If you happen to have been paying attention to my “quick reviews” sidebar, you will have noticed that I’ve been running with a severe backlog of material for some time now. At the moment I have 25 books and films unreviewed, many of which are from the very start of the year. I keep meaning to do them, but…I’ve finally admitted to myself that I probably won’t. I’m reading new books and watching new films all the time, but I constantly feel dragged down by the weight of those outstanding items.
(When I started doing the quick reviews, the idea was that I’d write a sentence or two about my general impression of the item, and give it a star rating, primarily so that I could keep a record of what I’d read and watched. But gradually the sentence or two stretched into a paragraph or two, or three, and I stopped feeling happy with anything less. This is what has led to the backlog: the thought that I’m not doing an item justice if I just knock one out in a couple of minutes, and the brain freeze that comes if I can’t think of what I want to say about it immediately. And if I don’t do them straight away, they sit around and linger….)
So anyway, I’ve decided to just set all of the outstanding items from “draft” to “published”, and get them out of the way. If something sparks off a particularly vivid recollection, I might add a sentence or two–but no more. I’m leaving them all with their original dates, so they’ll show up in roughly the positions that I saw or read the films or books in question. This also means they won’t show up on the list of most recent reviews, but if you’re interested in the ratings, here they are:
Films
The Interpreter- Y Tu Mama Tambien
- Sahara
Open Range- Dark Blue
- Romeo Must Die
- Secretary
Constantine
Hollywood Homicide- Pooh’s Heffalump Movie
Don’t Say A Word
The One
Books
Christopher Brookmyre – Boiling A Frog- Christopher Brookmyre – Country of the Blind
- Tami Hoag – Ashes To Ashes
- Bruce Campbell – If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor
- Richard Morgan – Woken Furies
- Neal Asher – The Skinner
- Christopher Brookmyre – Be My Enemy
- Christopher Brookmyre – Quite Ugly One Morning
- Michael P. Kube-McDowell – Vectors
- Neal Asher – Cowl
- Charles Stross – Iron Sunrise
- Charles Stross – Singularity Sky
- Alan Moore, David Lloyd – V For Vendetta