18 July 2008

Media Diet week 29

Ten shocking weeks since I last did this. Ok, ok, I have the excuse of a house move and a mountain of work, but...

Press: here we go. Not much has changed on my reading front. My daily newspaper round is still the Guardian, the Sun and BBC News Online. I hate the Sun's online revamp - you can tell it's been tweaked yet it doesn't look radically different. In fact, the left-hand menu makes it even harder to locate sections now and the whole site remains frustratingly slow when it comes to loading pages. Methinks they wasted a lot of money for nowt. Elsewhere, I have a pile of unread Press Gazettes building up. I simply haven't had time. Will try to blitz them this weekend.

Blogs: I'm enjoying Neil Baker's return to form after a long silence. He always has interesting things to say (see his post on why he never reads his work after it's been published, for example. I've also discovered the blog of a colleague who, like me, both writes and edits for a living. Check out Ms_Well.Words for her take on the news.

TV/radio: so, no more Doctor Who, the Nancys are finished, the Apprentice has been picked and the evenings are looking decidely quiet. If it wasn't for EastEnders, I'd be down the pub 7 nights a week. I toyed with watching Bonekickers, but managed to miss both the first two episodes. On the other hand, I stumbled into Britain's Missing Top Model and am really enjoying it. Usually, I find BBC3 irritating and dumbed down but for once it is screening an intelligent insight into the reality of living with a disability and the prejudices the disabled face on a daily basis. We could do with more telly like this. (I want Sophie to win, btw.)

Books: as with the press, there's not been a lot of spare reading time for books. Suffice to say I've just finished a crime novel so bad I contemplated lining the cat tray with the pages. I vaguely recall reading a review of In Cold Daylight somewhere, that insisted it was unputdownable. Au contraire. It was clichéd, badly copy-edited (I was endlessly distracted by shit punctuation) and the plot was based on conjecture in the protagonist's head. Thank gawd I have the latest Mark Billingham to get stuck into...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Wordsmith. Thanks for the mention of my blog. I'm a regular reader of yours.

Unknown said...

Hey Neil, nothing like a mutual blog love-in! I really missed yours while you were off air so it's good to see you back again.