Matt has been through so much shit, but that scene may be the first time I actually thought that he was going to get killed. Very tense.

Heavens to Betsy are guest starring? Will it have musical interludes?

I'm pro-birds but then I read Freedom and Franzen irritated me so much that I considered re-thinking my position.

Me, umm, also.

Pretty sure she walked back that statement long ago, she's a lot cooler with sci-fi thse days (or maybe she's just scared she'll suffer the wrath of Le Guin…)

The Buble version is particularly bad for its attempt to 'no homo' the lyrics.

They used to play the Tom Jones/Cerys Matthews version on the radio a lot, which was pretty horrific.

We're letting Bob Geldof off the hook here guys. He deserves more scorn for this.

Ah Wings. The band the Beatles could have been.

Christmas Shoes doesn't seem to have crossed the Atlantic, similar to how our omnipresent 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday' and 'Merry Xmas Everybody' don't seem to. We definitely got the best end of this deal.

I think it's a decently sounding song (I like the vocal melodies, if not the actual words) but yeah all that stuff about Africa is just dumb. I guess the 80s were less enlightened, but I mean if you're raising money for causes in a region at least do a bit of research…

Wait - Peter Serafinowicz voiced Darth Maul in Star Wars and also does a famously good Paul McCartney impression. It's all connected, guys

I really want to read that!

It's one of the few post-apocalyptic novels I've read that decided to show how humanity can overcome instead of wallowing in misery. Not that the depressing ones can't be good, but it was such a breath of fresh air to find one that showed the lasting power of art rather than the power of cannibal's machete…

It's only fitting to read Mitchell out of order and work out the connections later. For what it's worth Ghostwritten is one of his best.

In terms of books that were released this year there is The Honours by Tim Clare which is an fun historical adventure story with a fantasy/horror twist. Slade House by David Mitchell which seems like him having a bit of fun with some of The Bone Clocks's world as well as thumbing his nose at the critics that disliked…

I thought number9dream was all right, but it is nowhere as good as his other novels and feels like a well-done Murakami fan-fiction.

Surely he's saying that he broke up the Beatles there though.

This has been a thing in folk for ages - the actual real-life dirt-poor ex-sharecropper musicians usually played in their best clothes (suit, tie, hat) while the city-slickers tried to buy authenticity points by dressing how they assumed farmers would dress. No actual farmer would have worn his work clothes on stage.

The point about the glamorization of mental illness is one of the things I loved about Frank.