Emma Crighton

Having some thoughts about Frankenstein Look — on average, with no other things happening, I am always slightly thinking about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I’ve studied it, I’ve…

Unfortunately I have not stopped having thoughts about GDT's Frankenstein, sooooo here's a full essay about it:

medium.com/@emmacrighto...

Also! Sad that my favourite himbo Henry Clerval didn't make the cut.

Further thoughts: I like that it didn't shy away from melodrama, but it didn't quite nail the father-son-master / enemies who love each other / neither can live while the other survives dynamic that the book does so well.

Am also devoting considerable brain space to why they made Walton Norwegian.

Other feelings: casting was great, liked the reimagining of Elizabeth, enjoyed the addition of Christoph Waltz, wish the rest had stuck a bit closer to the original plot.

Favourite acting choice was Jacob Elordi's laudable but somewhat jarring choice to make the monster slightly northern.

Saw Del Toro's Frankenstein, and it has reaffirmed my absolute conviction that no film merits a 2.5h+ runtime.

(Except, obviously, the first Wicked film, which whizzed by, and which I would still have watched if it was 500 hours long.)

‘The more local you are, the more global you are’: the ever-brilliant Sarah Hall on her new novel, ‘Helm’, place-writing, and the importance of positivity in environmental fictional writing at @litfest.bsky.social 📚🍃

Reasons to be cheerful, September edition:
- Dog sitting on a rainy Sunday
- The yellowest-yellow flowers
- Seeing beautiful places, doing beautiful things

when driving on the highway it’s important to at all times have established an enemy

My dad has come to an arrangement with the public pool in Nottinghamshire where he swims: after everyone else has got out of the pool, he is permitted to do a somersault before he gets changed. “THEY OPEN UP THE STORAGE CUPBOARD AND LET ME GO IN THERE SO I CAN GET A GOOD RUN-UP,” he said. Last week my dad, who will be seventy in August, got his friend Malcolm, who is seventy-three, to film the somersault. “It’s shattered all his illusions,” my mum told me. “Until he saw the film he thought he was creating poetry in motion. But it’s really just an old bloke who can’t run fast doing a sideways flop.”

A thread of notes I've made in my notebook about my dad:

1. The Swimming Pool.

Loved learning all about the women of Lancaster today in the sunshine, brilliant guided walk by Eleanor Levin ☀️

@litfest.bsky.social

obviously still looking forward to it hugely but turns out there really is an age at which "getting ready for a massive boozy party to be attended by dozens of pals" stops feeling fully "weeeyyyyy" and starts feeling a bit more "Theoden minutes before the battle of Helm's Deep"

So loved hearing Amy kick off Lancaster Litfest this evening 💕

The details for the meeting in black text in a white circle against the Litfest 2025 programme background.

What makes Litfest...is you!

Lancaster Litfest wouldn't exist without our volunteers. If you're interesting in taking part, and would like to learn more, drop us a email to bethd@litfest.org and/or join us at our volunteers meeting this Saturday, 10:30am at the Café in The Storey!

A flatlaid copy of the Litfest 2025 programme against a background of elements of the Programme cover design.

One month to go until Litfest comes back to Lancaster!

You might have seen our programmes cropping up across the North West or popping through your letterbox if you're on our mailing list, but you can also browse the programme online and book your tickets here: geni.us/Litfest2025

... anyway, I don't know why I started this, I don't know why I keep going, but I am now into the final episodes of DS9, so here's a long and pointless tweet thread to celebrate. 🚀✨👽

The saving grace is that at some point Star Trek became the thing I put on at bed-time, so it is now a tried and tested method of falling asleep.

The bad news is that because I'm usually half-asleep, I can't remember 90% of what I've watched, which makes the whole enterprise deeply pointless...

....so far I've watched 2034 hrs. That's 12 whole weeks of my life. I don't think I'm even halfway through yet. Since I started doing this they have added THIRTEEN new seasons across the franchise. I can't watch any of these new ones, because I'm going in order and I'm still stuck in the late 90s...

A few years ago I had the unbelievably stupid idea of trying to watch every episode of Star Trek. I didn't really like Star Trek that much, and I had not looked up how many hours of Star Trek existed (I really, really wish I had)...

Against a blue fabric background, a stylised Lancaster skyline with multicoloured notable buildings made our of words including Lancaster Cathedral, Lancaster Castle, Ashton Memorial, the Butterfly House, The Priory, the Queen Victoria Memorial, The Storey Institute and the Maritime Museum. The red Litfest logo is in the top right corner. White text reads "www.litfest.org 46th Lancaster Literature Festival 7-17 March 2025. Black text reads "The World into Words."

Welcome to Litfest 2025!

Today, we’re delighted to launch the full programme for our 46th Lancaster Literature Festival —‘The World Into Words’. geni.us/Litfest2025

This year there are over 50 ways to get involved inc. activities, co-creation opportunities and workshops!

Fun fact: if you're buying from a creator on etsy, you can reduce their etsy selling fees from 6.5% to 2.5% by ordering via 'shopname.etsy.com' instead of 'etsy.com/shopname' or searching from the main site. It costs you the same but the creator makes more

It's barely 4 years since the UK had a British-Pakistani chancellor in Downing Street, calling out to his mum in Punjabi at the Tory Party conference "mum, did you ever think we'd make it here?"

And now Jenrick is smearing the whole community from the Tory front bench

www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-p...

Relatedly or unrelatedly, I did also just impulse buy some unnecessarily expensive fancy salt that promises a "piney" flavour.

Rumours that this purchase was intended as a 'screw you' to the Belgian authorities are entirely unfounded.

A tree is just for Christmas, not for dinner, Belgian food agency warns Message came after northern city of Ghent posted tips for recycling the conifer as a dish

God bless the Belgian food agency for providing me with one solitary news story this January that doesn't fill me with existential dread.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Listen, you simply cannot drop a well-executed Wicked film on an ex-theatre kid and expect her to be normal about it. You just can't.

Doctored version of Spotify Wrapped 2024. Top artists: Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande AND Cynthia Erivo, Jonathan Bailey, Ariana Grande again. Top songs: Defying Gravity, Defying Gravity, Defying Gravity (Original Broadway Cast), Good Luck Babe, Defying Gravity. Minutes Listened: More than is probably healthy.

We're one month into a new Spotify year, and I'm already very concerned that my Spotify 2025 is going to look like this:

My 26-30 Railcard runs out next year. Vague sense of dread at the thought of going out into the wild west of the railways without it by my side.

Me too, puffins, me too.

This is so wise

Another day at Bluesky, and it looks like growth is not slowing down! Welcome!

We’d like to take a moment to share our stance on AI and user data: