Giant Squid Creations

India: A Concise History by Francis Watson My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book tackles its immense task admirably and gives a good overview of the historical movements, and some of the key figures within that. It, naturally enough, gets a bit clogged in names and places and events that it can't possibly spell out clearly, and could probably have profited by a few more maps to clarify. Nevertheless, given its scope it's an amazing achievement, that also highlights the importance of India in broader world history. View all my reviews

A couple of decades and four sequels late, I finally watched Jurassic Park the other day. I don't know why it took me quite that long but it did. Aside from being a bit dated, and screaming 'Spielberg directed this' from the first sequence (not in itself a bad thing), it was a good movie. I can imagine seeing it in the cinema in its day would have provoked the desired shrieks and gasps. I played the Lego game of the first four movies last year, so a few spoilers, but with some obvious gaps in my understanding. What I found myself thinking about after watching it was the characters and how they might have been in the novel. One of the few things I know about Michael Crichton as a writer is that several of his books have ended up as movies, which he also writes the screenplays for. For some reason I cannot explain, that put me off reading anything he wrote. Some irrational bias I had I guess, tall poppy maybe. But from the movie I sensed a lot of depth to the characters wh...