January 2024 - Some Words to Start the Year Off

   So that was January 2024 then.  It began at a slow crawl and then seemed to break into a sprint towards the end.  I wasn't ready for it's passing, which is why you are reading this a week into February.

   Having invested a lot of time into it, I thought I might finally finish Iain Sinclair’s London Orbital in January but as it's 22 hours long on Audible and 450 plus pages as a hardback book. And as I’m flipping between the two formats to savour both the reading and the writing of it, I haven't especially put my foot down to race to the end. There are only a few chapters left now so that should happen quite effortlessly this month. At which point I'll drop a few words about it here because its a rather inspiring and brilliant piece of work.

   However, what I have completed this month is the following:

Atomic Habits by James Clear on audible

   This is a bit of a best seller from what I gather, and it is very interesting in breaking down the things we do and explaining why we get into bad habits and how we can turn those triggers into making good habits.  My big take away from this was that there is no point having a goal without having plotted out the path for how you are going to achieve it.  Seems sort of obvious but I write this at a time of year when healthier diets, get fit plans and stop smoking promises are crashing to the floor like plates at a Greek wedding.

The Chaos Protocols by Gordon White on audible

   I had a very mixed reaction to this because I have my own take on how Chaos magic works and as soon as I hit chapters that suggested the uttering of certain “magic” phrases to make the mojo work, my eyes rolled.  However, the author's assessment of the state of the modern world and how a Chaos magician might carve a place within it was perceptive and an interesting way to frame the game. On reflection, it's maybe one of the better Chaos Magic books I've read.

Doctor Who - Gaze of Medusa. Written by Gordon Rennie & Emma Beeby. With art by Brian Williamson & HI FI

   I picked this graphic novel up for a couple of quid in a sale and, for a collected 5 part comic mini-series, that seems a bargain.  Also, it’s a 4th Doctor story and some of us had our childhoods illuminated by that Doctor so we live in hope that an occasional bit of spin-off merch like this will reignite some of the same wonder.  And it did, to a degree.  The likenesses are good, you can hear Tom Baker speaking those lines and it's definitely the kind of story that would have been a credible choice in that particular era of the show.  Except the comic has a much more spectacular visual budget than the Beeb would have ever managed at the time and oddly that breaks the illusion for me.  I would love for someone to have a go at one of these but having acknowledged the limitations of the time within the visuals and scope of the story, just to see if they could produce something really authentic.

  

                   

Torchwood 26: The Green Life                         Torchwood 27: Sync

   Not escaping too far from the worlds of Doctor Who, and also presenting themselves to me via a half price sale, were these Torchwood CDs from Big Finnish.  These, like the Night of the Fendahl, that I listened to several times last year, are from a small thematically linked mini-series of “Torchwood Agents Vs Doctor Who Monsters”.  These two were entertaining fun for scratching an itch but I’m not sure that they where any where as moody and “adult” as the Fendahl story was. I've one more in the series to listen to and then I might have to have a think about what makes a really good Torchwood story as opposed to a bit of Doctor Who spin-off because there is clearly a fine line of distinction between the two things

   And then there is this lot, which have all been started or moved on a good few pages throughout January but as yet remain unfinished.

   And apart from a massive amount of podcasts on a variety of subjects, that was my diet of words for the first 1/12th of the year

   My plan for the rest of 2024 is to up my reading of actual books and to clear down the TBR pile that's bowing my shelves.  I also intend to read some of the weirder things that I’ve picked up or stumbled across over the years.  Those seemingly random finds and curiosities that have screamed: “Me Me Me!” but for reasons I’ve yet to investigate.

   And talking of reading odd things; I paused to flick through this old The Herbs annual on a recent trip into the attic and one of the illustrations triggered a very unexpected Proustian rush.   It was difficult at first to understand what that echo of emotion was but I took a few minutes to read the whole short story within and it turned out to be quite a revelation.  But that's a tale for another time.

Steve