The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating (Elisabeth Tova Bailey 2010)

Another one from the book club. I heard the author on the ABC's late lamented Book Show last year.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (John Madden 2011)

... for the elderly and beautiful, now with guests. This is a very workmanlike comedy with a cast of fabulous character actors. I smiled a lot, laughed out loud more than once. It's much more respectful of India than Wes Anderson's Darjeeling Limited.

A Separation (Asghar Farhadi 2011)

A self-portrait drawing by Leonardo Da Vinci, a sketched head of a native American chief: the middle class couple at the centre of this movie look to the West, but are kept in Iran by responsibility for the man's father, who has dementia. The separation of the title refers to the wife's attempt to extricate herself and their daughter. But the separation is really just the set-up.

Sea of Poppies (Amitav Ghosh 2008)

Our next Book Group title, replacing Cold Light, on which key members of the group went cold.

The Eagle Catcher (Margaret Coel 1995)

This is the first of the Wind River Reservation Mysteries, which were recommended to me a couple of years back. I'm reading it as light relief before embarking on the next big book.

Belvoir Street: Babyteeth (Rita Kalnejais 2012)

A play about illness and death, drugs and courage, love and life. The cast is wonderful. Likewise the writing, the set, the music, Eamon Flack's direction. An epochal shift for Belvoir: female rather than male nudity. And tears.

My Week with Marilyn (Simon Curtis 2011)

Like The Iron Lady, this has a brilliant impersonation at its heart. It's more successful as an exploration of the troubled human inside a cultural icon.