I always post my favourite things of the year – at around this time, predictably. I’m sure this is of limited public interest but one day in my dotage I can use these posts as a replacement for my ailing memory!
Film: The Dark Knight – I watched this on a flight back from Shanghai in November. After spending a week in a dystopian vision of the urban future, Gotham City seemed quite pleasant.
Music: Max Richter’s ’24 postcards in full colour’. A real return to form – 24 short pieces of classical / experimental / electro-acoustic (?) music, each one displaying the complexity and intimacy of his earlier work but planned to explore the possibilites of the ring tone as a vehicle for expression.
Non-fiction Book: Naomi Klein’s ‘The shock doctrine’. Not as much of a polemic as ‘No Logo’, and better for it. I think of Naomi Klein as a kind of Fisher Price-version of David Harvey. ‘My first dialectical materialist’ maybe.
Fiction: Louis de Bernieres’ ‘Birds without wings’. A weighty tome but it repays the effort. A range of beautifully drawn perspectives on the post-WW1 collapse of the Ottoman empire and the foundation of modern Turkey.
Website: Get Darker – without a doubt the best source of dubstep music, mixes and news. It’s a scene I’m fascinated by but have very little access to out in the suburbs.
