Cultural Highlights

The Oscars of course will dominate much of this month, and so far it’s Saroo Brierley’s Lion that has proved the real draw for our customers, although the film adaptation of Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life as Arrival has opened his pretty high-end SF to an entirely new audience (as happened with Philip K. Dick and Blade Runner, really).

The Gallery choices are a stunner: Paul Nash at the Tate has resulted in a corker of an accompanying book, the kind of volume you find yourself taking to the till without even thinking; the range and mastery of technique is humbling.  The Whitechapel’s upcoming retrospective on Eduardo Paolozzi gives us excuse to reappraise his work too: the sculptor and artist was of course an enormous friend of J.G. Ballard, and it’s fair to speculate that both seeded each other’s work: the Ballardian elements occasionally shine through.

And for younger readers, it’s Netflix’s adaptation of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events that is rapidly becoming the playground must-have – it’s like the last decade never happened...