I thought I knew exactly what I was going into when I picked up Koushik Banerjea's Another Kind of Concrete. As someone largely interested in the pop culture element of historical fiction, I interpreted the blurb as an enjoyable yet slightly overtold tale of the 70's punk scene with racial tensions of the time woven... Continue Reading →
Writing a full-length review on David Mitchell's most recent novel, Utopia Avenue, definitely didn't seem like something on the cards when I first started it. It didn't even 500 pages in, to be honest. It was only once I'd closed the book that I was hit with so many emotions that I knew I couldn't... Continue Reading →
Evelyn Hugo is a book that seemed to haunt me. It was all over my Twitter feed, in every respectable critic's recommendations, going for a discounted price on Amazon....escaping the hype was almost impossible. Of course, though, it was the latter appearance that sold it for me. I gave into its reasonable price tag almost... Continue Reading →
One look at Oliver Tree’s social media is enough to catch anyone up with his stunts: sitting in a bath of hot Cheetos, riding the world’s biggest scooter, crashing the world’s biggest scooter, being hospitalised as a result of the world’s biggest scooter…the list goes on. The lead-up to the release of his debut album... Continue Reading →
2013 was a shaky year for the emo genre. On the one hand we have the breakup of My Chemical Romance, a tragedy that loomed over all of our heads for years. But on the other hand, Fall Out Boy were back and better than ever, easing the mourning of our loss with what has... Continue Reading →
I'm not sure when or if I planned to listen to The 1975's fourth full length album. It almost seemed set up to fail: its release was delayed by almost a year, a string of controversies surrounding the band and their manager turned fans against them, and the album was slammed so brutally by critics... Continue Reading →
Over the past four years, Scottish-based Vistas have earned their title as one of the most promising upcoming indie bands. Their highly anticipated debut album, Everything Changes in the End, seems to establish this for them further. It's thirteen tracks of pure joy, with cheerful vocals and upbeat guitar riffs. It's the type of album... Continue Reading →
It's been three whole years since Modern Baseball announced their indefinite hiatus from touring and music. And it's been three whole years of me never truly getting over it. And I think it's time that I searched for some sort of closure. On surface level, Modern Baseball don't exactly seem like the most groundbreaking band.... Continue Reading →
Like most people, Ninth House was one of my most anticipated books of 2019. A dark academia novel about secret societies and murder, by a well respected author? Sounds like a dream. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't have my reservations from the start. It's a fantasy novel, and me and fantasy... Continue Reading →
"One thing I'm sure Colborne will never understand is that I need language to live, like food—lexemes and morphemes and morsels of meaning nourish me with the knowledge that, yes, there is a word for this." If We Were Villains seemed like the only step forward from The Secret History - every review draws comparisons,... Continue Reading →
thoughts in small print 