Where To Next?

Girls is a special show. It's special because the characters are flawed. It's not a matter of 'Oh, I'm so beautiful but I'm terrible at relationships' or 'I'm such a workaholic and I have trouble balancing work with my personal life'. There's no one-off episodes where someone sleeps with someone's ex-boyfriend but then apologises and they're besties again. Problems aren't solved by a saviour swooping in at the last minute. These characters have realistic flaws. Friendships are broken, addictions are managed, mistakes are made, repeatedly, people say and do the wrong things. Things don't work out how you want them to. It is an authentic look at life. Which is the reason people will either love it or hate it. It is also why the finale is the way it is. The second last episode saw the four girls reunite, in a less than ideal way. Hannah turns up to Shoshanna's apartment, only to see everyone else there, celebrating Shoshann...

The way people were talking about 13 Reasons Why all over the internet, I felt like I had to watch it. I saw the first episode and I knew I had to watch it. Hooking you in from the very beginning, 13 Reasons Why will make you want to call in sick to work just so you can binge-watch all the episodes. The series follows Clay Jensen, a high school student who has received a set of tapes from his classmate and friend, Hannah Baker. Hannah recently committed suicide, and on the tapes are the 13 reasons why. Each reason is a person Hannah knew, someone that hurt her in some way, and they each get their own tape. Hannah's plan for the tapes is for each person to hear them and pass them on to the next person. When they arrive on Clay's doorstep he struggles with his emotions as he listens to each tape. He feels the need to confront each person when he hears their tape, to question them, to make sense of it all, to try and make things right somehow. 13 Reasons Why is so captiv...

So this is what happens when Judd Apatow is allowed to make more than one season of a TV show. I have to say, when I watched the first season of Love, I wasn't really sure how I felt about it. When I saw that season two was coming out, I didn't even know if I wanted to watch it. The characters aren't particularly lovable; Mickey is unkind and Gus is such a fucking knob that I often can't stand to watch what he's doing because it's so embarrassing. Curiosity overcame me, I hate to stop watching a series when I've already invested so much time into it. I had to know what was going to happen, and I was actually pleasantly surprised. This season we find Gus and Mickey still fumbling through as they work out whether they want to be in a relationship or not. There are numerous bumps and roadblocks along the way, of course, nothing is ever easy with these two. Fortunately, for my sanity, Gus is a lot less annoying this season. I mean, he's still annoyi...

*Please note that this review is for seasons 1-3, as I have not seen season 4 yet because I can't find it. It took me until the series was actually over until I started watching Please Like Me, so I'm very behind the times, what's new.  Luckily, the first three seasons are on Netflix, so I binge-watched them all. Unfortunately, season four is not yet on Netflix and is no longer on iView, and I can't even find it to download, so I guess I'm stuck for awhile.  I love this show. It's the type of show that I watch and think, 'Not only do I love watching this, but I am also jealous that I was not somehow involved in making it.' It revolves around Josh, who we meet as he gets dumped by his girlfriend Claire, realises that he's gay, and is informed that he has to take care of his mother, who just tried to commit suicide. A lot for any twenty year old to deal with, but Josh seems to take it in his stride. He also has support from his best friend and...

For something a little bit different today, I wanted to talk about how I've gone about setting up my own small business. It's really new, we've only just started in December, so I am in no way an expert, but I wanted to write about what I've done so far in the hopes that it may be useful for someone else, but also so that I have a record of it. So my husband and I have started our own laser cutting business, from home. We purchased a small laser cutter from eBay, on the lower end of the scale at around $3000. Laser cutters can range up to $20,000 or even $100,000, depending on the materials and scale of production you're wanting. We just wanted something small to experiment with though, and we don't have a lot of money. We started off by making reindeer Christmas ornaments, personalised with names on them, as well as some small wooden reindeer. I advertised the ornaments on our local Facebook noticeboards, and I got a lot of interest which was really ex...

Due to living at the edge of the earth (when it comes to TV at least), I will often discover great shows long after everyone else. Usually, this isn't a bad thing because I can binge all the seasons at once and not have to wait a week for each new episode, although there is the problem of spoilers. No matter how hard I try, I will accidentally find out about some death or wedding. Kind of hard to avoid when I follow lots of American Facebook pages I guess.  BUT NOT THIS TIME. Oh no, I am getting in early on this one. This Is Us was only about ten episodes in before I caught wind of it. Milo Ventimiglia is in a new show, you say? I must check it out! So I did and, although the general gist I got was that it was a great show, I was not prepared to fall in love with it so hard. You know how sometimes you will watch the first episode of a show, and you think 'oh yeah, this is alright' and keep watching, and each episode drags you in further until you're hooked? We...

I have been meaning to do some new reviews etc in the last few weeks but a. I've been super busy, and b. I've been really lazy. So here is a lazy post, and I will try to gather some energy and post some more exciting things this year. Every year I aim to read 52 books. One per week. It hasn't happened yet, but that goal helps me to read more than I otherwise would. This year I got halfway, with a grand total of 26. Just for my own curiosity, I wrote a list of them all. Here it is, chronologically: BOOKS READ IN 2016 The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion Sick in the Head by Judd Apatow Making It Up As I Go Along by Marian Keyes Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer Wildflower by Drew Barrymore The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams All Over the Map by Laura Fraser Poking a Dead Frog by Mike Sacks Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares Can I Say by Travis Barker Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams Manson: The Life and Times ...