Ben's September Favourites

It's me again. I don't seem to be able to stop myself. Also, brace yourselves. Some of this is going to be a little bit sad and nerdy.

Book
I have quite a lot of books that I will be reading this year because I have to. But that won't stop me enjoying them. One such example is The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. This is a story set in a dystopian future where women are not even second class citizens, but are only there for a purpose. Offred is a Handmaid. Her only purpose in life is to give birth.

Despite how weird this might sound, it's a very interesting and well written book which is always questioning how our society works. I can't wait to write essays about it (!)

Film
September felt so long that I couldn't remember what I'd seen. So here's one I saw recently ish. It's The Double, directed by the IT Crowd's Richard Ayoade.  Simon James and James Simon look exactly the same, but are complete opposites. Based on a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, this film messes with your head a bit but is very interesting and dark. Jesse Eisenberg plays Simon and James very well and at times reminds me as Matt Smith in Doctor Who. Make no mistake, though, this film is far from light-hearted.

Song
Hard to choose songs from this band, as they're all so good, but Islands by Screaming Maldini has stayed in my head. It's full sound, powerful 5/4 pulse and general musical cleverness makes it really stand out from other songs I've had in my head (saying that, most Maldini songs do the same). It's really catchy, happy, poetic and unforgettable.

TV Show
I mean, you've probably guessed this one. It has to be Doctor Who. Apart from one episode, I've really liked this series so far. It's a great new starting place for people who haven't seen it before as well as satisfying the long term fans. It combines all the right aspects of old a new to create an exciting and original new set of episodes. My favourite so far is episode 4, Listen, the best 50 minutes of television for a long time.

App
This is going to sound so sad. But it has to be Office Lens for me. It's been really useful. I'm forever taking pictures of other people's work or notes off the board for homeworks, and Office Lens makes my life so much easier! It sharpens the text up to make it more readable and will turn it into a powerpoint or a word document with real typed out text and shapes for things like mind maps, saving me typing things up. And, as I have a Windows phone, I can just upload it to the cloud and print it off whenever I like. Pretty darn useful.

Album
Easily This is All Yours by alt-J. Yet again they bring us a brilliant collection of well written and produced songs which are incredibly good, but you can't put your finger on why. It creates a superb blend of atmospheric, melodic and epic sounds with poetic and puzzling lyrics. Gus Unger-Hamilton has a very strange vocal style, but this some just adds to its awesomeness. It proves my theory that all good things come from Leeds.

Whatever
This is the really nerdy one now. A key thing for me this past month has been Shostakovich's Symphony No 5 in D minor. I'm studying it for A Level music and the context of its composition is really fascinating. It was written in Stalin's Russia under pressure to conform to extreme nationalism, but Shostakovich really cleverly takes the absolute Michael out of Stalin all the way through. It's also a really good piece to listen to and I had the opportunity to play it recently, which was really fun.

Ciao.