Floating my boat

Following Northern Monkey's recent post on what is rocking her world, here are a few things, I'm liking:

Saxondale - Steve Coogan's recent comedy. Ok, so it Alan Partridge laugh-out loud stuff, but we have just watched the whole series on C1 (Homechoice's television on demand channel) and I thought it was pretty good. Perhaps it does require some knowledge of classic rock and the behaviour of its devotees to fully appreciate it, but I did find it rather funny.

'A Brighter Beat' by Malcolm Middleton - the new album from former member of Arab Strap (also Mr Lauren Laverne). The OH bought an advance copy of this last week, played it to me the other day and I've relistened to it on the way into work this morning. I was initially sceptical of his favoured song 'We all going to die' but it was, as promised, a surprisingly cheery number (comfort in the universal human condition perhaps?, which must be the most pretentious thing I've ever written). According to the review in the Metro this morning, MM described the album as pop music for people who hate pop music, which is a pretty good description.

House - I resisted watching this for so long, because I really don't like medical dramas (although for some reason the deaths in detective programmes don't bother me). But I caught one episode of it late last year and actually it was pretty good. This weekend was House weekend on the Hallmark channel so for want of anything better to do, I watched umpteen episodes of it yesterday (I didn't sit around all day - I did go for a swim in the morning)


'The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat' by Oliver Sacks - I've been meaning to read this for years, but have only gotten around to it now (courtesy of ReadItSwapIt). It is fascinating, moving and disturbing. Some of the ailments are at first almost comical (as in the title story) but ulimiately tragic in the cases were no solution could be found. The human brain is a truly wonderous thing, although perhaps reading this whilst watching House, I'm in danger of medical overload.