TV: Offspring, Series 2 (Debra Oswald 2011)

Chris has moved to Brisbane, but Nina has two plausible contenders for the love interest vacancy. Debra Oswald  said at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards that she'd thought there was room for something on TV that didn't involve corpses on stainless steel tables. She was right.

DVD: The Reluctant Infidel (Josh Appignanesi 2010)

Interesting to think of this as a companion piece to The Finkler Question. Not as complex, perhaps, but much funnier and at least as serious.

Get Low (Aaron Schneider 2009)

Robert Duvall is, as always, excellent – a total appeal to the gut. Bill Murray actually acts. Cissy Spacek's script is almost all subtext, and she give it the works. The ending is anticlimactic, but by the time we get there that seems exactly right.

Tonto's Revenge (Adam Aitken 2011)

Beautifully designed, this is Nº 2 in a series of chapbooks being produced by Tinfish Press at a ridiculously cheap price.

Bleak House (Charles Dickens 1853)

Back to the classics for the Book Group. Apart from Great Expectations and David Copperfield, which I read as a teenager or younger, I know Dickens's novels through film, TV, stage and comics.

TV: Angry Boys (Chris Lilley 2011)

I've been consistently irritated by everything Chris Lilley has done, but taped this anyhow. It's being screened on HBO in the US. I'm sorry, but the irritation got the better of me here too: he's very clever, but if he doesn't despise his characters I can't tell. One episode is enough.

Doctor Who, Series 6

I'm up to Episode 4, the long awaited Neil Gaiman script. Worth the wait. 'Alive isn't a sad word.' 'It is when it's over.'

A Taste of River Water (Cate Kennedy 2011)

I heard Cate Kennedy read from this at the SWF. How could I resist?

Like You'd Understand, Anyway (Jim Shepard 2007)

Short stories, including one set on Sturt's journey to Central Australia.

Overland 202 (Editor Jeff Sparrow, Autumn 2011)

Progressive culture since 1954 meets Shaun Tan 2010

The Human Resources Manager (Eran Riklis 2010)

From cynical PR exercise to caring for the bereaved to honouring the dead. I was fascinated by the insistent use of Christian emblems.

TV: The Good Wife (Michelle King & Robert King 2009–2011)

We're coming to the end of the second series, and I realise I haven't owned up to being a total fan of this show. Julianna Margulies would be brilliant at poker.

SBS: East West 101 Season 3 (Peter Andrikidis 2011)

We're up to the third episode of this series. The script for the first is shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, and rightly so. But it couldn't work without the brilliant cast, especially Don Hany.

The Finkler Question (Howard Jacobson 2010)

This is up for discussion at our next Book Group meeting, which is scheduled for just after Howard Nicholson's talk at the Sydney Writers' Festival.

SBS: Gasland (Josh Fox 2010)

Capitalism off the leash in the US thanks to the good offices of Dick Cheney, unstopped by Barack Obama: fracking for gas heedless of the effects on the environment, including animals and humans, and denying that there's a problem. Only in America, you'd be tempted to think, but Oh, it's soon coming to a park near us in inner west Sydney.

Source Code (Duncan Jones 2011)

Much more like Moon than I expected, and the ending is excellent to the point of inevitable. Jake Gyllenhaal is brilliant.

Sydney Comedy Festival: Fear of a Brown Planet Attacks

Nazeem Hussain and Aamer Rahman, very funny, like Christian ("Stuff White People Like") Landers with fangs.

Oranges and Sunshine (Jim Loach 2010)

Jim Loach is Ken Loach's son. The film doesn't have a lot of flair, but the story, which has been told from other angles by, among others, Ruth Starke's wonderful book Orphans of the Queen, and a doco and book by David Hill, comes through with great emotional force. The movie is based on the book, Empty Cradles, by Margaret Humphries, which is near the top of my TBR pile.

Seymour Centre: Smoke & Mirrors (Craig Ilott & iOTA)

We missed this at the Spiegeltent at the Sydney Festival. I loved the circus elements, especially the magician, but the brilliantly talented iOTA left me cold and unmoved. His ringmaster persona struck me as a Betty Blokk Buster with self-pity. Someone said as we left the theatre, 'A dying rabbit singing in a snowstorm will do it every time.' Well, not for me it doesn't.

Goodnight Moon (Margaret Wise Brown 1947)

After years of hearing this mentioned I have finally had it read to me by a trio of Harvard Professors, thanks to YouTube and Maria Tatar's blog

And Chaos Died (Joanna Russ 1970)

Joanna Russ, author of The Female Man, died on Friday. This is the only book of hers on my bedside pile. The least I could do was move it to the top.