It's finally time to explore one of the apps that I think is most accurate when targeting advertisements at me: Instagram. Insta gets a bad name for being full of 'influencers' that advertise an unattainable lifestyle, but those aren't the kinds of accounts I follow - my feed is full of friends and artists.
There's two parts of Instagram where I expect to see ads: the home feed and in between 'stories' (that's those little circles at the top of the screen, for those of you who aren't familiar with the app. Today I'm focusing on the home page and it didn't take long to find an ad - there was one immediately following the top post.
The advert is for Phaidon, a British publisher of art books. They're a company I hadn't heard of until they first appeared on my Insta feed this morning but the feel of their ad is that they're a high-end publisher of those big expensive coffee table books you see in the Fashion section of Waterstones but definitely can't afford. This is the most sure I've been so far that an ad is targeted to me, as I spent yesterday evening reading about Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe (who was a renowned photographer) and as of this morning the app is trying to sell me books of photography.
The actual advert here is not for Mapplethorpe (but they do sell two books of his photos) but is actually there to inform me that they have a sale on. I was intrigued by the Rihanna book you see above, which is the first of four pages on the ad; the other screens showed books about nature and animals. One thing I did notice is that they are prominently displaying the discount, but not the actual price. Apprehensively I clicked to have a look at the website and find out what the cost is.
I was unsurprised to find that their 'sale' books are mostly retailing at between £50-£100. Scrolling through, I didn't see anything I was interested enough to spend that sort of money on, although I did see some things going for £15-£25. After ruling out the sale section, I moved on to the full-price books - first art, which featured the £125 Mapplethorpe anthologies and also what is probably their most expensive item:
Now, I like Rihanna as much as the next girl, but anyone who has £5175 to spend on a book has too much money! In the fashion section, a couple of things caught my eye: first, a book about 70s punk posters and press, and then a book called 'Gothic & Lolita' showing Japanese street fashion pictures.
At £19.95 this is much cheaper than the Rihanna offerings but even still, I always have an eye out for a bargain so I went for a browse online to see if I could find a cheaper copy. eBay was a contender and so was Amazon, but Abebooks won out with a Used copy retailing for £2 (plus £3.10 postage).
The listing says there's some wear to the cover but that the inside pages look new. At a quarter of the price of a new copy from the publisher I'm willing to go for it, so I placed an order and waited for it to arrive...
It came pretty quickly but the package was open, which was a little weird. Luckily, the book was inside. It's in great condition and from first glance, the pictures inside look really good quality and fascinating - I can't wait to use it as inspiration for some sketches. My only complaint is that the lettering on the spine is upside down so it's going to look unsatisfying on my shelf.
If I come across any more cool Phaidon books in secondhand shops I'd definitely be tempted to pick them up and display them on my coffee table. I still won't be dropping £5k on a book though.
App: YouTube
Ad: Angel Rock Leap by Ellen Weisberg
Targeted: No
At this point I'm pretty sure that the advertisements at the top of my YouTube feed are random but today it suggested a book to me. As we all know by now, I love to read - my very first TIMMTI post was for a reading challenge - but despite that fact, I'm pretty sure this is coincidental. The book in question is a YA novel called 'Angel Rock Leap' by Ellen Weisberg.
The ad itself was a video filled with reviews, set to a cover of 'Shake It Out' by Florence + the Machine. I didn't watch it for long before heading to Goodreads, where the book has a 4.12/5 rating. That, however, is not enough to convince me to read this book. Between the title and the artwork I get a feeling that this book is not a standard YA novel but a Christian one, and after reading through the reviews on Goodreads my suspicions were confirmed.
The book doesn't sound bad - it's apparently about taking ownership of your situation after your life plans change (the main character, Sarah, fails college and goes back home to confront her past, or something) - but I'm not up for being preached to. I thought, if this book is free on the Apple Store, I'll read it. It turns out that it's £7.49, a price I rarely pay for new physical books, never mind virtual books that I can't display on my shelf. What Apple does have, though, is a free sample chapter. So I read that.
The writing is alright, but a couple of things put me off reading the whole book. Firstly, the professor who just failed our protagonist is called Dr. Weinstein and even though this character isn't one I'm supposed to feel kindly towards, I struggled to get past that name. Next, everything in this chapter was negative - I haven't retained any description about Sarah except that she was upset, and I think she loved writing but for some reason was doing a medical research degree? Finally, a lot of the chapter was taken up with a description of some greasy old man cowboy who starts talking to her at the train station and then follows her before letting her go when she gets off at her stop. Between that and the name Weinstein, I felt uncomfortable, but honestly confused. If this is what the story is about, the author hasn't done a great job setting us up - we're straight in the action. If this is a prologue to the action, I don't feel like she really helped me get to know the character that I'm supposed to be sympathetic for.
I'm not going to find out what happens in the rest of this book as I won't be purchasing it. I'll stick to secular YA.
You may remember that on New Years Day, the internet made me sign up to the Penguin Reading Challenge, where I elected to read some classic novels and was initially sent a list of 10 (I picked Persuasion by Jane Austen and loved it). I got my first February newsletter on the 7th, which came with some new suggestions.
The newsletter is mostly a way for Penguin to get me onto their website and read articles about books and literature - this month there's links to pieces about love stories and 'book crimes', along with quotes, tips for writers and, of course, a lot of advertisements for their books and literature-themed merchandise.
What I expected from the reading challenge was for 10 new book recommendations each month, or for me to be able to tell them which books I'd read so that they could tailor suggestions as time went on. However, there's actually only one 'reading challenge' book suggestion in each newsletter which takes away the joy of choosing my next read from a selection of blurbs. This month's selection for the "read the books you've always meant to" challenge is Love & Mr Lewisham by HG Wells, which I don't have a copy of, and in fact have never even heard of. It sounds like an okay read, and I like the seance-y cover, but it's not something that I can easily pick up in a charity shop - which is why I picked the classics category in the first place. Instead, I zeroed in on another of the books in the photograph:
It's the book of the month for a different challenge category, but I bought a copy of Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton on my last shopping trip of 2019 - I found it for £1 on the damaged books shelf in Waterstones and I've enjoyed Dolly's work on podcasts and in the media so took a chance on it. This past weekend I've been to see The 1975 in three different cities so a lot of my time has been spent on trains, and I thought this would be a good book to keep me company over these four days.
In truth, I ended up reading it in two days and I was completely engrossed in it. The book starts out with Dolly's teenage experiences of meeting boys on MSN Messenger, a world I remember well despite being five years younger than her, so I expected that I was going to relate to her story and mirror a lot of her experiences. However, after that point our lives are drastically different - she talks frankly about her experiences with alcohol, sex and her close-knit group of female friends which she has in abundance and I have little to none of. Even though our lives are so different, I didn't want to put the book down and ended up having to buy another to keep me company on the remainder of my journey.
There's a ton of glowing reviews printed on the book jacket but one compares this book to Caitlin Moran's 'How To Be A Woman', another of my favourites, and I think it's fair to say that if you like Caitlin's work then you'll probably like this too. It's both heartwarming and heartbreaking, sometimes at the same time, and I'm glad Dolly has put all her mistakes down on the page for me, and hopefully a generation of girls, to learn from.
Even though I didn't read the book that was recommended to me, I'm glad the Penguin newsletter prompted me to pick this out of the growing pile of paperbacks in my bedroom. I've moved on to a book about Prince's Purple Rain and an Irvine Welsh short story collection to tide me over until next month's recommendation, join me again then!
Happy New Year everyone! It's that time of year when we all reflect on where we've been, what caught our interest and where we want to go over the next 365 days.
In 2019 I achieved one of my New Years Resolutions and learned to play bass, albeit using the bottom strings of an electric guitar I stole from my brother, so now I can play along to all of Elastica's debut album (the album I listened to most in 2019!). For 2020 I was unsure which new skill I wanted to learn but then I discovered 'thrift flipping' videos on YouTube, where people buy old clothes and re-work them into something modern and more their style, which I think I want to try out.
2019 was also the first year for a while where I didn't complete a 'reading challenge' and as a result I ended up reading more books than usual - sometimes I get stuck on the same book for months and then have to grab some short reads in December to finish the categories, or start counting audiobooks that I've listened to via radio or podcasts. Over the last month or so I decided I should go back to a reading challenge for 2020, but now that the new year is here I've changed my mind and elected to just get through as many of my books as I can without worrying about fitting them into a category. I've also decided that if the blurb and first chapter don't excite me, I'm not going to force myself to finish them.
I've also flirted with the idea of trying out a few experiments based on advertising, 'self care' and social media. I wanted to try out that classic feminist-scholar experiment of buying a women's magazine and following all the tips and buying all of the advertised products, to see whether they had any effect on improving my life. However, when I went into WH Smith I was very uninspired by the selection they had to offer - a lot of the glossy celebrity weeklies have gone online (aside from things like OK! and Hello! which don't really fit my criteria) and none of the monthlies caught my eye aside from US Vogue, which wouldn't be of much use to me since a lot of the products won't be available to me and also it costs an eye-watering £8.50 as an imported title! So I abandoned that idea. I also thought about trying out some of those 30 day productivity/self-care/wellness challenges that keep appearing in my Pinterest feed but I quickly got bored of that idea.
Inspiration struck me once again when I was watching YouTube. At some point in 2019, my recommendations threw up a video called something like "Trying on wedding dresses from Wish". As someone who once (and never again) made the mistake of buying clothes on Wish, and who has always been curious about what the wedding dresses they advertise really look like, it caught my attention. Since then, I've spent many, many hours glued to the YouTube videos created by Safiya Nygaard, who is a fashion and beauty vlogger known for experiments like mixing every lipstick from a make-up store together to see what colour they made, creating outfits inspired by different decades, and a series called 'The Internet Made Me Buy It', where Safiya scrolls through her social media feeds and buys whatever is advertised to her. This last one is what has inspired my experiment for 2020. I have about a dozen apps on my phone which I'd categorise as being social media or shopping apps, and they advertise to me all the time. Sometimes the 'sponsored content' is clearer than other times, which means that sometimes I don't even notice that I'm looking at a paid advertisement. Part of Safiya's aim, and one of the things that I found interesting about the series, was to work out to what extent ads are targeted specifically to her. She found that some apps (Facebook, Instagram) seemed to have a really good idea of what she was interested in - for instance, a lot of her purchases wound up being clothes or makeup - whereas others (YouTube, Snapchat) were more generalised. However, I'd argue that it's hard to tell how specific they're being when only one person is taking part in the experiment - you could argue that Instagram is geared towards aesthetics and maybe everyone sees a lot of clothing advertised on there, and that it's a coincidence that Safiya's interests match with that.
So, this year, I'm going to complete my own version of her 'the internet made me buy it' series to see what sort of things I get advertised to me on the apps I use every day. It feels like the modern equivalent of looking at magazine ads, especially if the content is personalised to my specific interests and not "female 18-45" or whatever the magazines perceive their target demographic to be. Unlike looking for a challenge that someone else has written, I can do this while I mindlessly scroll through the internet every day.
I've set some limits: I'm not going to throw money at designer/expensive brands just because they're advertised to me - I don't get YouTube revenue like Safiya for my experiments! - and I'll be ignoring things that are in opposition to my lifestyle, like adverts by drinks companies or services that are unattainable to a person living in a relatively rural area.
Here are the apps I'm going to be focusing on, which have all been living on my iPhone for a few years and which I use almost every day (aside from the Apple stores but I think they could be interesting!):
App Store
Buzzfeed
Facebook
Instagram
iTunes Store
Mail
Pinterest
Podcasts
Snapchat
Spotify
Tumblr
Twitter
YouTube
Day 1 - January 1st 2020
App used: Facebook
Advert: Penguin Reading Challenge
Do I think this was targeted to me: Yes
Day one, and I chose Facebook to start me off. I've had my Facebook account for over 10 years, so if they're targeting adverts to me, they ought to know me pretty well, no? I open it every day to scroll but rarely interact - my profile picture is from 2016, I update my status every few months (usually with a music video or a picture from a concert I've been to) and I rarely get tagged in any memes. My main uses for Facebook are to keep up with news about my office and the band Suede, whose Insatiable Ones fanclub has a very active Facebook group.
I interact far more with Messenger, Instagram and Whatsapp,which aren't 'Facebook' but are owned by the Facebook company. As Safiya Nygaard points out in her series, these apps and sites state that they use your data from across sites and other sites and apps you use that don't belong to Facebook in order to select ads for you. In that context, this ad makes sense.
When I was shown the ad for the Penguin Reading Challenge, I was still almost convinced I was going to try one of the reading challenges I'd seen on Pinterest - I'd searched "2020 reading challenge" on there a few times in the last few days to help pick a list of categories. New Years Day is the perfect day to hit me with this ad; it's probably the one day of the year where most reading challenges are set.
After clicking on the ad, I was taken to Penguin's website. For anyone reading this who prefers blogs to books, Penguin is one of the UK's (maybe the world's) biggest and most beloved book publishers, specialising in 'Penguin Classics' as well as contemporary works. I expected them to present me with a survey which would personalise some recommendations for me from their vast catalogue, but instead I was met with four choices:
(Image from Penguin website)
I was a bit disappointed that their challenge is actually far more general that what I'd expected to find - I hoped they'd offer me some books I hadn't heard of that were a perfect fit for me, but instead I can pick a resolution from "Expand my mind", "Keep up with the big hits", "Read the books I've always meant to" and "Discover the best contemporary writing". I get most of my books from charity shops and have a stack of 'classics' that I've collected and not yet read, so "Read the books I've always meant to" sounded like the most attainable and that's the one I signed up for.
I received an email immediately telling me I'm "on my way to an exciting reading life" followed by a list of 10 books with a short description. Of the list, I own two: Persuasion by Jane Austen, and A Room Of One's Own by Virginia Woolf. Persuasion was given pride of place at the top of the email, along with Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe - these two have full descriptions while the other 8 books come with a tagline only (such as "essential feminist literature" for Virginia Woolf), so it seems like that's what they want me to read, if I haven't already. I've actually never read a Jane Austen novel, which comes as a surprise to some; I started Emma once but University got in the way and I didn't get very far into the story.
After reading this email I swiftly put it into my Trash folder and decided not to bother with the challenge, but writing this blog entry has changed my mind, and persuaded me to give Persuasion a go. Clicking the book cover in the email took me to the Penguin site which recommended online book stores where I could purchase a copy, but since I already have one in my book drawer, that won't be necessary. Sadly, mine isn't a Penguin but a charming 1964 US edition from the New American Library.
I can't offer a review just yet as I won't start reading until bedtime, but check back at the end of the month and we'll see whether I've made it to the end! I'm looking forward to seeing what the next Penguin Challenge newsletter is like for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I want to know whether it will let me weigh in on last month's choices and offer them a review of Persuasion to base future recommendations on. Secondly, I'm interested to see when it arrives, as the email says 'monthly' but the website says 'bi-monthly' which could either be twice a month or every second month.
Over the summer I read John Harris' Britpop book 'The Last Party' and came away with an interest in Suede, whose story makes up part of that book. At around the same time, I was scrolling through the Edinburgh Book Festival programme and noticed that their singer, Brett Anderson, was going to be appearing to discuss his memoir, Coal Black Mornings. I had to renew my library card to borrow the book, which I devoured over a few days and adored. The book covers the story of Brett's young life, from his beginnings in a little council flat with his eccentric parents, through his school and university years, ending with him living in London and finally signing a record deal with Suede after years of being ignored by the music world. He describes the book as being about failure, rather than the classic celebrity success memoir that we're all used to, and it's full of little details which ground him as a regular person with an extraordinary job, rather than as the otherworldly indie rock icon he can appear as in the press. I'm too young to remember a lot of what he talks about youth-wise, but I'm enchanted by his tales of time spent living in London in the late 80s and early 90s, especially the treatment of his relationship with Justine Frischmann.
After finishing the book I went to the Festival and saw him talk about it (in a room full of Suede/Britpop people of his generation, that is, twice my age) and had him sign a copy for me, which I'm still a little starstruck about two months later. I've heard that he's planning to release the next instalment of his story in a year's time and am patiently waiting for it to arrive.
The last movie I watched... The Lost Boys
When I was 18, I saw The Lost Boys for the first time and then proceeded to watch it every other day for the rest of the summer. I knew every line, every song, every piece of trivia about the making of the movie. I wrote about it in film class, pointed to it when asked what my favourite movie was and was basically obsessed by it for a while. It's been a few years now since I last saw it so last weekend I decided to put the DVD on and find out whether it still resonated with me, and I was pleased to find that I still love it just as much as I ever did. Having recently watched Stranger Things, I saw parallels between that squad of monster-hunting kids and the vampire-slaying team of Sam and the Frog Brothers who used to irritate me but who I now see as endearing. I was always drawn to Kiefer Sutherland's David and his vampire gang so that very first shot of them walking around on the boardwalk carousel still makes me shiver. I still remember what happens but there were little details that had faded from my memory which made it feel like I was seeing it for the second or third time again. Aesthetically it's still on point; there's the black leather motorbike gang vibe of the vampires, Star's hippy-Stevie-Nicks thing, and I even appreciate and kind of want to emulate the trendy 80s looks that Sam wears. If there's anyone out there who hasn't had the pleasure of watching The Lost Boys yet, please stop reading and go do that right now!
On my turntable... Elastica - Elastica
I've listened to this album more than any other over the last few months. Again, I became interested in Elastica after reading The Last Party (and, to an extent, Coal Black Mornings) and they quickly became my favourite band of the Britpop era. Their songs are short, fast, sexy and witty, and it doesn't make sense to me that they aren't universally beloved by young women in the same way that Hole or Paramore are. I'm fairly certain that Justine Frischmann is the coolest woman in the world and it's a shame that they split at the beginning of the millennium because I really want to be down the front at every one of their shows, singing every word back to her. They reissued this, their fastest-selling, Mercury-nominated debut album, on vinyl last year and I snapped up a cut-price copy on eBay from someone who said there was a flaw in the packaging that I haven't been able to find, so now I have it on my turntable at home, in my cassette walkman at work and on my iPod for those places in between so that I never have to be without it.
My Autumn playlist:
1. Stay Together - Suede
2. TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME - The 1975
3. Elastica - Elastica
4. Suede - Suede
5. Filmstar - Suede
6. Love Interest - Dear Boy
7. Four Out Of Five - Arctic Monkeys
8. Bizarre Love Triangle - New Order
9. I Wanna Be Adored - The Stone Roses
10. Parklife - Blur
Currently watching... The Good Place
I'm a big fan of Michael Schur's past shows (The Office, Parks & Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine), so The Good Place has been on my radar since it started in 2016. I'm almost at the end of the first of three seasons and find it very charming. It follows Eleanor (Kristen Bell) who arrives in the Utopian 'The Good Place' after her death, despite not having earned her spot there while on Earth, and her struggle to become a good person so she can escape being committed to 'The Bad Place' where she belongs. The show is filled with charming supporting characters, like Eleanor's supposed soulmate-cum-teacher Chidi and her philanthropic neighbour Tahani, but my favourite character is Janet, the humanoid designed to deliver goods and information to the residents of the Good Place who isn't quite perfect. If you like your sitcoms to be a little whimsical and surreal, you should definitely give this a try.
From my journal...
These are the pictures I've used to illustrate my bullet journal this week. The mood is a little romantic, a little retro, more Valentines than Halloween and a good excuse for me to test out some of the red and pink washi tape patterns I've been saving.
Here's how my current obsessions are manifesting themselves:
My vibe at the moment is very 90s mixed with modern internet goth. I've started browsing through Wish and adding things to my basket throughout the month and then clicking 'Purchase' on the last day, which means that I get little surprise parcels from myself at the end of the following month. The set of pins in the picture to the right are a Wish purchase, and so is the crystal necklace. I'm disappointed with the necklace - it has a chip where the silver coating has come off and the 'crystal' part has kind of melted into the silver next to it which shows that it's definitely just plastic, plus it's much more translucent than I expected it to be. However, it still reflects the light and I'll still wear it regularly. I'm much happier with the pin set, I was worried that they would be really poorly made and illegible but they look just like the photo. My favourites are the ghost and the 'Ugh.' heart which reminded me of The 1975's song of the same name. I'm going to put the banner with "Sure. Fine. Whatever." on something I wear at work to point to when I can't be bothered answering someone's silly question.
I found the Empire Records patch at Pie In The Sky in Edinburgh which has a wide range of patches, pins, band t-shirts and other cool stuff. A lot of it is really pricey (they had some great Jarvis Cocker pins which were £8.50; other pins and patches in there are up to £20 each) but this one was £2.99 and will fit right in on my denim jacket which I've been embellishing all summer. I was surprised to find it there because Empire Records is a totally underrated movie.
They're all sitting on a checked background courtesy of some 'cosy' leggings I bought in Primark. Their approach this season is apparently 'all tartan everything' - I'm not a fan of patterned trousers so I avoided those and went for the leggings instead, which I can wear under a skirt or short dress to keep warm this winter.
As everyone who knows me knows, I can't resist an armful of books, and I picked these ones up on two trips to my hometown charity shops. Sylvia Plath is one of my favourite people of the 20th century; I've read The Bell Jar multiple times, along with her Letters Home and some of her poems, but I've never come across a copy of her Journals until now. As much as I recognise her poetic genius, it's her letters and journal entries that enthral me the most - I don't believe there has been anyone who has written about the day-to-day experience of being a young woman as well as Plath did.
I picked up the Oasis book to fulfil the '2 for 99p' offer that allowed me to take home the vintage copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover. I like Oasis but they aren't my favourite of the Britpop set (more on Britpop later); I get the feeling that the best book about them would be one that the Gallagher brothers took turns writing so that it had the maximum amount of petty sibling drama, but we'll see.
Persepolis is different to my usual reading material in that it's a graphic novel but I've heard so many interesting things about it over the years that it feels like something I should get round to reading. I'm also looking forward to devouring the Jim Morrison story in No One Here Gets Out Alive, which I've passed over so many times but finally decided to purchase.
Finally, I can't resist old Penguin copies of classic books, even if they're falling apart, which is why I came home with a 60s edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover. I do already have a copy as part of a DH Lawrence compendium, but this paperback is going to be much easier to handle as long as I don't lose any pages! I also picked up a 70s copy of Franny & Zooey in the hope that I enjoy it more than The Catcher In The Rye, which I thought was a little overrated.
Now on to my favourite band of the summer, Elastica. Even though they were active from approx. 1993-2001, I've been obsessively devouring any Elastica material I can find over the last few months. They are the most underrated and overlooked of the Britpop 'big five' despite being the coolest of the bunch - there weren't and still aren't enough bands with three cool girls up front. I'm currently collecting their discography on vinyl so pictured are this month's acquisitions: the 7" of their single 'Connection' and a promotional soundsheet of 'Vaseline'. I think the soundsheet is particularly cool - it's a US item similar to the flexidiscs that used to occasionally come free with magazines over here but pressed onto a sheet of acetate rather than being disc-shaped. I've listened to the first Elastica album so many times this summer that I feel like I know every single second of it so it's cool to have found pressings of two of my favourite songs from it.
To jump briefly back to clothes and from one set of iconic ladies to another, I picked up this blazer in Primark yesterday which, like most of the clothes in there at the moment, reminds me of the girls in 'Heathers'. I took it into the dressing room expecting it to look terrible on me but instead I fell in love with it and will be wearing it to work all the time from now on. I now have a conundrum though: do I go to work on October 31st dressed as Wednesday Addams or Veronica Sawyer??
Back to the music and the pile of CDs I've bought this month. See what I mean when I said I had a 90s vibe going on at the moment?
At the start of the summer I began reading the book 'The Last Party' by John Harris, which gives a history of the Britpop era and how it contributed to the election of Tony Blair. The book covers Oasis, Blur, Suede and Elastica, which occasional mentions of Pulp, Menswear and a few other stars of the time. I've been listening to Suede since I was about 6, when 'She's In Fashion' appeared amongst the boybands on a compilation I got free with a magazine. Their self-titled debut album is what I've been listening to on the rare occasions that I'm not playing the Elastica album and this month I felt ready to graduate to their 1994 follow-up, Dog Man Star. Unfortunately, the only song on it that really resonates with me is the beautiful 'The Wild Ones', so I probably won't spend much time with it before moving on to the next album in their discography. (A Suede side-note that I have to mention - their singer Brett Anderson wrote the most wonderful coming-of-age memoir, Coal Black Mornings, this year and I got to meet him at the Edinburgh Book Festival last month. It was magical.)
I'm almost ready to graduate to the 2nd Elastica album too, but not before listening to their 6 Track EP which came out just before. They changed their line-up a lot between the two so I'm interested to see how the music sounds. I have, however, listened to Weekend Swingers, which is a bootleg I picked up on eBay. It includes a 1994 festival performance, 2 of their Peel Sessions and some other demos and live bits and pieces. I was worried that the quality was going to be bad but thankfully the sound is really good and so is the live show that makes up the first half of the disc - I wish I could time travel to see them play!
It was while I was browsing the Elastica section of eBay that I came across the soundtrack to Gregg Araki's 'Nowhere', a film I've written about before on the blog that is one of my favourite obscure movies. I had no idea that both Elastica and Suede had songs on the soundtrack and I ordered it straight away - I wish finding a DVD of the film was that easy.
I've also finally managed to pick up the first two Oasis albums. Even though I said they weren't my favourite of the Britpop bands, it's undeniable that they had some really good tunes, most of which are on these two CDs. I picked up Pulp's 2001 album 'We Love Life' out of love for Jarvis Cocker, Mazzy Star's 'She Hangs Brightly' out of love for their song 'Fade Into You', Bis' 'Vs. The DIY Corps' EP out of love for Scottish indie and The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart's self-titled just because I've heard they're good. Reviews to come someday when I've had time to listen to them!
A couple of magazines since I've been in Edinburgh: Bust is a feminist-leaning magazine that I found very charming and interesting when I first bought it, so I always have a look to see if there are any interesting features when I see a copy. This month's cover star plays the lead in 'Crazy Rich Asians' which I'm planning on seeing soon, plus there are pieces on cults, Michelle Wolf and Tumblr culture which are all things I'm interested in.
I also bought Dazed because M.I.A is on the cover. I saw her documentary Matangi/Maya/M.I.A yesterday and found it incredible so now I'm on a mission to read everything I can about it.
One final music item to finish off: I haven't talked about Depeche Mode in this post but I still love and adore them as much as I did at the start of the year. I've collected most of their vinyl now so I don't spend as much time in the Depeche Mode part of eBay as I used to but I had a look the other day and caught a copy of Black Celebration on cassette about to end with 0 bids. I put a bid in expecting someone else to be watching it, but nobody was and I won. As luck would have it, the same seller had also just listed the Suede album which I also ended up winning. I keep a cassette Walkman in my desk at work to listen to when I have nobody in the office to speak to - or when I need to drown out the people who are talking so I can concentrate - so both of these will be joining the collection in my drawer.
I do a reading challenge every year and one of my 2018 categories is "a book written by someone you admire" so I chose to read the John Waters essay collection that I've had sitting on my shelf for a while, since I find his movies so entertaining. It's definitely the book I've enjoyed most so far this year - Waters writes about niche obsessions like Baltimore TV shows of the 60s, tabloid journalism, Z-list actresses and criminals hilariously and even though I tried to limit myself to one essay per day I found it hard to put the book down. His references are so obscure that for all I know he could have invented William Castle and Pia Zadora (I had to do a bit of Googling) but it wouldn't have mattered if the whole thing was a work of complete fiction. Immediately after finishing I went online and ordered a copy of his first book, 'Shock Value', and headed to YouTube to watch some clips of him being interviewed on late-night talk shows; I admire him far more now than I did when I picked the book up.
Choice quote (from 'Hatchet Piece: 101 Things I Hate): "I've had it with being nice, understanding, fair and hopeful. I feel like being negative all day. The chip on my shoulder could sink the QE2. I've got an attitude problem and nobody better get in my way."
The last movie I watched: West Side Story (1961)
This one has been a long time coming. I saw parts of West Side Story in high school music classes, I've seen them pay homage to it on Glee and the soundtrack has been welcome on my turntable, but I'd never actually seen West Side Story until last month. As I already knew the story and the songs, it didn't feel like I was sitting down to watch something new but it was interesting to finally see the visuals that go with the iconic musical numbers and the faces behind the voices (or at least, the faces miming those voices). I was a little disappointed to see how white the Puerto Rican characters were, having gotten used to seeing Latinx actors on Jane The Virgin and Orange Is The New Black, but now I'm itching to see a remake that gives those actors a chance to inhabit the roles of Maria and Bernardo and the other Sharks. I see that Spielberg has put out a casting call and I'm going to remain cautiously optimistic.
On my hi-fi: Depeche Mode - Songs of Faith and Devotion
The album may be the same age as me but it's my favourite of 2018; there's not a single song on it that I don't adore. I was listening to some of my favourite Depeche Mode singles last night and after putting 'I Feel You' onto the turntable I ended up getting this CD out and playing the full album. So right now I have I Feel You on the turntable, Songs Of Faith And Devotion in the CD player, and an old mixtape of my dad's of his favourite songs from 1972-73 in the tape-deck - that's a bit early for Depeche Mode and is instead made up of a lot of glam rock and the like: Children Of The Revolution, Ballroom Blitz, Walk On The Wild Side...
My current playlist:
1. Give Yourself A Try - The 1975
2. Route 66 - Depeche Mode
3. Young & Dumb - Cigarettes After Sex
4. The Dream Synopsis - The Last Shadow Puppets
5. Tammy Faye - Nicole Dollanganger
6. Cherry - Lana Del Rey
7. Black Celebration - Depeche Mode
8. Rose-Colored Boy - Paramore
9. Nothing - Depeche Mode
10. Space & Time - Wolf Alice
The TV shows I'm watching: Orange Is The New Black / My So-Called Life
I finally finished (or at least caught up with) Orange Is The New Black last night, after a couple of years of watching episodes whenever I can get an hour alone with Netflix. I'm glad the next season is due out this month because I need to know what happens next, especially with Flaca and Maritza!
I've been making my way through My So-Called Life as well, even though it was on TV 20 years ago. It's regarded as a classic that was cancelled too soon, and even though I'm enjoying it I don't think it lives up to the hype as much as, say, Freaks & Geeks. I relate to Angela (played by Claire Danes) and I'm especially jealous of her 90s flannel outfits but I can't deal with her parents and how much of an ~after-school teen issues~ vibe it has sometimes.
My journal theme this week: pretty pastels
I'm using this adorable flower collage as my inspiration this coming week. I've stuck it in my bullet journal, where it compliments the pastel highlighter pens I bought, and I've painted my nails in white, lilac and mint with pink and blue holographic sparkle. The pale colours and the super-organised pattern feel so peaceful and I'm hoping I can draw on that if I have a difficult day at the office.
Tell me in the comments what things you're into at the moment!
My annual end-of-year list blog post... My favourite songs that came out this year:
1. Don't Delete The Kisses - Wolf Alice
2. Hard Times - Paramore
3. On Hold - The xx
4. Love - Lana Del Rey
5. Rose-Coloured Boy - Paramore
6. Green Light - Lorde
7. Told You So - Paramore
8. Passionfruit - Drake
9. Idle Worship - Paramore
10. Beautifully Unconventional - Wolf Alice
11. Lust For Life - Lana Del Rey & The Weeknd
12. Sign Of The Times - Harry Styles
13. Coachella - Woodstock In My Mind - Lana Del Rey
14. After The Zero Hour - Wolf Alice
15. Fake Happy - Paramore
16. Revolution - Rat Boy
17. Kill For Candy - Dreamcar
18. Sadboy - Wolf Alice
19. Right Now - HAIM
20. Going Backwards - Depeche Mode
My favourite albums of the year:
1. After Laughter - Paramore
2. Visions Of A Life - Wolf Alice
3. Lust For Life - Lana Del Rey
4. Material Control - Glassjaw
5. AFI (The Blood Album) - AFI
6. Dreamcar - Dreamcar
7. More Life - Drake
8. I See You - The xx
Concerts I went to this year:
1. TRNSMT Festival: Radiohead, Belle & Sebastian, Kasabian, Catfish & The Bottlemen, The Kooks, George Ezra, Stormzy, Biffy Clyro, The 1975, Two Door Cinema Club
2. Depeche Mode
3. Paramore/Bleached
4. AFI/Deftones
5. Lana Del Rey
6. The Smyths (The Smiths tribute)
7. Room 29 (Jarvis Cocker & Chilly Gonzales)
8. Cloudbusting (Kate Bush tribute)
9. Taking Back Sunday
New films I saw this year:
1. Baby Driver
2. T2: Trainspotting
3. The Killing of the Sacred Deer
4. La La Land
5. Wonder Woman
6. Loving Vincent
Favourite old films I saw for the first time this year:
1. Trainspotting
2. The Doom Generation
3. Ladies & Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains
4. Kill Bill: Vol 1
5. Kill Your Friends
6. Sing Street
7. The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert
6. Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
7. Talk To The Snail - Stephen Clarke
8. The Pact - Jodi Picoult
9. The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
10. The Melancholy Death Of Oyster Boy, & Other Stories - Tim Burton
11. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
12. Top Gear Skin - Richard Allen
13. Geek Girl - Holly Smale
14. Weekend In Paris - Robyn Sisman
15. The Gift - Vladimir Nabokov
Top 5 most listened songs of the year according to last.fm...
1. Hotline Bling - Drake
2. Neon Angels On The Road To Ruin - The Runaways
3. Moaning Lisa Smile - Wolf Alice
4. True Trans Soul Rebel - Against Me!
5. Disco 2000 - Pulp
About 18 months ago I made a blog post sharing some of the new clothes I'd bought for work. Since then I've found it kind of hard to find things to add to my office wardrobe, which isn't ideal when some of my favourite pieces are getting worn out. The Peter Pan collared blouses I adore have disappeared from the shelves and been replaced with ruffles and wide sleeves and off-shoulder tops and other things that are impractical and unflattering, so I've been pretty uninspired while shopping for the last while. Luckily, on my trip to Carlisle last weekend I finally found some cute things again:
These two blouses are both from Primark. I love embroidered things and I've tried a bunch of different things on over the last few months but this blouse is the first thing I've liked in the fitting room. It's made of a soft material and looks really informal but I plan to wear it to the office anyway. It comes in navy or khaki and costs £8.
I bought a sheer polka dot blouse from a charity shop a while ago and it's one of my favourites but unfortunately it has torn in a few places, leaving it unsuitable for work (but probably still suitable for punk shows). I've spent a long time searching for a replacement and Primark has finally answered my prayers with this, and for only £7. This blouse is less transparent than my old one but it still makes me feel like Harry Styles or Matty Healy (below) which is what I'm after in a patterned blouse - weird fashion icon choices for a girl to have, maybe, but choices I've made all the same.
Next up, two items that I picked up inspired by Stacey Duguid's article in The Pool last Monday - or more specifically, about the line "why save things for those ever-elusive “posh nights out”?".
The top is from Primark (£8) and you probably can't tell from the photo but it has a black-on-black lace pattern. The t-shirt shape makes it just right for me to wear to work but it's also nice enough for me to wear to dinner.
I picked up the velvet skirt in H&M (£12.99). I have a couple of skirts like this that I wear to work already but I've been looking for an excuse to wear velvet to work and I think this is it. Velvet is one of my favourite fabrics and it's been hard not to buy up everything I see so black velvet is starting to take over my wardrobe and I have no problem with it.
I've got a couple of H&M dresses in this shape that I wear to work and they make me feel like I mean business, so when I saw this navy and white striped one on the sale rail for £7 it felt right. I'm still searching for a black and white striped t-shirt but this will keep me going in the meantime.
Finally, I've been low-key wishing for a fuzzy black sweater for a couple of years now so I was happy to find one in H&M for £10. It looks really 90s and it's fluffy but not thick which is ideal for me because I am almost always too warm. Definitely one for Casual Friday.
Lastly, some new music and books, because I can never resist:
My dad signed the family up for a PureHMV card when they first came out and we've never gotten that much use out of it. Recently though, HMV have started an offer where they always have one record priced at £8.99 for their cardholders. In the past they've had albums by The Killers, Bob Marley and Guns N' Roses, and now they're phasing out their deal on Blondie's 'Parallel Lines' (which I already have, since my mum was a Blondie fan in the 70s) and offering Back To Black by Amy Winehouse at the discount price. 'Back To Black' is now 10 years old and I know a lot of the songs from it but had never listened to the album until I put it on my turntable yesterday. It was a worthwhile purchase, for sure.
I also bought 'God's Favorite Band', the new greatest hits compilation from Green Day. Like God himself, I also consider Green Day to be my all-time favourite band so I already have all of their albums but it's been my tradition for the last few years to always go out and buy their latest release whenever they put something out. This compilation features lots of favourite songs, like She, Hitchin' A Ride, Holiday, Oh Love and Bang Bang, as well as a new one that I'm excited to hear.
Lastly, I stopped by the Oxfam book shop to browse the shelves. It's one of my favourite charity places - in the past I've picked up A Clockwork Orange, the Edie Sedgwick biography and the 12" single of 21st Century Boy by Sigue Sigue Sputnik there, and once there was a cat in the shop - so I always visit when I'm in the city. This time I bought 'The Penguin Book Of The Beats' (£2.49) which has excerpts from all of the most famous works and authors of the Beat Generation, and 'The Last Party' by John Harris, which documents the Britpop era of the mid-nineties. At £3.49 it was a little more than I like to pay for a second hand book but as I've been so into Trainspotting and Jarvis Cocker and Elastica and Britpop this year and also because I love pop music non-fiction, I figured I'd treat myself.
Shopping aside, I was in Carlisle to see The Smyths, who you might've been able to guess are a tribute act recreating the sound of The Smiths. I saw them last year and was so impressed that I've been desperate for them to come back for 12 months. Unlike the real Morrissey who has been giving his terrible opinions again, The Smyths did not disappoint. 12 months to go until they come back...
All My Friends - Snakehips ft Tinashe & Chance The Rapper
Alluria - Dear Boy
The Ballad Of Me And My Brain - The 1975
Bury It - CHVRCHES ft Hayley Williams
Controlla - Drake
Desire - Years & Years ft Tove Lo
False Alarm - The Weeknd
Good Grief - Bastille
Greedy - Ariana Grande
Hands To Myself - Selena Gomez
Hype - Drake
I Took A Pill In Ibiza - Mike Posner
Into You - Ariana Grande
Let Me Love You - Ariana Grande ft Lil Wayne
Love Yourself - Justin Bieber
Miracle Aligner - The Last Shadow Puppets
Needed Me - Rihanna
One Dance - Drake ft Wizkid & Kyla
Paris - The 1975
Pillowtalk - Zayn
Revolution Radio - Green Day
Robbery Love - Dear Boy
Sometimes - Ariana Grande
The Sound - The 1975
Starboy - The Weeknd ft Daft Punk
This Girl - Kungs vs Cookin' On 3 Burners
This Is What You Came For - Calvin Harris ft Rihanna
Tilted - Christine And The Queens
Too Good - Drake ft Rihanna
UGH! - The 1975
Work - Rihanna ft Drake
You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) - Blaqk Audio
Great movies I saw for the first time this year:
The Lobster
Zoolander 2
Joy
Kill Your Darlings
True Romance
The Nice Guys
Funny Face
The Princess And The Frog
Bands I saw live this year:
The 1975, 5 times including their Live Lounge Symphony show and three dates on their arena tour
As It Is
The Smyths (The Smiths tribute band)
Cool things I did this year:
Got promoted at work and made a set of great friends
Started a pub quiz team with my work friends and won a few times
Discovered a new band to obsess over in The 1975, went off on an arena tour by myself
Earned a bronze badge for 2 years volunteering with Shelter
Completed the 2016 Reading Challenge I set myself in January
Favourite books I read this year:
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Less Than Zero - Bret Easton Ellis
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Interview With The Vampire - Anne Rice
Valley Of The Dolls - Jacqueline Susann
Poe's Helen - Caroline Ticknor
The 5 songs I listened to most this year according to last.fm...
Love Me - The 1975
Menswear - The 1975
The Sound - The 1975
One Dance - Drake ft Wizkid and Kyla
Robbers - The 1975
...and according to Spotify:
One Dance - Drake ft Wizkid and Kyla
The Sound - The 1975
Desire - Years & Years ft Tove Lo
Love Yourself - Justin Bieber
Pillowtalk - ZAYN
Favourite purchases and acquisitions of the year:
Matte nail polish
Matryoshka dolls from Prague
iPhone
I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it by The 1975
Glittering statue of Jesus
Pink fairy lights
Black crochet/lace dress
Platform soled shoes
Nude nail polish
Shiny silver backpack
Rose gold The 1975 rectangle necklace
Bullet journal
Masses of second hand vinyl and books
Super high waisted skinny jeans
Sheet music from the BBC Philharmonic's performance with The 1975
New Year's Resolutions:
Don't worry or stress about work, accept I can only accomplish so much in one day and that there's no point getting annoyed at the mistakes made by other people because they're probably just doing what they think is right
Make sure I stay in touch with my Shelter family who are moving on to other things
Take some selfies, use Snapchat filters, have a picture of myself I like enough to use on my social media profiles
Keep up quizzing with my work friends and go on nights out with them every now and again
Make a friend who loves The 1975 as much as I do so I have someone to talk with about them and someone to go to future tours with
Sunday, 18 September 2016
The last movie I saw...
Bend It Like Beckham, dir Gurinder Chadha
This film was on TV recently when I got home from work and I ended up resurrecting my old bedroom television set to tune in. I've seen this movie before but it was a long time ago and I couldn't really remember what happened; in my memory the two leading ladies ended up as a couple so I was a little disappointed when I watched it back.
Bend It Like Beckham tells the story of Jess, an Asian teenager living in London who dreams of being a football star rather than aspiring to the marriage-and-kids lifestyle that her family expects. She joins a women's team with new BFF Jules (Keira Knightley in one of the roles that made her famous), coached by love interest Joe and has to balance this new double life to hilarious effect. As a culture-clash comedy this film is great; as a rom-com not so much - there's something about Joe that I don't trust at all, I thought he was a bit of a creep and I would much rather have had Jess and Jules end up together. The film also stands up as an early-00s nostalgia piece which pop culture will no doubt be looking back to in the coming years, I know it made me want to go back and watch some of the other movies I liked back then.
The last book I read...
High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
I picked this book up in the charity shop a while ago, not sure what to expect. I saw the movie and it was a bit of a let-down, but I had hopes that a book about records and pop culture and cynicism would live up to what I'd wanted in the film. It all started out well, I thought the prologue was very funny, but the further I got into the book the more bored I was.
The protagonist Rob is a middle-aged record-shop owner who has just broken up with his girlfriend Laura and spends most of the book moping about how terrible he is with women despite believing he isn't a below-average person. He complains about how pop music has ruined his life and how his parents live and how teenage romance worked and how his colleagues behave; there is so much complaining.
Hornby writes about women in a way that only men do: as if we are some separate species that men cannot possibly begin to understand and who are governed by some sort of drive that men apparently do not possess. After reading this book I've begun to notice the ways that men write about women in other books (I'm reading Thomas Hardy right now and it's equally excruciating) and I get the impression that it's going to make reading any sort of romance much less enjoyable for me from now on, so thanks Nick Hornby. I do intend to read some more of his work but I'm not so hopeful - this book is going back to charity.
On my turntable... Grease - The Original Soundtrack From The Motion Picture
As a child aged 9 or 10 I was obsessed with Grease. I don't remember how or why I saw the movie for the first time but one of the first things I did was get my mum to dig out her vinyl copy of the soundtrack and record it onto cassette for me to listen to. All these years later the songs still make it onto my playlist and I'll still watch the movie whenever it's on TV.
The soundtrack is spread across 2 discs; the first has all the big numbers (Grease, Summer Nights, You're The One That I Want etc) and the second is mostly full of the rock'n'roll songs from the high school dance and the jukebox alongside some of the songs from the end of the film. It's hard to pick highlights from a soundtrack that the world knows and loves so well (it's the 2nd best-selling album of all time) but I always loved Rizzo's numbers as a kid - Look At Me I'm Sandra Dee and There Are Worse Things I Could Do - and the ones I listen to most now are Freddy My Love and the Sha-Na-Na dance numbers.
My Netflix queue...
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Orange Is The New Black, Bad Education
I don't get to watch a lot of Netflix since my family's subscription is for one screen only and that's the TV in the living room where my parents usually are. When they're out these are the three shows I'm watching.
I started watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt last year as we got our subscription not long after it was released. I loved the first season's brightness and frame of reference but I haven't gotten into the second season so much, maybe because I haven't been able to binge watch it the same way.
I'm only on the first season of Orange Is The New Black but it's been on my watchlist more or less since it started. I get why it's such a cultural phenomenon, I love it so far and I just wish I had enough time to sit down and watch a whole lot more of it.
Finally I watched Bad Education on iPlayer when it was originally released on BBC3 and thought it was excellent so I've been playing it in the background while I scroll through the Internet since it doesn't take up a lot of my attention. It's still as funny as I remember.
My guilty pleasure...
Spice Girls
I got home from work the other day just in time to see a little documentary about the career of the Spice Girls who were probably the first pop group I ever really loved. As a little girl their single Viva Forever was the first CD I ever bought and I played it on my parents' hi-fi so much that they bought me a boombox for Christmas. I also had a VHS of their music videos, a doll of Scary Spice and who knows what else. After watching that documentary I went straight to YouTube and spent the rest of the evening reviewing all their music videos which led to me buying both of their original albums last night... They are truly iconic in terms of music, fashion and of course Girl Power and I fully intend to channel their spirit from now on.
On my nails...
This week I'm trying out nude nail polish for the first time with sparkly turquoise tips. They're a little clumsy looking but I'm hoping I can perfect the technique, ideally I'd like the colours to blend into one another but I'm not sure that's possible when painting one's own nails.
The nude polish in question is Rainy Day by Lottie London which I got with a recent Pink Parcel. I usually go for very bright or dark shades so I've never had any desire for a neutral colour like this but I love it now that I've tried it.
The turquoise shade is a Miss Sporty polish called Hypnotic Turquoise which I've had for around a decade and which I've worn regularly over the years, I'm surprised that it's still in use. The glitter is an NYC topcoat which is called Starry Silver Glitter on my bottle but I believe they've changed the name since then. It's made up mostly of tiny flecks of silver glitter with bigger pieces of blue and silver to look like a starry sky and it tied the two base polishes together.
Tech...
Two months ago I finally upgraded to an iPhone from the basic smartphone I've been using for the last couple of years and I adore it. I have a gold SE which is a smaller phone (I'm not a fan of the very-thin, huge screen phones that a lot of people are using at the moment) with all the power of the iPhone 6 inside. Here are some of my favourite apps and features at the moment:
Cymbal- An app which looks a lot like Instagram but allows you to share your 'song of the moment' rather than post images. You can post songs from Spotify or Soundcloud and listen to snippets from the people you follow. My current Cymbal is Escape Route by Paramore which makes me feel like I'm going on an adventure every time I listen to it. Follow me @Rachii.
iBooks - One of the standard apps that comes with the iPhone is proving to be a good friend to me during lonely lunch breaks and time spent waiting for the bus to pick me up from work. I'm currently working my way through Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy which I was a third of the way through reading between calls when I got taken off inbound duty at work.
iTunes U - i.e. iTunes University, which is the Apple learning hub. Here you can download courses on pretty much any subject and work through them as if you were studying at school. Right now I'm working through a course on The British Invasion in the 1960s as I'm going through a Swinging London phase. It comes from the Ohio State University so it's fascinating seeing UK history through American eyes.
Podcasts - Another of the standard apps. Before I found a job I kept up to date with half a dozen podcasts that I've since fallen behind on but now I have no excuse. I started by going straight to the iTunes chart and trying out the #1 podcast which is My Dad Wrote A Porno and it's been one of the best decisions I've made all year. The show is basically a guy and his two friends reading and commenting on a terribly-written erotic novel that his father has published and it is hilarious, I would absolutely recommend it above everything else right now.
Priority - I decided to take out my phone contract with O2 mainly because of the Priority benefits so this app is a must-have. It offers discounts and freebies in various shops and restaurants, plus free movies and benefits at O2 music venues. I used the app the other day to order Taking Back Sunday tickets while on the bus to work; the future is amazing. TripAdvisor - I've browsed TripAdvisor to get suggestions for restaurants and things to do on holiday for ages but since getting the app I've been using it more and more. It's an easy way to look at reviews and menus for nearby eating places, find out what the must-sees are in places I'm visiting, and even book hotels which I did for the first time the other day. They send a whole lot of emails with recommendations which is both helpful and a little annoying, plus to rate a place you have to write a review which is often too much effort for me, but I like the idea all the same.
1010! - This is a puzzle game app that I play a lot while I'm watching shows or listening to podcasts, replacing 2048 as my distraction of choice. The game is very much like Tetris although you drag and drop the shapes onto a 10x10 grid rather than fit them into lines from bottom to top. The only annoying thing about it, like most apps, is the ads which you have to watch for war or 3-in-a-row games every time the game beats you.
