I'm very fond of 21 South Street, one of Reading Council's venues, with two small (70 and 100) capacity rooms. We use South Street for Delicatessen, and it works a treat.
This Warren Ellis three-part comic has finally had its third and last part published. I didn't know anything about this series -- the first two parts were published a long time ago, during my comics hiatus -- but luckily they've published an omnibus edition containing the first two parts.
I've just visited the New City Architecture exhibition, in the City of London (in the middle of this square in Broadgate, which has somehow metamorphosed into a public area, complete with a subterranean exhibition space.
Okay, I know I'm biased when it comes to the BBC. Caveats aside, I've just finished watching a time-shifted (twice! by me and my employer) BBC Four documentary about Richard Thompson, broadcast last Monday on BBC Two.
The Truck Festival is a small (3,000 people) festival which happens in Steventon, Oxfordshire, and has done for the last seven years. I haven't for a long time (1999 or 2000), but it has a little truck-shaped space in my head -- I've always meant to go -- and it was good to make it back this year, even if it was only for one day.
I've just finished reading Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled. The overwhelming sensation I had while reading the book was discomfort: I was torn between wanting to just keep reading, to not put the book down, and to put the book down right now and read something else, never to return to it.
The St Bride printling library held an exhibition of the typographer Hans Schmoller's work at Penguin books, where he was the chief designer for most of the latter half of the twentieth century. Curated by David Pearson, the exhibition presented layouts, proofs and finished designs (i.e. the books themselves).
I caught the first episode of Outlaws, a BBC Three series which has come to BBC 2. I caught it again on Sunday night, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Centred around a pair of solicitors, Phil Daniel's cynical, desensitised Dunbar, and Ray Emmett-Brown's young, idealistic, Gulliver. The writing's sharp, and the comedy is black, but the series tackles hard issues (domestic violence, mental health) with subtlety and heart. It also has fantastic titles.
I've just finished playing Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. I bought it six months ago, and it's lain around waiting for me to finish other games. I remember the warm reception it received in Edge on its release two-odd years ago, and I remember the subsequent laments about its poor sales, and the frequent references to its fluidity in reviews of similar games (in which the comparisons were usually in favour of POP).
A top N, in alphabetical order
One of the things that was most appealing about my first computer, besides the fact that my mate Mark had one, was the fact that the BBC 'B' was the home of Elite, David Braben & Ian Bell's mammoth space-trading game.
I'm back in New York this week, and I went to see Spring Awakening at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre. I'm a huge fan of Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater's collaboration Phantom Moon, so I thought I'd see the show if I got the chance.