Valerie June - The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers

This is indeed a dreamy album, countryish, soulish, indieish music with a dream-pop swirl. High grade stuff. 

Ted Lasso seasons 1 & 2

Properly feel good tv. 

N K Jemisin - The City We Became

Sturdy concept, well executed. There are lots of ways this could've gone wrong, with so many characters in play and the main ones standing in for cities or boroughs, but Jemisin's up to the task.

Brandi Carlile - In These Silent Days

Brandi Carlile was big for me last year, and I didn't even get round to properly listening to the album of hers that was actually released in 2021, In These Silent Days. It's classic singer-songwriter fare, right down to Carlile's willingness to write seemingly simple melodies, put them right upfront, and trust in those melodies to be enough for the songs to work - which they do. Putting aside the production, many of the songs on In These Silent Days could have been written and recorded in the 1970s, including some of its best - especially "You and Me on the Rock". This is an excellent record all round - more low-key than By The Way, I Forgive You but comparably good.

The Witcher seasons 1 & 2

Somehow, in a show that knowingly and expansively - giddily even - traffics in the ridiculous, on this second pass I once again got stuck on the fact that The Witcher expects us to take it seriously while brandishing a main character named 'Yennefer of Vengerberg'. Of course, one of the show's charms is that it in fact only expects us to take it seriously in certain ways - as a fantasy, in a world with all the trimmings and filled with epic doings and dark portent - without being all humourless about it.

Season 2 is at once more streamlined (because it's a single timeline in which the characters and major pieces of action regularly intersect) and more sprawling (because it broadens its scope and the ramifications of its characters' actions and 'destinies') than season 1. It also has more emoting by Henry Cavill's Geralt of Rivia in about 5 minutes in the first episode than in the entirety of the previous season.

Basically this just continues to be a fun show, tuned pretty well to one segment of what I enjoy for escapism, and with enough going on across its various dimensions to not be distractingly or egregiously offensive in any way.

Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, Spectre & No Time To Die

The Daniel Craig Bond films. 

I'd previously seen Skyfall (which I remembered as good, with my impressions dominated to an outsized extent by the house) and Spectre (of which I had no memories at all).

I'd also gathered from general pop culture consumption that Casino Royale was regarded as very good and Quantum of Solace as very bad.

What I took from watching all five of these in sequence over a few weeks is that they do basically all fit together - not in that perfectly crafted 'aha' way that some series do, but in a way that even when the seams show, by the end it feels like there's enough stitched-together integrity that it satisfies, including on the emotional level.

There's tons of action (QoS includes chases by foot, car, boat and plane), some memorable supporting characters (and some less so) among whom Eva Green's Vesper Lynd earns the heavy narrative and emotional weight her character is made to bear across films 2, 3, 4 and 5, dapper Dave Bautista's villain is enjoyable, and Ana de Armas' cameo also stands out, and some artful touches throughout in script, direction and cinematography. 

David Epstein - Range

Challenges the assumption that early specialisation is key to success, arguing instead from a range of perspectives that 'range' is commonly the more fruitful path. 

Aimee Mann - Queens of the Summer Hotel

Pleasant but not very melodically striking.

"2021 (Harness Your Hopes)"

Mix cd from David. Favourites - apart from Soccer Mommy's "circle the drain" and Mitski's "The Only Heartbreaker", which I already knew - are Pete Yorn's "Elizabeth Taylor" and Foxygen's "Shuggie", also Warren Zevon's "Lawyers, Guns and Money".

Kate Atkinson - Transcription

Kate Atkinson is a terrific writer and always readable, and it's no surprise that her take on a spy novel - and her third World War II novel after the truly superlative Life After Life and the also impressive A God in Ruins - is a page turner, even without the major plot misdirection(s) and twist(s) that land in its second half. I didn't quite love Transcription - I thought it was missing that indefinable quality of 'about life-ness' that my favourites of hers have - but liked it plenty.

Moana

A good one.

"Margel Hinder: Modern in Motion" + more @ Heide

Margel Hinder - "Construction" (1954) & "Gemini" (1955) - I most liked these ones but the wooden ones spoke to me a bit too

Anish Kapoor - "Untitled" (1993) & "In the Presence of Form II" (1993)

(w/ R, J & H and Carmel)