Best And Worst Books I Read In 2012

[Sorry this is all text; I will add some pretty pictures later.]

Ok, well I’ve sort of done my best and worst films of 2012, so now it’s time for the books. But before that, I’m writing a few days before the Oscars winners are announced and looking down the nominations I see that once again I have not seen any films on the list. I even somehow managed to miss the mini-Simpsons short which is nominated in Best Short Animated Film; but seeing as I love The Simpsons [the first ten years or so, at least], I hope this wins in its category. Then it might be on the telly again!

 

Right, to the issue of the day. My best novels of 2012; I’ve sorted them into rank, with 1) being the best. Again, please note, these novels weren’t all published in 2012, they were just published in a limited edition in my brain in 2012. Here we go. My favourite novel that I read in 2012 was;

 

1)      THE DEAD ZONE [1979] by Stephen King. Unusually for a Stephen King title, I didn’t know a great deal about this before I read it; neither had I seen the film adaptation. There’s a link here > See all my reviews where there’s a long and spoiler-ridden review of mine for the book. THE DEAD ZONE is a great book, and the psychic supernatural stuff in it isn’t necessarily [NOTE TO SELF: learn how to spell] the best thing about it. Superb writing and excellent characterisation here. It is certainly among the top notch of King’s novels I have read, and I even read a fair chunk of it after a drinking session, when I usually forget how to read, such was its excellence. Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys good writing.

 

2)      MOONFLEET [1898] by J.Meade Faulkner. I was first given this book to read at school in English, and, like most books at school, I didn’t like it. Boring, old-fashioned, can’t be bothered to read it. But something must have stuck, and over the years I found myself occasionally thinking about it, and when I saw a falling-to-bits copy in a charity shop I snapped it up and left it on my shelf for five years. Last year I finally read it; what an exciting, dramatic, compelling boys-own adventure story! The plot concerns a young boy and how he gets mixed up with smugglers and pirates treasure in the English coastal village of Moonfleet. It is an absorbing novel, and reading it made me feel like an excited boy again, instead of an old grumpy bugger. Very highly recommended, to boys of all ages.

 

3)      A WRITER’S LIFE [2011] by Eric Brown. This is a short [107 pages] novel masquerading as science-fiction, but in reality has tendrils of Lovecraftian horror throughout. It tells the story of Daniel Ellis, a writer and prolific reader who comes across a couple of books of Vaughan Williams, an author whom Ellis had not previously heard of. Ellis finds much to admire in the novels, and seeks out more by the author, slowly unravelling a mystery connecting three writers from different periods, and a bit of research and a series of coincidence soon guide Ellis to Williams’ isolated cottage, where local myths of strange events and hauntings abound. Will Daniel Ellis discover the truth, or will he find too much? This is very good, very readable and compelling and had me trying to guess the mystery, and I thoroughly enjoyed the journey of it. It’s a perfect book to get pulled into, and you could read it in one sitting.

 

4)      OF MUSCLE AND MAGIC [Published 2012] by Jonathan Strickland – Yes, this one’s by my friend Jonny, but wait a minute, it’s not a shameless plug [well, ok, it is a bit]; this short novel has made it into my top five on its own merit. The book was called THE TERROR ON THE ISLAND OF PAGZUIRE when I read it, and it takes the form of a classic sword’n’sorcery tale in the style of Fritz Leiber or Robert E Howard. It reminded me very much of Michael Moorcock’s 70’s novels, Corum, and Hawkmoon and all that; exciting, action-driven easy to read fantasy. OF MUSCLE AND MAGIC is about the same size as those Moorcock novels too, at around 40,000 words. The story concerns a demon who is devouring hearts, and the warrior Calin who attempts to destroy it. It is action-packed and is full of bright characters, sarcastic demons, imaginative monsters and real-ale drinking. It is only available as an e-book on Amazon or Smashwords for a dollar or two, but Jonny has very kindly put half of it [self-contained] on Smashwords for free. Why not download this for free, and see what you think. Truthfully, it could do with a little polish to make it gleam, but the occasional spelling mistakes and typos do not get in the way of the fantastic story. I loved it!

 

 

5)      THE WOMAN WHO WENT TO BED FOR A YEAR [2012] by Sue Townsend – I have loved Sue Townsend’s books since I was about twelve and first read THE SECRET DIARY OF ADRIAN MOLE AGED 13 ¾ . THE WOMAN WHO WENT TO BED FOR A YEAR is witty and clever social commentary; a fictional look at popularity and a celebrity-obsessed society. Mum Eva, after sending her twins off to University, after years of looking after them, feels tired and goes to bed, and decides to stay there and see what happens, relying on her family and complete strangers to see to her needs. She soon becomes a local celebrity, and it seems everyone wants a piece of her, when all she wants to do is have a good lie down. Funny, relavant, insightful, realistic, and humane. It’s not the best Sue Townsend [the ADRIAN MOLE series or THE QUEEN AND I are her best work; fantastic stuff], but it’s well worth a read.

 

And there we have my five novels of 2012; now for the bad books I read. I don’t really believe that any book is really terrible and a waste of time, so these aren’t worst books, as such, more disappointing ones. Often even a really bad book can be instructive to a writer. It can tell you how NOT to write, and it’s often a huge boost to read something [especially by a big-name author] and think, “That’s crap. I can write better that.”. It’s inspiring; if they managed to get that crap published, then there’s hope for you yet. It’s also good karma to check reviews of bad books on the interweb, and when you see that others too thought that particular book not very good, you can get the satisfaction of being correctly able to distinguish between good writing and bad.

The most high-profile “bad book” I read last year was ODD THOMAS by Dean Koontz. Again, there’s a lengthy review on my Amazon page, but briefly; it’s clichéd, slow, meandering, and full of just plain bad writing. Not  bad writing in the sense of unskilled, but bad in the sense that Koontz is trying too hard to impress. His sentences, his dialogue in particular is ridiculous and pretentious; it is some of the most grammatically perferct yet viscous and difficult prose I’ve ever encountered, like reading treacle. Read this;

"The air flash-dried my lips and brought to me that summer scent of desert towns that is a melange of superheated silica, cactus pollen, mesquite resin, the salts of long-dead seas, and exhaust fumes suspended in the motionless dry air like faint nebulae of mineral particles spiralling through rock crystal."

Woah, right. What a sentence! What about dialogue; read this, say it aloud;

"I've listened with my heart for so long I've periodically had to swab earwax out of my aortal valve."

Who talks like that in normal conversation? Do you talk like that? I bet you don’t. It’s just too clever, or it thinks it’s too clever. This is not just one pretentious character who speaks like this, but the whole bloody lot of them in the book. For me, it killed any realism; I had to struggle to finish the book. Incidentally, the story concerns a bloke who can see dead people, and is barely interesting as it is, without the awful prose to wade through. But what do I know; ODD THOMAS has become one of KOONTZ’ most popular characters and he has written half a dozen sequel novels, with a feature film due out sometime shortly. On Amazon or Goodreads, it gets potty reviews calling it the best book ever; there are some nay-sayers like myself but in general they are shouted down by the masses.

It’s not that I dislike Koontz. I have read and really enjoyed MIDNIGHT, THE TAKING, LIGHTNING, THE VOICE OF THE NIGHT, HIDEAWAY, MR MURDER and more. But it seems in his more recent novels he has changed his voice to this awful, dragging, difficult style. I started LIFE EXPECTANCY a few years ago and couldn’t finish it; I have half a dozen or so of his fairly recent books sitting on my bookshelf, as yet unread. I don’t think I’ll be trying them anytime soon. Yet ODD THOMAS would have sold shedloads, and continues to do so, especially with a film coming out. Well, fairplay to Koontz, but ODD THOMAS was most definitely that, ODD!

 Well, that turned into a bit of a rant, but never mind; prime blog material.

 

I read a critical book on fantasy novels last year; MODERN FANTASY:THE 100 BEST NOVELS [1988] by David Pringle. The 100 novels that Pringle selected were an interesting list, very eclectic and varied, and unusual choices. The problem was, that the short piece [1-3 pages] on each book told you the entire plot, often including the ending, and discussed them in a needlessly highbrow and subtextual way. There were books there that I may have read at some point, but now Pringle has told me the plot, I may not bother. I really like books about books, but this one was really disappointing.

 

I read a number of trashy creature-feature novels every year; nature on the rampage, killer bugs, fish, scorpions, budgies etc, that kind of thing. They are often not very good, but I’m fond of them. Anyway, this year was a bad year for creature-features; THE CATS by Nick Sharman [1977] has an MOD-backed experiment into a new bacterial weapon go awry. The bacteria is injected into test-subjects, a laboratory full of cats, which, when the temperature rises, begin to turn into mad, crazy, but highly intelligent carnivorous pussies. Before you can say “Whiskas”, those couple of dozen animals have somehow turned into thousands of the furry blighters and go on the rampage. Cue vignettes of caricatured characters who get killed by the cats, then larger scenes of full-on action where vast oceans of cats gain ground against helicopter bombings and flame throwers (!), climaxed by a quick but drawn-out ending that equally makes little sense. Sharman appears to know or care little for cats as they are entirely lacking in any character or feline traits. The vast hordes of creatures he writes about are entirely interchangeable; he could have written of dogs, foxes, frogs, or rabbits with very minimal changes. I got the impression that Sharman didn’t actually like or respect cats much, and chose his “creatures” simply because they sounded so similar to RATS, which indeed they could very easily have been. Sharman’s human characters also are stereotypes, with questionable motives, and even more questionable dialogue, and I found it difficult to differentiate between them. In fact, I just generally found this book difficult; it is full of action, yet boring, and at a slim 160 pages, seemed to take ages to read.

 

I first read THE PIKE [[1982] by Clifford Twemlow] when I was still at school, and enjoyed it. It’s a novel [of only about 45,000 words] that is best read in your teens, and perhaps kept there. Where something like THE RATS retains its power and depth, THE PIKE, unfortunately, has lost its bite. Story; something is attacking and killing swans, fishermen and tourists on Lake Windermere. Surprisingly, bearing in mind the title of the book, this turns out to be a giant pike. A journalist, a trio of adventurers and a Scottish stereotype join forces to hunt it down and destroy it, while local traders try to hamper their efforts with a few fisticuffs. This is JAWS with flaws; this is basic, unimaginative story-telling. Exposition-heavy attempts at character are made, but in the end the players are one dimensional, and interchangeable; only the giant Scot, Ulysees, is at all memorable, and the climactic finale turns out to be both a bit of a cheat, and a damp squib. One event, on the final pages shows a bit of life, but it’s all too little, too late.

THE PIKE isn’t really a very good book, yet I am quite fond of it. It reminds me of hunting through piles of paperbacks on windy market stalls, and finding a book such as this, would give me a happy delight. I rather liked this as a teenager, and this time round I read it in less than a day and on holiday in the Lakes, hoping for extra atmosphere, which I didn’t receive. Oh well, not all killer fish books can be brilliant, can they?

The cover of THE PIKE proudly promises “Soon To Be A Major Film”; alas, it was not to be, despite celebrity author Twemlow and star Joan Collins trying to rustle up the funds for it.

Blimey, I’ve waffled on about books for 2200 words. I could have been farting about with my novel in that time. Congratulations if you’re still reading. Curiously, have any readers [curiously, have I got any readers?] got any particularly bad books to unreccomend. And yes, I know I can’t spell recommend. Although I may just have. Oh-kay, Next Time Gadget...

 

RSS Test

Well, this is just a quick post to say there's lots more stuff on the way, eventually. Also, this is a test to see if the RSS feed thing works. I'm trying to get the titles of my posts to pop up under my blog address on my Smashwords page, but either it's fiendishly difficult to do, or else I'm really stupid, or possibly an exciting mixture of the two.

So, I'll see if this new post pops up. Which it probably won't. If anyone can help with this, it would be appreciated by a stupid person.

Incidentally, while I'm here, my new story is now available on Smashwords. Which you'll already know if you came here from there. Ah well, such is life.

Silly post.

Ooops, I've accidentally posted a new post at the end of my last post, or made the last post a longer post, or something like that. If you've read the earlier post, there's some new stuff there, but if you've already read this post and the updated last post, then, er, there isn't. Hey ho!

Bests And Worsts Of 2012; And A Pledge

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Well, I know its February now, but here's a little review of my best and worst films and books of 2012. Note that most of, if not all, these titles weren't released in 2012, but I just watched or read them.So its not a review of 2012 as such, but a review of my 2012. It might be interesting or it might not, but it should give you an idea of the crap films I am watching and the silly books I read.

Films: I watched 222 films last year. I try to watch a film early on a morning if poss, either a DVD or something I've taped off the telly. Some mornings I don't have time for a film, and sometimes, if my wife is away for instance, I might watch more, or I might be watching a TV series or something [more of which later].

Anyway, here are the ten best films I watched last year;

     1) AVATAR (2009) [great hard tech epic sci-fi, rewatched on TV]

  

     2) THE EVIL DEAD (1982) [watched this on Horror Channel; its been ten years or so since I last saw it and it seemed like almost a different film. Perhaps in the past, I had been watching a cut version. Brilliant, gory, amusing horror fun.There is a remake in the works, I believe. Hope its not crap!]

     3) THE PEARL OF DEATH (1944) - I rewatched most of these old Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films this year, and I've loved them for ages. THE PEARL OF DEATH is my personal pick, I think, based on Doyle's story THE ADVENTURE OF THE SIX NAPOLEONS. Mesmerising, brilliant stuff.

    4) RAWHEAD REX (1986) based on the very good [but different] short story by Clive Barker, this is basically a silly monster romp set in Ireland. But I loved it when I was 12, and I love it today. So there. -->

    5) THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE (2005) is a very well made film mixing exorcismic horror themes with a gripping courtroom case. Very highly reccomended indeedy.

     6) TIMECRIMES (2007) - The very first film I watched this year, just after midnight had struck and the chinese lanterns were blowing about in the wind. TIMECRIMES is an excellent Spanish film about time-travel, and how an ordinary man, by being curious, gets himself in a bit of a pickle. Don't let the subtitles put you off; this   is brilliant small-scale science fiction.

   7) THE LAST EXORCISM (2010) - You might be thinking I'm a huge fan of exorcism pictures, but, no, not particularly. Most of them are terrible. This film, in a documentary BLAIR WITCH found footage style asks many fascinating questions about the reality or otherwise of exorcisms, and is a thrilling watch, apart from a slightly silly ending.

   8) DARBY O'GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE (1959) - is a charming Disney-ish film [it might be Disney, I can't remember] set in Ireland, exploring the rural myths and legends of Irish mythology; things such as leprechauns, the banshee, and the death coach [in a very atmospheric and scary climax]. It has Sean Connery in an early role and is a wonderful family film. I've seen this half a dozen times or so since I was a kid, and this year I introduced it to my wife. Excellent stuff. [As an aside, I once talked to an old guy in the pub where I live who swore blind that when he was a young 'un in Ireland, he experienced the Banshee wail. I always mean to ask him more about it sometime, but I'm worried he'll think I'm taking the piss.]

   9) TAKEN (2008) - I saw this for the first time this year after remembering lots of good talk about it. Yeah, it's an exciting action movie, made Liam Neeson into an action hero, and cheered up my morning.

   10) BLACK WATER (2007) I bet you thought I'd forgotten about giant crocodile films, didn't you?

To be fair to it, this is simply a larger than usual crocodile film, hence much more believable. It's supposedly based on a true story, and sees some tourists take a ride up an isolated backwater in Australia. The croc strikes, the boat sinks, their guide eaten, and the family take to the trees with the hungry aggressive croc playing games with them down below. This is very tense, very enjoyable, and my wife was watching through her fingers. [Although, saying that, she watches Postman Pat through her fingers.] Highly enjoyable, a proper thriller, and I promise that the croc never once jumps up and eats a plane or destroys a nuclear submarine or nothing silly like that.

 Right, that's it for now. Duty calls. I'll go through my worst films I watched in 2012 next time, then try and do the books. It'll take me all year to get this bugger done.

WORST FILMS I HAVE SEEN IN 2012

Right, I've got a list of ten here that I've spent too much down narrowing down. I'm going to go backwards, so that the top one here, number 10), is marginallly better than the poor film at number 1). Hey ho, here we go; the worst 10 out of 222.

     10) BLACK FOREST (2012) - One of the most modern films I've seen this year and its on the 'crap' list. This has a group off odd tourists being led on a tour into a forest, where characters from classic fairytales live. It's wierd and strange, and I think I've blocked it from my memory.  

     9) THEM [ILS] (2006) - This French film is basic hoodie-horror, and appeared to do well in Europe and film festivals. I found it boring, which is the worst thing a film or book can possibly be. The subtitles aren't the problem; just the rest of the film.

    8) BELOW (2002) is another film that perhaps doesn't deserve to be here, as maybe its just my personal opinion as to its crapness. BELOW is maritime horror; spooky goings-on in the cramped and stressful confines of a submarine. It just didn't work for me; once again, boring.

    7) BIKINI GIRLS ON ICE (2009) could have been a guilty pleasure, a boys film, an antidote to rom-coms. Instead it was flat, dissapointing, moronic, dull, cliched tripe. The problem is that from a film like BIKINI GIRLS ON ICE, the viewer doesn't really expect much anyway, but even those low expectations are not met. This film left me cold [see what i did there!].

   6) MESA OF LOST WOMEN  (1953)  is a crazy B-movie starring Jackie Coogan who became famous as Uncle Fester in THE ADDAMS FAMILY TV series. This odd film features a mad scientist attempting to create super-spider-women by mixing up pituatary stuff from spiders and loose women. Or something. It sounds great, but just, regrettably, isn't. The giant spider is fun, but looks like it has fallen out of an oversized cornflake box. If you really must, you can watch this film in a number of places online, but it's actually quite boring, so I'll just post a few pics from the film here, and thus save you an hour. How kind am I?  [As you can see from the picture above, the lady and the spider are doing their syncronized press-up routine, before posing the picture below, their entry into the 'Bizzare Giant Spider Porn' monthly competition. ]

    5) POLICE ACADEMY 6: CITY UNDER SEIGE (1989) - Well, when I was young a youngster I used to quite like these POLICE ACADEMY films. I have fond memories of my dad getting them on video in the mid-to-late eighties. They were funny, ha-ha, and sometimes even a little bit rude. I watched the first POLICE ACADEMY a few years ago and was a bit disappointed it had lost most of its charm. POLICE ACADEMY 6, however, is certainly the nadir of these films, although I have yet to see number 7, MISSION TO MOSCOW. PA6 is a travesty of the PA films. It has the same tired characters doing the same tired plot with the same tired jokes. The film made me tired, and I had just gotten up. Another piece of childhood destroyed.

   4) PARANORMAL ASCENDANCY {AKA 3 A.M.} (2008) - Oh dear, now we're getting to the really crap ones. PARANORMAL ASCENDANCY [which, creepily, has the same initials as POLICE ACADEMY] is just that; really crap. It is made like a TV home movie, but with the flair, adeptship and quality control as an old diahroetic camel. This, truly, is among the most badly-produced films I have ever seen. The sound is baffling, the effects are baffling, the story confused me almost from the start and then later baffled me. Just for posterity, here's my entire review from Amazon;

1.0 out of 5 stars AKA Paranormal Craptivity, 3 Dec 2012

By 

Quetzalcoatl78 (Durham, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paranormal Ascendancy [DVD] (DVD)

Ok, first of all, bear in mind that I have a very high tolerance for really crap films. I'm not talking about your under-par Hollywood blockbuster like WILD WILD WEST or LOST IN SPACE; I'm talking really rubbish films that are at the bottom of the 'Rubbish' pile. Well, when I noticed the terrible reviews on Amazon for PARANORMAL ASCENDANCY, I remembered it was in my ever-increasing pile of unwatched DVD's {I think I got it at a Pound Shop]. Thinking, well, it can't be that bad, after all, I've watched THE CAVERN, I hunted down the DVD and sat down to watch with my beer.

All of the comments in the one-star reviews are valid; the film is very cheap, the sound is terrible, mumbly, one toned, unhearable stuff; one minute the microphone seems to be attached to the actors face, the next scene it could be up their bottom, for all you can hear of the dialogue. The production values are so cheap and careless that they could have been betterred had the film been made, for example, by an intelligent bunch of crayfish. The whole package is cheap, shoddy, embarrassing stuff that you would cringe at if you'd made yourself when you were 12 and drunk. And, yes, of course, it's all just a ploy to cash in on the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY bandwagon. In fact, I bet this is just a very amateur home movie, spotted by an enterprising movie-bloke, given a trendy new title and dashed out to make a few quid.

But wait a minute; this film has a plot, I think, at least the bits I could hear did, and it goes roughly like this; a bloke tells his mate his flat is haunted so his mate goes to have a look, and a 'ghost' [a funny light] tells him something bad is going to happen to his girlfriend. Next thing I knew everything went strange by a lake and a water-demon [a funny light again] is trying to kill people. There's a bit of a twist in the story at the end, but by this time I was thinking the twist was that I'd actually watched it to the end.

To try to be fair to the film, it has an ember of an idea in there somewhere, but there's not much PARANORMAL anything in the film, and the truly incompetent film-making makes the idea almost impossible to sift out. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, the first film at least, is by no means a great film, but is far far superior to this knock-off that you'll just want to knock off.

I was going to give it two stars, because I did watch it to the end, and it had an idea in there, but to be honest, I don't want to any more. '

     So there you go. Incidentally, on Amazon the film has had 13 reviews and has a fantastic average of 1.2 stars. Fantastic!

   3) CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA (1961) -

I know what you're  thinking, you're thinking "But what can be worse than PARANORMAL ASCENDANCY?"

 

 This is an early Roger Corman film about drug dealers coming across a lendary sea monster. Look at the monster; it is a man covered in fluff with ping pong balls sellotaped in his eye holes. The CREATURE is in the film for about two minutes, and the rest of the flick is very dreary, sleepy stuff. But what a great monster!

   2) THE RIG (2011) ; Again, an Amazon review of mine, for your perusal;

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars What? Sorry, what did you say? Pardon? Excuse me? Eh? 5 July 2012

By Quetzalcoatl78

Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase

 

Wow! THE RIG. Just look at the cover and the story writes itself. Brilliant, I thought; I love this sort of crap, was this film made especially for me.

Some oil-riggers who think they're the ones in ARMAGEDDON get trapped on a [surprise!] oil rig. Drilling for [surprise!] oil, they disturb a nasty creature-feature. Someone goes missing, the creature starts [surprise!] killing them off. There's lots of mumbling then it's finished!

Surprise! I hated it.

I didn't hate it for its predictable plot, or its slow start. I don't hate it for its ripping-off of many previous monster flicks, or for its dodgy acting by the extended family of the director. I didn't hate it because the DVD cover indicates a huge sea-monster type beast, and all we get is an underfed-bloke in a CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON-type costume jumping up and pirouetting across the screen in the dark. I didn't hate it for its poorly-concieved multi-tiered ending. I hated it because any enjoyment I may have got from an under-par B-movie [which I love], was sucked away like a whirlpool by the fact that half the time I couldn't hear what the hell was bloody going on.

Acting means acting; why do they mumble their lines? Why bother having any character development at all when all the dialogue might as well be delivered by the flowerpot men. Often, films have subtitles for the hard of hearing. Here we required Subtitles for the Hard Of Speaking! I watch and enjoy loads of micro-budget horror and sf [and really applaud low-budget film-making] but I always believe there are two cardinal rules for film-makers; Don't make it boring, and don't make it sound like its been filmed underwater.

If you have super Spiderman hearing skills, perhaps add another star if you like this sort of thing. Otherwise read "NICOR!", a trashy 80's so-so horror novel by Peter Tremayne that is eerily similar to this. It's equally not amazing, but at least you can hear all the dialogue!

 

  1) THE CAVERN (2007) - I must have seen hundreds of pretty bad films in my time but THE CAVERN seriously is among the worst. A moronic attempt to copy the success of GOOD films like THE DESCENT or THE CAVE, I bought this, cheaply, to see if it was really as bad as other reviewers said it was, 'cos thats the sort of idiot I am. Guess what; its terrible.

 

 The story may have worked, but I wasn't sure what the story was; everything was far too dark, the actors are great at mumbling, seriously a deaf blind unfortunate could have enjoyed this film as much as I did, and the ending just confused me even more. Of the 222 films  I watched in 2012 THE CAVERN was by far the worst. On Amazon, the film has around 20 reviews with a well-deserved average of 1.2 stars. On one of the reviews on IMDB, someone has praised it for being a realistic caving film, and, having caved myself, [I fancied caving myself while watching this!], I can also agree that watching the film was like sitting in a damp, dark, smelly, muffled, freezing cave for an hour and a half. Very realistic indeed.

 

 

     My Books, Best and Worst of 2012 will follow in another post, 'cos to be honest, I've wasted all afternoon doing this and my eyes have gone funny.