Football season review 2015-16

It's the end of the football season and here is my review of the games I went to. The asterisks indicate the football grounds I watched a game at for the very first time.

First, here are the overall stats:
Season: 2015-16
Total games: 11
Most goals in a game: 7
Fewest goals in a game: 0
Total goals seen: 23
Number of football grounds visited: 8 (4 of which I’d never visited before)

Newport County v Queen's Park Rangers (friendly)
Score: 0-0
This was memorable mainly for the utter torrent of rain that drenched the Londoners who had forgotten that it always rains in Wales and had turned up in shorts. One of those games that could have been played forever and still been goalless.

Welcoming sign; inclement weather

Action shot of Spytty the dog

Shrewsbury Town v Millwall (League 1)
Score: 1-2
First home game of the season. First defeat. Set a pattern for the season really. The deciding goal was a penalty that was more of a penalty won than a penalty conceded.

Yeovil Town* v QPR (League Cup 1st round)
Score: 0-3
My first trip to Huish Park. I was a Hoop for the night. QPR ran out fairly easy 3-0 winners in the end.

Borrowed shirt.

Shrewsbury Town v Crewe Alexandra (League 1)
Score: 0-1
Crewe were bottom of the league having not won a match by this point (we were about 8 games in). They finished bottom of the league at the end of the season. Of course they won this game as Shrewsbury's players seemed to have forgotten what sport they were playing.

Pink bibs in the warm up. It was downhill from here.

Reading* v QPR (Championship)
Score: 0-1
I'd not been to Reading's Madjeski Stadium before. It was pretty impressive. This was Neil Warnock's last game in charge at QPR before being replaced by Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink. Reading boss Steve Clarke was sacked the following morning as well. I think this is the first time I've been at a game that was the last game for both managers. The game was pretty dire and QPR nicked it at the end with a bundled in goalmouth scramble.

It filled up a bit for the actual game

Bristol City* v QPR (Championship)
Score: 1-1
Another QPR game. Another new ground. For a long time it looked like Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink would finally see his new side win. But Bristol City equalised. I was impressed with how he stood and shook the hands of all his players as they came off at the end. That's class.

Flags to greet the players as they enter the pitch

Shrewsbury Town v Fleetwood Town (League 1)
Score: 1-1
Shrewsbury struggled to make any headway against another struggling team. At this point I felt Shrewsbury were very likely relegation candidates.

Cardiff City v Shrewsbury Town (FA Cup 3rd round)
Score: 0-1
This was odd. The game was on a Sunday night. Most of the ground was empty as Cardiff fans were protesting something. It was also live on S4C. And yet, it's the first time I've seen Shrewsbury win in Cardiff.

Not many more arrived.

Seriously, this was about it.

Barry Town United v The New Saints (Welsh Cup 4th round)
Score: 2-5 (the most goals seen in a game all season)
Full write up here. Highly enjoyable game.

Shrewsbury Town v Manchester United (FA Cup 5th round)
Score: 0-3
Given everything that has happened at Manchester United since they went on to win the cup a few days ago, and the season they had, this was a real missed opportunity. Shrewsbury kind of choked. This was the third game in a row that I'd been to that was also live on telly. Full write up here.

Celtic* v Dundee (Scottish Premier League)
Score: 0-0
Full write up here. This turned out to be my final game of the season. It feels apt that my season began and ended with 0-0 draws. The essence of football, right there.

And now, bring on the Euros...

Previous seasons: 2014-15

The final post about our Christmas cards: Which Bible verse is the most Christmassy?

Having done my annual audit, posted 10 of my favourite cards and then done a second, longer, post about who sends what kind of card, this, I promise is the last post on my blog about Christmas cards.

In my previous post about them I logged the kind of messages that appear on the front of the cards, including Bible verses. This then got me thinking about Bible verses that are used on Christmas cards, generally and I began to wonder what would be the most popular. I also realised there were no religious designs in the Christmas cards I posted before. so I have rectified this and included some designs in this post...

I really liked this one

I expected the early chapters of Matthew and Luke to feature heavily, as these are where the nativity stories appear in the gospels. The 'story' most people know from school plays and Christmas church services is actually a mish-mash of the two nativity stories in Matthew and Luke, which are actually very different to each other. On freelance theology I've written how the reason they are so different is because they aren't historical stories, but theological stories instead - they are written to make certain points about Jesus. [Read the article here.] I think that's probably why the stories are so different.

Dozing donkey and curious sheep

Given that the wise men / kings / astrologers / magicians appear in Matthew's story and not Luke's, while the shepherds feature in Luke's story and not Matthew's, and that we had 11 cards featuring the three kings and absolutely zero cards featuring the shepherds, I thought we were much more likely to see verses from Matthew appearing on the cards. Turns out, I was wrong.

In total we had 10 cards featuring Bible verses, which is about ten per cent of all the cards we were sent (working from a sample of 103).

The verses featured were, as follows:

Psalm 139.11-12
If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me
    and the light become night around me,’
    even the darkness will not be dark to you;
    the night will shine like the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

(I have no idea why that is considered Christmassy, but there you go. Strangely, this appeared on a card featuring an owl, and wasn't religious-looking at all. Although, I guess owls are birds of pray, har har har.)

This is the 'owl' card with a Bible verse in

Isaiah 9.6
For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given,
    and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
    Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

(An Old Testament prophecy that Christians believe is about Jesus.)

Matthew 2.11
On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

(This is part of the story of the three wise men, or 'three kings'. It was on one of the cards featuring the three wise men, but only one.)

One of the Kings was ginger...

Luke 2.4-5
So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.

(As heard in every school nativity play, ever.)

John 1.9
The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

(Fun fact: the Gospel of John doesn't have any nativity stories. But it does have a "Prologue", which is probably the most linguistically sophisticated, theologically complicated and semi-mystical part of the whole New Testament. It may also be borrowed from pre-existing Gnostic traditions; it certainly draws on them.)

1 John 1.5b
God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.

(1 John is a short book towards the end of the New Testament that is traditionally ascribed to the same author as the Gospel of John. It's actually a letter, or 'epistle', sent to a Christian community by someone in authority. It shares a lot of common language with the gospel, including using the word 'light' a lot. The 'b' in the Bible reference indicates they only used the second half of the verse.)

More inquisitive sheep

And the most common Bible verse on Christmas cards, appearing on four of them waaaaaaas (drumroll...)

Luke 2.11
Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.

Although two of these were printed in ye olde worlde King James Version:
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

And one of the cards quoted verse 10 as well, but then edited both verses to come up with their own version, really:
Great tidings of great joy which will be to all people!. For there is born... a Saviour who is Christ, the Lord.

Meh, close enough.

This verse even appeared on one card in English and Welsh (where Luke is Luc):
Ganwyd i chwi heddiw yn nhref Dafydd, Waredwr, yr hwn yw'r Meseia, yr Argkwydd.

So, there you go, Luke 2.11 is apparently the most Christmassy Bible verse in the whole Bible. At least according to the people who make Christmas cards.

Previous posts

Annual audits: 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012

Deeper demographic scrutiny (2015)

Some of my favourite cards from Christmas 2015

Things you see in Newcastle: "Bones" - recycled vinyl records from the USSR

Last year, Cathy and I visited Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. While there we had a few hours in the centre of the city and visited the art exhibition space linked to the Baltic. The exhibition was 'The art of the needle' - the art of, or inspired by, vinyl records.

As you can imagine from an art exhibition, there was a mix of stuff there. Most of it was easily dismissable hipsterish nonsense - who wants to go to a four hour performance of a DJ playing scratched and warped records? But there was one bit that really captured my imagination - a display of "Bones", Soviet-era bootlegs of banned Western albums, printed on the only ready source of vinyl: used medical x-ray sheets.

With the records back-lit, you can see what recycled vinyl looks like. I imagine the audio quality is terrible, but really, these are display pieces.

This prompted me to think about 'art'. There were plenty of intentional art pieces in the exhibition. People had gone out and purposefully tried to use vinyl records or record sleeves to make something else. But none of those things wowed me the way these did. What I find interesting is that these discs are repurposing something else - in this case medical images that are no longer needed - and in the process are creating something unique and, in it's own way, beautiful. But they are a by-product of a process of sharing art and weren't intended as art themselves, and yet, they were displayed in an art exhibition and were easily the most evocative exhibit.

So, what does that tell us about art? That the best stuff happens by accident? That art is a by-product of inventive minds solving problems? That artists are often trying too hard to make art, instead of focusing their intentions on making something useful that turns out to be art?

The Christmas card audit part 2: a demographic breakdown

For the past four years I have reviewed the common themes that appear in all the Christmas cards that Cathy and I get sent. This may seem a bit sad, but I get a lot of interested people talking to me about it. Someone we know who sells greetings cards for a living finds it interesting enough to talk about with her company. (And even to the point of doing her own audit!)

Anyway, apparently this has prompted a discussion regarding religious themes on cards and how they break down. The director of my friend's company has proposed the following: "The breakdown of religious v secular is always revealing, although there is a marked difference across the ages with the more serious 'I'm making a statement' religious cards falling in popularity against the more cartoony 'I just think this is a sweet image' religious cards."

My friend then added her own thoughts: "I was probably one of those 'got to make a statement' people until very recently and only sent 'religious' cards. I used one design for everyone. Now I send a mix, and think a bit more about what image I'm sending, often sending Christians Christmas themed cards but also to non-Christians too." (By Christmas themed, I think she means the less religious aspects of Christmas.)

So, I think those are some interesting hypotheses hidden in those conversations that we can test out: Firstly, are religious people more likely to send religious themed cards? And secondly, if they do, are older religious card senders more likely to send cards that make a 'statement' than younger senders?

For the purpose of this survey I am going to define 'religious' people as people who I know are 'regular church-goers' (RCGs). There are a lot of people out there who would tick Christian in the census, but don't seem to have much more of a religious commitment than that and probably wouldn't regard themselves as religious.

To understand the data a bit better, I also need to know the kind of people sending cards. The age-range is between 4 and 96. There is a mix of ages in every decade between them, with a higher proportion of people over the age of 50. There are a large number of family members and friends from a variety of social backgrounds: school, university, current and former workplaces, neighbours, the church we attend, and former churches we attend. So, this is a wide mix of people, including a large number of RCGs, making it an ideal field to draw on to test the idea that religious people are more likely to send religious cards and to see if there is a difference based on age. I'm going to break it up into the following age groups: children, 20-40, over 40-60, over 60-80 and over 80.

As I've got the opportunity, I'm also going to add in a more in-depth breakdown of the kinds of messages on the front of cards (something my friend did in her audit). I've already noted that the trend in 2015 for religious themed cards to be less likely to use the word 'Christmas' on the front followed previous years. But there are carols, Bible verses, and other messages, which are as interesting to record. I am also going to log how many are 'personal' e.g. 'To a special son/ husband/ uncle' etc. I should say at this point that Cathy helped with the data analysis, so from hereon in I'm going to use 'We' and 'Us'.

So here goes. Firstly a breakdown of who is more likely to send which types of cards. We divided the cards four ways according to whether the sender was an RCG or not, and what theme it was. Two cards were discounted as they weren't from individuals (one was a church and the other was a company). Here's how the numbers divided up:

What we see there is the relatively predictable finding that non-religious senders are much more likely to send cards with non-religious themes. However, the reverse isn't particularly true with RCG senders only slightly more likely to send a religious-themed card.

We had very few 'cartoony' religious cards - just six in the whole sample, which probably renders the second hypothesis inconclusive. Here is the breakdown of who our of our sample sent which kind of message.

Pretty much all the religious cards we received were serious. The table shows that the odds tip towards religious cards as the age of the senders increases, but in the oldest segment there is almost a half and half split between religious cards and non-religious cards. As mentioned there were only six cartoony religious cards, and they were in the two younger adult brackets (adults between 20 and 60).

Looking at the messages on the front of the cards then, we find the following breakdown:

As pointed out in my original audit, the majority of cards that said 'Christmas' on the front did not have a religious design. a lot of religious designs had lines or verses from Christmas carols. Two had Bible verses on the front. There were four other religious messages. Three cards had been bought with a "To" message on the front. The divide between religious and non-religious cards that didn't have any message at all on the front was about equal, taking into account the higher number of cards with a religious theme.

And, a final table... This shows the sender age compared to the type of religious message likely to be included on the front of a card.

Again, we are dealing with small numbers, which kind of skews the data. But you can see that all the generic religious messages fall into one age bracket and both the cards with Bible verses on the front were sent by people in the age 60-80 bracket. The cards with carols on the front were sent with a near-as-makes-no-difference cross-sectional split across the age ranges.

One final note, because Cathy was interested in this, we counted up the charity cards by sender type. We found that 40 RCG senders sent charity cards, compared to 20 non-religious senders. Given that in our sample there were twice as many RCGs as non-RCGs, this implies religious belief makes no difference to the choice of buying cards that support a charity. Which is quite a finding! Cathy also wanted to know whether there was a greater trend towards buying charity cards in a supermarket in a given group. We had 10 supermarket charity cards from RCGs (exactly a quarter) and 9 from non-RCGs (almost half). Quite what this means is less clear, although it shows that supermarket charity cards are a good fundraising mechanism.

So, there you go. I have one more analysis of the data to come, fueled more by interest in theology than anything else. But this has been a long post already, so it will have to wait!

This is how a groom and his groomsmen make an entrance at a wedding

One of the real highlights of last year was being asked to be Best Man for one of my best friends, all-round creative bright spark and fairly decent graphic designer, Matt, as he married the lovely Lauren.

One of the things I really had in mind as Best Man was a shot for us groomsmen, because one of the things about weddings is that there are usually lots of shots, quite rightly, of the bride and the bridesmaids, but you don't often get memorable shots of the male side of the wedding shenanigans.

I'm not a photographer, although I have many friends who are, but I do know a bit about creating images that will work. I've run some photo-shoots for work purposes and had a clear idea of what I want the photos to end up looking like. Some photographers listen to you and some don't. Fortunately Matt had booked the former type - when I explained what I wanted, he knew exactly what I meant. (Personally, after working with many photographers, I would say that what sets the real pros apart from the rest, but that's just my opinion.)

Anyway, as I explained to the photographer, I wanted something reminiscent of this - probably one of the most iconic (if not the iconic) movie posters of the 1990s.

 That image of a group of suited and booted guys on their way to complete a job. (but perhaps looking a bit happier.)

(Amusingly, one of the groomsmen, Lauren's littlest brother, had no idea what we were talking about as Reservoir Dogs came out about ten years before he was born. Which didn't make me feel old at all...)

Anyway, it took a few shots, but we got there in the end.

Yeah. Nailed it.

I promised you some Christmas cards, so here you go

Cathy has been a star and scanned in some of the Christmas cards that we received in 2015. (Read the annual audit here) So, for your enjoyment, here are the 10 cards that really stood out for us this year. Enjoy!

First up - one of the dogs in Santa hats cards we got this year. He looks happy it's Christmas...

What could be better than a pug in a Santa hat? How about a dog driving a car while wearing a Santa hat?

Cathy says the one on the right is obviously meant to be me. What do you think?

(I only noticed when compressing these that he is kind of wearing Shrewsbury Town colours. Freaky.)

Anyway, we had some other snowmen (snowpeople?) too. I liked this snow family.

Want to get in my wife's good books for life? Draw her a Snoopy card! The kid who did this was 8. She did a better job than I would have.

I quite liked this deer card. It's cute and it also has a beveled edge like a stamp making it feel much posher. Die-cut cards aren't that common so it stood out.

Googly eyes! Always a winner. A pun! Toast! Everything you would want on a card, here.

I always love cards that teach me something new. Here's a charity I have never heard of before: Perennial, the charity that cares for horticulturalists in need. (Loaded up large so you can click on it to read the text)

But in terms of charity logos, this, for the Roald Dahl Marvellous Children's Charity, wins hands down.

And finally, there is always one card that makes you think, 'What on earth...' This year's winner in that category has a back story and was in a good cause, but even so, was one of the strangest card designs I think we've ever received. (Again loaded as a larger file - click on it to see it in all its glory! Be warned, though. You can't unsee it.)

So, there you go. If any of your cards made the cut, then well done and thank you for sending us a card.

2015 in review: The non-fiction books I read

I've already blogged about the fiction I read in 2015. Here are some short reviews of the non-fiction I read during the year. I've divided them up into sections.

Football

I do read quite a few football books. The joke in book group is that I tend to read books about goalkeepers, particularly German goalkeepers. This year I kept up the tradition...

The Outsider: A History of the Goalkeeper - Jonathan Wilson
This is the book about goalkeepers and starts from the interesting premise that goalkeepers are different, both in terms of the role they play and psychologically. The historical stuff about the development of goalkeeping as a specialist role is really interesting. Unfortunately it gets bogged down discussing the various goalkeepers produced by different countries. While the research into, say, Cameroonian keepers, or the inheritors of Lev Yashin's spot in the Russian national team, can't be faulted, the material does all get a bit samey. There are also a few occasions when the author references stuff with the assumption the reader will know what he is talking about. I got most of them, but some I had to look up.

The Incredible Adventures of the Unstoppable Keeper - Lars Pfannenstiel
I got sent this to review for When Saturday Comes. Lars Pfannenstiel is a German journeyman keeper who ended up playing on all six continents, although never for anyone particularly good. He seems to regularly ditch everything to follow the gilded promises of agents or club owners, which invariably come to nothing. He cuts a fairly naive figure as a result. My (longer) review for WSC is online here.

An Autobiography - Pat Jennings
When I was a kid I collected football stickers (I still do!) and the first collection my brother and I had was Panini's 'Football 85'. The first team in the album were, of course, Arsenal, and the first player was their goalkeeper, Pat Jennings. So, he is one of those players who I can picture really clearly (at least, his sticker!). This autobiography was from 1983 and it's interesting to a point. He comes across as fairly dull, but some of the things he talks about aren't. For example, the stuff people chucked at him from the terraces. He ended up with a dart (!) in his arm on a couple of occasions. There's also a bit late on in the book which just wouldn't appear in a book by a pro sportsman now, when he worries that players playacting and pretending to be injured would make other people think footballers are "poufs". That's a word that doesn't tend to be used these days. Altogether now, "It was acceptable in the eighties..."

Full Time - Tony Cascarino
Not a goalkeeper, but another footballer from a different era. Cascarino played for a number of top clubs and also the Republic of Ireland in the late 80s and the 90s. This was one of the first truly confessional footballer autobiographies and it is really interesting. The section when he talks about splitting up with his wife is raw and honest and you can tell he feels like an utter shit about the way he treated her. There's a revelation that he might not have ever been eligible to play for Ireland after all, and an interesting accounting of where all the money he made disappeared to. It's hard to read the book and not like Tony Cascarino, mainly because he is being honest about how unlikeable he is. I'd quite like to read an updated version to find out what happened to him after he retired.

Theology

Gospel of Freedom - Jonathan Rieder
This is a very scholarly, yet accessible, study of Martin Luther King's 'Letter from Birmingham Jail' that unpicks King's theology of non-violence and liberation to thoroughly explain it. It's rare I would use the term 'life-changing' of any book, but this has really impacted on me. Particularly the challenge of Dr King regarding what kind of 'extremists' we will be. In a world that seems to be dominated by the actions of extremists, the call to be extremists of love and justice, is still powerfully relevant.

Other non-fiction

A Universe from Nothing - Lawrence Krauss
This is trying to make astrophysics simple and it must work because I understood it. Put simply, it proposes that the existence of the universe was inevitable given quantum fluctuations. There is no 'cause' to the universe; it just is. In philosophical terms this means the world is just a 'brute fact' and various cause-related arguments for God's existence are rendered moot.

Too Much Information - Dave Gorman
This is like a book version of Dave Gorman's TV show Modern Life is Goodish. He makes some great points about how spammers ruin Twitter and how bands shouldn't stick new songs on 'Greatest Hits' albums (or release such albums if, in fact, they haven't had many hits!), but generally it's one of those semi-forgettable books you breeze through, chuckle at, and then stick on the shelf to never read again.

So, that's it. All in all I read 22 books in 2015. Not a bad reading rate!

Previous posts:
The Douglas Coupland books I read in 2015
The other non-fiction I read in 2015

2015 in review: Other fiction books I read

I've already blogged about the six Douglas Coupland novels I read this year. Here is a list of the other fiction that I read (or finished reading) during 2015.

A Little Love Song - Michelle Magorian
This was my 'Book Group Secret Santa' book. Set in World War II, two teenage girls move to the country for safety and suddenly are able to live free of adult influence. It was quite sympathetically drawn although had a bit of a too happy ending, but it dealt with some mature themes despite being ostensibly a book for older kids. One bit, involving a person hiding orange peel about their person, made me laugh out loud.

Bonjour Tristesse - Francois Sagan
This is a Penguin Classic and came in a set of other classics. In its favour, it's quite short, so you can get the feeling of 'Yeah, I read a classic; without killing yourself to finish an epic tome. It's about a cynical teenage girl who uses sex and emotional manipulation to get what she wants from life. It was apparently considered scandalous when it was published, but I got a bit bored with it. The main character is unlikeable, which I know is kind of the point, but I found it was difficult to engage with her or her reasons for doing what she did.

Tuf Voyaging - George RR Martin
This was a reasonably interesting science fiction story split into four separate stories. The first one was excellent, probably some of the most enjoyable science fiction I've read for a while as space-wanderer Havilland Tuf finds and lays claim to a starship of almost unspeakable power - a planetary and genetic engineering vessel that can be used for good or evil. What lets it down after the first story is a drift towards slightly racist stereotyping as Tuf helps a culture that is overpopulating its planet. That the people of the planet are known with an 'ese' suffix makes you think of China or Japan and the descriptions of the people seem to follow this up. So that left me feeling uncomfortable. Then there's Tuf himself who is all-wise and able to second-guess anyone and unbelievably lucky and always right about everything. Which was plain annoying.

The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of a Window and Disappeared - Jonas Jonasson
This started well and then got stupid very, very fast. I liked the concept more than the story. The initial chapters of the eponymous old man's disappearance is funny and engaging. But then the flashbacks of his life begin and it all gets a bit ridiculous.

Moominland Midwinter, Tales from Moominvalley, and Comet in Moominland - Tove Jansson
Here's a three for one offer. I'd read Moominland Midwinter as a kid and really enjoyed it on a re-read. Moomintroll wakes up mid-hibernation and can't go back to sleep so leaves the family home and explores the alien wintery Moominvalley. It's quite fun and has some great characters, like the traghic and scary Groke who just wants to be warm, but extinguishes all warm things it sits on. It's the best Moomin book I've read and I've read most of them.

ales from Moominvalley was a bit hit and miss. There was one short story about the Moomin family taking in an orphan girl who had been rendered invisible through living with relatives who constantly belittled her and put her down. I quite liked that. Moominmama is the lead Moomin character, which doesn't happen often. There's also a story of when Moominpappa goes sailing with the enigmatic Hattifatteners, who terrified me as a child, but now seem a lot more comic.

Comet in Moominland was one of the first Moomin books and is pretty weak. For example, Moomintroll and Sniff travel to the observatory in the Lonely Mountains and back to Moominvalley but cross completely different topography each way - crossing a dried up sea bed on the way back of an ocean that wasn't mentioned on the way there.

One thing all the Moomin books have in common is that I can't shake the feeling I am reading an in-joke. The characters are obviously based on people Tove Jansson knew and no doubt her family and close friends wet themselves laughing when they read the stories, but for me that was frustrating because I felt excluded somehow.

A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness
This isn't really about a monster. It's about cancer and loss and the darkness of grief. It's ostensibly for kids. Someone who knows more than me about bereavement said it was one of the best things they had ever read about it.

The Red Pony - John Steinbeck
A depressing set of stories about not making promises you can't keep, and not setting your heart on something that is out of your control to have - like promising a boy a red pony of his own when there is every danger the pony will get sick and die, which of course, it does. Set on a ranch on California in the early part of the twentieth century, the description of living there feels authentic. I like Steinbeck's writing style, but this is a short book and as such sometimes feels a bit superficial even though it is dealing with deep themes. This particular edition came with an essay about the book as a preface, which I didn't read until afterwards. This proved a wise move as it was chock full of spoilers from the get go.

So, that was my year in fiction.

2015 in review: Books I read by Douglas Coupland

I've been logging (and rating) the books I read for a number of years. In the past I've listed the ones I've given a five star rating to (five being my arbitrary maximum), but I haven't listed my yearly reading for some reason. So, here starts a new tradition!

I've grouped these in rough categories rather than list them in order. I've read six Douglas Coupland's novels this year, so he has his own post to kick this off, for no other reason than it's my blog and I can do what I like.

Miss Wyoming
Susan Colgate is a reluctant beauty pageant winner who gets a chance to escape from her monstrous 'pageant mom' when her plane crashes and she can walk away. When she returns to public life a year later she attracts the attention of a film producer who went through a similar process by giving all his possessions away. It's an interesting study of how success ends up owning you. I wouldn't rate it as one of Coupland's best novels, but it was surprisingly upbeat and ended on a more hopeful note than most.

Life After God
This isn't really a novel; more a collection of sort-of fiction that kind of ties together. It was full of amazing quotes. I listed some here. One featured in a talk I gave in the summer.

Hey Nostradamus
This was devastatingly beautiful. It's really four stories, starting with the victim of a high school shooting who is secretly married and pregnant. Then it cuts to her secretly widowed husband several years later, then to his new partner, and finally to his religious fanatic father. I found it profound in its analysis of the way the pursuit of religious holiness ends up corrupting people and turning them into terrible human beings. This quote stood out: "There can be an archness, a meanness in the lives of the saved, an intolerance that can colour their view of the weak and the lost. It can make them hard when they ought to be listening, judgmental when they ought to be contrite." (p.28) I also used a quote from this book to begin my tribute to my Grandma at her funeral.

Worst. Person. Ever.
This was fantastically funny and vulgar. Raymond Gunt is a freelance TV cameraman and literally the worst person ever. He regards himself very differently, of course. Given the opportunity of a wonderful job in a tropical paradise he jumps at it, but then falls victim to a sequence of amusingly horrible events, many of them caused by his own terrible personality, which makes his suffering very enjoyable to read. Very different from Coupland's other novels, but brilliant.

All Families Are Psychotic
This is probably the maddest Coupland story that I've read, a real whirlwind of twists and shocks. A female astronaut is waiting to blast off on a shuttle mission, while her utterly dysfunctional family try to make their way to the launch site. The astronaut's mother is the most interesting character with a fairly nihilistic take on life. Throw in an eccentric European multi-millionaire, a cure for AIDS, and hijinks with crims and it remained unpredictable right to the end. Not my favourite of his novels, but pretty good.

The Gum Thief
Roger works in Staples. He's in his early 40s and the reason he works there is simple: his life has fallen apart. His much younger co-workers become the inspiration for him to start writing a novel. Weaved into the novel are several of his real-life experiences. One stand out thought was "Where does personality end and brain damage begin?" (I've thought that about a few people since reading this.) I really quite liked this book. It moved at a more relaxed pace than All Families Are Psychotic (thankfully) and made me think a bit. If I had one criticism, he has a character leave North America to go and visit Europe, which he's done in previous books. I know it's to make juxtapositions and take the characters out of their comfort zones, but does it always have to be Europe? And if it does have to be Europe, does it have to be London or Paris or wherever? Why can't it be Wales or another lost corner of the old world?

If you only read one of these... read Hey Nostradamus. Particularly if you are of a religious persuasion.

The big 2015 Christmas Card Audit

Now in it's 4th year! (See 2012, 2013 and 2014)

No preamble. I'm just going to jump right in...

Total number of cards: 103 (up from 91 in 2014 and arresting a 3 year decline)
Hand-made / home-produced cards:  7 (same as 2014)
Cards with detachable tree decorations: 1 (also same as 2014)

Cards sold in aid of charity (or fundraising): 60 (up from 47 in 2014)
Total number of charities represented: 39 (It was 40 in 2014) 
Main charity represented: British Heart Foundation (9 cards)
The top performers: BHF (9), Diabetes UK (8), Traidcraft etc. (7), Macmillan (5), Leprosy Mission and Sue Ryder (both 4), Cancer Research UK and Fareshare (both 3).
Marks and Spencer cards: 7 (these promote the Woodland Trust but aren't 'charity' - one did also raise funds for good causes)
Notable newcomer: had not heard of Perennial, which looks after destitute horticulturalists (no really) or the Roald Dahl's Marvelous Children's Charity before
'Political' fund-raising cards: 0

Themes
Religious-themed cards: 45 (massive increase from 27 in 2014)
In a crossover category correlation, 31 of the religious cards were also raising money for charities.
Cards featuring the Nativity: 22
Christmas story 'characters':
Three kings: 11 (very popular compared to previous years)
The shepherds: 0 (no one liked the Shepherds this year)
The star of Bethlehem: 3
*Angels: 5 (new category)
There were also 2 cards with the cover message of "Joy to the World" and quite a few with lyrics from carols on.

Other themes 
'Peace': 1
Santa: 14 (up from 7 in 2014)
Penguins: 1
Various cartoon bears: 1 (Well down from the all time high of 12 in 2012)
Dogs in Santa Hats: 2! (There were 3 dog-centered cards in total, with 2 depicting a dog in control of some kind of transport)
Deer/reindeer: 1
Christmas decorations: 1 
Christmas trees: 5
*Christmas food: 2 (new category)
Robins: 3
Mistletoe: 1 
Winter scene/scenery: 7 (down from 14 in 2014, but even so this was most glitter-heavy category) 
Snowmen: 5
Owls: 1
It seems Like Santa was the big winner in the non-religious category. I guess if we were getting pedantic, we could say he is St Nicholas really and class him as religious. But then he's also a shill for Coca-Cola, so maybe not.

Messages
Cards that mention 'Christmas' on the front: 34 (almost the same as the 2014 total of 33). Only 2 of the 34 were religious themed. Cards seem to be either about the religious origins of the festival or explicitly say 'Christmas' but very rarely have both. I've noted before how this is kind of weird.

So, that's it. I'm going to scan some of my favourite Christmas cards and post them for your enjoyment later.

2015 in review: Films I watched on TV or DVD

I've decided to list all the films I watched for the first time in 2015. I've already listed the 19 I saw in the cinema in another post because otherwise this would be crazily long. As previous, I've listed these films in the order I saw them rather than in order of quality. As I saw them on TV or DVD, some of them are a few years old, although some were released this year.

Freebirds
A fairly poor animation about a group of turkeys who travel back in time to try and stop the tradition of eating turkey at Thanksgiving (and the resultant slaughter of turkeys in the present day). It had its moments, but none of them memorable enough for me to recall for this review. The notion that turkeys suffer because humans want to eat them isn't really explored in any depth, but this film could provide a useful discussion starter with kids about animal welfare and vegetarianism, if you wanted something like that. But then Chicken Run probably does it better.

Identity Thief
Melissa McCarthy steals Jason Bateman's identity and he has to track her down to clear his credit rating. McCarthy is an acquired taste, but I quite like her. Jason Bateman raises the film slightly and it's nice to see him playing the wronged victim for a change.

The Smurfs 2
Sequel to The Smurfs from a couple of years ago, For me, the new characters didn't really work that well, but Hank Azaria as Gargamel puts in another scenery-chewing performance that ensure the film is better than many animated sequels. It's not as good as the first one, which I really enjoyed.

Hoodwinked Too
I didn't think I'd ever see this sequel to Hoodwinked, as it got pulled from cinemas before release for some reason. However, a fellow animation fan had it on imported DVD and loaned it to us. It was very funny, like the original, although not all the characters returned, sadly. It also suffered from the trope of 'baddie was just misunderstood and decides to help the good guys after a short heart to heart conversation', which even in a cartoon isn't really that believable. But easily deconverted villain aside, it was generally well-scripted and quite fun.

10 Years: The Reunion
A cheapie DVD we bought because it had Chris Pratt in it. (After Guardians of the Galaxy and Parks and Recreation, we got slightly obsessed with him.) So, about this film... It's basically the most photogenic bunch of friends who ever went to high school in America reunite for their reunion. Nothing much happens in the course of the film and there are no big questions here. Chris Pratt plays an obnoxious, high-spirited individual and gives some comedy value to the proceedings, but generally this is a forgettable film.

Delivery Man
I quite like Vince Vaughn and he lends a certain air of quality to this fairly average story that illustrates the 'great concept / poor story' conundrum that many films fall into. Vince plays a man who discovers his deposits in a sperm bank have been used to father over 500 children, many of whom are now joining together to find out who their biological father is. Unwisely, he starts to interact with them and it all gets a bit messy. Chris Pratt is his best friend and legal counsel and manages to steal the scenes he is in. Worth a watch, but not one for repeated viewings.

The Nut Job
Animated adventure featuring squirrels trying to steal enough nuts for winter after an accident wipes out their food supply. Covering similar ground to A Bug's Life and Over the Hedge and with a fairly obvious story, this was enjoyable, but not great.

The Five Year Engagement
Jason Segal proposes to Emily Blunt but then life gets in the way and the engagement drags on. It's a sort of anti-romantic comedy up until the happy ending. The stand out moment is Chris Pratt (again) doing a rendition of Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start the Fire' listing all Jason Segal's former girlfriends at the meal celebrating his engagement. Cringe-inducing but hilarious. Rhys Ifans is also great as a seedy professor with eyes on Emily Blunt.

Crazy, Stupid Love
Steve Carrell is known for slapstick comedy, but it's his darker turns where he really shines. However, he kind of stumbles through this slightly sad film. When his character's marriage breaks down, he comes under the tutelage of ladies man Ryan Gosling who turns him into a hit with the ladies that doesn't help with the hurt and loss he is feeling. There's a twist at the end I didn't see coming and also a highly inappropriate plot-line involving someone taking nude photos of themselves. Despite an almost happy resolution, the film left me feeling a bit gloomy.

Mr Peabody and Sherman 
A big-budget flop and it's not hard to see why. The script cuts so many corners I imagine it was printed on circular paper. There's a villain who is a villain for no other reason than the plot needs a villain. Characters switch allegiances way too easily. The jokes don't work. It feels criminal to waste the talents of Ty Burrell (Phil from Modern Family) in this, but this is the second poor film I've seen him in after the Muppets sequel. Maybe he doesn't have what it takes to make the leap to the big screen.

Quantum of Solace
I watched this on TV to fill in the gap before going to see Spectre. It was alright. Not really sure it added much to the Bond mythos at all. The trope for the Daniel Craig era Bond films tends to be the women he sleeps with end up dead. It happens in this one too as Gemma Arterton gets drowned in oil. Bond doesn't seem to care. The next conquest will be along in a minute. It also suffered from the villain's base having 'Death Star syndrome' as the whole building blows up with the minimum of effort.

Cinderella
Disney's live action version of their cartoon. I really liked this, mainly for the theme of 'Have courage and be kind' - what a great motto! - and for Helena Bonham Carter as the Fairy Godmother. I don't like watching cruelty on-screen so actually found wicked stepmother Cate Blanchett quite hard to watch. They also made Prince Charming into an actual person with his own moral dilemmas. So, all told, well worth seeing.

Elf: Buddy's Musical Adventure
This is an animation using songs from the stage show and the plot-line of the film, Elf. Confused? Well, it's enjoyable nonetheless. The animation is pretty good. The songs are pretty funny. A good film for repeat Christmas-time viewings.

Home
This animation didn't do that well at the box office but I really liked it. The main character, an alien called Oh who is voiced by Jim Parsons (Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory), is a bit annoying, but bearable. The plot isn't totally unique but has enough charm to get past that. The bad guys have a reason for being bad guys, which gives the film an unexpected turn, and overall, this is different and funny enough to justify watching it more than once.

The Muppets: Letters to Santa
Before the Disney-backed revival the Muppets released occasional straight to DVD films. This one is from 2008. It's not terrible, but it's not brilliant either. The film title tells you what you need to know. There's a fun musical number in a post office. Uma Thurman and Nathan Lane appear in cameos. The late Richard Griffiths plays Santa. There's a heart-warming moral, as you'd expect.

Maleficent
Disney's live action retelling of Sleeping Beauty that explores the story of the villain, Maleficent. Some grown up themes of greed and betrayal, loss and vengeance, and a pre-Frozen exploration of the idea that a 'true love's kiss' might not be from a handsome prince. Overall I was impressed with the film. Angelina Jolie is other-worldly as fearsome faerie queen Maleficent, and Sharlto Copley plays the King, and father of Sleeping Beauty, with the right mix of wickedness and tragic doom.

Into the Woods
Disney does Stephen Sondheim in a musical mash-up of various fairy tales. It's very dark. We watched this on New Year's Eve and finished it just past midnight, but I'm counting it in the 2015 list. James Corden is a better actor than you might think and carries this. Emily Blunt is also very good. Johnny Depp steals his scene as the Wolf who encounters Little Red Riding Hood - "There's a difference between nice and good." I also like the Prince's line: "I was raised to be charming. Not sincere."

So, that's 17 films on TV or DVD, making for a grand total of 36 films I've seen for the first time this year. That's 3 a month. Not too shabby.

2015 in review: Films I saw at the cinema

I've decided to list all the films I watched for the first time in 2015. I've split them into cinema releases and movies I watched on TV or DVD, some of which are a bit older - those follow in another post because otherwise this would be crazily long. FYI, I've listed these films in the order I saw them rather than in order of quality.

Kingsman ~ The Secret Service
Comedic take on spy films based on a comic book. Despite the ludicrously over the top violence, I enjoyed this apart from the controversial brief sexual content right at the end. Although the big names in it were Colin Firth, Samuel L Jackson and Michael Caine, it also offered a rare cinematic outing for Mark Hamill, who didn't have much to do except look surprised.

Big Hero Six
Disney animation based on a comic book. A genius kid inherits his brother's robot nurse (naturally, being a Disney film, family members die) and turns it into a super-hero. It was a good film, but the supporting hero team weren't necessary and the villain's actions didn't really make any sense. So it turned into one of those films with some good central characters and not much of a plot.

Selma
Moving drama about the events in Selma, Alabama, during the height of the Civil Rights movement. It really made me aware of how the racism of powerful institutions worked to keep black people subjugated, and the sheer strength of character shown by Dr Martin Luther King and other leaders. I blogged about it here.

Chappie
South African-set science fiction action drama about a robot programmed to become self-aware. I quite liked this because it seemed quite realistic in portraying how a machine would feel when it came alive - shocked and awkward.

Avengers: Age of Ultron
Latest chapter in the Avengers franchise. Didn't really do much for me. Also about machine intelligence, but fell too easily into tropes. Why would a robot decide to create multiple copies of itself when theoretically it could just take over any machine going? Also it passed over spending time with characters in favour of MORE EXPLOSIONS!

Tomorrowland
Disney live action science fiction story starring George Clooney and Hugh Laurie. It had a surprising theme of hope in the future despite the way the world has been exploited and ruined to the point where it's on the brink of destruction.

Jurassic World
Basically, this is Jurassic Park, except the park and the dinosaurs are bigger. It had a more callous approach to human victims than the original, especially one character, an Executive Assistant, who was marked for death early on because she had a British accent. Chris Pratt starred, continuing his A-list trajectory that started with Guardians of the Galaxy last year.

Spy
Melissa McCarthy divides opinion. But this film was funnier than the trailers would have you believe. Also featured Alison Janney (yay) and Miranda Hart ( no, seriously) along with Jude Law as a slimy James Bond-spoofing chick magnet spy. But Jason Statham stole the show for sending up so many of his own films.

Moomins on the Riviera
A slow animated adventure based on an early Moomins story. If you like Moomins then it's one for you. It's European origins are very obvious.

Minions
The Despicable Me prequel. Being fair, it had some great set pieces. The first 20 minutes or so were fab. But the point about the Minions is they are knockabout background characters and asking them to carry a movie is a bit much. Although the showing we went to see did have the added bonus of a chap showing up in an adult Minion onesie, much to the embarrassment of his friends.

Terminator Genisys
I really enjoyed this. It took the Terminator mythos and turned it on its head. Arnie was back, which was the big seller, and they incorporated his real-world ageing well into the film. He was also deadpan funny. In many ways every Terminator movie is about the same thing - avoiding the fate that seems unavoidable, and this wasn't too different, but the plot was suitably complex to keep me interested. Matt Smith, former Doctor Who, has a small but important part as well.

Ant-Man
I knew very little about this going  in, except that it was Marvel Comics and the trailer looked good. It was very enjoyable, different enough from the main story arc to not feel like a retread of the same old ground (unlike Age of Ultron). In fact, the bit that jarred was the unnecessary attempt to tie in the wider Marvel franchise with an appearance by The Falcon. Although that did lead to a fun on-screen fight. Paul Rudd made a likeable leading man. Michael Douglas is always good value. And the final showdown involves a model train set. Could you ask for anything more?

Inside Out 
The summer's big Pixar movie, starring the emotions inside a little girl's head. As usual for Pixar, this is a top concept and very cleverly done. The basic story is the 'main characters are exiled and need to get back to their home' that worked very well in Toy Story, but didn't work so well here. It does have what I would contend is the cleverest joke to appear in any Pixar movie as a throwaway gag that I think most people missed. My main complaint, however, is the way Pixar allowed their main characters to shill for Sky and Subway, with them appearing in adverts before the film came on screen, That spoiled it for me. There was also an ad for the toys that gave away a key plot point. It would have been a better movie without these commercial spoilers.

Song of the Sea
This is my movie of the year. It's a beautifully drawn animation based on an old Irish legend about a little girl who is a selkie and the last hope of the faerie folk trapped in the human world. The artistry of the animation is gorgeous. The story deals with love and loss and I'm not ashamed to say I was blinking away tears at the end. Thoroughly recommended.

Suffragette
Before seeing this movie I hadn't fully grasped what it meant to be denied the vote and various rights on the basis of what genitals you were born with. I thought the subject matter was well-handled. It didn't glorify acts of terror, but it did made me think about how the boundaries blur. I recognise the sacrifices of the suffragettes, but setting off bombs and destroying property aren't really actions to endorse. Or are they? I've written more about it here.

Spectre
James Bond does what he does best - following his own orders, killing people mercilessly and exploiting vulnerable women for sex. I've written about glorifying a sexual predator here. On the other hand there was a lovely shot of a train in the North African desert, which if you like trains is worth watching the film for.

The Good Dinosaur
Pixar's first flop? Certainly the first Pixar film that I thought borrowed too heavily on other films. A bit of A Bug's Life as Arlo the dinosaur doesn't fit in and makes a mess of things, a bit of the Lion King (why do parents always die in Disney films?). The similarities to non-Disney franchises like Ice Age were also surprising. This film took ages to get to screen apparently and had been in production almost a decade. And yet, while beautifully animated even by Pixar's high, high standards, it was still let down by the story.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (seen x3)
Also known as Episode VII. This was great. Long review WITH SPOILERS here. My Mum loved it as well. In her words "So good to get away from the awful prequels."

Charlie Brown and Snoopy: The Peanuts Movie
I have to admit I found this a bit slow. It is a very loving tribute to the original TV cartoons but there isn't much of a script. However, Cathy is probably one of the biggest fans of Peanuts there is and she really enjoyed it, so that's all that really matters. I did enjoy Snoopy acting out his dogfights with the Red Baron, prompting phone calls from worried kids all over the neighbourhood to Charlie Brown.

And that's it. 22 trips to the cinema to see 19 different films makes for a very full year of movie-going.