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Archive for June, 2012

My Radio 1 Hackney Weekend

Posted in Concerts, Festivals, Summer 2012, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 30, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

I have been excited about the Hackney Weekend ever since my friends and I managed to get tickets for the Saturday entry, but the day before the D-day I was literally bouncing off the walls! So Saturday came and it was agreed that I meet my friend at Homerton station and we will just walk to the Hackney Marshes where the festival was held. You know how it is with the best laid plans? Yes, they never work the way they are supposed to.

So, after the public transport threw few sticks underneath my feet (no Overground trains in my part of London), I ended up at Stratford station. I knew that there were free shuttle busses supposed to run from Stratford, so I decided to go and check it out. And although I didn’t know from which stand the free busses went, it was very easy to spot the right queue – yes, it was the one with the biggest collection of wellies :D

Anyways, it was time to jump on the running part of the Overground and get myself to Homerton. By the look of the train, I wasn’t the only one who had this idea as the train was full of bright tops, hot pants and (yes you are guessing right) wellies :) By the looks of it, London was expecting sunny and hot weather.

Throughout the whole day I was impressed with how the event was organised and the attention to detail which started right when we stepped off the train. I don’t know how about you but I usually have only one question on my mind and one dread when on my way to a festival. The question is – how do I get there asap? and the dread – portable toilets. I have nothing against them, but with 50 000 people attending the festival on each day, you can only imagine that by the end of the day, they can get bit unpleasant. Well fear not, the toilets were kept clean throughout the day with plenty of toilet paper. Impressive, huh? And there were plenty of stewards to show you the way to and from the event as well as very efficiently managing the queue, that was actually moving forward in a good pace so we reached the first checks before we knew it. After that, just a ticket check and we were in!

Six stages and plenty of great music and us trying to make the plan of the day so we see everyone who we wanted to see. Yeah baby, the party was on!!!  Here is few pictures to map our journey through the day ;)

Leona Lewis kicking off the show on the Main Stage.

Leona released balloons with small pink hearts inside them. Shame it was so windy that they just passed the crowds and off they went over the fence to explore the Hackney…

Dance Arena with Annie Mac playing in the background.

Full BBC Radio 1Xtra Stage during great DJ Fresh performance.

Back at the Main Stage with Rizzle Kicks in full swing.

And the crowd is having great time!

Eric Prydz keeping the Dance Arena on its toes.

D’Banj next at 1Xtra Stage. This was my discovery of the day! My friend said that she must see him, so we went. Apparently D’Banj is massively popular in Africa and I could see that he has a massive follow-up here as well. The tent was packed and everybody was dancing and having a great time! What a vibe! Check out his new single – Oliver Twist – on YouTube, really catchy!

D’Banj in action.

Calvin Harris sweeping the Dance Arena off their feet.

Calvin Harris

Our next stop was Kasabian, which I was looking forward to see, but I was slightly disappointed with the performance. They just couldn’t get the crowd going for almost the full first half of their performance. I think they slightly underestimated the crowd and decided to play their new songs, which only the first ten or so rows of fans in the front knew and the rest of the people didn’t react at all. But the mood changed once they started playing their well known hits and everyone got energised again.

Kasabian

We also saw Example on Main Stage and Sean Paul on 1Xtra Stage, but way too busy dancing and enjoying myself to remember to take pictures :D

And the wait is over! Jay Z is on stage…

With Rihanna!

And after Jay Z’s second guest – M.I.A. – we got our final treat – Kanye West!!! What a treat and great finish of an amazing day!!!

Sorry guys that the last picture is bit blurry, but this is as much as I could do between jumping and screaming and the rain didn’t help either but who cared!

Well done Radio 1 and Hackney, you did yourselves proud!

Next stop: Coca-Cola Torch Relay Concert in Birmingham :)

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Westsiders by Tom Finn

Posted in Life story, Rating: 3 stars, Review copy, Short stories, tagged , , , , , on June 25, 2012 | 1 Comment »

I must admit, I am not a massive fan of short stories. Why? Purely because they are short. With short stories, it feels almost like you start somewhere in the middle and before you realise the story is over. Imagine yourself really wanting to go swimming, you get ready, the excitement builds up and as soon as you are at the pool you jump in only to realise that the water is way too cold and you just shoot out of there never to return. That’s how short stories feel to me, never getting the full satisfaction the same way I get from other books.

Said that, now and again I feel like I need to read something else, something different, something unexpected and it is in these times that I reach for short stories. So when I got the chance to read the Westsiders, I thought, why not. And I wasn’t disappointed. This collection of short stories is like a deluxe package of spa treatment for your soul. You find yourself slowly strolling through 1940′s/50′s Corner Brook in Newfoundland listening to the stories of some of its residents. The book is full of more or less loveable characters and you only get a sneak peek into a brief moments in their lives. And that’s when you realise that generations upon generations have dealt with the same problems as people are dealing with now. The only difference is that now we have more options how to deal with the situations such as unwanted pregnancy or secret relationship and running away with a boss.

As you can imagine, Corner Brook in the middle of last century must have been place small enough for everyone to know everyone and ultimately a place where everyone was involved in everyone’s business. So there is no surprise that the underlying theme for the stories is an escape from Corner Brook. It seems that there are truly just two options – either to escape or stay and be the major topic of the town’s latest gossip.

Overall, I had nice time with this book  and my only hope is that when the time comes and I pick another book of short stories, I will be as lucky as with this ones.

(review copy)

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Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad

Posted in Summer 2012, London Olympics 2012, Festivals, Concerts, Further studies, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 16, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Don’t worry, I am not going to talk about you or about the world, I am going to talk about ME for a change! Those of you who know me personally can stop reading here, as it is very unlikely that you will come across something that you don’t already know about me. The rest of you, please come in and welcome to my world. :)

First of all, I should point out that this summer is going to be socially the busiest summer I have ever had (so far! There is always room for improvement…). Between now and mid September I literally have two weekends free. That’s it!

It all started when my friend and I discussed ages ago how to enjoy this summer on very tight budget (because the Olympics are going to be money drain even if we try our best not to overspend) and still sample plenty of what London has on offer. And so we did a little bit of web surfing and started (madly) applying for free events with the rationale that if we apply for everything we find, then we are bound to get at least some tickets. Little did we know that our luck will strike several times…

As mentioned before, the summer is packed as it gets and I don’t even mention, that I need to fit there some reading for the blog and some reading for the book club (and the monthly meeting for that too). And with this in mind I stumbled upon this article. Once I read the article, the clogs in my head started spinning and jumping and doing all sorts of weird things and I realised that there is no way back. I simply HAVE TO use this opportunity and do some of the courses! And so I looked at the Coursera website and started shortlisting courses that I would be interested in. When the browser reached critical mass (full screen of tabs), a tiny voice of reason dared to voice the opinion that I can’t have it all at once as I have also other commitments like work (yep, bills don’t pay themselves apparently), sleep and blogging (among others). So with a heavy heart I limited myself to two courses per semester. Good, don’t you think? I was proud of myself because most of the courses start in September. Yes, you correctly guessed that ‘most’ was the key word in that sentence! As by a coincidence there are two courses starting on 23rd July! Now, bearing in mind my busy summer schedule, it would be sensible to agree with my voice of reason that it would be insane to apply for those. And that’s exactly what I did! No, I didn’t listen to the already self-conscious and traumatized voice of reason, oh no, that wouldn’t be me, I just went and applied. And the reasoning? Very simple, I can get these two courses out-of-the-way in order to start another two in September! Logical, don’t you think? More information about the courses (one of them requires some serious reading sessions) and my progress through them will be shared later in summer.

So word of warning, this blog is going to be partly hijacked by majority of the events as they come because I hope to have some nice pics, remarks/stories and excitement to share. Call me naïve, but I am still planning to do some reading and reviewing so I will have to play it by ear and see how this blog is going to cope with this variety ;) And I hope that you, my lovely readers, will enjoy the ride as well.

And I promise that by mid September this blog  will come back to be predominantly a book blog (well at least until next summer…).

Renny

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The May Round Up

Posted in 2012 challenge, Monthly Round Up on June 13, 2012 | 3 Comments »

Oh dear, it is the time to admit that May was bit of disastrous month for my reading. Nope, don’t worry, I am not going to list any reasons and definitely not any excuses! I shall just stick to the fact that I read just two books! Yep, just two!

So this is basically my virtual walk of shame and I can only hope that this isn’t going to be repeated any time soon.

So the winners in the category ‘Read in May’ are:

  1. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
  2. Dirty Little Angels by Chris Tusa

My aim for June is to finish as many books as possible from the ‘already started reading in previous months’ pile. Some books in this pile need just the final push (just like The Slap – see my review below) some need considerably more time spent with them, so stop talking and start working :)

Happy reading people, I know I am going to do plenty of that!

Renny

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The Slap: A Novel by Christos Tsiolkas

Posted in Book club, fiction, Life story, Novel, Rating: 1 star, tagged , , , , , on June 6, 2012 | 13 Comments »

I finally finished this book! You might not believe me, but this has been a long battle and the fact that I managed to finish it should earn me a pat on the back. My book club choose this book for our monthly read almost a year ago and right from the first page I knew that this is not going to be a pleasant read. Don’t get me wrong, I am not prude and I don’t mind a bit of bad language if it serves a good purpose in the story, but this book went completely off rails. Right from first paragraph you are bombarded with swearwords left, right and centre, no matter whether it is male or female character, old or young. It is almost as if no one can express themselves unless they swear. I am not sure to which extend is this a portrait of current australian society (I really hope it isn’t) and to which extend it is the author’s poor observational skills or/and influence of the people surrounding him. Or maybe the author is just trying too hard and the result is just appalling.

Apart the foul language, the book is filled with constant sex, abrupt bursts of unbelievable violence (nope, not talking about the slap itself) and a bit of a story line. Before I started to read this book I was hoping that it would offer a moral discussion about the slap itself, how different generations see it, how different cultures see it etc. but I couldn’t be more wrong! The book offers a precious little on this and the slap itself is just a minor event in the whole book. I really wonder why the author choose it as a title! Maybe it would be harder to market and sell so many copies if he had chosen a random swear word for the title – which would be much more appropriate if you ask me, because at least you would know that you are willingly buying a garbage.

In regards to the characters, well, neither of them is pleasant enough for the reader to care for them. They are a random bunch of greedy, angry, drunken, lecherous, lying, self-obsessed, woman-hating, homophobic and unbelievably racist people. I don’t think there is anything more to add to this.

As I said before, I started this book almost a year ago and managed to read seven out of the eight chapters and had to give up. I couldn’t take the abuse from the book anymore and it is not like me not to finish a book. But this one was particularly bad. Well, the book was looking at me from my bedside table for so long, that it was about a time to bite the bullet and finish it. And actually the last chapter wasn’t half as bad, definitely the best out of the book.

By the way, this book was a winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2009!!! Honestly, how was that possible is beyond me! Did any of the judges read the book?! I purely refuse to believe that the other books (runner ups) were worse than this one, because that would have been a disastrous year for the commonwealth books! I don’t approve any mishandling of books or damaging them on purpose but this one would be my first choice to throw in bonfire. I truly believe that future generations wouldn’t  miss much if this book was never written…

You can only imagine my shock when I read in one magazine that the ABC is making a drama series out of this book! First I dismissed it completely, but then I got curious to see how is the ABC going to tackle this material. And to be honest I quite liked the series! I was pleased to see that ABC more or less stayed true to the original material, they just really mellowed the language (you wouldn’t be able to broadcast the original no matter what time of the night), mellowed the excessive violence and the ever-present sex and made it an interesting series. All the actors played their part very well and I could see that they fit the descriptions from the book to a T.

So if you are still curious about The Slap and want to know the full story, then I would recommend to avoid the book like a plague and rent out the ABC series on a DVD.

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