The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier (Amy Wilentz 1989)

I know nothing about Haiti, except that it was the first successful slave rebellion in modern times and has been paying for it ever since.

The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow 2010)

I went to this against the advice of my elder son, because I heard that Julie Rigg recommended it. Alex 1, Julie Rigg 0. It's mainly a series of suspenseful and/or adrenaline charged set pieces. The Red Badge of Courage it ain't.

For Esmé – With Love and Squalor (J D Salinger 1953)

It took some hunting, but I got hold of a second-hand copy of this, which is known in the US as Nine Stories. My edition has a grave accent over the final e of Esmé on the cover. Does that make it valuable?

MTC: Spring Awakening (Frank Wedekind 1891, Steven Sater 2006)

I don't know that I've ever seen a theatrical piece about adolescence as effective and personally touching as this.

TV: From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann 1951)

Ah, the good old days when movies had dance clubs, crashing waves and a hand reaching for a baton rather than brothels, sweaty sex scenes and blood-spattering violence!

The Shambhala Anthology of Chinese Poetry (J.P. Seaton 2006)

J D Salinger pushed me to take this from the TBR pile.

American Rust (Philipp Meyer 2009)

Another book borrowed from the Book Club.

Wanting (Richard Flanagan 2008)

I have this from the Book Club, and am approaching it with extreme caution after the horrible experience of The Unknown Terrorist.

The Road (John Hillcoat 2009)

I've not read any Cormac McCarthy. I read this film as a successful exercise in justifying a scene in which a father says to his young son, 'You have my whole heart. You always did.' There's also a powerful wordless statement about companion animals.

Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction ( J D Salinger 1963)

Dedicated to the 'amateur reader', if any is still left in the world.

DVD: 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini 1963)

This is so much better than I expected after seeing Nine, even though I could tell Nine was a hyper-sexualised travesty. Fellini may have spent a lot of his childhood in a brothel, but he didn't drag us into one, at least not in this movie.

DVD: Everything Is Illuminated (Liev Schreiber 2005)

We went all multi-media at the Book Group tonight and watched the movie after discussing the book.