London, the modern babylon and patchwork histories.

Julien Temple’s documentary London, the modern babylon is, like it’s subject, a cacophonous cornucopia of sounds and images.

Mixing archival and present day footage with interviews, the mode is an impressionistic sound and image patchwork of a city rather than a by-the-numbers portrait.

The result is overwhelming, but there are calming anchors to the experience, like the 106 year Londoner Hetty Bower recounting just a few of her personal memories.

I loved the freewheeling mixing of music with images from different eras. This is particularly effective when female fronted  punk group X-ray Spex are used for the soundtrack to the archival footage of the suffragette movement.

Recently I’ve been digging around in our own city’s rich history via our Heritage et AL blog one of the many blogs available on the Auckland Libraries website. One recent entry fascinated me, a colleague had collected 11 of her favourite maps of New Zealand. I loved seeing early incarnations of how either parts or the whole country have been visualised. There’s a ton of amazing archival photos, documents, maps and on and on…

Review: Siege by Simon Kernick [Jan]

A group of terrorists plot to take over a London hotel, using violence and bloodshed to control the hostages they have. Wolf is the leader of a group of fanatics and they have ensured the head of MI6 is one of the hostages.  The rest of the group are Fox’s men, and he has a slightly different agenda.  As bullets fly some guests hide while others try to escape.  The rest are rounded up and hope they live through the night.

Scope has just assassinated several people and is on his way out of the hotel when the hotel is taken hostage and he is trapped.  He comes across Abby and her son Ethan and rescues them from immediate death, then stays to protect them.  Elena is the newly engaged hotel manager, planning to move to Australia she was handing in her resignation that day.  Martin has terminal cancer and is planning to commit suicide in a hotel room that holds a special meaning for him.  When the bullets start to fly, he discovers he doesn’t want to die that day.  Michael, the MI6 man, know secrets people would kill for.  There’s an interesting subplot with the officer on the ground that’s in direct charge of the police forces response to this hostage situation.

The plot unfolds rapidly, with points of view of different characters giving a perfect view of what’s happening.  The story is told in short chapters, usually ending in cliff-hangers that are exciting and teasers to devour the book in one sitting!  The story has masterful suspense where you’re sitting on the edge of your seat waiting for the next thing to happen.

I loved the ending!  The good guys win, bad guys lose, and the dodgy hero’s motivations are revealed.  Brilliant.  Off to find other books by Simon Kernick.

Title: Siege
Author: Simon Kernick
Published: Bantam Press, 2012
Reviewer: Jan