Sunday love song(s)

Submarine: Joe Dunthorne

So it took me two recommendations, two days and four bus journeys to read Joe Dunthorne’s Submarine. Set in Swansea, it’s the brilliant and outrageously funny tale of one young boy’s coming of age. Hell-bent on saving his parent’s marriage whilst simultaneously attempting to begin his own relationships, Dunthorne provides comical insight into the mind of 15 year-old Oliver Tate as he tries to negotiate life’s experiences.

As a Swansea girl, reading Submarine was utterly compulsive. Being able to picture his house in Mount Pleasant, the heart-wrenching scene of Oliver watching his ex-girlfriend parade around the Quadrant shopping centre with her new beau and those walking/camping trips to Worm’s Head that every Swansea child has been forced to experience, made me feel as though I were taking those painful steps out of adolescence with him.

Submarine has now been made into a film. Directed by Richard Ayoade of IT Crowd fame and set in Swansea, I literally cannot wait to see the sights of my hometown on the big screen in March, in what is sure to be one of the funniest films of 2011.

Watch the trailer for Submarine here

Sunday love song(s)

TV bookclubs

This weekend I finally got around to reading Emma Donoghue’s Room, one of the selection shortlisted for this year’s Booker prize. I heard a lot of reviews about this, both good and bad (coincidentally the guardian included it in Saturday’s Review), and sad to admit that I was slightly disappointed after only a few chapters.

I am starting to get both frustrated and bored with a number of books that seem to be written with the intention of appearing on increasingly popular tv bookclubs (re: Richard and Judy), and are then made into films. Ok, so The Time Traveler’s Wife may have been a gripping read, as well as The Lovely Bones etc…the list goes on, but they all seem suspiciously too similar in regards to the audience they’re targeting: notably the sentimental woman with slight leanings towards magical realism.

Having almost finished Room in two days, I am pretty much eating my own words before this post has even been published. Gripping, yes, but believable, no. Although it’s incredibly compulsive, it seems a little too easy to perhaps be writing on a topic where the emotions and ethics have been predetermined by the 2008 Fritzl case and the worldwide media.

So, not a bad read, but not great either. Lets just say I’ll be reaching for Tolstoy and Zola. Well, until the summer at least.

Emma Forrest

I have just read the extract featured from Emma Forrest’s memoir, featured in this week’s guardian weekend magazine. One of the most heart-wrenching pieces of writing I think I’ve ever read; beautiful and moving.

http://gu.com/p/2m6tq

Jamie XX minimix for Benji B

One word. Incredible. Anyone who includes The Knife in a minimix gets my vote. Tracklisting below; stream via Pinglewood

Jamie XX minimix

Timmy Thomas — Why Can’t We Live Together
Zomby — Tarantula
Jamie Woon — Night Air – Becoming Real Remix
Koreless — M.T.I.
James Blake — I Mind
Cassie — Must Be Love – Jacques Greene’s Marriage Proposal Mix
Mount Kimbie — Before I Move Off
Rui Da Silva — Touch Me – Chopped and Screwed
DJ Choko — Stealth Drums
Jamie xx — Far Nearer – The Knife Bootleg
Beach House — 10 Mile Stereo
Crazy Cousinz — Inflation – Chopped and Screwed
Tanya Stephens — Can’t Touch Me No More
Dj A B — Darbuka
Harmonic 313 — Problem 7
Lumidee — Never Leave You
Adele — Rolling In The Deep – Jamie XX Shuffle
Gil Scott Heron and Jamie XX — One Take

A white Christmas in Wales

Albums of the year

It’s that time of year when everyone starts discussing their favourite albums of 2010. Not sure in what particular order but Caribou, Darkstar and Gold Panda definitely feature in my top five, as well as The National and Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti.

TED talks: Oliver Sacks + Zainab Salbi

Walking an hour to work and back isn’t a great deal of fun when the British temperatures equate to Siberia but having listened to almost every Essential/Fact/Xl8r mix of 2010 I’ve moved on to the TED talks, and so glad that I have.

I started with Oliver Sacks: What hallucinations reveal about our minds. Having previously read The Man who mistook his wife for a hat, Sacks’ 1985 book on the case histories of some of his patients, I was aware of the work he is doing with those suffering from deficits or excesses of particular brain functions. Although I enjoyed his talk, it wasn’t exactly as inspiring as I thought it might be, and the audience’s continuous laughter suggests that they may have completely missed the crux of his talk: that brain malfunctions are more commonplace than we perceive and need to be seriously addressed.

With only 20 minutes allocated for each talk, it must be hard for each speaker to correctly convey the importance of what they’re speaking of whilst keeping the audience engaged. The second speaker I listened to did exactly that, though. Having no previous knowledge of Zainab Salbi, I read the summery of her talk and decided to give it a listen – it turned out to be 20 minutes of some of the most inspiring words I’ve heard in a very long time. In her talk entitled ‘Women, wartime and the dream of peace’, Salbi explains the importance of women during wartime as those that are forced to be the affected group but yet have no place in the peace-making process. Giving a personal account of how her life has been affected by war, as well as that of others, she delivers a rational and urging plea for women to be present at the negotiating table for peace. I strongly urge you to listen to her words.

“There is a side that thinks that peace is the end of fighting,and there is the side that thinks that peace is the arrival of schools and jobs. There is a side that is led by men, and there is a side that is led by women. And in order for us to understand, how do we build lasting peace, we must understand war and peace from both sides.” Zainab Salbi

www.ted.com

Ministry of Stories

I know I’m almost a week late but it’s Sunday morning, I haven’t yet left my bed and I’m completely inspired. For the first time this year I heard about Dave Eggers’ beautifully creative work with children in inner-city America and spent the summer reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and attempting to consume as much Eggers as possible. This morning I finally got round to reading how Nick Hornby, close friend of Eggers, has now launched the same project to inspire children to write through the help of unpaid volunteers. However, rather than Eggers original pirate shop facade to allow the project to occur within shop premises, Hornby’s is a Monster Supply Store. Awesome.

Read the Financial Times article on Hornby’s East London project, as well as the amazing website itself.