas irreemplazables. No se trataba únicamente de obras de arte, sino de objetos científicos, etnográficos y documentales que conformaban la memoria de múltiples culturas. La magnitud de la pérdida puso de manifiesto la fragilidad de las instituciones y la necesidad urgente de invertir en conservación, prevención y sistemas de protección adecuados, incluyendo los seguros.
Entre las pérdidas más significativas estuvieron fósiles, artefactos egipcios y el cráneo de Luzia, uno de los restos humanos más antiguos de América.A estos grandes episodios se suman innumerables pérdidas menos visibles pero igualmente significativas: obras desaparecidas en colecciones privadas, piezas dañadas por restauraciones inadecuadas o destruidas lentamente por condiciones ambientales deficientes. En conjunto, configuran una historia paralela del arte, marcada no por la creación, sino por la desaparición.
Desde una perspectiva histórica, cada uno de estos siniestros ha tenido consecuencias que van más allá del daño inmediato. Han impulsado mejoras en la seguridad, han favorecido el desarrollo de normativas internacionales y han contribuido a consolidar herramientas como los seguros de arte. En cierto modo, la forma en que hoy protegemos el patrimonio es el resultado directo de estas pérdidas.
Comprender esta dimensión implica asumir que el patrimonio artístico no es un legado estático, sino un equilibrio frágil entre conservación y riesgo. Las grandes pérdidas del pasado no solo nos hablan de lo que ya no está, sino que nos obligan a replantear cómo cuidar aquello que todavía permanece.
¿Qué son los seguros de arte y por qué importan?
Los seguros de arte es una póliza especializada que cubre daños, pérdidas o robos de obras artísticas. Pero su función va más allá de la indemnización económica ya que: obliga a documentar correctamente la obra, fomenta buenas prácticas de conservación, facilita los préstamos para exposiciones y reduce el impacto de posibles pérdidas.
En otras palabras, el seguro no solo protege el objeto, sino también su circulación y su estudio.
Coleccionismo y responsabilidad cultural a través de los seguros de arte
El coleccionismo privado ha sido, históricamente, uno de los grandes motores de conservación del patrimonio artístico. Muchas obras que hoy consideramos fundamentales han llegado hasta nosotros gracias al interés, la sensibilidad y los recursos de coleccionistas que, en distintos momentos, asumieron su custodia. Sin embargo, en el contexto actual, coleccionar arte no puede entenderse únicamente como una práctica de adquisición o inversión: implica también una responsabilidad cultural activa.
A diferencia de las instituciones públicas, cuya misión de conservación y difusión está explícitamente definida, el coleccionista privado se mueve en un terreno más flexible. Esa libertad es, al mismo tiempo, una oportunidad y un riesgo. Por un lado, permite rescatar obras olvidadas, apoyar a artistas contemporáneos o preservar conjuntos que, de otro modo, podrían dispersarse. Por otro, puede generar situaciones en las que piezas de gran relevancia quedan fuera del acceso público o del ámbito de investigación.
Aquí es donde la responsabilidad cultural adquiere todo su sentido. Coleccionar no debería limitarse a poseer, sino también a documentar, conservar y, en la medida de lo posible, compartir. La correcta catalogación de las obras, el mantenimiento de condiciones adecuadas de conservación y la colaboración con expertos son prácticas que transforman una colección privada en un verdadero agente cultural.
El mercado del arte, articulado en gran medida a través de casas como Sotheby’s o Christie’s, facilita la circulación de obras y su entrada en colecciones privadas. Pero esa circulación no debería suponer una desconexión con el ámbito académico o institucional. De hecho, muchas de las exposiciones más relevantes se nutren de préstamos de coleccionistas, lo que demuestra que la colaboración entre lo privado y lo público es esencial para la difusión del patrimonio.
Estudio de leones reclinados pintado por Eugène Delacroix volvió a la escena pública tras más de un siglo dentro de una misma familia. El cuadro ha sido autentificado. El lienzo había desaparecido en 1864 y se vendió en marzo por unos 300.000 dólares.En este contexto, los seguros de arte juegan un papel menos visible pero fundamental. No solo protegen el valor económico de la obra, sino que introducen una lógica de gestión: obligan a evaluar riesgos, a mantener estándares de conservación y a documentar adecuadamente cada pieza. De este modo, los seguros convierten en una herramienta que refuerza esa responsabilidad cultural, alineando los intereses del coleccionista con la preservación a largo plazo.
Desde una perspectiva histórico-artística, cada obra forma parte de un relato colectivo que trasciende a su propietario. El coleccionista, en este sentido, no es tanto un dueño como un depositario temporal de un bien cultural. Asumir esta idea implica entender que las decisiones individuales tienen un impacto directo en la construcción del conocimiento y en la transmisión del patrimonio.
Conclusión: asegurar el arte es asegurar la memoria
El titulo de esta conclusión no es una metáfora retórica, sino una forma precisa de entender qué está realmente en juego cuando protegemos una obra. El arte no es solo un objeto material: es un vehículo de memoria histórica, identidad cultural y conocimiento colectivo. Cada pintura, escultura o pieza patrimonial contiene una forma de mirar el mundo, un contexto, una técnica y una intención que pertenecen tanto a su tiempo como al nuestro.
Cuando una obra se pierde, no desaparece únicamente su valor económico. Se pierde también una fuente directa para la investigación, una referencia para comprender un periodo, una pieza dentro de un relato más amplio. La memoria cultural no es abstracta: se construye a partir de objetos concretos. Por eso, protegerlos implica proteger la posibilidad de interpretar el pasado.
En este sentido, el seguro de arte actúa como una herramienta contemporánea que traduce esa necesidad en términos operativos. No puede evitar todos los daños ni sustituir a la conservación, pero sí introduce una lógica de prevención y responsabilidad. Al exigir documentación, condiciones adecuadas y evaluación de riesgos, el seguro contribuye a que la obra no solo exista, sino que permanezca en condiciones de ser comprendida y transmitida.
Asegurar y conservar el arte son dos caras de una misma idea: prolongar la vida útil de la memoria cultural
La tormenta en el mar de Galilea es una obra del pintor holandés Rembrandt y es la obra que encabeza este artículo. Esta obra fue robada en la madrugada del 18 de marzo de 1990, en el que es considerado el mayor robo de arte de la historia (desaparecieron doce obras de arte) y que sigue sin resolver. Actualmente hay una recompensa de 9 millones de euros para quien pueda aportar datos reales sobre el paradero de las obras.
Gracias por acompañarnos en este viaje creativo en ArteyAlgomás. Sigue explorando, creando y descubriendo nuevas perspectivas con nosotros. #ArteSinLimites
#SalvandoElPatrimonio #SegurosDeArte -
#MurderEveryMonday “the man” or “the woman” in the title
Today’s #MurderEveryMonday theme is “the men” or “the woman” in the title. I went through the Portuguese collection Vampiro to find all the titles. We have more men than women. I’m considering the titles in Portuguese, and when different I will write the original title. Also all the titles in Portuguese have “the man” (o homem) or “the woman” (a mulher) as you can see from the photos, but when translating the Portuguese titles into English we must change the order of the words, so it makes sense.
- The powerful man – Michael Spillane (original title: The Deep)
- The man in the bed number 10 – Mary R. Rinehart (original title: The man in lower 10) – read it and liked it
- The sinister man – Edgar Wallace – read and liked it
- Maigret and the man from the bench – Georges Simenon (Maigret et L’Homme du banc) – favourite cover by the artist Lima de Freitas, not sure if I read this one, but usually like Simenon and recommend
- The shadow man – Dashiell Hammett (original title: The thin man)
- Maigret and the man with two women – Georges Simenon (original title: Liberty Bar)
- Maigret and the solitary men – Georges Simenon (original title: Maigret et L’Homme tout seul)
The man in the brown suit and The man in lower 10 were the first titles I remember could do for today’s hashtag. This book by Agatha Christie is not her usually murder mystery, but it is more on the side of adventure novels and I also like she borrowed from her trip with the British Empire Expedition.
There is less “the woman” in the collection.
- Maigret and the vanished woman – Georges Simenon (original title: Chez les flamands)
- The quiet woman – Harry Carmichael (I have read this author as Hartley Howard and liked it, I’m curious about this one. Real name: Leopold Ognall)
- The phantom woman – William Irish (original title: The phantom lady. Read this one a long time ago and liked it)
- The woman that was not missed – Dorothy Simpson (original title: Dead and gone. Can’t remember if I ever read Simpson, although the name rings a bell).
Back to your covers. If you want to participate in #MurderEveryMonday check Kate’s post here.
#AgathaChristie #BookLook #books #classicCrime #ColecçãoVampiro #CrimeFiction #GeorgesSimenon #MurderEveryMonday #readings
-
#MurderEveryMonday “the man” or “the woman” in the title
Today’s #MurderEveryMonday theme is “the men” or “the woman” in the title. I went through the Portuguese collection Vampiro to find all the titles. We have more men than women. I’m considering the titles in Portuguese, and when different I will write the original title. Also all the titles in Portuguese have “the man” (o homem) or “the woman” (a mulher) as you can see from the photos, but when translating the Portuguese titles into English we must change the order of the words, so it makes sense.
- The powerful man – Michael Spillane (original title: The Deep)
- The man in the bed number 10 – Mary R. Rinehart (original title: The man in lower 10) – read it and liked it
- The sinister man – Edgar Wallace – read and liked it
- Maigret and the man from the bench – Georges Simenon (Maigret et L’Homme du banc) – favourite cover by the artist Lima de Freitas, not sure if I read this one, but usually like Simenon and recommend
- The shadow man – Dashiell Hammett (original title: The thin man)
- Maigret and the man with two women – Georges Simenon (original title: Liberty Bar)
- Maigret and the solitary men – Georges Simenon (original title: Maigret et L’Homme tout seul)
The man in the brown suit and The man in lower 10 were the first titles I remember could do for today’s hashtag. This book by Agatha Christie is not her usually murder mystery, but it is more on the side of adventure novels and I also like she borrowed from her trip with the British Empire Expedition.
There is less “the woman” in the collection.
- Maigret and the vanished woman – Georges Simenon (original title: Chez les flamands)
- The quiet woman – Harry Carmichael (I have read this author as Hartley Howard and liked it, I’m curious about this one. Real name: Leopold Ognall)
- The phantom woman – William Irish (original title: The phantom lady. Read this one a long time ago and liked it)
- The woman that was not missed – Dorothy Simpson (original title: Dead and gone. Can’t remember if I ever read Simpson, although the name rings a bell).
Back to your covers. If you want to participate in #MurderEveryMonday check Kate’s post here.
#AgathaChristie #BookLook #books #classicCrime #ColecçãoVampiro #CrimeFiction #GeorgesSimenon #MurderEveryMonday #readings
-
#MurderEveryMonday “the man” or “the woman” in the title
Today’s #MurderEveryMonday theme is “the men” or “the woman” in the title. I went through the Portuguese collection Vampiro to find all the titles. We have more men than women. I’m considering the titles in Portuguese, and when different I will write the original title. Also all the titles in Portuguese have “the man” (o homem) or “the woman” (a mulher) as you can see from the photos, but when translating the Portuguese titles into English we must change the order of the words, so it makes sense.
- The powerful man – Michael Spillane (original title: The Deep)
- The man in the bed number 10 – Mary R. Rinehart (original title: The man in lower 10) – read it and liked it
- The sinister man – Edgar Wallace – read and liked it
- Maigret and the man from the bench – Georges Simenon (Maigret et L’Homme du banc) – favourite cover by the artist Lima de Freitas, not sure if I read this one, but usually like Simenon and recommend
- The shadow man – Dashiell Hammett (original title: The thin man)
- Maigret and the man with two women – Georges Simenon (original title: Liberty Bar)
- Maigret and the solitary men – Georges Simenon (original title: Maigret et L’Homme tout seul)
The man in the brown suit and The man in lower 10 were the first titles I remember could do for today’s hashtag. This book by Agatha Christie is not her usually murder mystery, but it is more on the side of adventure novels and I also like she borrowed from her trip with the British Empire Expedition.
There is less “the woman” in the collection.
- Maigret and the vanished woman – Georges Simenon (original title: Chez les flamands)
- The quiet woman – Harry Carmichael (I have read this author as Hartley Howard and liked it, I’m curious about this one. Real name: Leopold Ognall)
- The phantom woman – William Irish (original title: The phantom lady. Read this one a long time ago and liked it)
- The woman that was not missed – Dorothy Simpson (original title: Dead and gone. Can’t remember if I ever read Simpson, although the name rings a bell).
Back to your covers. If you want to participate in #MurderEveryMonday check Kate’s post here.
#AgathaChristie #BookLook #books #classicCrime #ColecçãoVampiro #CrimeFiction #GeorgesSimenon #MurderEveryMonday #readings
-
#MurderEveryMonday “the man” or “the woman” in the title
Today’s #MurderEveryMonday theme is “the men” or “the woman” in the title. I went through the Portuguese collection Vampiro to find all the titles. We have more men than women. I’m considering the titles in Portuguese, and when different I will write the original title. Also all the titles in Portuguese have “the man” (o homem) or “the woman” (a mulher) as you can see from the photos, but when translating the Portuguese titles into English we must change the order of the words, so it makes sense.
- The powerful man – Michael Spillane (original title: The Deep)
- The man in the bed number 10 – Mary R. Rinehart (original title: The man in lower 10) – read it and liked it
- The sinister man – Edgar Wallace – read and liked it
- Maigret and the man from the bench – Georges Simenon (Maigret et L’Homme du banc) – favourite cover by the artist Lima de Freitas, not sure if I read this one, but usually like Simenon and recommend
- The shadow man – Dashiell Hammett (original title: The thin man)
- Maigret and the man with two women – Georges Simenon (original title: Liberty Bar)
- Maigret and the solitary men – Georges Simenon (original title: Maigret et L’Homme tout seul)
The man in the brown suit and The man in lower 10 were the first titles I remember could do for today’s hashtag. This book by Agatha Christie is not her usually murder mystery, but it is more on the side of adventure novels and I also like she borrowed from her trip with the British Empire Expedition.
There is less “the woman” in the collection.
- Maigret and the vanished woman – Georges Simenon (original title: Chez les flamands)
- The quiet woman – Harry Carmichael (I have read this author as Hartley Howard and liked it, I’m curious about this one. Real name: Leopold Ognall)
- The phantom woman – William Irish (original title: The phantom lady. Read this one a long time ago and liked it)
- The woman that was not missed – Dorothy Simpson (original title: Dead and gone. Can’t remember if I ever read Simpson, although the name rings a bell).
Back to your covers. If you want to participate in #MurderEveryMonday check Kate’s post here.
#AgathaChristie #BookLook #books #classicCrime #ColecçãoVampiro #CrimeFiction #GeorgesSimenon #MurderEveryMonday #readings
-
#MurderEveryMonday “the man” or “the woman” in the title
Today’s #MurderEveryMonday theme is “the men” or “the woman” in the title. I went through the Portuguese collection Vampiro to find all the titles. We have more men than women. I’m considering the titles in Portuguese, and when different I will write the original title. Also all the titles in Portuguese have “the man” (o homem) or “the woman” (a mulher) as you can see from the photos, but when translating the Portuguese titles into English we must change the order of the words, so it makes sense.
- The powerful man – Michael Spillane (original title: The Deep)
- The man in the bed number 10 – Mary R. Rinehart (original title: The man in lower 10) – read it and liked it
- The sinister man – Edgar Wallace – read and liked it
- Maigret and the man from the bench – Georges Simenon (Maigret et L’Homme du banc) – favourite cover by the artist Lima de Freitas, not sure if I read this one, but usually like Simenon and recommend
- The shadow man – Dashiell Hammett (original title: The thin man)
- Maigret and the man with two women – Georges Simenon (original title: Liberty Bar)
- Maigret and the solitary men – Georges Simenon (original title: Maigret et L’Homme tout seul)
The man in the brown suit and The man in lower 10 were the first titles I remember could do for today’s hashtag. This book by Agatha Christie is not her usually murder mystery, but it is more on the side of adventure novels and I also like she borrowed from her trip with the British Empire Expedition.
There is less “the woman” in the collection.
- Maigret and the vanished woman – Georges Simenon (original title: Chez les flamands)
- The quiet woman – Harry Carmichael (I have read this author as Hartley Howard and liked it, I’m curious about this one. Real name: Leopold Ognall)
- The phantom woman – William Irish (original title: The phantom lady. Read this one a long time ago and liked it)
- The woman that was not missed – Dorothy Simpson (original title: Dead and gone. Can’t remember if I ever read Simpson, although the name rings a bell).
Back to your covers. If you want to participate in #MurderEveryMonday check Kate’s post here.
#AgathaChristie #BookLook #books #classicCrime #ColecçãoVampiro #CrimeFiction #GeorgesSimenon #MurderEveryMonday #readings
-
January 2026 Media Round-Up
Here’s my January round up of all the media I’ve read/watched/listened to this month! I’m going to try and keep this to the highlights, but I usually DNF things I’m not enjoying and they don’t get counted. Positivity only in this space! …Although the content itself may be not so positive.
As a bonus, I’m going to let you know my favourite song of the month too. I’ve just switched from Spotify to Qobuz, a music streaming service based in France, as Qobuz pays artists more per track while still costing the same, and also has a much better sound quality. Most of my playlist content has transferred over fine, but the one artist I was devastated is not fully on there yet is Felix Hagan.
There is one song of his on there currently though: Happy Songs (2025), from the brand new album of the same name which smashed its goal on Kickstarter. I’m really hopeful that the whole album will drop on Qobuz as well.
Happy Songs by Felix Hagan is definitely my favourite song from the start of the month. LISTEN ON QOBUZ
As I go on my Qobuz journey, I’ll be looking for new music to replace the tracks I loved to listen to on Spotify but that aren’t on Qobuz yet, and finding (I hope) new obsessions. I’ll be adding this into my media round-up just for fun!
On to the main event: books, shows, and films. This month I’m experimenting with highlighting my favourites, and listing everything else. I was off sick this month, so there’s a lot of them.
Books, Audiobooks, Story Podcasts
These are the highlights of what I’ve read/listened to this month. I’ve been really spoiled for ARCs! That’s one really lovely bonus of offering the author spotlights – the small presses that get in touch with me for their authors sometimes offer a reader copy for me to frame the interview questions around.
(I never ask for this and I do not expect it, and frankly, I couldn’t ever read one per author! But for the small presses, I know they’re going to be in genres I already like and would want to read, so I often accept these if offered.)
Best Friends Bury Bodies by C.M. Rosens.
You know what, I’m counting this. I read this cover-to-cover for the revisions and edits, and it’s a 78K novel, so this is on my round-up.
When their search for a missing music star leads to murder, how far will his old friends go?
Midsomer Murders meets The Forty Year Kiss. A contemporary mystery with middle-aged polyamorous bisexual second chance romance.
Sarah believes she’s happy with her life despite never really dealing with her partner’s sudden death six years ago; her job is fine, her friends are supportive, her girlfriend Sammie is amazing. But when her estranged soulmate, Bas, reaches out after a 12 year absence, Sarah’s carefully cultivated rut is thrown into chaos.
Her best friends are all for tracking down the prodigal member of their close-knit group, who drifted away from them when he got famous, spiralled into addiction, then disappeared. But finding a long-lost 1990s rock star is the least of their worries, when it catapaults them into the middle of a murder investigation in the sleepy Surrey village where he’s been recovering.
With skeletons falling out of every closet, and lives upended everywhere they turn, what will they do when another body shows up, and both Sarah and Bas are implicated?
I got an ARC of Dianna Gunn‘s Gothic Fantasy novel, Woman of Sorrow and Blood. This is a sensuous, bisexual, sapphic vampire tale, set in richly built world of pleasure, pain, and power. I really enjoyed it, and read it fairly quickly; poor Alma is not very quick on the uptake, bless her, but there’s a decent climax and I was very satisfied with the ending. This one squeaked in right at the end of the month; I just finished it in time for this post! Read my full review.
When 18-year-old Alma is invited to live with Nightfather and pursue the Pleasures of Power, she’s determined to win his affection and ultimate gift: eternal life.
Yet life in the House of Night is not what she expected. Nightfather spends all of his time alone with Nightmother, leaving his second wife to rule with an iron fist. The servants brought from Alma’s home are hollowed out versions of their former selves. Others—including Alma’s own mentor—have disappeared entirely.
Alma buries her suspicions and throws herself into attending to the Daughter of Night, an extraordinary woman who requires special care.
When Nightfather calls upon Alma at last, she begins to see that his eternity is not a reward but a trap—and that it is not him, but the woman he calls his daughter, that her heart longs for. But tragedy lurks in every corner, and sometimes the only escape is death.
Once Upon A Song by Nadine Bells – an ARC Read from Quill & Crow Publishing. I got into this book a lot more from the midpoint, and as it took off into the resolution and climax, I really enjoyed it. This Snow Queen retelling was fairly well done, although there were elements I personally didn’t vibe with. If you’re looking for a quick, lightweight and entertaining Gothic read, this is one to look out for and pre-order from your local store or library. Read my full review.
Welcome to the Hôtel de Neige. Let yourself be swept away by its grandeur and glamor, but beware…the cold may swallow you whole.
When lonely waitress Ana lands a job as a singer at the prestigious Hôtel de Neige, she believes it to be the beginning of her fairytale. Yet she soon finds that in those eerie halls, the line between Cinderella story and Gothic nightmare blurs. Sinister dreams cause her to sleepwalk, a ballerina makes ominous threats, and a phantom in white haunts the hotel—and Ana.
As Ana discovers that the hotel’s last singer lost his life under mysterious circumstances, she needs to decide if happily-ever-after is worth it. She knows she cannot trust her secretive colleagues or the charming but elusive hotel manager, Dimitri. All Ana ever wanted was to belong, but at the Hôtel de Neige, that may mean never leaving again…
The Dreaming of Man by Nikoline Kaiser. I got a copy from Neon Hemlock Press.
I love “Innsmouth” stories, and this is one of the better ones for sure. It has a trans man protagonist and plays with Shakespeare as well.
“An eerie, anxious read, crawling with tentacles of loss, regret, and uncanny coincidence. Nikoline Kaiser’s voice recalls the timbre of a rotting, bygone place and time while remaining fresh and crisp. A true joy for lovers of the weird!” —A.Z. Louise, author of Off-Time Jive
After receiving a letter telling him terrible news, Doctor Lawrence Cooper visits the small harbor-town Osmund in search of answers. Though something is clearly wrong there, Lawrence keeps finding reasons to stay: the sake of a young girl he meets, and to get to the bottom of his one-time lover’s suspicious death.
And the longer he stays, the more Lawrence is drawn into Osmund’s peculiar mysteries.
Cover Illustration by JJ Epping.
Death Valley Blooms by S.M. Mack is an interesting novella out with Neon Hemlock Press, a queer ecohorror about the inevitability of the landscape and the desert claiming its dues. It’s a tragic meditation on bodily autonomy and the survival of a landscape that uses humanity to thrive, but will outlast them.
“Death Valley Blooms is a breathtaking, atmospheric novella that explores hard-hitting topics such as gendered inheritance, mourning, and sacrifice with an impressively light touch. S.M. Mack’s writing is full of humor and sobriety, which held my attention from start to finish. If you enjoy stories that bridge meditative, slice-of-life scenes with fast-paced action, this book will not disappoint.” — Liza Wemakor, author of Loving Safoa
Every decade or so, vast quantities and varieties of wildflowers bloom all at once in Death Valley. But unbeknownst to the wider world, these super blooms are powered by a woman’s life. Mar Ramse lost her mother to Death Valley as a teenager and would give anything to break her family’s curse, but now the desert whispers its call to her. However, she still has a single ace up her sleeve: neither she nor her brother will ever have children. Is it enough for the desert to release its grip on her family?
Cover illustration by Rose Meyer. Cover design by dave ring.
Some classics in here, and new content by narrator Ian Gordon. This is a compilation of a number of stories, and Vol 1 is available on YouTube.
I have not finished this one yet.
The HorrorBabble podcast is one I’m listening to a lot, just to get a short story fix as that’s all I can really concentrate on currently. I don’t enjoy every classic story they read out, but I really like the range of tales I’m listening to and the classic authors I’m able to access via their podcast. I usually listen before bed for an hour or two, or while I’m doing housework or something.
Click for the list of HorrorBabble episodes I’ve listened to: short stories by classic horror and weird fiction authors, with their runtime (min:sec). I have highlighted my favourites.“Two Black Bottles” by H.P. Lovecraft & Wilfrid Branch Talman (29:51)
“The Dance of Death” by Algernon Blackwood (25:04)
“The House of Cards: A Thomas Chadwick Story” by Malcolm Ferguson (33:42)
“The Red Room” by H.G. Wells (26:06)
“The Spectre Priestess of Wrightstone” by Herman F. Wright (13:26)
“A Ghost/The Tale of a Haunted Chateau” by Guy de Maupassant (16:47)
“Mr. Hyde-and-Seek: A Thomas Chadwick Story” by Malcolm Ferguson (24:14)
“Stranger at Dusk” by Malcolm Murchie (42:16)
“The Mandrakes” by Clark Ashton Smith (17:13)
“The Lurking Fear” by H.P. Lovecraft (54:44)
“The Gateway of the Monster: A Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder Story” by William Hope Hodgson (51:20)
“The Horror from the Mound” by Robert E. Howard (45:19)
“The Thing from the Barrens” by Jim Kjelgaard (37:00)
“Chickamauga” by Ambrose Bierce (17:31)
“The Crawling Chaos” by H.P. Lovecraft (20:09)
“Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”, by M.R. James (45:57) – listened to x2 because it’s so funny.
“A Suspicious Gift” by Algernon Blackwood (26:38)
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (38:28)
“Catnip” by Robert Bloch (27:06)
“To Build a Fire” by Jack London (38:32)
“The Hound” by H.P. Lovecraft (21:55)
“An Unnatural Feud” by Norman Douglas (35:20)
“Caterpillars” by E.F. Benson (19:23)
“The Shining Pyramid” by Arthur Machen (52:30)TV Shows & Mini Series
I’ve highlighted the shows I’ve really enjoyed this month, and listed the other shows I watched below the highlights. The highlighted ones are my favourite watches. Expand the details of my other watches below these, so you can see the other shows & random Marple/Poirot episodes I watched.
Started the month catching up on Fallout (2024-), created by Geneva Robertson-Dworet
and Graham Wagner, which I loved.Absolutely amazing. One of my oldest friends has been a massive fan of the games for years, and when we were housemates he had a display cabinet of the figures in our living room – those were my introduction to the games and the world! I’m not fully caught up yet.
In a future, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles brought about by nuclear decimation, citizens must live in underground bunkers to protect themselves from radiation, mutants and bandits.
Year of the Rabbit (2019) an 8-part mini-series directed by Ben Taylor and written by Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley that got cancelled over funding issues. It is a rewatch and a comfort watch, as it makes me laugh out loud every episode.
Mabel (Susan Wokoma) demanding to be made a policewoman/Lady Fuzz: “When you adopted me you said you wanted the best for me!!”
Chief Inspector (Alun Armstrong): “I was mostly thinking about hats!”
Detective Inspector Rabbit, a dedicated, tough, thick, and oft-inebriated Victorian copper, sleuths his way across London with his two young partners: a doofy rookie and a brilliant Black policewoman no one ever believes.
Haunted Hotel (2025-) is a rewatch, another comfort show! I hope there’ll be another season soon. Just a really fun cartoon, with lots of family scares.
A single mom with two kids operates a haunted hotel, aided by her late brother’s ghost who believes they can have ingenious ideas despite his ethereal state.
West Country Tales (1982-1983). I loved the 9 available episodes I saw on YouTube, I think these are the only ones left out of the 14 that were aired.
This post, Remembering West Country Tales, has a full episode breakdown, including the missing episodes, courtesy of Steve Calvert.
I’ve listed the 9 episodes below, with each title linked to the YouTube video! Click to expand.The Poacher – I liked how slow this was, just like you were listening to an older man in the pub tell you a story from his younger days. It did keep me interested all the way to the end, and I really liked the idea of meeting Pan/the Devil in the woods.
The Breakdown – I switched my brain off for this one and didn’t try to guess where it was going, but just sort of let it carry me onwards. The twist is an obvious one, and it’s based on a fairly common/well-known urban legend (or rural legend?) but it’s one I liked. Not scary at all, just good company and a bit unsettling.
White Bird of Laughter Tor – this is a sad one, based on another fairly well-told folktale (I think, or ballad – but anyway I’ve heard a few variants of this one before) of a poor girl and her ill-fated romance. You have the sense of sad dread as you know where it’s going.
The Visitor – not a pleasant one, concerning two women and their competition for the life and love of a little toddler. A mother’s fear of usurpation, but also of the dangers posed by the people closest to you, regarding your child.
The Beast – I watched this one first, and really enjoyed it. It was a great episode. It’s much more folk horror in essence, and has the elements of the Beast of Bodmin Moor about it, much more of a Creature Feature than the others.
Miss Constantine – my personal favourite. This starts off with a dreamy vibe, where you meet an old lady who seems to be confused, perhaps has Alzheimers or dementia, and believes that she is being harrassed by ‘the young people from the Social’, who have moved into her home and refuse to leave. There is, of course, nobody there; at least, nobody the local vicar can see… or is there?
With Love, Belinda – a very sad one about the loss of a child, and its impact on the parents and surviving sister, Belinda. The ghostly return of the little boy heralds a series of strange happenings and a change in Belinda’s behaviour, causing the mother especially great distress. The ending, however, is not tragic, and rather sweet.
To Wit To Woo – a medieval tale of an unloved wife, who is tricked by a witch into various methods of making her husband love her. This one was sad and also funny, but I just felt really sorry for the poor woman.
Ring a Ring a Rosy – a feral autistic-coded girl who likes to kill things occasionally, out of curiosity, gets herself a boyfriend, and her mother starts worrying about the lad’s safety after they appear to have an argument and he disappears. But is she worried about the right thing? I didn’t know how to feel about this one, but it’s another sad one.
Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials (2026), created/written for the screen by Chris Chibnall and directed by Chris Sweeney, is a 3-part drama that just got released on UK Netflix, and I really loved it. In fact, it’s given me some thoughts about parent/child dynamics I’d like to write, or at least think about. It’s very silly fun, which I’m fully on board with.
In 1925, a country house party prank turns deadly. Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent investigates the chilling murder plot. Lady Caterham and Superintendent Battle assist in solving the country house mystery that changes Bundle’s life.
Miss Scarlet and The Duke (2020-) created by Rachael New, is a fun Victorian-era detective show I like to both rewatch and catch up on. I really love the period lady detective genre, like Miss Fisher, and Miss Scarlet has a few seasons under its belt to go through. S06 came out in December; I’ve watched up to S05.
When Eliza Scarlet’s father dies, he leaves her penniless, but she resolves to continue his detective agency. To operate in a male-dominated world, though, she needs a partner – step forward a detective known as the Duke.
Other Episodes & Mini-Series watched (click the + sign to expand)
These aren’t all in the order I watched them; I’ve grouped the Marple and Poirot episodes together, bookending the list. It’s all a bit random but it made some weird sense to me when I was typing this up.
- Miss Marple: The Body in the Library (1984) dir. Silvio Narizzano, screenplay by T.R. Bowen. I do love the old Miss Marple series with Joan Hickson, and this is one I’ve seen so many times. This was originally a 3-part mini-series, but it’s available now in one single feature. It’s not my favourite book either, but it’s one I’ve re-read a lot.
- Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Body in the Library (2004) dir. Andy Wilson, dramatised by Kevin Elyot. They very bravely* changed the ending of this one, and departed from the original reveal to bring it up-to-date, but this just succeeds in falling into the ‘evil lesbians’ trope, preying on younger girls. Still, sapphics on screen in 2004… I don’t enjoy the Bantrys’ dynamics as much in this one, either. We can still be feminists looking for women to be their own people, and love our husbands very much. Overall, I think I prefer T.R. Bowen’s adaptation.
*I am British, this is not a compliment
- Miss Marple: The Moving Finger (1985) dir. Roy Boulting, dramatised by Julia Jones. I do enjoy this one because of the romantic subplots and who gets with whom. These definitely make me want to read Christie’s romance novels, published under her pen name Mary Westmacott. This was a 2-parter, which is now available as a single feature.
- Miss Marple: A Murder is Announced (1985) dir. David Giles, dramatised by Alan Plater. I prefer the way the book character Mitzi is treated in this dramatisation, name changed here to Hannah which makes her not only Eastern European but Jewish-coded, although she is not explicitly Jewish in the text or in the episode. Even so, there’s a lot of anti-Eastern European prejudice in evidence. It’s a good adaptation though, and has one of my favourite lesbian-coded couples as ‘companions’. Also, so many autistic-coded women in this one. A village full of them.
- Miss Marple: Pocket full of Rye (1985) dir. Guy Slater, dramatised by T.R. Bowen. The nursery rhyme one! Originally a 2-parter, and then shown as a single feature-length episode. It has one of my favourite character actors, Selina Cadell, as Mary Dove. Sadly, this one is really forgettable, except for the nursery rhyme killings.
- Miss Marple: Nemesis (1987) dir. David Tucker, dramatised by T.R. Bowen. This is a good story, and one I haven’t seen a lot. I really enjoyed it, and it has a good few twists and turns. I love the three sisters, the random bus tour of historic homes and gardens, the locations used, and also Miss Marple having a nap on a bench. She’s elderly, let her sleep in a garden and stop bothering her with ice cream cornets.
- Mrs Amworth (1975) dir. Alvin Rakoff. Based on the E.F. Benson short story, adapted by Hugh Whitemore. A good ’70s short, 29mins runtime. I really enjoyed this one! I do like the gnat plague heralding the vampire, which is a bit different to the usual vampire fare. I’m not sure what this was part of, I think it was part of a series or anthology originally, but it’s on YouTube as a standalone, courtesy of What the Folk‘s channel.
- The Lost Will of Dr Rant (1951) dir. Laurence Schwab Jr., based on M.R. James’s story, The Tractate Middoth, and dramatised by Doris Halman. 30mins runtime. This is a US production, and possibly the first time that an M.R. James story was adapted for the screen! It was for the “Lights Out” series, and it’s pretty good. I really liked it, and it still stands up against the 2013 Mark Gatiss adaptation.
- The Incredible Dr Baldick: Never Come Night (1972) dir. Cyril Coke. Another one courtesy of the What the Folk YouTube channel, this was the pilot of a series that never got aired/made, and is now a standalone feature. It seems that Terry Nation, its creator, wanted to replace Dr Who‘s Doctor with a folk horror version who went around the country in his steam train The Tzar, a mobile home and laboratory, solving paranormal mysteries. It stars Robert Hardy in the titular role, and I’m really sad this was never a series as planned. The pilot is really worth a watch.
- Stones (1976) dir. Graham Evans. An episode of The Mind Beyond (BBC2 Playhouse), focused on the weird properties and then-shadowy history of Stonehenge. Available on YouTube via What the Folk‘s channel. This one is a full hour. Lots of stuff around ancient languages and the connection between written langauge and druidic power. It’s a bit dry for me, centering on a Tory minister’s scheme to move Stonehenge to London’s Hyde Park, and the subsequent discovery of an ancient language hidden on the spines of a 3-volume 17thC set of books about the stone circle. It has some positive Welsh rep in it, which is a nice change, and picks up towards the end with the involvement of the children.
- A Place to Die (1973) dir. Peter Jefferies. This is a Thriller episode, Season 1 Episode 7, available on YouTube via What the Folk‘s channel. Creepy rural English village alert! This is a pre-Wicker Man folk horror, in which the lovely doctor’s wife, Tessa Nelson (Alexandra Hay), becomes the focus of the villagers’ obsession, and uncovers a sinister cult at work.
- Poirot: The Adventure of the Clapham Cook (1989) dir. Edward Bennett, adapted by Clive Exton. I had no idea these were 1980s, I had them in my head as all being 2000s! But no – this is one of the much earlier episodes, and Suchet ran as Poirot for a hugely long time, 1989-2013. I enjoy the early series, for sure. I liked Exton’s original ghost story for Ghost Stories for Christmas, Stigma (1977), and this adaptation manages to be domestic and fun, and held our attention. This was a birthday watch since we were too ill to go and celebrate as planned. We stayed in and watched Seven Dials on Netflix, and then some Poirot. NOTE: Some very dated casual racism (towards Chinese immigrants).
- Poirot: Triangle At Rhodes (1989) dir. Renny Rye, adapted by Stephen Wakelam. This plot reminds me of Evil Under the Sun, and I get it confused with that one all the time. That’s because, I guess, Evil Under the Sun is the full-length version, while this is a short story. There are the star-crossed couples and the domestic drama between husbands and wives in each, and so they are fairly easy to confuse!
- Poirot: Problem at Sea (1989) dir. Renny Rye, adapted by Clive Exton. Some thoroughly unpleasant people having a terrible time on a cruise, with Hastings and Poirot along for the ride. This is another of the short stories adapted for the first season, which has that glossy bigger budget feel. I did really enjoy the two girls, they were fun.
- Poirot: The Cornish Mystery (1990) dir. Edward Bennett, adapted by Clive Exton. I liked this one, it’s another short story adaptation, and it works well as a feature. Again, I really enjoy Exton’s scripts and the dynamics he writes, and how Christie’s characters come alive on screen. Poor Mrs Pengelley.
Films
My films of January 2026: the highlighted ones with posters are all my top rated watches. I’ve watched a total of 40 films this month, from 1933-2025, and a range of short films and feature-length ones. Letterboxd has counted the 5 Miss Marples I logged as films, but I’ve counted those in my TV show watches, so they don’t appear here.
Expand the details below this highlighted list to see the full list of films I’ve seen this month! I’ve enjoyed all of them in some way. They aren’t in any particular order.
Foxes (2011) dir. Lorcan Finnegan. 17mins runtime.
I loved this little short, on YouTube via the Screen Ireland channel. It’s really atmospheric and unsettling, and I did like the ending. Also: some cracking fox shots, and lovely, eerie shots of the housing estate and its uniformity.
A young couple trapped in a remote estate of empty houses and shrieking foxes are beckoned from their isolation into a twilight world – a world of the paranormal or perhaps insanity.
The Sacrifice Game (2023) dir. Jenn Wexler.
This is one of my favourite Christmas movies, which I didn’t actually watch over Christmas this year (boo to me), but was the first film I watched in 2026. I really love how it ends. If you want to know what I’m like as a person, this film contains most elements I enjoy to watch. Draw your own conclusions.
This Christmas, raise a little hell.
Christmas break, 1971. Samantha and Clara, two students who are staying behind for the holidays at their boarding school, must survive the night after the arrival of uninvited visitors.
Strange Harvest (2024) dir. Stuart Ortiz.
Mockumentary with interviews and found footage that I really enjoyed. Cosmic horror that is actually well done. New to me.
He isn’t hiding, he’s waiting.
Detectives are thrust into a chilling hunt for “Mr. Shiny”—a sadistic serial killer from the past whose return marks the beginning of a new wave of grotesque, otherworldly crimes tied to a dark cosmic force.
Bring Her Back (2025) dirs. Michael Philippou, Danny Philippou
I really liked Talk To Me by the same directors, and this one was a real mind fuck as well. Deeply upsetting in places. I had to fast forward scenes, literally can’t watch some of that. Next level diabolical. New to me.
Family requires sacrifices.
Following the death of their father, a brother and sister are sent to live with a foster mother, only to learn that she is hiding a terrifying secret.
Clown in a Cornfield (2025) dir. Eli Craig.
Based on the Adam Cesare novel. US-set Hot Fuzz with clowns and teen protagonists. Gay rep (yay). Only Black teen in the friend group is the first one to die (boo). Modern teens dying because they don’t know how to use a rotary phone or drive a manual (“stick”) vehicle is so funny to me. Teach your kids these basic life skills.
Are you a friend of Frendo?
Quinn and her father have just moved to the quiet town of Kettle Springs hoping for a fresh start. Instead, she discovers a fractured community that has fallen on hard times after the treasured Baypen Corn Syrup Factory burned down. As the locals bicker amongst themselves and tensions boil over, a sinister, grinning figure emerges from the cornfields to cleanse the town of its burdens, one bloody victim at a time.
Morgiana (1972) dir. Juraj Herz.
A rewatch for me – Morgiana is the name of the cat, whose fate is a major plot point. I really enjoy this one. We get a lot of cat-eye-view shots as well, moving around the house and seeing things from the cat’s POV.
Jealous of her vapidly “good” sister’s popularity, poisonous Viktoria doses pretty Klara’s tea with a slow-acting fatal substance. As the latter grows hysterically weak, the former finds success increasingly compromised by guilt, blackmail, and the pesky need to kill others lest she be exposed.
Dark Waters (1993) dir. Mariano Baino.
If you enjoyed Soavi’s The Church (1989), this is definitely one for the watchlist. It goes harder in a few places. One of the most disturbing family reunions I’ve seen. New to me, but I’ve rewatched it 3x this month, once with the director’s commentary.
A New Wave of Horror
After the death of her father, a young woman travels to a remote convent on an island in the Black Sea to find out why her father funded it for years.
O’r Ddaear Hen/From the Old Earth (1981) dir. Wil Aaron.
LEAVE THINGS ALONE school of horror, which deserves its place here for its place in Welsh cinema history, as much as for its addition to the 1980s weird films, like the Tales of the West Country series. New to me.
As William Jones digs in the garden of his council house he finds a strange looking stone head. During the night his wife has horrible dreams, forcing William to move the head out of the house. In turn, he takes the head to an archaeologist at Bangor University who is an expert on Celtic artefacts and trying to dig up the remains of the Celts elsewhere. In order to try and understand the head, he goes home with her but things start to go wrong at night there as well, bringing the horrors of a half-human half-animal creature to the housewives. One by one the archaeologist’s family is horrified leading to death and another sacrifice to the ancient gods of the Celts.
The Endless (2017) dirs. Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson.
I like this duo – I enjoyed Spring (2014), and I think this film is even better. It might be one of my favourite timey-wimey cosmic horror Sci-Fi films now. New to me.
Time is a prison.
Two brothers return to the cult they fled from years ago to discover that the group’s beliefs may be more sane than they once thought.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) dir. Guy Ritchie.
This is a comfort rewatch of my favourite Arthurian film. It has everything I enjoy about Ritchie films, plus it’s an action-fantasy. Arthur’s basically a gangster, which is all kings really are. This is actually my (almost) perfect fantasy film. Himself reckons Guy Ritchie should do a version of Preiddeu Annwn/The Spoils of Annwn, which is literally a heist story. That would be amazing.
From nothing comes a King
When the child Arthur’s father is murdered, Vortigern, Arthur’s uncle, seizes the crown. Robbed of his birthright and with no idea who he truly is, Arthur comes up the hard way in the back alleys of the city. But once he pulls the sword Excalibur from the stone, his life is turned upside down and he is forced to acknowledge his true legacy… whether he likes it or not.
Underwater (2020) dir. William Eubank.
Another comfort rewatch, which I really enjoy. This one did the deep sea walk across the seabed being attacked by monsters before Meg 2. This is a Cthulhu/Deep Ones mythos film, one of THE best entries into that subgenre made so far.
7 miles below the ocean surface something has awakened
After an earthquake destroys their underwater station, six researchers must navigate two miles along the dangerous, unknown depths of the ocean floor to make it to safety in a race against time.
Crow Hollow (1952) dir. Michael McCarthy.
A new-to-me British Gothic thriller, with a blushing bride (she’s known him a week), and three batty old aunts to contend with. My favourite genre of British Gothic is three old women up to no good. Available on YouTube.
A new bride tries to survive multiple attempts on her life in a dark mansion, while her husband refuses to believe that she in danger.
Panna a Netvor/Beauty and the Beast (1978) dir. Juraj Herz.
A favourite comfort watch, and one I finally own on disc. I love it so much.
I have so much to say about this, but I won’t do that here, I’ll save that for a full post or something.
Julie, the youngest daughter of a bankrupt merchant, sacrifices her life in order to save her father. She goes to an enchanted castle in the woods and meets Netvor, a bird-like monster. As Netvor begins to fall in love with Julie, he must suppress his beastly urge to kill her.
The Bench (2024) dir. Sean Wilkie.
This is an indie Scottish film that took 17 years to make, and finally got snapped up by Amazon. I have to say, I really enjoyed it. It’s a good old-fashioned slasher, made by people who clearly like slashers, and there are lots of nice moments and meta nods in it.
The twist is fairly predictable, but I don’t need it to be clever, I just want a fun 75mins of people having relationship drama then running around and screaming. Both our killer (Gareth Hunter) and my hero Tommy (Chris Somerville) were very Ricky-coded to me. Any film where I say “That’s my son!” twice gets an extra star.
Over 300,000 people go missing in the UK every year. Most are never found.
A breakdown. A kind invitation. A cabin with a bloody past. Alex and her newfound friends face a nightmarish reality as they are picked off one by one, drawn to the sinister bench below. Inspired by low-budget horror films of the 1970s.
An Cailleach Bhéarra (2007) dir. Naomi Wilson. 8mins runtime. Available on YouTube via Screen Ireland’s channel.
A lovely 8min folklore short, with a large scale puppet and some great animation.
“The Cailleach was dependent on this one thing… every hundred years she must get back to the water and immerse herself so that she might become young again.”
This film is an interpretation of fragments of the ancient myth of the “cailleach”, old hag, otherworld female, mother earth, sovereignty queen, or witch. Told using a large scale puppet and actors moving through real landscape.
Other Films Watched
Films and standalone shorts watched in January (click to expand)- Until Dawn (2025) dir. David F. Sandberg. It’s based on a video game I haven’t played but can see the appeal of. I really liked the aesthetics of the house, the monster design, and the concept. I also enjoyed the dynamics between the characters, but I lost interest in the middle.
- It Feeds (2025) dir. Chad Archibald. This is like a darker, feature-length film version of the US show, Medium. It has a very strong mother/daughter relationship and a good ending, fine for an afternoon viewing, but I don’t think I’d watch this again.
- The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras (2023) dir. Craig Williams. 17min runtime, a really good short film. We don’t see the wyrm herself, but hopefully we all know what a wyrm/really big fucking snake-dragon looks like. I would watch this short film again.
- The Innsmouth School for Girls (2023) dir. Joshua Kennedy. This is a rewatch, not a favourite or anything, but sometimes I get an urge to watch it again. It’s one of the better Deep Ones/Innsmouth entries, and I think it’s definitely worth a look.
- Dark Light (2019) dir. Padraig Reynolds. This is a rewatch – again, not a highlighted favourite, but one I occasionally feel in the mood for. It’s a pretty competent Sci-Fi-Horror, with monstrous humanoids rather than aliens, and I do enjoy the central mother-daughter drama.
- 東海道お化け道中 / Yokai Monsters: Along With Ghosts (1969) dirs. Kimiyoshi Yasuda, Yoshiyuki Kuroda. New to me, a good background one. Atmospheric, and with really fun 1960s effects! I think I’d rewatch this, I liked the little girl and the plot was entertaining enough. Available on YouTube.
- The Barbarians (1987) dir. Ruggero Deodato. A rewatch – accidental, I was doing stuff with the TV on in the background, this came on, and I didn’t turn it off and ended up watching the whole thing. As entertaining as the last time, not one I would ever dedicate my concentration to, but it’s ’80s Sword and Sorcery for comforting background company on a rainy day.
- The Spiritualist/The Amazing Mr. X (1948) dir. Bernard Vorhaus. I liked this one; I watched it for Turhan Bey and Lynn Bari. It’s a good psychological, Supernatural Explained noir, although for goodness sake her husband has only been dead for two years and everyone is pressuring her to move on and remarry, leave her alone. Westerners not knowing how to process grief is not a 21stC phenomenon. Available on YouTube.
- The Return (1973) dir. Sture Rydman. 30mins runtime, a made-for-TV British short; this is a pretty good Gothic ghost story, very atmospheric and melodramatic. It is based on stories by A.M. Burrage and Ambrose Bierce. A 2-person cast, which really works for the atmosphere and sense of claustrophobia in the house setting. Available on YouTube.
- Il mulino delle donne di pietra/Mill of the Stone Women (1960) dir. Giorgio Ferroni. Not as fun as I hoped, but pretty good. A bit of Mad Science and Italian Gothic. Available on YouTube. I actually think this might be a rewatch but it didn’t leave much of an impression on me the first time.
- The Ghoul (1933) dir. T. Hayes Hunter. This one made me laugh, I did enjoy it for 80mins of excitable young people shouting at each other. Is it culturally sensitive to anyone? No, not in the least. I really liked the enemies-to-partnership thing the cousins had going on, though; Betty was great. This is what 1930s feminism looked like.
- Moss Rose (1947) dir. Gregory Ratoff. An absolutely wild melodrama murder mystery/thriller, with Vincent Price as a policeman, and the worst faux-Cockney accents I have ever heard. Some fascinating class discussion though.
- Darklands (1996) dir. Julian Richards. I watched this again for a review I’m writing for Divination Hollow, and to see how the Director’s Cut (6min shorter) fares against the original version I watched in 2023, the year the Cut was released. This is… something. I have a whole post on it already, where I missed the antisemitism of the Lilith imagery of a character called Rebecca, on top of everything else it’s doing. Anyway, the new essay on this will be potentially cross-posted, but Divination Hollow will get it first.
- Deváté srdce/The Ninth Heart (1979) dir. Juraj Herz. The third Herz film I’ve seen this month, this is one I also own on disc (thanks to the Severin Films Folk Horror Compendium). I didn’t like this as much as Panna a Netvor, but the hair was amazing. I don’t think it was a highlighted watch for me, but I do think I’ll be watching it again, and maybe this will grow on me.
- The Fall of the House of Usher (1960) dir. Roger Corman. I’m not a massive Poe fan but I do like his work, and I do like a few of the adaptations of it. This is much more of a comfort rewatch for me just because of Vincent Price. I know there are loads of versions of it and I haven’t seen them all, but this is not a bad film. It was written by Richard Matheson, and I tend to enjoy his scripts.
- A Child’s Voice (1978) dir. Kieran Hickey. An Irish made-for-TV short, 29mins runtime. Very much in the vein of Ghost Stories for Christmas, and strongly reminiscent of Mark Gatiss’s original story, The Dead Room (2018) which has a very similar premise and main character. It was a one-off, not part of a series or anthology, and only shown on UK TV once in the 1980s.
- The Circle (2017) dir. Peter Callow. I’ve seen this one before and I vaguely remembered it was low budget and not awful, and I fancied the folk horror feels. It’s a Scottish set one, and I want to watch more Scottish horror where possible, like The Isle, Get Duked!, Dog Soldiers, Outcast, and Little Bone Lodge. The Irish horror scene is really flourishing, but Wales and Scotland are behind. A lot of that is budget and investment, so I’m on the lookout for more films by Scottish filmmakers. I don’t know if Callow is Scottish, but it does make some good use of the landscape and isolation of the islands!
- Tattiebogle (2017) dir. Douglas Kyle. Made for £101.99, this was the start of a rabbithole I fell into while looking for more Scottish Horror. Douglas Kyle seems to have a production company, ChaosBox Productions, which has a YouTube Channel. He has a 62-episode no-budget Sci-Fi series, The Pandora Men, and several features and shorts. This is one of the features, made over 8 days in the cast & crew’s spare time. I really appreciate no-budget / microbudget films made by people having a lot of fun, and this is absolutely that. It’s an ecohorror/folk horror slasher, made in Aberdeenshire.
- The Ghillie Dhu (2024) dir. Douglas Kyle. His latest short feature, roughly 37mins runtime. This attempts to be about anxiety disorder and, I guess, the horror of being consumed by your traumas and disorders, married with the Scottish folktale of the Ghillie Dhu.
- The Yird Swine (2020) dir. Douglas Kyle. This isn’t on Letterboxd yet, I need to add it. The link is to IMDB instead. This has the same core cast, with another cast member from The Pandora Men series, Myla Corvidae (he/they), originally from Cardiff! This was a fun one too. The pacing wasn’t as good as Tattiebogle, but I really liked it. Everyone was obviously really enjoying themselves making it. I think if you’re into this side of amateur indie filmmaking, you should check out these films.
DID YOU MISS ANY?
CLICK THE CATEGORY TAG (“Media Round Up”) TO SEE ALL THE POSTS, BEGINNING WITH NOVEMBER 2025.
A SELECTION OF THE MOST RECENT ROUND-UPS IS BELOW:My monthly media round-up for December 2025 – all the books, podcasts, tv shows, and films I read/listened to/watched this month.
by cmrosensDecember 30, 2025December 29, 2025I’m starting a new monthly series where I post a round-up of all the media I’ve watched/read/listened to for the previous month. Here is November’s media round-up!
by cmrosensDecember 5, 2025January 26, 2026 Subscribe to my newsletter to stay updated! I send newsletters around once a month. You can also subscribe to my site so you don't miss a post, but I also do a post round-up in my monthly newsletters, along with what I've been working on, what I've been reading, and what I've been watching. I will often update newsletter subscribers first with news, so stay ahead of the game with my announcements and discount codes, etc! First name Last name Email #BookReview #filmReview #mediaRoundUp #tvReview -
January 2026 Media Round-Up
Here’s my January round up of all the media I’ve read/watched/listened to this month! I’m going to try and keep this to the highlights, but I usually DNF things I’m not enjoying and they don’t get counted. Positivity only in this space! …Although the content itself may be not so positive.
As a bonus, I’m going to let you know my favourite song of the month too. I’ve just switched from Spotify to Qobuz, a music streaming service based in France, as Qobuz pays artists more per track while still costing the same, and also has a much better sound quality. Most of my playlist content has transferred over fine, but the one artist I was devastated is not fully on there yet is Felix Hagan.
There is one song of his on there currently though: Happy Songs (2025), from the brand new album of the same name which smashed its goal on Kickstarter. I’m really hopeful that the whole album will drop on Qobuz as well.
Happy Songs by Felix Hagan is definitely my favourite song from the start of the month. LISTEN ON QOBUZ
As I go on my Qobuz journey, I’ll be looking for new music to replace the tracks I loved to listen to on Spotify but that aren’t on Qobuz yet, and finding (I hope) new obsessions. I’ll be adding this into my media round-up just for fun!
On to the main event: books, shows, and films. This month I’m experimenting with highlighting my favourites, and listing everything else. I was off sick this month, so there’s a lot of them.
Books, Audiobooks, Story Podcasts
These are the highlights of what I’ve read/listened to this month. I’ve been really spoiled for ARCs! That’s one really lovely bonus of offering the author spotlights – the small presses that get in touch with me for their authors sometimes offer a reader copy for me to frame the interview questions around.
(I never ask for this and I do not expect it, and frankly, I couldn’t ever read one per author! But for the small presses, I know they’re going to be in genres I already like and would want to read, so I often accept these if offered.)
Best Friends Bury Bodies by C.M. Rosens.
You know what, I’m counting this. I read this cover-to-cover for the revisions and edits, and it’s a 78K novel, so this is on my round-up.
When their search for a missing music star leads to murder, how far will his old friends go?
Midsomer Murders meets The Forty Year Kiss. A contemporary mystery with middle-aged polyamorous bisexual second chance romance.
Sarah believes she’s happy with her life despite never really dealing with her partner’s sudden death six years ago; her job is fine, her friends are supportive, her girlfriend Sammie is amazing. But when her estranged soulmate, Bas, reaches out after a 12 year absence, Sarah’s carefully cultivated rut is thrown into chaos.
Her best friends are all for tracking down the prodigal member of their close-knit group, who drifted away from them when he got famous, spiralled into addiction, then disappeared. But finding a long-lost 1990s rock star is the least of their worries, when it catapaults them into the middle of a murder investigation in the sleepy Surrey village where he’s been recovering.
With skeletons falling out of every closet, and lives upended everywhere they turn, what will they do when another body shows up, and both Sarah and Bas are implicated?
I got an ARC of Dianna Gunn‘s Gothic Fantasy novel, Woman of Sorrow and Blood. This is a sensuous, bisexual, sapphic vampire tale, set in richly built world of pleasure, pain, and power. I really enjoyed it, and read it fairly quickly; poor Alma is not very quick on the uptake, bless her, but there’s a decent climax and I was very satisfied with the ending. This one squeaked in right at the end of the month; I just finished it in time for this post! Read my full review.
When 18-year-old Alma is invited to live with Nightfather and pursue the Pleasures of Power, she’s determined to win his affection and ultimate gift: eternal life.
Yet life in the House of Night is not what she expected. Nightfather spends all of his time alone with Nightmother, leaving his second wife to rule with an iron fist. The servants brought from Alma’s home are hollowed out versions of their former selves. Others—including Alma’s own mentor—have disappeared entirely.
Alma buries her suspicions and throws herself into attending to the Daughter of Night, an extraordinary woman who requires special care.
When Nightfather calls upon Alma at last, she begins to see that his eternity is not a reward but a trap—and that it is not him, but the woman he calls his daughter, that her heart longs for. But tragedy lurks in every corner, and sometimes the only escape is death.
Once Upon A Song by Nadine Bells – an ARC Read from Quill & Crow Publishing. I got into this book a lot more from the midpoint, and as it took off into the resolution and climax, I really enjoyed it. This Snow Queen retelling was fairly well done, although there were elements I personally didn’t vibe with. If you’re looking for a quick, lightweight and entertaining Gothic read, this is one to look out for and pre-order from your local store or library. Read my full review.
Welcome to the Hôtel de Neige. Let yourself be swept away by its grandeur and glamor, but beware…the cold may swallow you whole.
When lonely waitress Ana lands a job as a singer at the prestigious Hôtel de Neige, she believes it to be the beginning of her fairytale. Yet she soon finds that in those eerie halls, the line between Cinderella story and Gothic nightmare blurs. Sinister dreams cause her to sleepwalk, a ballerina makes ominous threats, and a phantom in white haunts the hotel—and Ana.
As Ana discovers that the hotel’s last singer lost his life under mysterious circumstances, she needs to decide if happily-ever-after is worth it. She knows she cannot trust her secretive colleagues or the charming but elusive hotel manager, Dimitri. All Ana ever wanted was to belong, but at the Hôtel de Neige, that may mean never leaving again…
The Dreaming of Man by Nikoline Kaiser. I got a copy from Neon Hemlock Press.
I love “Innsmouth” stories, and this is one of the better ones for sure. It has a trans man protagonist and plays with Shakespeare as well.
“An eerie, anxious read, crawling with tentacles of loss, regret, and uncanny coincidence. Nikoline Kaiser’s voice recalls the timbre of a rotting, bygone place and time while remaining fresh and crisp. A true joy for lovers of the weird!” —A.Z. Louise, author of Off-Time Jive
After receiving a letter telling him terrible news, Doctor Lawrence Cooper visits the small harbor-town Osmund in search of answers. Though something is clearly wrong there, Lawrence keeps finding reasons to stay: the sake of a young girl he meets, and to get to the bottom of his one-time lover’s suspicious death.
And the longer he stays, the more Lawrence is drawn into Osmund’s peculiar mysteries.
Cover Illustration by JJ Epping.
Death Valley Blooms by S.M. Mack is an interesting novella out with Neon Hemlock Press, a queer ecohorror about the inevitability of the landscape and the desert claiming its dues. It’s a tragic meditation on bodily autonomy and the survival of a landscape that uses humanity to thrive, but will outlast them.
“Death Valley Blooms is a breathtaking, atmospheric novella that explores hard-hitting topics such as gendered inheritance, mourning, and sacrifice with an impressively light touch. S.M. Mack’s writing is full of humor and sobriety, which held my attention from start to finish. If you enjoy stories that bridge meditative, slice-of-life scenes with fast-paced action, this book will not disappoint.” — Liza Wemakor, author of Loving Safoa
Every decade or so, vast quantities and varieties of wildflowers bloom all at once in Death Valley. But unbeknownst to the wider world, these super blooms are powered by a woman’s life. Mar Ramse lost her mother to Death Valley as a teenager and would give anything to break her family’s curse, but now the desert whispers its call to her. However, she still has a single ace up her sleeve: neither she nor her brother will ever have children. Is it enough for the desert to release its grip on her family?
Cover illustration by Rose Meyer. Cover design by dave ring.
Some classics in here, and new content by narrator Ian Gordon. This is a compilation of a number of stories, and Vol 1 is available on YouTube.
I have not finished this one yet.
The HorrorBabble podcast is one I’m listening to a lot, just to get a short story fix as that’s all I can really concentrate on currently. I don’t enjoy every classic story they read out, but I really like the range of tales I’m listening to and the classic authors I’m able to access via their podcast. I usually listen before bed for an hour or two, or while I’m doing housework or something.
Click for the list of HorrorBabble episodes I’ve listened to: short stories by classic horror and weird fiction authors, with their runtime (min:sec). I have highlighted my favourites.“Two Black Bottles” by H.P. Lovecraft & Wilfrid Branch Talman (29:51)
“The Dance of Death” by Algernon Blackwood (25:04)
“The House of Cards: A Thomas Chadwick Story” by Malcolm Ferguson (33:42)
“The Red Room” by H.G. Wells (26:06)
“The Spectre Priestess of Wrightstone” by Herman F. Wright (13:26)
“A Ghost/The Tale of a Haunted Chateau” by Guy de Maupassant (16:47)
“Mr. Hyde-and-Seek: A Thomas Chadwick Story” by Malcolm Ferguson (24:14)
“Stranger at Dusk” by Malcolm Murchie (42:16)
“The Mandrakes” by Clark Ashton Smith (17:13)
“The Lurking Fear” by H.P. Lovecraft (54:44)
“The Gateway of the Monster: A Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder Story” by William Hope Hodgson (51:20)
“The Horror from the Mound” by Robert E. Howard (45:19)
“The Thing from the Barrens” by Jim Kjelgaard (37:00)
“Chickamauga” by Ambrose Bierce (17:31)
“The Crawling Chaos” by H.P. Lovecraft (20:09)
“Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”, by M.R. James (45:57) – listened to x2 because it’s so funny.
“A Suspicious Gift” by Algernon Blackwood (26:38)
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (38:28)
“Catnip” by Robert Bloch (27:06)
“To Build a Fire” by Jack London (38:32)
“The Hound” by H.P. Lovecraft (21:55)
“An Unnatural Feud” by Norman Douglas (35:20)
“Caterpillars” by E.F. Benson (19:23)
“The Shining Pyramid” by Arthur Machen (52:30)TV Shows & Mini Series
I’ve highlighted the shows I’ve really enjoyed this month, and listed the other shows I watched below the highlights. The highlighted ones are my favourite watches. Expand the details of my other watches below these, so you can see the other shows & random Marple/Poirot episodes I watched.
Started the month catching up on Fallout (2024-), created by Geneva Robertson-Dworet
and Graham Wagner, which I loved.Absolutely amazing. One of my oldest friends has been a massive fan of the games for years, and when we were housemates he had a display cabinet of the figures in our living room – those were my introduction to the games and the world! I’m not fully caught up yet.
In a future, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles brought about by nuclear decimation, citizens must live in underground bunkers to protect themselves from radiation, mutants and bandits.
Year of the Rabbit (2019) an 8-part mini-series directed by Ben Taylor and written by Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley that got cancelled over funding issues. It is a rewatch and a comfort watch, as it makes me laugh out loud every episode.
Mabel (Susan Wokoma) demanding to be made a policewoman/Lady Fuzz: “When you adopted me you said you wanted the best for me!!”
Chief Inspector (Alun Armstrong): “I was mostly thinking about hats!”
Detective Inspector Rabbit, a dedicated, tough, thick, and oft-inebriated Victorian copper, sleuths his way across London with his two young partners: a doofy rookie and a brilliant Black policewoman no one ever believes.
Haunted Hotel (2025-) is a rewatch, another comfort show! I hope there’ll be another season soon. Just a really fun cartoon, with lots of family scares.
A single mom with two kids operates a haunted hotel, aided by her late brother’s ghost who believes they can have ingenious ideas despite his ethereal state.
West Country Tales (1982-1983). I loved the 9 available episodes I saw on YouTube, I think these are the only ones left out of the 14 that were aired.
This post, Remembering West Country Tales, has a full episode breakdown, including the missing episodes, courtesy of Steve Calvert.
I’ve listed the 9 episodes below, with each title linked to the YouTube video! Click to expand.The Poacher – I liked how slow this was, just like you were listening to an older man in the pub tell you a story from his younger days. It did keep me interested all the way to the end, and I really liked the idea of meeting Pan/the Devil in the woods.
The Breakdown – I switched my brain off for this one and didn’t try to guess where it was going, but just sort of let it carry me onwards. The twist is an obvious one, and it’s based on a fairly common/well-known urban legend (or rural legend?) but it’s one I liked. Not scary at all, just good company and a bit unsettling.
White Bird of Laughter Tor – this is a sad one, based on another fairly well-told folktale (I think, or ballad – but anyway I’ve heard a few variants of this one before) of a poor girl and her ill-fated romance. You have the sense of sad dread as you know where it’s going.
The Visitor – not a pleasant one, concerning two women and their competition for the life and love of a little toddler. A mother’s fear of usurpation, but also of the dangers posed by the people closest to you, regarding your child.
The Beast – I watched this one first, and really enjoyed it. It was a great episode. It’s much more folk horror in essence, and has the elements of the Beast of Bodmin Moor about it, much more of a Creature Feature than the others.
Miss Constantine – my personal favourite. This starts off with a dreamy vibe, where you meet an old lady who seems to be confused, perhaps has Alzheimers or dementia, and believes that she is being harrassed by ‘the young people from the Social’, who have moved into her home and refuse to leave. There is, of course, nobody there; at least, nobody the local vicar can see… or is there?
With Love, Belinda – a very sad one about the loss of a child, and its impact on the parents and surviving sister, Belinda. The ghostly return of the little boy heralds a series of strange happenings and a change in Belinda’s behaviour, causing the mother especially great distress. The ending, however, is not tragic, and rather sweet.
To Wit To Woo – a medieval tale of an unloved wife, who is tricked by a witch into various methods of making her husband love her. This one was sad and also funny, but I just felt really sorry for the poor woman.
Ring a Ring a Rosy – a feral autistic-coded girl who likes to kill things occasionally, out of curiosity, gets herself a boyfriend, and her mother starts worrying about the lad’s safety after they appear to have an argument and he disappears. But is she worried about the right thing? I didn’t know how to feel about this one, but it’s another sad one.
Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials (2026), created/written for the screen by Chris Chibnall and directed by Chris Sweeney, is a 3-part drama that just got released on UK Netflix, and I really loved it. In fact, it’s given me some thoughts about parent/child dynamics I’d like to write, or at least think about. It’s very silly fun, which I’m fully on board with.
In 1925, a country house party prank turns deadly. Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent investigates the chilling murder plot. Lady Caterham and Superintendent Battle assist in solving the country house mystery that changes Bundle’s life.
Miss Scarlet and The Duke (2020-) created by Rachael New, is a fun Victorian-era detective show I like to both rewatch and catch up on. I really love the period lady detective genre, like Miss Fisher, and Miss Scarlet has a few seasons under its belt to go through. S06 came out in December; I’ve watched up to S05.
When Eliza Scarlet’s father dies, he leaves her penniless, but she resolves to continue his detective agency. To operate in a male-dominated world, though, she needs a partner – step forward a detective known as the Duke.
Other Episodes & Mini-Series watched (click the + sign to expand)
These aren’t all in the order I watched them; I’ve grouped the Marple and Poirot episodes together, bookending the list. It’s all a bit random but it made some weird sense to me when I was typing this up.
- Miss Marple: The Body in the Library (1984) dir. Silvio Narizzano, screenplay by T.R. Bowen. I do love the old Miss Marple series with Joan Hickson, and this is one I’ve seen so many times. This was originally a 3-part mini-series, but it’s available now in one single feature. It’s not my favourite book either, but it’s one I’ve re-read a lot.
- Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Body in the Library (2004) dir. Andy Wilson, dramatised by Kevin Elyot. They very bravely* changed the ending of this one, and departed from the original reveal to bring it up-to-date, but this just succeeds in falling into the ‘evil lesbians’ trope, preying on younger girls. Still, sapphics on screen in 2004… I don’t enjoy the Bantrys’ dynamics as much in this one, either. We can still be feminists looking for women to be their own people, and love our husbands very much. Overall, I think I prefer T.R. Bowen’s adaptation.
*I am British, this is not a compliment
- Miss Marple: The Moving Finger (1985) dir. Roy Boulting, dramatised by Julia Jones. I do enjoy this one because of the romantic subplots and who gets with whom. These definitely make me want to read Christie’s romance novels, published under her pen name Mary Westmacott. This was a 2-parter, which is now available as a single feature.
- Miss Marple: A Murder is Announced (1985) dir. David Giles, dramatised by Alan Plater. I prefer the way the book character Mitzi is treated in this dramatisation, name changed here to Hannah which makes her not only Eastern European but Jewish-coded, although she is not explicitly Jewish in the text or in the episode. Even so, there’s a lot of anti-Eastern European prejudice in evidence. It’s a good adaptation though, and has one of my favourite lesbian-coded couples as ‘companions’. Also, so many autistic-coded women in this one. A village full of them.
- Miss Marple: Pocket full of Rye (1985) dir. Guy Slater, dramatised by T.R. Bowen. The nursery rhyme one! Originally a 2-parter, and then shown as a single feature-length episode. It has one of my favourite character actors, Selina Cadell, as Mary Dove. Sadly, this one is really forgettable, except for the nursery rhyme killings.
- Miss Marple: Nemesis (1987) dir. David Tucker, dramatised by T.R. Bowen. This is a good story, and one I haven’t seen a lot. I really enjoyed it, and it has a good few twists and turns. I love the three sisters, the random bus tour of historic homes and gardens, the locations used, and also Miss Marple having a nap on a bench. She’s elderly, let her sleep in a garden and stop bothering her with ice cream cornets.
- Mrs Amworth (1975) dir. Alvin Rakoff. Based on the E.F. Benson short story, adapted by Hugh Whitemore. A good ’70s short, 29mins runtime. I really enjoyed this one! I do like the gnat plague heralding the vampire, which is a bit different to the usual vampire fare. I’m not sure what this was part of, I think it was part of a series or anthology originally, but it’s on YouTube as a standalone, courtesy of What the Folk‘s channel.
- The Lost Will of Dr Rant (1951) dir. Laurence Schwab Jr., based on M.R. James’s story, The Tractate Middoth, and dramatised by Doris Halman. 30mins runtime. This is a US production, and possibly the first time that an M.R. James story was adapted for the screen! It was for the “Lights Out” series, and it’s pretty good. I really liked it, and it still stands up against the 2013 Mark Gatiss adaptation.
- The Incredible Dr Baldick: Never Come Night (1972) dir. Cyril Coke. Another one courtesy of the What the Folk YouTube channel, this was the pilot of a series that never got aired/made, and is now a standalone feature. It seems that Terry Nation, its creator, wanted to replace Dr Who‘s Doctor with a folk horror version who went around the country in his steam train The Tzar, a mobile home and laboratory, solving paranormal mysteries. It stars Robert Hardy in the titular role, and I’m really sad this was never a series as planned. The pilot is really worth a watch.
- Stones (1976) dir. Graham Evans. An episode of The Mind Beyond (BBC2 Playhouse), focused on the weird properties and then-shadowy history of Stonehenge. Available on YouTube via What the Folk‘s channel. This one is a full hour. Lots of stuff around ancient languages and the connection between written langauge and druidic power. It’s a bit dry for me, centering on a Tory minister’s scheme to move Stonehenge to London’s Hyde Park, and the subsequent discovery of an ancient language hidden on the spines of a 3-volume 17thC set of books about the stone circle. It has some positive Welsh rep in it, which is a nice change, and picks up towards the end with the involvement of the children.
- A Place to Die (1973) dir. Peter Jefferies. This is a Thriller episode, Season 1 Episode 7, available on YouTube via What the Folk‘s channel. Creepy rural English village alert! This is a pre-Wicker Man folk horror, in which the lovely doctor’s wife, Tessa Nelson (Alexandra Hay), becomes the focus of the villagers’ obsession, and uncovers a sinister cult at work.
- Poirot: The Adventure of the Clapham Cook (1989) dir. Edward Bennett, adapted by Clive Exton. I had no idea these were 1980s, I had them in my head as all being 2000s! But no – this is one of the much earlier episodes, and Suchet ran as Poirot for a hugely long time, 1989-2013. I enjoy the early series, for sure. I liked Exton’s original ghost story for Ghost Stories for Christmas, Stigma (1977), and this adaptation manages to be domestic and fun, and held our attention. This was a birthday watch since we were too ill to go and celebrate as planned. We stayed in and watched Seven Dials on Netflix, and then some Poirot. NOTE: Some very dated casual racism (towards Chinese immigrants).
- Poirot: Triangle At Rhodes (1989) dir. Renny Rye, adapted by Stephen Wakelam. This plot reminds me of Evil Under the Sun, and I get it confused with that one all the time. That’s because, I guess, Evil Under the Sun is the full-length version, while this is a short story. There are the star-crossed couples and the domestic drama between husbands and wives in each, and so they are fairly easy to confuse!
- Poirot: Problem at Sea (1989) dir. Renny Rye, adapted by Clive Exton. Some thoroughly unpleasant people having a terrible time on a cruise, with Hastings and Poirot along for the ride. This is another of the short stories adapted for the first season, which has that glossy bigger budget feel. I did really enjoy the two girls, they were fun.
- Poirot: The Cornish Mystery (1990) dir. Edward Bennett, adapted by Clive Exton. I liked this one, it’s another short story adaptation, and it works well as a feature. Again, I really enjoy Exton’s scripts and the dynamics he writes, and how Christie’s characters come alive on screen. Poor Mrs Pengelley.
Films
My films of January 2026: the highlighted ones with posters are all my top rated watches. I’ve watched a total of 40 films this month, from 1933-2025, and a range of short films and feature-length ones. Letterboxd has counted the 5 Miss Marples I logged as films, but I’ve counted those in my TV show watches, so they don’t appear here.
Expand the details below this highlighted list to see the full list of films I’ve seen this month! I’ve enjoyed all of them in some way. They aren’t in any particular order.
Foxes (2011) dir. Lorcan Finnegan. 17mins runtime.
I loved this little short, on YouTube via the Screen Ireland channel. It’s really atmospheric and unsettling, and I did like the ending. Also: some cracking fox shots, and lovely, eerie shots of the housing estate and its uniformity.
A young couple trapped in a remote estate of empty houses and shrieking foxes are beckoned from their isolation into a twilight world – a world of the paranormal or perhaps insanity.
The Sacrifice Game (2023) dir. Jenn Wexler.
This is one of my favourite Christmas movies, which I didn’t actually watch over Christmas this year (boo to me), but was the first film I watched in 2026. I really love how it ends. If you want to know what I’m like as a person, this film contains most elements I enjoy to watch. Draw your own conclusions.
This Christmas, raise a little hell.
Christmas break, 1971. Samantha and Clara, two students who are staying behind for the holidays at their boarding school, must survive the night after the arrival of uninvited visitors.
Strange Harvest (2024) dir. Stuart Ortiz.
Mockumentary with interviews and found footage that I really enjoyed. Cosmic horror that is actually well done. New to me.
He isn’t hiding, he’s waiting.
Detectives are thrust into a chilling hunt for “Mr. Shiny”—a sadistic serial killer from the past whose return marks the beginning of a new wave of grotesque, otherworldly crimes tied to a dark cosmic force.
Bring Her Back (2025) dirs. Michael Philippou, Danny Philippou
I really liked Talk To Me by the same directors, and this one was a real mind fuck as well. Deeply upsetting in places. I had to fast forward scenes, literally can’t watch some of that. Next level diabolical. New to me.
Family requires sacrifices.
Following the death of their father, a brother and sister are sent to live with a foster mother, only to learn that she is hiding a terrifying secret.
Clown in a Cornfield (2025) dir. Eli Craig.
Based on the Adam Cesare novel. US-set Hot Fuzz with clowns and teen protagonists. Gay rep (yay). Only Black teen in the friend group is the first one to die (boo). Modern teens dying because they don’t know how to use a rotary phone or drive a manual (“stick”) vehicle is so funny to me. Teach your kids these basic life skills.
Are you a friend of Frendo?
Quinn and her father have just moved to the quiet town of Kettle Springs hoping for a fresh start. Instead, she discovers a fractured community that has fallen on hard times after the treasured Baypen Corn Syrup Factory burned down. As the locals bicker amongst themselves and tensions boil over, a sinister, grinning figure emerges from the cornfields to cleanse the town of its burdens, one bloody victim at a time.
Morgiana (1972) dir. Juraj Herz.
A rewatch for me – Morgiana is the name of the cat, whose fate is a major plot point. I really enjoy this one. We get a lot of cat-eye-view shots as well, moving around the house and seeing things from the cat’s POV.
Jealous of her vapidly “good” sister’s popularity, poisonous Viktoria doses pretty Klara’s tea with a slow-acting fatal substance. As the latter grows hysterically weak, the former finds success increasingly compromised by guilt, blackmail, and the pesky need to kill others lest she be exposed.
Dark Waters (1993) dir. Mariano Baino.
If you enjoyed Soavi’s The Church (1989), this is definitely one for the watchlist. It goes harder in a few places. One of the most disturbing family reunions I’ve seen. New to me, but I’ve rewatched it 3x this month, once with the director’s commentary.
A New Wave of Horror
After the death of her father, a young woman travels to a remote convent on an island in the Black Sea to find out why her father funded it for years.
O’r Ddaear Hen/From the Old Earth (1981) dir. Wil Aaron.
LEAVE THINGS ALONE school of horror, which deserves its place here for its place in Welsh cinema history, as much as for its addition to the 1980s weird films, like the Tales of the West Country series. New to me.
As William Jones digs in the garden of his council house he finds a strange looking stone head. During the night his wife has horrible dreams, forcing William to move the head out of the house. In turn, he takes the head to an archaeologist at Bangor University who is an expert on Celtic artefacts and trying to dig up the remains of the Celts elsewhere. In order to try and understand the head, he goes home with her but things start to go wrong at night there as well, bringing the horrors of a half-human half-animal creature to the housewives. One by one the archaeologist’s family is horrified leading to death and another sacrifice to the ancient gods of the Celts.
The Endless (2017) dirs. Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson.
I like this duo – I enjoyed Spring (2014), and I think this film is even better. It might be one of my favourite timey-wimey cosmic horror Sci-Fi films now. New to me.
Time is a prison.
Two brothers return to the cult they fled from years ago to discover that the group’s beliefs may be more sane than they once thought.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) dir. Guy Ritchie.
This is a comfort rewatch of my favourite Arthurian film. It has everything I enjoy about Ritchie films, plus it’s an action-fantasy. Arthur’s basically a gangster, which is all kings really are. This is actually my (almost) perfect fantasy film. Himself reckons Guy Ritchie should do a version of Preiddeu Annwn/The Spoils of Annwn, which is literally a heist story. That would be amazing.
From nothing comes a King
When the child Arthur’s father is murdered, Vortigern, Arthur’s uncle, seizes the crown. Robbed of his birthright and with no idea who he truly is, Arthur comes up the hard way in the back alleys of the city. But once he pulls the sword Excalibur from the stone, his life is turned upside down and he is forced to acknowledge his true legacy… whether he likes it or not.
Underwater (2020) dir. William Eubank.
Another comfort rewatch, which I really enjoy. This one did the deep sea walk across the seabed being attacked by monsters before Meg 2. This is a Cthulhu/Deep Ones mythos film, one of THE best entries into that subgenre made so far.
7 miles below the ocean surface something has awakened
After an earthquake destroys their underwater station, six researchers must navigate two miles along the dangerous, unknown depths of the ocean floor to make it to safety in a race against time.
Crow Hollow (1952) dir. Michael McCarthy.
A new-to-me British Gothic thriller, with a blushing bride (she’s known him a week), and three batty old aunts to contend with. My favourite genre of British Gothic is three old women up to no good. Available on YouTube.
A new bride tries to survive multiple attempts on her life in a dark mansion, while her husband refuses to believe that she in danger.
Panna a Netvor/Beauty and the Beast (1978) dir. Juraj Herz.
A favourite comfort watch, and one I finally own on disc. I love it so much.
I have so much to say about this, but I won’t do that here, I’ll save that for a full post or something.
Julie, the youngest daughter of a bankrupt merchant, sacrifices her life in order to save her father. She goes to an enchanted castle in the woods and meets Netvor, a bird-like monster. As Netvor begins to fall in love with Julie, he must suppress his beastly urge to kill her.
The Bench (2024) dir. Sean Wilkie.
This is an indie Scottish film that took 17 years to make, and finally got snapped up by Amazon. I have to say, I really enjoyed it. It’s a good old-fashioned slasher, made by people who clearly like slashers, and there are lots of nice moments and meta nods in it.
The twist is fairly predictable, but I don’t need it to be clever, I just want a fun 75mins of people having relationship drama then running around and screaming. Both our killer (Gareth Hunter) and my hero Tommy (Chris Somerville) were very Ricky-coded to me. Any film where I say “That’s my son!” twice gets an extra star.
Over 300,000 people go missing in the UK every year. Most are never found.
A breakdown. A kind invitation. A cabin with a bloody past. Alex and her newfound friends face a nightmarish reality as they are picked off one by one, drawn to the sinister bench below. Inspired by low-budget horror films of the 1970s.
An Cailleach Bhéarra (2007) dir. Naomi Wilson. 8mins runtime. Available on YouTube via Screen Ireland’s channel.
A lovely 8min folklore short, with a large scale puppet and some great animation.
“The Cailleach was dependent on this one thing… every hundred years she must get back to the water and immerse herself so that she might become young again.”
This film is an interpretation of fragments of the ancient myth of the “cailleach”, old hag, otherworld female, mother earth, sovereignty queen, or witch. Told using a large scale puppet and actors moving through real landscape.
Other Films Watched
Films and standalone shorts watched in January (click to expand)- Until Dawn (2025) dir. David F. Sandberg. It’s based on a video game I haven’t played but can see the appeal of. I really liked the aesthetics of the house, the monster design, and the concept. I also enjoyed the dynamics between the characters, but I lost interest in the middle.
- It Feeds (2025) dir. Chad Archibald. This is like a darker, feature-length film version of the US show, Medium. It has a very strong mother/daughter relationship and a good ending, fine for an afternoon viewing, but I don’t think I’d watch this again.
- The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras (2023) dir. Craig Williams. 17min runtime, a really good short film. We don’t see the wyrm herself, but hopefully we all know what a wyrm/really big fucking snake-dragon looks like. I would watch this short film again.
- The Innsmouth School for Girls (2023) dir. Joshua Kennedy. This is a rewatch, not a favourite or anything, but sometimes I get an urge to watch it again. It’s one of the better Deep Ones/Innsmouth entries, and I think it’s definitely worth a look.
- Dark Light (2019) dir. Padraig Reynolds. This is a rewatch – again, not a highlighted favourite, but one I occasionally feel in the mood for. It’s a pretty competent Sci-Fi-Horror, with monstrous humanoids rather than aliens, and I do enjoy the central mother-daughter drama.
- 東海道お化け道中 / Yokai Monsters: Along With Ghosts (1969) dirs. Kimiyoshi Yasuda, Yoshiyuki Kuroda. New to me, a good background one. Atmospheric, and with really fun 1960s effects! I think I’d rewatch this, I liked the little girl and the plot was entertaining enough. Available on YouTube.
- The Barbarians (1987) dir. Ruggero Deodato. A rewatch – accidental, I was doing stuff with the TV on in the background, this came on, and I didn’t turn it off and ended up watching the whole thing. As entertaining as the last time, not one I would ever dedicate my concentration to, but it’s ’80s Sword and Sorcery for comforting background company on a rainy day.
- The Spiritualist/The Amazing Mr. X (1948) dir. Bernard Vorhaus. I liked this one; I watched it for Turhan Bey and Lynn Bari. It’s a good psychological, Supernatural Explained noir, although for goodness sake her husband has only been dead for two years and everyone is pressuring her to move on and remarry, leave her alone. Westerners not knowing how to process grief is not a 21stC phenomenon. Available on YouTube.
- The Return (1973) dir. Sture Rydman. 30mins runtime, a made-for-TV British short; this is a pretty good Gothic ghost story, very atmospheric and melodramatic. It is based on stories by A.M. Burrage and Ambrose Bierce. A 2-person cast, which really works for the atmosphere and sense of claustrophobia in the house setting. Available on YouTube.
- Il mulino delle donne di pietra/Mill of the Stone Women (1960) dir. Giorgio Ferroni. Not as fun as I hoped, but pretty good. A bit of Mad Science and Italian Gothic. Available on YouTube. I actually think this might be a rewatch but it didn’t leave much of an impression on me the first time.
- The Ghoul (1933) dir. T. Hayes Hunter. This one made me laugh, I did enjoy it for 80mins of excitable young people shouting at each other. Is it culturally sensitive to anyone? No, not in the least. I really liked the enemies-to-partnership thing the cousins had going on, though; Betty was great. This is what 1930s feminism looked like.
- Moss Rose (1947) dir. Gregory Ratoff. An absolutely wild melodrama murder mystery/thriller, with Vincent Price as a policeman, and the worst faux-Cockney accents I have ever heard. Some fascinating class discussion though.
- Darklands (1996) dir. Julian Richards. I watched this again for a review I’m writing for Divination Hollow, and to see how the Director’s Cut (6min shorter) fares against the original version I watched in 2023, the year the Cut was released. This is… something. I have a whole post on it already, where I missed the antisemitism of the Lilith imagery of a character called Rebecca, on top of everything else it’s doing. Anyway, the new essay on this will be potentially cross-posted, but Divination Hollow will get it first.
- Deváté srdce/The Ninth Heart (1979) dir. Juraj Herz. The third Herz film I’ve seen this month, this is one I also own on disc (thanks to the Severin Films Folk Horror Compendium). I didn’t like this as much as Panna a Netvor, but the hair was amazing. I don’t think it was a highlighted watch for me, but I do think I’ll be watching it again, and maybe this will grow on me.
- The Fall of the House of Usher (1960) dir. Roger Corman. I’m not a massive Poe fan but I do like his work, and I do like a few of the adaptations of it. This is much more of a comfort rewatch for me just because of Vincent Price. I know there are loads of versions of it and I haven’t seen them all, but this is not a bad film. It was written by Richard Matheson, and I tend to enjoy his scripts.
- A Child’s Voice (1978) dir. Kieran Hickey. An Irish made-for-TV short, 29mins runtime. Very much in the vein of Ghost Stories for Christmas, and strongly reminiscent of Mark Gatiss’s original story, The Dead Room (2018) which has a very similar premise and main character. It was a one-off, not part of a series or anthology, and only shown on UK TV once in the 1980s.
- The Circle (2017) dir. Peter Callow. I’ve seen this one before and I vaguely remembered it was low budget and not awful, and I fancied the folk horror feels. It’s a Scottish set one, and I want to watch more Scottish horror where possible, like The Isle, Get Duked!, Dog Soldiers, Outcast, and Little Bone Lodge. The Irish horror scene is really flourishing, but Wales and Scotland are behind. A lot of that is budget and investment, so I’m on the lookout for more films by Scottish filmmakers. I don’t know if Callow is Scottish, but it does make some good use of the landscape and isolation of the islands!
- Tattiebogle (2017) dir. Douglas Kyle. Made for £101.99, this was the start of a rabbithole I fell into while looking for more Scottish Horror. Douglas Kyle seems to have a production company, ChaosBox Productions, which has a YouTube Channel. He has a 62-episode no-budget Sci-Fi series, The Pandora Men, and several features and shorts. This is one of the features, made over 8 days in the cast & crew’s spare time. I really appreciate no-budget / microbudget films made by people having a lot of fun, and this is absolutely that. It’s an ecohorror/folk horror slasher, made in Aberdeenshire.
- The Ghillie Dhu (2024) dir. Douglas Kyle. His latest short feature, roughly 37mins runtime. This attempts to be about anxiety disorder and, I guess, the horror of being consumed by your traumas and disorders, married with the Scottish folktale of the Ghillie Dhu.
- The Yird Swine (2020) dir. Douglas Kyle. This isn’t on Letterboxd yet, I need to add it. The link is to IMDB instead. This has the same core cast, with another cast member from The Pandora Men series, Myla Corvidae (he/they), originally from Cardiff! This was a fun one too. The pacing wasn’t as good as Tattiebogle, but I really liked it. Everyone was obviously really enjoying themselves making it. I think if you’re into this side of amateur indie filmmaking, you should check out these films.
DID YOU MISS ANY?
CLICK THE CATEGORY TAG (“Media Round Up”) TO SEE ALL THE POSTS, BEGINNING WITH NOVEMBER 2025.
A SELECTION OF THE MOST RECENT ROUND-UPS IS BELOW:My monthly media round-up for December 2025 – all the books, podcasts, tv shows, and films I read/listened to/watched this month.
by cmrosensDecember 30, 2025December 29, 2025I’m starting a new monthly series where I post a round-up of all the media I’ve watched/read/listened to for the previous month. Here is November’s media round-up!
by cmrosensDecember 5, 2025January 26, 2026 Subscribe to my newsletter to stay updated! I send newsletters around once a month. You can also subscribe to my site so you don't miss a post, but I also do a post round-up in my monthly newsletters, along with what I've been working on, what I've been reading, and what I've been watching. I will often update newsletter subscribers first with news, so stay ahead of the game with my announcements and discount codes, etc! First name Last name Email #BookReview #filmReview #mediaRoundUp #tvReview -
January 2026 Media Round-Up
Here’s my January round up of all the media I’ve read/watched/listened to this month! I’m going to try and keep this to the highlights, but I usually DNF things I’m not enjoying and they don’t get counted. Positivity only in this space! …Although the content itself may be not so positive.
As a bonus, I’m going to let you know my favourite song of the month too. I’ve just switched from Spotify to Qobuz, a music streaming service based in France, as Qobuz pays artists more per track while still costing the same, and also has a much better sound quality. Most of my playlist content has transferred over fine, but the one artist I was devastated is not fully on there yet is Felix Hagan.
There is one song of his on there currently though: Happy Songs (2025), from the brand new album of the same name which smashed its goal on Kickstarter. I’m really hopeful that the whole album will drop on Qobuz as well.
Happy Songs by Felix Hagan is definitely my favourite song from the start of the month. LISTEN ON QOBUZ
As I go on my Qobuz journey, I’ll be looking for new music to replace the tracks I loved to listen to on Spotify but that aren’t on Qobuz yet, and finding (I hope) new obsessions. I’ll be adding this into my media round-up just for fun!
On to the main event: books, shows, and films. This month I’m experimenting with highlighting my favourites, and listing everything else. I was off sick this month, so there’s a lot of them.
Books, Audiobooks, Story Podcasts
These are the highlights of what I’ve read/listened to this month. I’ve been really spoiled for ARCs! That’s one really lovely bonus of offering the author spotlights – the small presses that get in touch with me for their authors sometimes offer a reader copy for me to frame the interview questions around.
(I never ask for this and I do not expect it, and frankly, I couldn’t ever read one per author! But for the small presses, I know they’re going to be in genres I already like and would want to read, so I often accept these if offered.)
Best Friends Bury Bodies by C.M. Rosens.
You know what, I’m counting this. I read this cover-to-cover for the revisions and edits, and it’s a 78K novel, so this is on my round-up.
When their search for a missing music star leads to murder, how far will his old friends go?
Midsomer Murders meets The Forty Year Kiss. A contemporary mystery with middle-aged polyamorous bisexual second chance romance.
Sarah believes she’s happy with her life despite never really dealing with her partner’s sudden death six years ago; her job is fine, her friends are supportive, her girlfriend Sammie is amazing. But when her estranged soulmate, Bas, reaches out after a 12 year absence, Sarah’s carefully cultivated rut is thrown into chaos.
Her best friends are all for tracking down the prodigal member of their close-knit group, who drifted away from them when he got famous, spiralled into addiction, then disappeared. But finding a long-lost 1990s rock star is the least of their worries, when it catapaults them into the middle of a murder investigation in the sleepy Surrey village where he’s been recovering.
With skeletons falling out of every closet, and lives upended everywhere they turn, what will they do when another body shows up, and both Sarah and Bas are implicated?
I got an ARC of Dianna Gunn‘s Gothic Fantasy novel, Woman of Sorrow and Blood. This is a sensuous, bisexual, sapphic vampire tale, set in richly built world of pleasure, pain, and power. I really enjoyed it, and read it fairly quickly; poor Alma is not very quick on the uptake, bless her, but there’s a decent climax and I was very satisfied with the ending. This one squeaked in right at the end of the month; I just finished it in time for this post! Read my full review.
When 18-year-old Alma is invited to live with Nightfather and pursue the Pleasures of Power, she’s determined to win his affection and ultimate gift: eternal life.
Yet life in the House of Night is not what she expected. Nightfather spends all of his time alone with Nightmother, leaving his second wife to rule with an iron fist. The servants brought from Alma’s home are hollowed out versions of their former selves. Others—including Alma’s own mentor—have disappeared entirely.
Alma buries her suspicions and throws herself into attending to the Daughter of Night, an extraordinary woman who requires special care.
When Nightfather calls upon Alma at last, she begins to see that his eternity is not a reward but a trap—and that it is not him, but the woman he calls his daughter, that her heart longs for. But tragedy lurks in every corner, and sometimes the only escape is death.
Once Upon A Song by Nadine Bells – an ARC Read from Quill & Crow Publishing. I got into this book a lot more from the midpoint, and as it took off into the resolution and climax, I really enjoyed it. This Snow Queen retelling was fairly well done, although there were elements I personally didn’t vibe with. If you’re looking for a quick, lightweight and entertaining Gothic read, this is one to look out for and pre-order from your local store or library. Read my full review.
Welcome to the Hôtel de Neige. Let yourself be swept away by its grandeur and glamor, but beware…the cold may swallow you whole.
When lonely waitress Ana lands a job as a singer at the prestigious Hôtel de Neige, she believes it to be the beginning of her fairytale. Yet she soon finds that in those eerie halls, the line between Cinderella story and Gothic nightmare blurs. Sinister dreams cause her to sleepwalk, a ballerina makes ominous threats, and a phantom in white haunts the hotel—and Ana.
As Ana discovers that the hotel’s last singer lost his life under mysterious circumstances, she needs to decide if happily-ever-after is worth it. She knows she cannot trust her secretive colleagues or the charming but elusive hotel manager, Dimitri. All Ana ever wanted was to belong, but at the Hôtel de Neige, that may mean never leaving again…
The Dreaming of Man by Nikoline Kaiser. I got a copy from Neon Hemlock Press.
I love “Innsmouth” stories, and this is one of the better ones for sure. It has a trans man protagonist and plays with Shakespeare as well.
“An eerie, anxious read, crawling with tentacles of loss, regret, and uncanny coincidence. Nikoline Kaiser’s voice recalls the timbre of a rotting, bygone place and time while remaining fresh and crisp. A true joy for lovers of the weird!” —A.Z. Louise, author of Off-Time Jive
After receiving a letter telling him terrible news, Doctor Lawrence Cooper visits the small harbor-town Osmund in search of answers. Though something is clearly wrong there, Lawrence keeps finding reasons to stay: the sake of a young girl he meets, and to get to the bottom of his one-time lover’s suspicious death.
And the longer he stays, the more Lawrence is drawn into Osmund’s peculiar mysteries.
Cover Illustration by JJ Epping.
Death Valley Blooms by S.M. Mack is an interesting novella out with Neon Hemlock Press, a queer ecohorror about the inevitability of the landscape and the desert claiming its dues. It’s a tragic meditation on bodily autonomy and the survival of a landscape that uses humanity to thrive, but will outlast them.
“Death Valley Blooms is a breathtaking, atmospheric novella that explores hard-hitting topics such as gendered inheritance, mourning, and sacrifice with an impressively light touch. S.M. Mack’s writing is full of humor and sobriety, which held my attention from start to finish. If you enjoy stories that bridge meditative, slice-of-life scenes with fast-paced action, this book will not disappoint.” — Liza Wemakor, author of Loving Safoa
Every decade or so, vast quantities and varieties of wildflowers bloom all at once in Death Valley. But unbeknownst to the wider world, these super blooms are powered by a woman’s life. Mar Ramse lost her mother to Death Valley as a teenager and would give anything to break her family’s curse, but now the desert whispers its call to her. However, she still has a single ace up her sleeve: neither she nor her brother will ever have children. Is it enough for the desert to release its grip on her family?
Cover illustration by Rose Meyer. Cover design by dave ring.
Some classics in here, and new content by narrator Ian Gordon. This is a compilation of a number of stories, and Vol 1 is available on YouTube.
I have not finished this one yet.
The HorrorBabble podcast is one I’m listening to a lot, just to get a short story fix as that’s all I can really concentrate on currently. I don’t enjoy every classic story they read out, but I really like the range of tales I’m listening to and the classic authors I’m able to access via their podcast. I usually listen before bed for an hour or two, or while I’m doing housework or something.
Click for the list of HorrorBabble episodes I’ve listened to: short stories by classic horror and weird fiction authors, with their runtime (min:sec). I have highlighted my favourites.“Two Black Bottles” by H.P. Lovecraft & Wilfrid Branch Talman (29:51)
“The Dance of Death” by Algernon Blackwood (25:04)
“The House of Cards: A Thomas Chadwick Story” by Malcolm Ferguson (33:42)
“The Red Room” by H.G. Wells (26:06)
“The Spectre Priestess of Wrightstone” by Herman F. Wright (13:26)
“A Ghost/The Tale of a Haunted Chateau” by Guy de Maupassant (16:47)
“Mr. Hyde-and-Seek: A Thomas Chadwick Story” by Malcolm Ferguson (24:14)
“Stranger at Dusk” by Malcolm Murchie (42:16)
“The Mandrakes” by Clark Ashton Smith (17:13)
“The Lurking Fear” by H.P. Lovecraft (54:44)
“The Gateway of the Monster: A Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder Story” by William Hope Hodgson (51:20)
“The Horror from the Mound” by Robert E. Howard (45:19)
“The Thing from the Barrens” by Jim Kjelgaard (37:00)
“Chickamauga” by Ambrose Bierce (17:31)
“The Crawling Chaos” by H.P. Lovecraft (20:09)
“Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”, by M.R. James (45:57) – listened to x2 because it’s so funny.
“A Suspicious Gift” by Algernon Blackwood (26:38)
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (38:28)
“Catnip” by Robert Bloch (27:06)
“To Build a Fire” by Jack London (38:32)
“The Hound” by H.P. Lovecraft (21:55)
“An Unnatural Feud” by Norman Douglas (35:20)
“Caterpillars” by E.F. Benson (19:23)
“The Shining Pyramid” by Arthur Machen (52:30)TV Shows & Mini Series
I’ve highlighted the shows I’ve really enjoyed this month, and listed the other shows I watched below the highlights. The highlighted ones are my favourite watches. Expand the details of my other watches below these, so you can see the other shows & random Marple/Poirot episodes I watched.
Started the month catching up on Fallout (2024-), created by Geneva Robertson-Dworet
and Graham Wagner, which I loved.Absolutely amazing. One of my oldest friends has been a massive fan of the games for years, and when we were housemates he had a display cabinet of the figures in our living room – those were my introduction to the games and the world! I’m not fully caught up yet.
In a future, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles brought about by nuclear decimation, citizens must live in underground bunkers to protect themselves from radiation, mutants and bandits.
Year of the Rabbit (2019) an 8-part mini-series directed by Ben Taylor and written by Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley that got cancelled over funding issues. It is a rewatch and a comfort watch, as it makes me laugh out loud every episode.
Mabel (Susan Wokoma) demanding to be made a policewoman/Lady Fuzz: “When you adopted me you said you wanted the best for me!!”
Chief Inspector (Alun Armstrong): “I was mostly thinking about hats!”
Detective Inspector Rabbit, a dedicated, tough, thick, and oft-inebriated Victorian copper, sleuths his way across London with his two young partners: a doofy rookie and a brilliant Black policewoman no one ever believes.
Haunted Hotel (2025-) is a rewatch, another comfort show! I hope there’ll be another season soon. Just a really fun cartoon, with lots of family scares.
A single mom with two kids operates a haunted hotel, aided by her late brother’s ghost who believes they can have ingenious ideas despite his ethereal state.
West Country Tales (1982-1983). I loved the 9 available episodes I saw on YouTube, I think these are the only ones left out of the 14 that were aired.
This post, Remembering West Country Tales, has a full episode breakdown, including the missing episodes, courtesy of Steve Calvert.
I’ve listed the 9 episodes below, with each title linked to the YouTube video! Click to expand.The Poacher – I liked how slow this was, just like you were listening to an older man in the pub tell you a story from his younger days. It did keep me interested all the way to the end, and I really liked the idea of meeting Pan/the Devil in the woods.
The Breakdown – I switched my brain off for this one and didn’t try to guess where it was going, but just sort of let it carry me onwards. The twist is an obvious one, and it’s based on a fairly common/well-known urban legend (or rural legend?) but it’s one I liked. Not scary at all, just good company and a bit unsettling.
White Bird of Laughter Tor – this is a sad one, based on another fairly well-told folktale (I think, or ballad – but anyway I’ve heard a few variants of this one before) of a poor girl and her ill-fated romance. You have the sense of sad dread as you know where it’s going.
The Visitor – not a pleasant one, concerning two women and their competition for the life and love of a little toddler. A mother’s fear of usurpation, but also of the dangers posed by the people closest to you, regarding your child.
The Beast – I watched this one first, and really enjoyed it. It was a great episode. It’s much more folk horror in essence, and has the elements of the Beast of Bodmin Moor about it, much more of a Creature Feature than the others.
Miss Constantine – my personal favourite. This starts off with a dreamy vibe, where you meet an old lady who seems to be confused, perhaps has Alzheimers or dementia, and believes that she is being harrassed by ‘the young people from the Social’, who have moved into her home and refuse to leave. There is, of course, nobody there; at least, nobody the local vicar can see… or is there?
With Love, Belinda – a very sad one about the loss of a child, and its impact on the parents and surviving sister, Belinda. The ghostly return of the little boy heralds a series of strange happenings and a change in Belinda’s behaviour, causing the mother especially great distress. The ending, however, is not tragic, and rather sweet.
To Wit To Woo – a medieval tale of an unloved wife, who is tricked by a witch into various methods of making her husband love her. This one was sad and also funny, but I just felt really sorry for the poor woman.
Ring a Ring a Rosy – a feral autistic-coded girl who likes to kill things occasionally, out of curiosity, gets herself a boyfriend, and her mother starts worrying about the lad’s safety after they appear to have an argument and he disappears. But is she worried about the right thing? I didn’t know how to feel about this one, but it’s another sad one.
Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials (2026), created/written for the screen by Chris Chibnall and directed by Chris Sweeney, is a 3-part drama that just got released on UK Netflix, and I really loved it. In fact, it’s given me some thoughts about parent/child dynamics I’d like to write, or at least think about. It’s very silly fun, which I’m fully on board with.
In 1925, a country house party prank turns deadly. Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent investigates the chilling murder plot. Lady Caterham and Superintendent Battle assist in solving the country house mystery that changes Bundle’s life.
Miss Scarlet and The Duke (2020-) created by Rachael New, is a fun Victorian-era detective show I like to both rewatch and catch up on. I really love the period lady detective genre, like Miss Fisher, and Miss Scarlet has a few seasons under its belt to go through. S06 came out in December; I’ve watched up to S05.
When Eliza Scarlet’s father dies, he leaves her penniless, but she resolves to continue his detective agency. To operate in a male-dominated world, though, she needs a partner – step forward a detective known as the Duke.
Other Episodes & Mini-Series watched (click the + sign to expand)
These aren’t all in the order I watched them; I’ve grouped the Marple and Poirot episodes together, bookending the list. It’s all a bit random but it made some weird sense to me when I was typing this up.
- Miss Marple: The Body in the Library (1984) dir. Silvio Narizzano, screenplay by T.R. Bowen. I do love the old Miss Marple series with Joan Hickson, and this is one I’ve seen so many times. This was originally a 3-part mini-series, but it’s available now in one single feature. It’s not my favourite book either, but it’s one I’ve re-read a lot.
- Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Body in the Library (2004) dir. Andy Wilson, dramatised by Kevin Elyot. They very bravely* changed the ending of this one, and departed from the original reveal to bring it up-to-date, but this just succeeds in falling into the ‘evil lesbians’ trope, preying on younger girls. Still, sapphics on screen in 2004… I don’t enjoy the Bantrys’ dynamics as much in this one, either. We can still be feminists looking for women to be their own people, and love our husbands very much. Overall, I think I prefer T.R. Bowen’s adaptation.
*I am British, this is not a compliment
- Miss Marple: The Moving Finger (1985) dir. Roy Boulting, dramatised by Julia Jones. I do enjoy this one because of the romantic subplots and who gets with whom. These definitely make me want to read Christie’s romance novels, published under her pen name Mary Westmacott. This was a 2-parter, which is now available as a single feature.
- Miss Marple: A Murder is Announced (1985) dir. David Giles, dramatised by Alan Plater. I prefer the way the book character Mitzi is treated in this dramatisation, name changed here to Hannah which makes her not only Eastern European but Jewish-coded, although she is not explicitly Jewish in the text or in the episode. Even so, there’s a lot of anti-Eastern European prejudice in evidence. It’s a good adaptation though, and has one of my favourite lesbian-coded couples as ‘companions’. Also, so many autistic-coded women in this one. A village full of them.
- Miss Marple: Pocket full of Rye (1985) dir. Guy Slater, dramatised by T.R. Bowen. The nursery rhyme one! Originally a 2-parter, and then shown as a single feature-length episode. It has one of my favourite character actors, Selina Cadell, as Mary Dove. Sadly, this one is really forgettable, except for the nursery rhyme killings.
- Miss Marple: Nemesis (1987) dir. David Tucker, dramatised by T.R. Bowen. This is a good story, and one I haven’t seen a lot. I really enjoyed it, and it has a good few twists and turns. I love the three sisters, the random bus tour of historic homes and gardens, the locations used, and also Miss Marple having a nap on a bench. She’s elderly, let her sleep in a garden and stop bothering her with ice cream cornets.
- Mrs Amworth (1975) dir. Alvin Rakoff. Based on the E.F. Benson short story, adapted by Hugh Whitemore. A good ’70s short, 29mins runtime. I really enjoyed this one! I do like the gnat plague heralding the vampire, which is a bit different to the usual vampire fare. I’m not sure what this was part of, I think it was part of a series or anthology originally, but it’s on YouTube as a standalone, courtesy of What the Folk‘s channel.
- The Lost Will of Dr Rant (1951) dir. Laurence Schwab Jr., based on M.R. James’s story, The Tractate Middoth, and dramatised by Doris Halman. 30mins runtime. This is a US production, and possibly the first time that an M.R. James story was adapted for the screen! It was for the “Lights Out” series, and it’s pretty good. I really liked it, and it still stands up against the 2013 Mark Gatiss adaptation.
- The Incredible Dr Baldick: Never Come Night (1972) dir. Cyril Coke. Another one courtesy of the What the Folk YouTube channel, this was the pilot of a series that never got aired/made, and is now a standalone feature. It seems that Terry Nation, its creator, wanted to replace Dr Who‘s Doctor with a folk horror version who went around the country in his steam train The Tzar, a mobile home and laboratory, solving paranormal mysteries. It stars Robert Hardy in the titular role, and I’m really sad this was never a series as planned. The pilot is really worth a watch.
- Stones (1976) dir. Graham Evans. An episode of The Mind Beyond (BBC2 Playhouse), focused on the weird properties and then-shadowy history of Stonehenge. Available on YouTube via What the Folk‘s channel. This one is a full hour. Lots of stuff around ancient languages and the connection between written langauge and druidic power. It’s a bit dry for me, centering on a Tory minister’s scheme to move Stonehenge to London’s Hyde Park, and the subsequent discovery of an ancient language hidden on the spines of a 3-volume 17thC set of books about the stone circle. It has some positive Welsh rep in it, which is a nice change, and picks up towards the end with the involvement of the children.
- A Place to Die (1973) dir. Peter Jefferies. This is a Thriller episode, Season 1 Episode 7, available on YouTube via What the Folk‘s channel. Creepy rural English village alert! This is a pre-Wicker Man folk horror, in which the lovely doctor’s wife, Tessa Nelson (Alexandra Hay), becomes the focus of the villagers’ obsession, and uncovers a sinister cult at work.
- Poirot: The Adventure of the Clapham Cook (1989) dir. Edward Bennett, adapted by Clive Exton. I had no idea these were 1980s, I had them in my head as all being 2000s! But no – this is one of the much earlier episodes, and Suchet ran as Poirot for a hugely long time, 1989-2013. I enjoy the early series, for sure. I liked Exton’s original ghost story for Ghost Stories for Christmas, Stigma (1977), and this adaptation manages to be domestic and fun, and held our attention. This was a birthday watch since we were too ill to go and celebrate as planned. We stayed in and watched Seven Dials on Netflix, and then some Poirot. NOTE: Some very dated casual racism (towards Chinese immigrants).
- Poirot: Triangle At Rhodes (1989) dir. Renny Rye, adapted by Stephen Wakelam. This plot reminds me of Evil Under the Sun, and I get it confused with that one all the time. That’s because, I guess, Evil Under the Sun is the full-length version, while this is a short story. There are the star-crossed couples and the domestic drama between husbands and wives in each, and so they are fairly easy to confuse!
- Poirot: Problem at Sea (1989) dir. Renny Rye, adapted by Clive Exton. Some thoroughly unpleasant people having a terrible time on a cruise, with Hastings and Poirot along for the ride. This is another of the short stories adapted for the first season, which has that glossy bigger budget feel. I did really enjoy the two girls, they were fun.
- Poirot: The Cornish Mystery (1990) dir. Edward Bennett, adapted by Clive Exton. I liked this one, it’s another short story adaptation, and it works well as a feature. Again, I really enjoy Exton’s scripts and the dynamics he writes, and how Christie’s characters come alive on screen. Poor Mrs Pengelley.
Films
My films of January 2026: the highlighted ones with posters are all my top rated watches. I’ve watched a total of 40 films this month, from 1933-2025, and a range of short films and feature-length ones. Letterboxd has counted the 5 Miss Marples I logged as films, but I’ve counted those in my TV show watches, so they don’t appear here.
Expand the details below this highlighted list to see the full list of films I’ve seen this month! I’ve enjoyed all of them in some way. They aren’t in any particular order.
Foxes (2011) dir. Lorcan Finnegan. 17mins runtime.
I loved this little short, on YouTube via the Screen Ireland channel. It’s really atmospheric and unsettling, and I did like the ending. Also: some cracking fox shots, and lovely, eerie shots of the housing estate and its uniformity.
A young couple trapped in a remote estate of empty houses and shrieking foxes are beckoned from their isolation into a twilight world – a world of the paranormal or perhaps insanity.
The Sacrifice Game (2023) dir. Jenn Wexler.
This is one of my favourite Christmas movies, which I didn’t actually watch over Christmas this year (boo to me), but was the first film I watched in 2026. I really love how it ends. If you want to know what I’m like as a person, this film contains most elements I enjoy to watch. Draw your own conclusions.
This Christmas, raise a little hell.
Christmas break, 1971. Samantha and Clara, two students who are staying behind for the holidays at their boarding school, must survive the night after the arrival of uninvited visitors.
Strange Harvest (2024) dir. Stuart Ortiz.
Mockumentary with interviews and found footage that I really enjoyed. Cosmic horror that is actually well done. New to me.
He isn’t hiding, he’s waiting.
Detectives are thrust into a chilling hunt for “Mr. Shiny”—a sadistic serial killer from the past whose return marks the beginning of a new wave of grotesque, otherworldly crimes tied to a dark cosmic force.
Bring Her Back (2025) dirs. Michael Philippou, Danny Philippou
I really liked Talk To Me by the same directors, and this one was a real mind fuck as well. Deeply upsetting in places. I had to fast forward scenes, literally can’t watch some of that. Next level diabolical. New to me.
Family requires sacrifices.
Following the death of their father, a brother and sister are sent to live with a foster mother, only to learn that she is hiding a terrifying secret.
Clown in a Cornfield (2025) dir. Eli Craig.
Based on the Adam Cesare novel. US-set Hot Fuzz with clowns and teen protagonists. Gay rep (yay). Only Black teen in the friend group is the first one to die (boo). Modern teens dying because they don’t know how to use a rotary phone or drive a manual (“stick”) vehicle is so funny to me. Teach your kids these basic life skills.
Are you a friend of Frendo?
Quinn and her father have just moved to the quiet town of Kettle Springs hoping for a fresh start. Instead, she discovers a fractured community that has fallen on hard times after the treasured Baypen Corn Syrup Factory burned down. As the locals bicker amongst themselves and tensions boil over, a sinister, grinning figure emerges from the cornfields to cleanse the town of its burdens, one bloody victim at a time.
Morgiana (1972) dir. Juraj Herz.
A rewatch for me – Morgiana is the name of the cat, whose fate is a major plot point. I really enjoy this one. We get a lot of cat-eye-view shots as well, moving around the house and seeing things from the cat’s POV.
Jealous of her vapidly “good” sister’s popularity, poisonous Viktoria doses pretty Klara’s tea with a slow-acting fatal substance. As the latter grows hysterically weak, the former finds success increasingly compromised by guilt, blackmail, and the pesky need to kill others lest she be exposed.
Dark Waters (1993) dir. Mariano Baino.
If you enjoyed Soavi’s The Church (1989), this is definitely one for the watchlist. It goes harder in a few places. One of the most disturbing family reunions I’ve seen. New to me, but I’ve rewatched it 3x this month, once with the director’s commentary.
A New Wave of Horror
After the death of her father, a young woman travels to a remote convent on an island in the Black Sea to find out why her father funded it for years.
O’r Ddaear Hen/From the Old Earth (1981) dir. Wil Aaron.
LEAVE THINGS ALONE school of horror, which deserves its place here for its place in Welsh cinema history, as much as for its addition to the 1980s weird films, like the Tales of the West Country series. New to me.
As William Jones digs in the garden of his council house he finds a strange looking stone head. During the night his wife has horrible dreams, forcing William to move the head out of the house. In turn, he takes the head to an archaeologist at Bangor University who is an expert on Celtic artefacts and trying to dig up the remains of the Celts elsewhere. In order to try and understand the head, he goes home with her but things start to go wrong at night there as well, bringing the horrors of a half-human half-animal creature to the housewives. One by one the archaeologist’s family is horrified leading to death and another sacrifice to the ancient gods of the Celts.
The Endless (2017) dirs. Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson.
I like this duo – I enjoyed Spring (2014), and I think this film is even better. It might be one of my favourite timey-wimey cosmic horror Sci-Fi films now. New to me.
Time is a prison.
Two brothers return to the cult they fled from years ago to discover that the group’s beliefs may be more sane than they once thought.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) dir. Guy Ritchie.
This is a comfort rewatch of my favourite Arthurian film. It has everything I enjoy about Ritchie films, plus it’s an action-fantasy. Arthur’s basically a gangster, which is all kings really are. This is actually my (almost) perfect fantasy film. Himself reckons Guy Ritchie should do a version of Preiddeu Annwn/The Spoils of Annwn, which is literally a heist story. That would be amazing.
From nothing comes a King
When the child Arthur’s father is murdered, Vortigern, Arthur’s uncle, seizes the crown. Robbed of his birthright and with no idea who he truly is, Arthur comes up the hard way in the back alleys of the city. But once he pulls the sword Excalibur from the stone, his life is turned upside down and he is forced to acknowledge his true legacy… whether he likes it or not.
Underwater (2020) dir. William Eubank.
Another comfort rewatch, which I really enjoy. This one did the deep sea walk across the seabed being attacked by monsters before Meg 2. This is a Cthulhu/Deep Ones mythos film, one of THE best entries into that subgenre made so far.
7 miles below the ocean surface something has awakened
After an earthquake destroys their underwater station, six researchers must navigate two miles along the dangerous, unknown depths of the ocean floor to make it to safety in a race against time.
Crow Hollow (1952) dir. Michael McCarthy.
A new-to-me British Gothic thriller, with a blushing bride (she’s known him a week), and three batty old aunts to contend with. My favourite genre of British Gothic is three old women up to no good. Available on YouTube.
A new bride tries to survive multiple attempts on her life in a dark mansion, while her husband refuses to believe that she in danger.
Panna a Netvor/Beauty and the Beast (1978) dir. Juraj Herz.
A favourite comfort watch, and one I finally own on disc. I love it so much.
I have so much to say about this, but I won’t do that here, I’ll save that for a full post or something.
Julie, the youngest daughter of a bankrupt merchant, sacrifices her life in order to save her father. She goes to an enchanted castle in the woods and meets Netvor, a bird-like monster. As Netvor begins to fall in love with Julie, he must suppress his beastly urge to kill her.
The Bench (2024) dir. Sean Wilkie.
This is an indie Scottish film that took 17 years to make, and finally got snapped up by Amazon. I have to say, I really enjoyed it. It’s a good old-fashioned slasher, made by people who clearly like slashers, and there are lots of nice moments and meta nods in it.
The twist is fairly predictable, but I don’t need it to be clever, I just want a fun 75mins of people having relationship drama then running around and screaming. Both our killer (Gareth Hunter) and my hero Tommy (Chris Somerville) were very Ricky-coded to me. Any film where I say “That’s my son!” twice gets an extra star.
Over 300,000 people go missing in the UK every year. Most are never found.
A breakdown. A kind invitation. A cabin with a bloody past. Alex and her newfound friends face a nightmarish reality as they are picked off one by one, drawn to the sinister bench below. Inspired by low-budget horror films of the 1970s.
An Cailleach Bhéarra (2007) dir. Naomi Wilson. 8mins runtime. Available on YouTube via Screen Ireland’s channel.
A lovely 8min folklore short, with a large scale puppet and some great animation.
“The Cailleach was dependent on this one thing… every hundred years she must get back to the water and immerse herself so that she might become young again.”
This film is an interpretation of fragments of the ancient myth of the “cailleach”, old hag, otherworld female, mother earth, sovereignty queen, or witch. Told using a large scale puppet and actors moving through real landscape.
Other Films Watched
Films and standalone shorts watched in January (click to expand)- Until Dawn (2025) dir. David F. Sandberg. It’s based on a video game I haven’t played but can see the appeal of. I really liked the aesthetics of the house, the monster design, and the concept. I also enjoyed the dynamics between the characters, but I lost interest in the middle.
- It Feeds (2025) dir. Chad Archibald. This is like a darker, feature-length film version of the US show, Medium. It has a very strong mother/daughter relationship and a good ending, fine for an afternoon viewing, but I don’t think I’d watch this again.
- The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras (2023) dir. Craig Williams. 17min runtime, a really good short film. We don’t see the wyrm herself, but hopefully we all know what a wyrm/really big fucking snake-dragon looks like. I would watch this short film again.
- The Innsmouth School for Girls (2023) dir. Joshua Kennedy. This is a rewatch, not a favourite or anything, but sometimes I get an urge to watch it again. It’s one of the better Deep Ones/Innsmouth entries, and I think it’s definitely worth a look.
- Dark Light (2019) dir. Padraig Reynolds. This is a rewatch – again, not a highlighted favourite, but one I occasionally feel in the mood for. It’s a pretty competent Sci-Fi-Horror, with monstrous humanoids rather than aliens, and I do enjoy the central mother-daughter drama.
- 東海道お化け道中 / Yokai Monsters: Along With Ghosts (1969) dirs. Kimiyoshi Yasuda, Yoshiyuki Kuroda. New to me, a good background one. Atmospheric, and with really fun 1960s effects! I think I’d rewatch this, I liked the little girl and the plot was entertaining enough. Available on YouTube.
- The Barbarians (1987) dir. Ruggero Deodato. A rewatch – accidental, I was doing stuff with the TV on in the background, this came on, and I didn’t turn it off and ended up watching the whole thing. As entertaining as the last time, not one I would ever dedicate my concentration to, but it’s ’80s Sword and Sorcery for comforting background company on a rainy day.
- The Spiritualist/The Amazing Mr. X (1948) dir. Bernard Vorhaus. I liked this one; I watched it for Turhan Bey and Lynn Bari. It’s a good psychological, Supernatural Explained noir, although for goodness sake her husband has only been dead for two years and everyone is pressuring her to move on and remarry, leave her alone. Westerners not knowing how to process grief is not a 21stC phenomenon. Available on YouTube.
- The Return (1973) dir. Sture Rydman. 30mins runtime, a made-for-TV British short; this is a pretty good Gothic ghost story, very atmospheric and melodramatic. It is based on stories by A.M. Burrage and Ambrose Bierce. A 2-person cast, which really works for the atmosphere and sense of claustrophobia in the house setting. Available on YouTube.
- Il mulino delle donne di pietra/Mill of the Stone Women (1960) dir. Giorgio Ferroni. Not as fun as I hoped, but pretty good. A bit of Mad Science and Italian Gothic. Available on YouTube. I actually think this might be a rewatch but it didn’t leave much of an impression on me the first time.
- The Ghoul (1933) dir. T. Hayes Hunter. This one made me laugh, I did enjoy it for 80mins of excitable young people shouting at each other. Is it culturally sensitive to anyone? No, not in the least. I really liked the enemies-to-partnership thing the cousins had going on, though; Betty was great. This is what 1930s feminism looked like.
- Moss Rose (1947) dir. Gregory Ratoff. An absolutely wild melodrama murder mystery/thriller, with Vincent Price as a policeman, and the worst faux-Cockney accents I have ever heard. Some fascinating class discussion though.
- Darklands (1996) dir. Julian Richards. I watched this again for a review I’m writing for Divination Hollow, and to see how the Director’s Cut (6min shorter) fares against the original version I watched in 2023, the year the Cut was released. This is… something. I have a whole post on it already, where I missed the antisemitism of the Lilith imagery of a character called Rebecca, on top of everything else it’s doing. Anyway, the new essay on this will be potentially cross-posted, but Divination Hollow will get it first.
- Deváté srdce/The Ninth Heart (1979) dir. Juraj Herz. The third Herz film I’ve seen this month, this is one I also own on disc (thanks to the Severin Films Folk Horror Compendium). I didn’t like this as much as Panna a Netvor, but the hair was amazing. I don’t think it was a highlighted watch for me, but I do think I’ll be watching it again, and maybe this will grow on me.
- The Fall of the House of Usher (1960) dir. Roger Corman. I’m not a massive Poe fan but I do like his work, and I do like a few of the adaptations of it. This is much more of a comfort rewatch for me just because of Vincent Price. I know there are loads of versions of it and I haven’t seen them all, but this is not a bad film. It was written by Richard Matheson, and I tend to enjoy his scripts.
- A Child’s Voice (1978) dir. Kieran Hickey. An Irish made-for-TV short, 29mins runtime. Very much in the vein of Ghost Stories for Christmas, and strongly reminiscent of Mark Gatiss’s original story, The Dead Room (2018) which has a very similar premise and main character. It was a one-off, not part of a series or anthology, and only shown on UK TV once in the 1980s.
- The Circle (2017) dir. Peter Callow. I’ve seen this one before and I vaguely remembered it was low budget and not awful, and I fancied the folk horror feels. It’s a Scottish set one, and I want to watch more Scottish horror where possible, like The Isle, Get Duked!, Dog Soldiers, Outcast, and Little Bone Lodge. The Irish horror scene is really flourishing, but Wales and Scotland are behind. A lot of that is budget and investment, so I’m on the lookout for more films by Scottish filmmakers. I don’t know if Callow is Scottish, but it does make some good use of the landscape and isolation of the islands!
- Tattiebogle (2017) dir. Douglas Kyle. Made for £101.99, this was the start of a rabbithole I fell into while looking for more Scottish Horror. Douglas Kyle seems to have a production company, ChaosBox Productions, which has a YouTube Channel. He has a 62-episode no-budget Sci-Fi series, The Pandora Men, and several features and shorts. This is one of the features, made over 8 days in the cast & crew’s spare time. I really appreciate no-budget / microbudget films made by people having a lot of fun, and this is absolutely that. It’s an ecohorror/folk horror slasher, made in Aberdeenshire.
- The Ghillie Dhu (2024) dir. Douglas Kyle. His latest short feature, roughly 37mins runtime. This attempts to be about anxiety disorder and, I guess, the horror of being consumed by your traumas and disorders, married with the Scottish folktale of the Ghillie Dhu.
- The Yird Swine (2020) dir. Douglas Kyle. This isn’t on Letterboxd yet, I need to add it. The link is to IMDB instead. This has the same core cast, with another cast member from The Pandora Men series, Myla Corvidae (he/they), originally from Cardiff! This was a fun one too. The pacing wasn’t as good as Tattiebogle, but I really liked it. Everyone was obviously really enjoying themselves making it. I think if you’re into this side of amateur indie filmmaking, you should check out these films.
DID YOU MISS ANY?
CLICK THE CATEGORY TAG (“Media Round Up”) TO SEE ALL THE POSTS, BEGINNING WITH NOVEMBER 2025.
A SELECTION OF THE MOST RECENT ROUND-UPS IS BELOW:My monthly media round-up for December 2025 – all the books, podcasts, tv shows, and films I read/listened to/watched this month.
by cmrosensDecember 30, 2025December 29, 2025I’m starting a new monthly series where I post a round-up of all the media I’ve watched/read/listened to for the previous month. Here is November’s media round-up!
by cmrosensDecember 5, 2025January 26, 2026 Subscribe to my newsletter to stay updated! I send newsletters around once a month. You can also subscribe to my site so you don't miss a post, but I also do a post round-up in my monthly newsletters, along with what I've been working on, what I've been reading, and what I've been watching. I will often update newsletter subscribers first with news, so stay ahead of the game with my announcements and discount codes, etc! First name Last name Email #BookReview #filmReview #mediaRoundUp #tvReview -
At The Yard, Salisbury — A Morning with Penguins
HOW PENGUIN BOOKS GOT ITS NAME — AND STARTED A PUBLISHING REVOLUTION
At the Yard, Salisbury, A Morning with PenguinsIt was a bright August morning when we wandered into The Yard, a tucked-away coffee shop in Salisbury that felt like a secret shared among friends. The scent of espresso mingled with freshly baked muffins, and the walls featured book covers — rows of orange, blue, and green Penguins, those timeless companions of readers everywhere.
At the Yard, Salisbury, A Morning with PenguinsAs we sipped our coffee (and yes, the hot chocolate was extraordinary), I remembered a story that began nearly a century ago — one that changed how the world reads.
At the Yard, Salisbury, A Morning with PenguinsIn 1935, Allen Lane, managing editor at The Bodley Head, stood on a train platform in Exeter after visiting Agatha Christie. Searching for a good-quality paperback for his journey back to London, he found only cheap, flimsy magazines. That moment sparked an idea that would transform publishing: books should be both affordable and beautifully made — quality literature priced like a daily newspaper.
Lane envisioned a series of paperbacks that would bring fine writing to everyone, sold not just in bookshops but in railway stations and corner stores. A young secretary, Joan Coles, suggested the name ‘Penguin,’ friendly and memorable. Lane sent 21-year-old artist Edward Young to the London Zoo to sketch the bird that would become one of the most beloved emblems in publishing history.
What many readers don’t realize is that the earliest Penguins were colour-coded — a design both simple and brilliant. Each colour represented a different genre: orange for fiction, dark blue for biography, red for drama, green for crime, black for serious non-fiction, purple for essays, and grey for world affairs. Together they formed a mosaic of modern reading — bright, confident, and accessible. When we looked at the colourful covers on The Yard’s walls, we were really looking at the visual history of how reading became democratic.
The literary establishment was scandalized. Serious literature, sold beside the morning paper? But readers had the final word. Hemingway, Christie, and Maurois found new homes in satchels and coat pockets across Britain. Within a year, millions of Penguins were in circulation — proof that good books belong to everyone.
As I looked at those covers in The Yard, I realized that the Penguin revolution wasn’t just about paperbacks. It was about trust — the belief that ordinary people deserved access to extraordinary ideas.
At the Yard, Salisbury, A Morning with PenguinsIn a quiet corner of Salisbury, over coffee and conversation, I was reminded that revolutions don’t always begin with noise. Sometimes, they start with a small bird and a bold idea.
Until the next page,
Rebecca
#books #PenguinBooks #RebeccaSReadingRoom #Salisbury #TheBodleyHead
-
At The Yard, Salisbury — A Morning with Penguins
HOW PENGUIN BOOKS GOT ITS NAME — AND STARTED A PUBLISHING REVOLUTION
At the Yard, Salisbury, A Morning with PenguinsIt was a bright August morning when we wandered into The Yard, a tucked-away coffee shop in Salisbury that felt like a secret shared among friends. The scent of espresso mingled with freshly baked muffins, and the walls featured book covers — rows of orange, blue, and green Penguins, those timeless companions of readers everywhere.
At the Yard, Salisbury, A Morning with PenguinsAs we sipped our coffee (and yes, the hot chocolate was extraordinary), I remembered a story that began nearly a century ago — one that changed how the world reads.
At the Yard, Salisbury, A Morning with PenguinsIn 1935, Allen Lane, managing editor at The Bodley Head, stood on a train platform in Exeter after visiting Agatha Christie. Searching for a good-quality paperback for his journey back to London, he found only cheap, flimsy magazines. That moment sparked an idea that would transform publishing: books should be both affordable and beautifully made — quality literature priced like a daily newspaper.
Lane envisioned a series of paperbacks that would bring fine writing to everyone, sold not just in bookshops but in railway stations and corner stores. A young secretary, Joan Coles, suggested the name ‘Penguin,’ friendly and memorable. Lane sent 21-year-old artist Edward Young to the London Zoo to sketch the bird that would become one of the most beloved emblems in publishing history.
What many readers don’t realize is that the earliest Penguins were colour-coded — a design both simple and brilliant. Each colour represented a different genre: orange for fiction, dark blue for biography, red for drama, green for crime, black for serious non-fiction, purple for essays, and grey for world affairs. Together they formed a mosaic of modern reading — bright, confident, and accessible. When we looked at the colourful covers on The Yard’s walls, we were really looking at the visual history of how reading became democratic.
The literary establishment was scandalized. Serious literature, sold beside the morning paper? But readers had the final word. Hemingway, Christie, and Maurois found new homes in satchels and coat pockets across Britain. Within a year, millions of Penguins were in circulation — proof that good books belong to everyone.
As I looked at those covers in The Yard, I realized that the Penguin revolution wasn’t just about paperbacks. It was about trust — the belief that ordinary people deserved access to extraordinary ideas.
At the Yard, Salisbury, A Morning with PenguinsIn a quiet corner of Salisbury, over coffee and conversation, I was reminded that revolutions don’t always begin with noise. Sometimes, they start with a small bird and a bold idea.
Until the next page,
Rebecca
#books #PenguinBooks #RebeccaSReadingRoom #Salisbury #TheBodleyHead
-
At The Yard, Salisbury — A Morning with Penguins
HOW PENGUIN BOOKS GOT ITS NAME — AND STARTED A PUBLISHING REVOLUTION
At the Yard, Salisbury, A Morning with PenguinsIt was a bright August morning when we wandered into The Yard, a tucked-away coffee shop in Salisbury that felt like a secret shared among friends. The scent of espresso mingled with freshly baked muffins, and the walls featured book covers — rows of orange, blue, and green Penguins, those timeless companions of readers everywhere.
At the Yard, Salisbury, A Morning with PenguinsAs we sipped our coffee (and yes, the hot chocolate was extraordinary), I remembered a story that began nearly a century ago — one that changed how the world reads.
At the Yard, Salisbury, A Morning with PenguinsIn 1935, Allen Lane, managing editor at The Bodley Head, stood on a train platform in Exeter after visiting Agatha Christie. Searching for a good-quality paperback for his journey back to London, he found only cheap, flimsy magazines. That moment sparked an idea that would transform publishing: books should be both affordable and beautifully made — quality literature priced like a daily newspaper.
Lane envisioned a series of paperbacks that would bring fine writing to everyone, sold not just in bookshops but in railway stations and corner stores. A young secretary, Joan Coles, suggested the name ‘Penguin,’ friendly and memorable. Lane sent 21-year-old artist Edward Young to the London Zoo to sketch the bird that would become one of the most beloved emblems in publishing history.
What many readers don’t realize is that the earliest Penguins were colour-coded — a design both simple and brilliant. Each colour represented a different genre: orange for fiction, dark blue for biography, red for drama, green for crime, black for serious non-fiction, purple for essays, and grey for world affairs. Together they formed a mosaic of modern reading — bright, confident, and accessible. When we looked at the colourful covers on The Yard’s walls, we were really looking at the visual history of how reading became democratic.
The literary establishment was scandalized. Serious literature, sold beside the morning paper? But readers had the final word. Hemingway, Christie, and Maurois found new homes in satchels and coat pockets across Britain. Within a year, millions of Penguins were in circulation — proof that good books belong to everyone.
As I looked at those covers in The Yard, I realized that the Penguin revolution wasn’t just about paperbacks. It was about trust — the belief that ordinary people deserved access to extraordinary ideas.
At the Yard, Salisbury, A Morning with PenguinsIn a quiet corner of Salisbury, over coffee and conversation, I was reminded that revolutions don’t always begin with noise. Sometimes, they start with a small bird and a bold idea.
Until the next page,
Rebecca
#books #PenguinBooks #RebeccaSReadingRoom #Salisbury #TheBodleyHead
-
At The Yard, Salisbury — A Morning with Penguins
HOW PENGUIN BOOKS GOT ITS NAME — AND STARTED A PUBLISHING REVOLUTION
At the Yard, Salisbury, A Morning with PenguinsIt was a bright August morning when we wandered into The Yard, a tucked-away coffee shop in Salisbury that felt like a secret shared among friends. The scent of espresso mingled with freshly baked muffins, and the walls featured book covers — rows of orange, blue, and green Penguins, those timeless companions of readers everywhere.
At the Yard, Salisbury, A Morning with PenguinsAs we sipped our coffee (and yes, the hot chocolate was extraordinary), I remembered a story that began nearly a century ago — one that changed how the world reads.
At the Yard, Salisbury, A Morning with PenguinsIn 1935, Allen Lane, managing editor at The Bodley Head, stood on a train platform in Exeter after visiting Agatha Christie. Searching for a good-quality paperback for his journey back to London, he found only cheap, flimsy magazines. That moment sparked an idea that would transform publishing: books should be both affordable and beautifully made — quality literature priced like a daily newspaper.
Lane envisioned a series of paperbacks that would bring fine writing to everyone, sold not just in bookshops but in railway stations and corner stores. A young secretary, Joan Coles, suggested the name ‘Penguin,’ friendly and memorable. Lane sent 21-year-old artist Edward Young to the London Zoo to sketch the bird that would become one of the most beloved emblems in publishing history.
What many readers don’t realize is that the earliest Penguins were colour-coded — a design both simple and brilliant. Each colour represented a different genre: orange for fiction, dark blue for biography, red for drama, green for crime, black for serious non-fiction, purple for essays, and grey for world affairs. Together they formed a mosaic of modern reading — bright, confident, and accessible. When we looked at the colourful covers on The Yard’s walls, we were really looking at the visual history of how reading became democratic.
The literary establishment was scandalized. Serious literature, sold beside the morning paper? But readers had the final word. Hemingway, Christie, and Maurois found new homes in satchels and coat pockets across Britain. Within a year, millions of Penguins were in circulation — proof that good books belong to everyone.
As I looked at those covers in The Yard, I realized that the Penguin revolution wasn’t just about paperbacks. It was about trust — the belief that ordinary people deserved access to extraordinary ideas.
At the Yard, Salisbury, A Morning with PenguinsIn a quiet corner of Salisbury, over coffee and conversation, I was reminded that revolutions don’t always begin with noise. Sometimes, they start with a small bird and a bold idea.
Until the next page,
Rebecca
#books #PenguinBooks #RebeccaSReadingRoom #Salisbury #TheBodleyHead
-
At The Yard, Salisbury — A Morning with Penguins
HOW PENGUIN BOOKS GOT ITS NAME — AND STARTED A PUBLISHING REVOLUTION
At the Yard, Salisbury, A Morning with PenguinsIt was a bright August morning when we wandered into The Yard, a tucked-away coffee shop in Salisbury that felt like a secret shared among friends. The scent of espresso mingled with freshly baked muffins, and the walls featured book covers — rows of orange, blue, and green Penguins, those timeless companions of readers everywhere.
At the Yard, Salisbury, A Morning with PenguinsAs we sipped our coffee (and yes, the hot chocolate was extraordinary), I remembered a story that began nearly a century ago — one that changed how the world reads.
At the Yard, Salisbury, A Morning with PenguinsIn 1935, Allen Lane, managing editor at The Bodley Head, stood on a train platform in Exeter after visiting Agatha Christie. Searching for a good-quality paperback for his journey back to London, he found only cheap, flimsy magazines. That moment sparked an idea that would transform publishing: books should be both affordable and beautifully made — quality literature priced like a daily newspaper.
Lane envisioned a series of paperbacks that would bring fine writing to everyone, sold not just in bookshops but in railway stations and corner stores. A young secretary, Joan Coles, suggested the name ‘Penguin,’ friendly and memorable. Lane sent 21-year-old artist Edward Young to the London Zoo to sketch the bird that would become one of the most beloved emblems in publishing history.
What many readers don’t realize is that the earliest Penguins were colour-coded — a design both simple and brilliant. Each colour represented a different genre: orange for fiction, dark blue for biography, red for drama, green for crime, black for serious non-fiction, purple for essays, and grey for world affairs. Together they formed a mosaic of modern reading — bright, confident, and accessible. When we looked at the colourful covers on The Yard’s walls, we were really looking at the visual history of how reading became democratic.
The literary establishment was scandalized. Serious literature, sold beside the morning paper? But readers had the final word. Hemingway, Christie, and Maurois found new homes in satchels and coat pockets across Britain. Within a year, millions of Penguins were in circulation — proof that good books belong to everyone.
As I looked at those covers in The Yard, I realized that the Penguin revolution wasn’t just about paperbacks. It was about trust — the belief that ordinary people deserved access to extraordinary ideas.
At the Yard, Salisbury, A Morning with PenguinsIn a quiet corner of Salisbury, over coffee and conversation, I was reminded that revolutions don’t always begin with noise. Sometimes, they start with a small bird and a bold idea.
Until the next page,
Rebecca
#books #PenguinBooks #RebeccaSReadingRoom #Salisbury #TheBodleyHead
-
Re-listen Liveblog: La Belle Sauvage
Doing a re-listen of books 1-2 in the Book of Dust trilogy, since book 3 just came out.
I just finished the first one, La Belle Sauvage, liveblogging it on Mastodon and on Bluesky, Here’s a roundup post.
(I haven’t read this book since it came out in 2017, and I deliberately didn’t reread my original 2017 reaction post to LBS until now. Feel free to look through both, see which things I had different reactions about, and how many times I just noticed the same thing twice.)
La Belle Sauvage, chapters 1-3:
This starts off so strong. Like Lyra opening TGC, Malcolm is an active, curious, fun kid! We get a ton of worldbuilding through the places he explores, and a ton more through “noticing what the adults pointedly aren’t telling him.”
Not sure how well a reader could follow the background mystery if you didn’t know all the names and references from HDM. But if you have, it’s really juicy. Malcolm obvs has no idea, and it’s great how he fills the gaps with wild speculation.
Our one glimpse of baby Lyra so far was super charming.
Chapter 4:
Detour into the POV of Farder Coram.
In retrospect, a lot of this is an excuse to recap things we know from HDM, but the writing is engaging enough that it’s hard to mind.
[Note after rereading my original reaction post: Huh, this annoyed me a lot more the first time around. Apparently it gets a lot more tolerable when you haven’t been deep in the original HDM recently.]
Chapters 5-6:
Hannah Relf, and the whole field of “alethiometry as a serious academic discipline” that she belongs to, is barely in HDM. Really cool to see it showcased with her younger self in action here.
The way Malcolm gets roped into her spycraft is a little contrived, but I’ll allow it. Hannah’s ongoing stress about the morality of it helps.
(Made more sense when adults were recruiting Lyra, she wasn’t just an unusually-sharp 11-year-old, they also knew she was part of an Important Prophecy.)
The first titles Hannah lends Malcolm turn out to be “The Body in the Library” and “A Brief History of Time.”
Anybody out there written “HDM AU of Agatha Christie”? It’s canon now.
Chapters 7-9:
Getting into the League of St. Alexander plot now, and, oof, still hits hard. An upsettingly realistic story of a group of kids being manipulated into turning on each other, and on the actually-supportive adults in their lives.
Reminds me of the school sections in Nona the Ninth. There’s high-stakes politics and espionage happening around them, people are getting killed, we have a small group of good teachers trying their best to get normal lessons to the kids in spite of it all, and the whole thing is from the POV of the kids, who aren’t officially being told much, but they know something is up. Lots of urgently passing rumors, on the level of “well, my dad says he heard such-and-such, so I reckon that means…”
Very different setups, but still, lots of parallels! And both good.
Oh, one more thing!
This St. Alexander appears to be an in-universe creation, but the Church official who tells his story also talks to the kids about Jesus – not in detail, just mentions of things like, their job is to spread The Love Of Jesus(TM).
I checked out the HDM ebooks just to text-search them. The name “Christ” never comes up. The name “Jesus” only comes up in TAS, and it’s from Mary Malone. (Talking to Lyra — no mention of whether Lyra recognizes the name.) Nobody ever mentions Christmas or Easter, either.
The Magisterium is explicitly Christian — TGC has Lyra mention someone being “baptized as a Christian.” (After that, the term disappears until, again, Mary in TAS uses it.) So this felt like a worldbuilding point, that their doctrine specifically de-emphasizes Jesus. No obligatory prayers, no lip service to “what would Jesus do,” no framing their actions in terms of “following the Word of Christ,” no references at all.
…And now we’re in LBS, and this random person is telling a group of elementary-school kids “of course this is a Proper Country where we follow the Good Word about Jesus,” like of course that’s a common thing they’ve all heard of.
Is this difference also a worldbuilding point? Or is it a Doylist thing where, in writing HDM, Pullman wasn’t ready to antagonize Jesus’ fans that directly, and now he is?
(So far, no idea! TBD if anything in future chapters will make it clearer.)
[Post-reread note: They did not make it clearer.]
Chapters 10-11:
Lors Asriel! HDM readers know in a few years he’ll murder a kid Malcolm’s age for a military advantage, but here, Malcolm doesn’t pick up anything sinister at all. Personal charisma on full blast. Don’t remember if Malcolm ever learns different, or not.
[Post-reread note: Well, not in this book, at least.]
Stray daemon details that caught my eye:
- The shop teacher’s woodpecker daemon drills holes in scrap wood as a nervous tic
- Malcolm’s unsettled Aster can take chimera forms, like an owl with duck feathers, but only experiments with that when nobody else is watching
- Hyena daemon urinates in the road, while looking at Malcolm. Makes him feel so dirty/violated that he’s too embarrassed to tell anyone until his next meeting with Hannah
Are we supposed to believe daemons have been doing that (just, you know, normally in private) all along? Not sure I buy it.
[Post-reread note: There’s an upcoming journey with baby Lyra in which Malcolm is constantly aware of how often she needs to be fed and changed. The idea of feeding/changing Pan is never even mentioned. So, yeah, I don’t think it’s a general daemon bodily function. I think it’s is a skill this specific daemon has cultivated to freak people out.]
Chapters 12-13:
Oh, huh. Argument at Malcolm’s family pub, the phrase “scientific management of resources” gets thrown around. A slip from Pullman, or was “experimental theology” supposed to be a term from Church-controlled circles, not common in the general public?
[Post-reread note: For now, I think it was just a slip from Pullman.]
Argument is about the upcoming plot-point flood.
Seems worth noting that the “modern, scientific” proponents are all characters who are going to be proven wrong. The Right Understanding comes from “the ancient wisdom of the gyptians who know how to read the signs” and “one guy’s granny.”
Hannah gets access to a contraband alethiometer! From the description, this is the one Lyra will eventually get.
Contrast to the Bodleian Library one she was using officially. Don’t think I realized there were different models before this. With only 6 ever made, I figured they were a matching set.
The Bodleian one has full-color symbols! The stolen one has plain black ink lineart.
Idle theorizing: all 6 were originally made with black lineart, but that faceplate was damaged and replaced at some point. The new artist either was told to paint the new symbols fancier, or just had fun with it.
End of this latest chapter refers to Bonneville (the guy with the hyena daemon) as “a physicist.”
So much for my half-baked theory that maybe “experimental theology” was a replacement term for “physics” specifically.
Chapters 14-15:
Higher-up spies encourage Hannah to keep talking with (from their POV) this random 11-year-old, but it gets in-universe justified in a way that works for me. (…I mean narratively, not ethically.)
Alice (teen kitchen worker) calls Lyra a “little flirt” for giggling at Malcolm. Not creepy on its own, that’s a joke people make about babies…but knowing that Pullman is planning future Lyra/Malcolm, with more explicitly-creepy stuff in the lead-up…yeah, this is a retroactive big oof.
Malcolm gets to meet Mrs. Coulter! Unlike with Asriel, he gets a bad vibe off her immediately. Well, she’s on track to murder a lot more children than Asriel will, so maybe it’s fair.
(Also, Asriel shows care for Lyra, which biases Malcolm toward him instantly.)
Part 1 ends (at the 54% mark) with the predicted Big Flood hitting. Alice, Malcolm, and Lyra get stranded together in a boat.
Everything I remember being “meh” about this book is on their river journey. Plunging apprehensively onward…
Chapter 16:
Worldbuilding detail: pharmacies are marked with a green cross. (Not sure from context if it’s just a palette-swapped ➕️, or an actual ✝️.)
The dynamic between Alice and Malcolm is really good here. Grudging teamwork.
Malcolm and Aster see a drowned body during the flooding, and wonder “what happens to daemons when you die?”
Surprised they wouldn’t know. Even with no deaths in their close family, surely it’s a thing children are taught about? (They’ve been reading murder mysteries! It never came up?)
Different chat a few chapters ago, they saw Pan turning into a mole, and wondered how a baby daemon knows how to turn into a creature they’ve never actually seen.
That I liked, because it doesn’t seem like there’s a clear, generally-known answer. One adult daemon offered “You just feel mole-y.”
Chapter 17:
Mention of a prophecy about “a boy” that might be Malcolm.
Feels like overkill? Like “he can’t just be a normal person caught up in Lyra’s cosmic destiny, he’s gotta be special too.” (Don’t remember if there’s payoff for this later. Might like it more if it’s good. TBD.)
[Post-reread note: There was not.]
Chapter 18:
Not much to say here except “go Alice.” Previously seen decking Bonneville with a chair, now she gets off a gun at him.
Bonneville mentions “experimental theology” to Malcolm. Guess he doesn’t use “science”…?
Malcolm has been seeing flecks/lights that Hannah thinks are migraine auras. He misheard it as “auroras”. Unsubtle hint that this is Dust’s way of guiding him? Hasn’t been plot-pivotal yet, so we’ll see.
[Post-reread note: It was not.]
Chapter 19:
Reappearance of a trusted ally I forgot was coming back at all! Surprised and delighted.
Kitten!Pan kneads Malcolm’s hand as he rocks Lyra. He thinks “she’s too young to know it’s taboo,” but I expect it’d hurt if she didn’t feel so comfy and cared-for with him.
Earlier hints of “things in the river” now expanded with examples: mermaids, Father Thames, “old gods.”
I know we meet some of these in later chapters. And, look, I’m good with Lyra’s world having more fantastical beings than we already saw. But it sure would be weird if, after all HDM, the message of LBS was “sure, the Magisterium is evil and their god sucks, but science also sucks and will lead you astray, the truth is in following the right religion and trusting the better gods.”
Don’t remember if that’s how it actually ends! Just noting, as of now, the vibes feel odd.
[Post-reread note: Good news, I don’t think that was the message. The possibly-god-ish creatures we meet are no more or less trustworthy than other people.]
Chapter 20:
Evil Magisterium group kidnapped Lyra, after a St. Alexander kid in the refugee group tipped them off. Malcolm hates him, which is fair, but his own family are also so awful to him that I get why he was won over in the first place. Praise and affirmation for a kid who isn’t getting any at home is one heck of a drug.
The daring rescue is quite good! The Alice-Malcolm teamwork is really flourishing by now.
Malcolm’s “aurora” pops up again, but only to highlight the place they were already going. Finding Lyra is all their own ingenuity.
Chapter 21:
Last quarter of the book, and now things get outright magical.
Washing up on the island of a mystery woman with a cloud of butterflies. Malcolm first assumes one of them is her daemon, then wonders if, somehow, all of them are. Hey, I’ve written that fic.
A bag they took off Bonneville has…an alethiometer inside. Malcolm figures it’s the famous missing one.
Explains how conveniently Bonneville always caught up to them! And maybe why he was so convinced that “kidnapping Lyra” was the key to fixing his life in the first place.
They leave the alethiometer with the probably-faerie woman. So I guess from now on it’ll be Missing For Real forever.
At least it’s a more poetic end than “the kids drop it in the water and it gets crushed in the flood.” Getting some One Ring vibes here. It won’t get lost when it doesn’t want to.
Chapter 22:
Oh, they didn’t trade the alethiometer to the faerie, just its nice box? Huh. That’s less poetic, but a savvier move from Malcolm, so good for him.
New batch of probably-faeries, in fancy dress, in the garden of a fancy-but-unreachable manor. They each have a bird, which might or might not be daemons.
Really like the setup of “desolate ruins, hidden just outside the beautiful tranquil sphere of the garden.” Classic Fairyland worldbuilding.
…And Bonneville isn’t dead, again. Ugh.
Unless this is a faerie-thing taking his shape? Others are taking shapes of people familiar to Alice+Malcolm, including at least one who’s dead. Although I don’t remember him being that…and it’s enough of a satisfying twist, I feel like I would?
[Post-reread note: No luck, this is just Bonneville.]
This might retroactively ruin my “oh, nice, the alethiometer justifies how conveniently he always caught up with them” satisfaction.
Will the narrative give him a new justification for this round? TBD.
[Post-reread note: It did not.]
Chapter 23:
Meeting a giant in the water, talking him into opening a set of gates. Fully fairy-tale logic here, with Little Nemo type imagery. This team could make it through the Phantom Tollbooth or survive the Labyrinth, easy.
They figure this guy is the minor god of some tributary, since he works for Father Thames, god of the Thames. Logical enough.
Also, part of their scheme is making him believe Lyra is a princess. Not clear if he’s just gullible, or she has supernatural Princess Vibes that he can sense.
Back in normal reality, a witch! Most human person they’ve met all day, but with her Arctic-tern daemon not in range at first, poor Malcolm assumes otherwise.
(Briefly wonders if her branch of cloud-pine is her daemon. …I’ve written that fic too.)
Okay, I know from HDM why the witches would have an interest in Lyra. What I’m not sure of is, why didn’t this one try to either (depending on clan) guide her to safety, or kill her?
She shields them with what H2G2 would call a Somebody Else’s Problem field, but then just flies off again. Hmm.
[Post-reread note: Yeah, this never gets resolved or comes up again. Why even put her in the book??]
Chapter 24:
Alice swiped a bunch of food from the faerie garden party, and the whole crew eats some now. I’m surprised it’s still food-shaped, outside that sphere of magic influence. They’re not hesitant to eat it, hm.
I didn’t mention before, but the faerie woman with the butterflies breastfed Lyra, and Malcolm+Alice were immediately suspicious. So they have some idea of the dangers of eating unseelie food…
[Post-reread note: Yeah, this goes nowhere.]
Getting foreshadowing now that Bonneville is a ghost, which would be fine by me!
…Nope, he’s alive, hyena daemon and all. Dammit.
Malcolm, almost in these words: “I need an adult”
Valid, buddy.
Anyway, we’re trying to murder him again, and this time the hyena vanishes, so I guess it finally took. About time.
Bonneville grabbed Alice’s daemon to force her to follow him, so Malcolm followed to help, while his own daemon stayed to guard Lyra. Forced to endure the distance pain because they had no one else to rely on. That was a good heroic sequence there!
Mixed feelings about the rest. Alice already beat this guy twice, and yet he gets to keep coming back, until the boy character takes him on? Malcolm succeeds with an oar when Alice couldn’t with An Actual Gun? Not my favorite twist.
There’s been an air of SA around Bonneville for a while. He got shunned from academia over an unspecified sex crime, which got mentioned so much that I figured it was setting up a dramatic reveal of the details, but now it seems like maybe not?
Point is, it’s not unexpected that he tries to assault Alice. (Vague about the extent of it, since Malcolm’s POV doesn’t fully process what he sees.)
But before now, all his creepiness was a means to the end of kidnapping Lyra. And here it seems like he forgets all about Lyra, his main goal is to assault Alice.
We know why Lyra was worth a massive multi-day boat chase: she’s Mrs. Coulter’s baby, and he wanted her influence on his side.
But why is Alice worth that?
There’s no nice way to put this, sorry in advance: why not go after any of the thousand closer teenage girls who would be easier targets? This is so much work to attack a specific girl! Predators are lazy!
I can sure imagine it being about “revenge for those two times she nearly killed him.”
But: He doesn’t show that. There’s no “haha, now you’ll be sorry for everything you did to me!” type gloating. Can’t think of anything that foreshadowed his priority-switch away from Lyra. This is just me retconning in a reason, not the book giving one.
One chapter left to go.
The list of “points I expect this book to leave unresolved” has gotten pretty long. On first read, I remember thinking they were left hanging for the sequel to pick up! They…were not.
Here goes nothing…
Chapter 25, thread 1:
I do like that they’ve washed up in a graveyard this time. Coffins in a stone mausoleum give them justifiably-still-dry wood to build fires with.
Malcolm apologizes a lot to the skeletons. Good kid.
…It’s just occurring to me that I would’ve loved a reveal that the hints about ghosts were foreshadowing “the ghosts of the graveyard, moved and affirmed by Malcolm’s respect, rise up to help him kill Bonneville.”
Doubly so if this was Ghost Bonneville, seeking revenge on Alice for killing him. That unfinished business could have guided him after Alice, and Malcolm would need the supernatural help of the graveyard ghosts to kill him double-plus-dead.
Feeling a little cheated we didn’t get this now, ngl :(
Back on the morning after the flood, Hannah deduced that Malcolm would try to take Lyra to Asriel’s address.
Good payoff: her allies have had boats looking for the canoe ever since. They even found Asriel first, got him in a boat, and so they found the canoe on the water! Probably would’ve fallen apart before the kids reached him, so instead, he reaches them. Moments before a Magisterium boat does, even! A good dramatic rescue scene.
Bad lack-of-payoff: Did Hannah’s cool secret alethiometer come to anything at all?
She didn’t use it to figure out where Malcolm was going, she just deduced that from the evidence + how well she knows Malcolm.
[Post-reread note: I didn’t comment at the time, but this was in chapter 17. Which is also Hannah’s last appearance in the book. She gets mentioned in chapters 18 and 22, but never shows up on-page again.]
To be clear, I like that bit! Their friendship is genuine and important. Giving it that kind of plot payoff was good!
But there was never a different plot point that she did need the alethiometer for.
There was also plenty of setup about how difficult it is. It takes a lot of study and cross-referencing. Hannah doesn’t have the magical intuition that Lyra does.
So you could’ve made the payoff out of that instead. It answered something for her, she’s poring over the books looking at the symbols…and we, the readers, can connect them all to the bizarre events of Malcolm and Alice’s Excellent Unseelie Adventure. But Hannah doesn’t have that context. At last, she despairs. “I can’t do it! This is out of my league! It’s so obscure and complicated, only a genius could figure it out.”
[Cue Lyra’s leitmotif from HDM playing in the background.]
Heck, drop the whole Special Bonus Witch Prophecy, let Hannah deduce “a boy is going on a journey carrying a treasure” from the symbols she reads. She just can’t interpret anything more helpful, like “pick him up at this date and time.”
Oh, and! About that prophecy! Why didn’t it say “a boy and a girl”?
Alice was integral to Lyra surviving this trip. She did half the carrying! What gives, prophets? Behind every man is an unacknowledged woman, even in a witch prophecy??
Chapter 25, thread 2:
Alice gets to yell at Lord Asriel about how great Malcolm is, so don’t you dare disrespect everything he’s done.
I like this! Well-earned!
Alice has never hesitated to tell off Malcolm when she has a problem with him. So this reversal, telling off someone else in his defense, is really fulfilling. And you know she means it.
From here they get to Jordan College, via Asriel flying a gyropter. (Helicopter.) I’m retroactively surprised Malcolm+Alice haven’t heard any before. Wouldn’t they be used for rescues? And to survey the flood damage?
They gyropters also have earmuff/microphone setups to communicate over the rotors. Which has me retroactively wondering why nobody else has used radio. Not to communicate, not for news reports, not to play music in the pub…
I was vaguely assuming the tech didn’t exist here! Now…huh.
Asriel basically dumps the kids at Jordan (literally, the last scene is Malcolm collapsing on their carpet) and immediately biffs off to the North. A+ parenting, right there.
Most of this journey has been “washing up at a sanctuary, feeling safe for a short time, then having to flee”, so it’s a little anticlimactic to end on “but THIS time it’ll be fine, no worries, roll credits.”
I’d feel better if Hannah was here to greet them! Which would also salve the lack of Hannah in the back half of the book. She got a few scenes, chapters ago, then totally disappeared. Unsatisfying.
(And just imagine if Hannah had brought Malcolm+Alice’s parents! We didn’t actually meet Alice’s before, but we met Malcolm’s, and surely all of them deserve that reunion!)
One more anticlimax: Asriel tells the kids “never talk about this, not with anyone but each other, then you’ll be safe.”
Not buying that at all.
Their school is full of junior Magisterium spies. Teachers were getting fired. A local guy stood up to Church agents at the pub once, then he and his family had to flee the district.
The town knows which kids went missing during the flood. And which one had a canoe.
What stops the Church from kidnapping these kids the minute they get home, and forcing the intel out of them?
…on a more upbeat note, why not give the kids clearance to talk about it with a whole circle of specific adults Asriel trusts? Farder Coram counts. Hannah deserves to.
It took support, intel, and prep from several sympathetic adults to get these kids through the flood. If we ended with Asriel setting up a group of supporters to get them through whatever danger the Church brings down next, I’d feel reassured!
But nope.
So that’s La Belle Sauvage. Really strong start! Faceplanted in a whole lot of ways by the end.
Might need a new thread for the “and ANOTHER thing that never got resolved–!” reactions that will undoubtedly hit me over the rest of the night.
(TSC is checked out. Will start that some time soon.)
-
Re-listen Liveblog: La Belle Sauvage
Doing a re-listen of books 1-2 in the Book of Dust trilogy, since book 3 just came out.
I just finished the first one, La Belle Sauvage, liveblogging it on Mastodon and on Bluesky, Here’s a roundup post.
(I haven’t read this book since it came out in 2017, and I deliberately didn’t reread my original 2017 reaction post to LBS until now. Feel free to look through both, see which things I had different reactions about, and how many times I just noticed the same thing twice.)
La Belle Sauvage, chapters 1-3:
This starts off so strong. Like Lyra opening TGC, Malcolm is an active, curious, fun kid! We get a ton of worldbuilding through the places he explores, and a ton more through “noticing what the adults pointedly aren’t telling him.”
Not sure how well a reader could follow the background mystery if you didn’t know all the names and references from HDM. But if you have, it’s really juicy. Malcolm obvs has no idea, and it’s great how he fills the gaps with wild speculation.
Our one glimpse of baby Lyra so far was super charming.
Chapter 4:
Detour into the POV of Farder Coram.
In retrospect, a lot of this is an excuse to recap things we know from HDM, but the writing is engaging enough that it’s hard to mind.
[Note after rereading my original reaction post: Huh, this annoyed me a lot more the first time around. Apparently it gets a lot more tolerable when you haven’t been deep in the original HDM recently.]
Chapters 5-6:
Hannah Relf, and the whole field of “alethiometry as a serious academic discipline” that she belongs to, is barely in HDM. Really cool to see it showcased with her younger self in action here.
The way Malcolm gets roped into her spycraft is a little contrived, but I’ll allow it. Hannah’s ongoing stress about the morality of it helps.
(Made more sense when adults were recruiting Lyra, she wasn’t just an unusually-sharp 11-year-old, they also knew she was part of an Important Prophecy.)
The first titles Hannah lends Malcolm turn out to be “The Body in the Library” and “A Brief History of Time.”
Anybody out there written “HDM AU of Agatha Christie”? It’s canon now.
Chapters 7-9:
Getting into the League of St. Alexander plot now, and, oof, still hits hard. An upsettingly realistic story of a group of kids being manipulated into turning on each other, and on the actually-supportive adults in their lives.
Reminds me of the school sections in Nona the Ninth. There’s high-stakes politics and espionage happening around them, people are getting killed, we have a small group of good teachers trying their best to get normal lessons to the kids in spite of it all, and the whole thing is from the POV of the kids, who aren’t officially being told much, but they know something is up. Lots of urgently passing rumors, on the level of “well, my dad says he heard such-and-such, so I reckon that means…”
Very different setups, but still, lots of parallels! And both good.
Oh, one more thing!
This St. Alexander appears to be an in-universe creation, but the Church official who tells his story also talks to the kids about Jesus – not in detail, just mentions of things like, their job is to spread The Love Of Jesus(TM).
I checked out the HDM ebooks just to text-search them. The name “Christ” never comes up. The name “Jesus” only comes up in TAS, and it’s from Mary Malone. (Talking to Lyra — no mention of whether Lyra recognizes the name.) Nobody ever mentions Christmas or Easter, either.
The Magisterium is explicitly Christian — TGC has Lyra mention someone being “baptized as a Christian.” (After that, the term disappears until, again, Mary in TAS uses it.) So this felt like a worldbuilding point, that their doctrine specifically de-emphasizes Jesus. No obligatory prayers, no lip service to “what would Jesus do,” no framing their actions in terms of “following the Word of Christ,” no references at all.
…And now we’re in LBS, and this random person is telling a group of elementary-school kids “of course this is a Proper Country where we follow the Good Word about Jesus,” like of course that’s a common thing they’ve all heard of.
Is this difference also a worldbuilding point? Or is it a Doylist thing where, in writing HDM, Pullman wasn’t ready to antagonize Jesus’ fans that directly, and now he is?
(So far, no idea! TBD if anything in future chapters will make it clearer.)
[Post-reread note: They did not make it clearer.]
Chapters 10-11:
Lors Asriel! HDM readers know in a few years he’ll murder a kid Malcolm’s age for a military advantage, but here, Malcolm doesn’t pick up anything sinister at all. Personal charisma on full blast. Don’t remember if Malcolm ever learns different, or not.
[Post-reread note: Well, not in this book, at least.]
Stray daemon details that caught my eye:
- The shop teacher’s woodpecker daemon drills holes in scrap wood as a nervous tic
- Malcolm’s unsettled Aster can take chimera forms, like an owl with duck feathers, but only experiments with that when nobody else is watching
- Hyena daemon urinates in the road, while looking at Malcolm. Makes him feel so dirty/violated that he’s too embarrassed to tell anyone until his next meeting with Hannah
Are we supposed to believe daemons have been doing that (just, you know, normally in private) all along? Not sure I buy it.
[Post-reread note: There’s an upcoming journey with baby Lyra in which Malcolm is constantly aware of how often she needs to be fed and changed. The idea of feeding/changing Pan is never even mentioned. So, yeah, I don’t think it’s a general daemon bodily function. I think it’s is a skill this specific daemon has cultivated to freak people out.]
Chapters 12-13:
Oh, huh. Argument at Malcolm’s family pub, the phrase “scientific management of resources” gets thrown around. A slip from Pullman, or was “experimental theology” supposed to be a term from Church-controlled circles, not common in the general public?
[Post-reread note: For now, I think it was just a slip from Pullman.]
Argument is about the upcoming plot-point flood.
Seems worth noting that the “modern, scientific” proponents are all characters who are going to be proven wrong. The Right Understanding comes from “the ancient wisdom of the gyptians who know how to read the signs” and “one guy’s granny.”
Hannah gets access to a contraband alethiometer! From the description, this is the one Lyra will eventually get.
Contrast to the Bodleian Library one she was using officially. Don’t think I realized there were different models before this. With only 6 ever made, I figured they were a matching set.
The Bodleian one has full-color symbols! The stolen one has plain black ink lineart.
Idle theorizing: all 6 were originally made with black lineart, but that faceplate was damaged and replaced at some point. The new artist either was told to paint the new symbols fancier, or just had fun with it.
End of this latest chapter refers to Bonneville (the guy with the hyena daemon) as “a physicist.”
So much for my half-baked theory that maybe “experimental theology” was a replacement term for “physics” specifically.
Chapters 14-15:
Higher-up spies encourage Hannah to keep talking with (from their POV) this random 11-year-old, but it gets in-universe justified in a way that works for me. (…I mean narratively, not ethically.)
Alice (teen kitchen worker) calls Lyra a “little flirt” for giggling at Malcolm. Not creepy on its own, that’s a joke people make about babies…but knowing that Pullman is planning future Lyra/Malcolm, with more explicitly-creepy stuff in the lead-up…yeah, this is a retroactive big oof.
Malcolm gets to meet Mrs. Coulter! Unlike with Asriel, he gets a bad vibe off her immediately. Well, she’s on track to murder a lot more children than Asriel will, so maybe it’s fair.
(Also, Asriel shows care for Lyra, which biases Malcolm toward him instantly.)
Part 1 ends (at the 54% mark) with the predicted Big Flood hitting. Alice, Malcolm, and Lyra get stranded together in a boat.
Everything I remember being “meh” about this book is on their river journey. Plunging apprehensively onward…
Chapter 16:
Worldbuilding detail: pharmacies are marked with a green cross. (Not sure from context if it’s just a palette-swapped ➕️, or an actual ✝️.)
The dynamic between Alice and Malcolm is really good here. Grudging teamwork.
Malcolm and Aster see a drowned body during the flooding, and wonder “what happens to daemons when you die?”
Surprised they wouldn’t know. Even with no deaths in their close family, surely it’s a thing children are taught about? (They’ve been reading murder mysteries! It never came up?)
Different chat a few chapters ago, they saw Pan turning into a mole, and wondered how a baby daemon knows how to turn into a creature they’ve never actually seen.
That I liked, because it doesn’t seem like there’s a clear, generally-known answer. One adult daemon offered “You just feel mole-y.”
Chapter 17:
Mention of a prophecy about “a boy” that might be Malcolm.
Feels like overkill? Like “he can’t just be a normal person caught up in Lyra’s cosmic destiny, he’s gotta be special too.” (Don’t remember if there’s payoff for this later. Might like it more if it’s good. TBD.)
[Post-reread note: There was not.]
Chapter 18:
Not much to say here except “go Alice.” Previously seen decking Bonneville with a chair, now she gets off a gun at him.
Bonneville mentions “experimental theology” to Malcolm. Guess he doesn’t use “science”…?
Malcolm has been seeing flecks/lights that Hannah thinks are migraine auras. He misheard it as “auroras”. Unsubtle hint that this is Dust’s way of guiding him? Hasn’t been plot-pivotal yet, so we’ll see.
[Post-reread note: It was not.]
Chapter 19:
Reappearance of a trusted ally I forgot was coming back at all! Surprised and delighted.
Kitten!Pan kneads Malcolm’s hand as he rocks Lyra. He thinks “she’s too young to know it’s taboo,” but I expect it’d hurt if she didn’t feel so comfy and cared-for with him.
Earlier hints of “things in the river” now expanded with examples: mermaids, Father Thames, “old gods.”
I know we meet some of these in later chapters. And, look, I’m good with Lyra’s world having more fantastical beings than we already saw. But it sure would be weird if, after all HDM, the message of LBS was “sure, the Magisterium is evil and their god sucks, but science also sucks and will lead you astray, the truth is in following the right religion and trusting the better gods.”
Don’t remember if that’s how it actually ends! Just noting, as of now, the vibes feel odd.
[Post-reread note: Good news, I don’t think that was the message. The possibly-god-ish creatures we meet are no more or less trustworthy than other people.]
Chapter 20:
Evil Magisterium group kidnapped Lyra, after a St. Alexander kid in the refugee group tipped them off. Malcolm hates him, which is fair, but his own family are also so awful to him that I get why he was won over in the first place. Praise and affirmation for a kid who isn’t getting any at home is one heck of a drug.
The daring rescue is quite good! The Alice-Malcolm teamwork is really flourishing by now.
Malcolm’s “aurora” pops up again, but only to highlight the place they were already going. Finding Lyra is all their own ingenuity.
Chapter 21:
Last quarter of the book, and now things get outright magical.
Washing up on the island of a mystery woman with a cloud of butterflies. Malcolm first assumes one of them is her daemon, then wonders if, somehow, all of them are. Hey, I’ve written that fic.
A bag they took off Bonneville has…an alethiometer inside. Malcolm figures it’s the famous missing one.
Explains how conveniently Bonneville always caught up to them! And maybe why he was so convinced that “kidnapping Lyra” was the key to fixing his life in the first place.
They leave the alethiometer with the probably-faerie woman. So I guess from now on it’ll be Missing For Real forever.
At least it’s a more poetic end than “the kids drop it in the water and it gets crushed in the flood.” Getting some One Ring vibes here. It won’t get lost when it doesn’t want to.
Chapter 22:
Oh, they didn’t trade the alethiometer to the faerie, just its nice box? Huh. That’s less poetic, but a savvier move from Malcolm, so good for him.
New batch of probably-faeries, in fancy dress, in the garden of a fancy-but-unreachable manor. They each have a bird, which might or might not be daemons.
Really like the setup of “desolate ruins, hidden just outside the beautiful tranquil sphere of the garden.” Classic Fairyland worldbuilding.
…And Bonneville isn’t dead, again. Ugh.
Unless this is a faerie-thing taking his shape? Others are taking shapes of people familiar to Alice+Malcolm, including at least one who’s dead. Although I don’t remember him being that…and it’s enough of a satisfying twist, I feel like I would?
[Post-reread note: No luck, this is just Bonneville.]
This might retroactively ruin my “oh, nice, the alethiometer justifies how conveniently he always caught up with them” satisfaction.
Will the narrative give him a new justification for this round? TBD.
[Post-reread note: It did not.]
Chapter 23:
Meeting a giant in the water, talking him into opening a set of gates. Fully fairy-tale logic here, with Little Nemo type imagery. This team could make it through the Phantom Tollbooth or survive the Labyrinth, easy.
They figure this guy is the minor god of some tributary, since he works for Father Thames, god of the Thames. Logical enough.
Also, part of their scheme is making him believe Lyra is a princess. Not clear if he’s just gullible, or she has supernatural Princess Vibes that he can sense.
Back in normal reality, a witch! Most human person they’ve met all day, but with her Arctic-tern daemon not in range at first, poor Malcolm assumes otherwise.
(Briefly wonders if her branch of cloud-pine is her daemon. …I’ve written that fic too.)
Okay, I know from HDM why the witches would have an interest in Lyra. What I’m not sure of is, why didn’t this one try to either (depending on clan) guide her to safety, or kill her?
She shields them with what H2G2 would call a Somebody Else’s Problem field, but then just flies off again. Hmm.
[Post-reread note: Yeah, this never gets resolved or comes up again. Why even put her in the book??]
Chapter 24:
Alice swiped a bunch of food from the faerie garden party, and the whole crew eats some now. I’m surprised it’s still food-shaped, outside that sphere of magic influence. They’re not hesitant to eat it, hm.
I didn’t mention before, but the faerie woman with the butterflies breastfed Lyra, and Malcolm+Alice were immediately suspicious. So they have some idea of the dangers of eating unseelie food…
[Post-reread note: Yeah, this goes nowhere.]
Getting foreshadowing now that Bonneville is a ghost, which would be fine by me!
…Nope, he’s alive, hyena daemon and all. Dammit.
Malcolm, almost in these words: “I need an adult”
Valid, buddy.
Anyway, we’re trying to murder him again, and this time the hyena vanishes, so I guess it finally took. About time.
Bonneville grabbed Alice’s daemon to force her to follow him, so Malcolm followed to help, while his own daemon stayed to guard Lyra. Forced to endure the distance pain because they had no one else to rely on. That was a good heroic sequence there!
Mixed feelings about the rest. Alice already beat this guy twice, and yet he gets to keep coming back, until the boy character takes him on? Malcolm succeeds with an oar when Alice couldn’t with An Actual Gun? Not my favorite twist.
There’s been an air of SA around Bonneville for a while. He got shunned from academia over an unspecified sex crime, which got mentioned so much that I figured it was setting up a dramatic reveal of the details, but now it seems like maybe not?
Point is, it’s not unexpected that he tries to assault Alice. (Vague about the extent of it, since Malcolm’s POV doesn’t fully process what he sees.)
But before now, all his creepiness was a means to the end of kidnapping Lyra. And here it seems like he forgets all about Lyra, his main goal is to assault Alice.
We know why Lyra was worth a massive multi-day boat chase: she’s Mrs. Coulter’s baby, and he wanted her influence on his side.
But why is Alice worth that?
There’s no nice way to put this, sorry in advance: why not go after any of the thousand closer teenage girls who would be easier targets? This is so much work to attack a specific girl! Predators are lazy!
I can sure imagine it being about “revenge for those two times she nearly killed him.”
But: He doesn’t show that. There’s no “haha, now you’ll be sorry for everything you did to me!” type gloating. Can’t think of anything that foreshadowed his priority-switch away from Lyra. This is just me retconning in a reason, not the book giving one.
One chapter left to go.
The list of “points I expect this book to leave unresolved” has gotten pretty long. On first read, I remember thinking they were left hanging for the sequel to pick up! They…were not.
Here goes nothing…
Chapter 25, thread 1:
I do like that they’ve washed up in a graveyard this time. Coffins in a stone mausoleum give them justifiably-still-dry wood to build fires with.
Malcolm apologizes a lot to the skeletons. Good kid.
…It’s just occurring to me that I would’ve loved a reveal that the hints about ghosts were foreshadowing “the ghosts of the graveyard, moved and affirmed by Malcolm’s respect, rise up to help him kill Bonneville.”
Doubly so if this was Ghost Bonneville, seeking revenge on Alice for killing him. That unfinished business could have guided him after Alice, and Malcolm would need the supernatural help of the graveyard ghosts to kill him double-plus-dead.
Feeling a little cheated we didn’t get this now, ngl :(
Back on the morning after the flood, Hannah deduced that Malcolm would try to take Lyra to Asriel’s address.
Good payoff: her allies have had boats looking for the canoe ever since. They even found Asriel first, got him in a boat, and so they found the canoe on the water! Probably would’ve fallen apart before the kids reached him, so instead, he reaches them. Moments before a Magisterium boat does, even! A good dramatic rescue scene.
Bad lack-of-payoff: Did Hannah’s cool secret alethiometer come to anything at all?
She didn’t use it to figure out where Malcolm was going, she just deduced that from the evidence + how well she knows Malcolm.
[Post-reread note: I didn’t comment at the time, but this was in chapter 17. Which is also Hannah’s last appearance in the book. She gets mentioned in chapters 18 and 22, but never shows up on-page again.]
To be clear, I like that bit! Their friendship is genuine and important. Giving it that kind of plot payoff was good!
But there was never a different plot point that she did need the alethiometer for.
There was also plenty of setup about how difficult it is. It takes a lot of study and cross-referencing. Hannah doesn’t have the magical intuition that Lyra does.
So you could’ve made the payoff out of that instead. It answered something for her, she’s poring over the books looking at the symbols…and we, the readers, can connect them all to the bizarre events of Malcolm and Alice’s Excellent Unseelie Adventure. But Hannah doesn’t have that context. At last, she despairs. “I can’t do it! This is out of my league! It’s so obscure and complicated, only a genius could figure it out.”
[Cue Lyra’s leitmotif from HDM playing in the background.]
Heck, drop the whole Special Bonus Witch Prophecy, let Hannah deduce “a boy is going on a journey carrying a treasure” from the symbols she reads. She just can’t interpret anything more helpful, like “pick him up at this date and time.”
Oh, and! About that prophecy! Why didn’t it say “a boy and a girl”?
Alice was integral to Lyra surviving this trip. She did half the carrying! What gives, prophets? Behind every man is an unacknowledged woman, even in a witch prophecy??
Chapter 25, thread 2:
Alice gets to yell at Lord Asriel about how great Malcolm is, so don’t you dare disrespect everything he’s done.
I like this! Well-earned!
Alice has never hesitated to tell off Malcolm when she has a problem with him. So this reversal, telling off someone else in his defense, is really fulfilling. And you know she means it.
From here they get to Jordan College, via Asriel flying a gyropter. (Helicopter.) I’m retroactively surprised Malcolm+Alice haven’t heard any before. Wouldn’t they be used for rescues? And to survey the flood damage?
They gyropters also have earmuff/microphone setups to communicate over the rotors. Which has me retroactively wondering why nobody else has used radio. Not to communicate, not for news reports, not to play music in the pub…
I was vaguely assuming the tech didn’t exist here! Now…huh.
Asriel basically dumps the kids at Jordan (literally, the last scene is Malcolm collapsing on their carpet) and immediately biffs off to the North. A+ parenting, right there.
Most of this journey has been “washing up at a sanctuary, feeling safe for a short time, then having to flee”, so it’s a little anticlimactic to end on “but THIS time it’ll be fine, no worries, roll credits.”
I’d feel better if Hannah was here to greet them! Which would also salve the lack of Hannah in the back half of the book. She got a few scenes, chapters ago, then totally disappeared. Unsatisfying.
(And just imagine if Hannah had brought Malcolm+Alice’s parents! We didn’t actually meet Alice’s before, but we met Malcolm’s, and surely all of them deserve that reunion!)
One more anticlimax: Asriel tells the kids “never talk about this, not with anyone but each other, then you’ll be safe.”
Not buying that at all.
Their school is full of junior Magisterium spies. Teachers were getting fired. A local guy stood up to Church agents at the pub once, then he and his family had to flee the district.
The town knows which kids went missing during the flood. And which one had a canoe.
What stops the Church from kidnapping these kids the minute they get home, and forcing the intel out of them?
…on a more upbeat note, why not give the kids clearance to talk about it with a whole circle of specific adults Asriel trusts? Farder Coram counts. Hannah deserves to.
It took support, intel, and prep from several sympathetic adults to get these kids through the flood. If we ended with Asriel setting up a group of supporters to get them through whatever danger the Church brings down next, I’d feel reassured!
But nope.
So that’s La Belle Sauvage. Really strong start! Faceplanted in a whole lot of ways by the end.
Might need a new thread for the “and ANOTHER thing that never got resolved–!” reactions that will undoubtedly hit me over the rest of the night.
(TSC is checked out. Will start that some time soon.)