2025 has been one thwackingly spectacular year – easily the best since party spoiler Covid (boo) exited the building stage left.

SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK has been along for the ride, with you every step, breath, snicker and guffaw along the way. Cue the look-back…

Back in July, a female BBC newsreader was ‘disciplined’ by the station after she added a single additional word to a news story and accompanied that (spontaneous) modification with a nano-second- length eye expression judged to be a personal condemnation of the politically-correct-nonsense- speak she was forced to read.

‘The Donald’ had a lot of newsworthy moments in 2025. SWS judged this to be the highlight –

I do some of my best movie watching on planes. I watched THE SUBSTANCE (2024) at one o’clock in the morning on a flight back to Brisbane from Seoul, Korea. By the time we landed I was still recovering from the experience. Every person I’ve spoken to since who’s seen THE SUBSTANCE agrees – it truly is one of the most original, mind-freaking films to come along in a great many years.

Saw this one on DVD. Completely loved its quirkiness, something I wouldn’t normally associate Sean Connery with.

Why exactly did this one get the gong? Besides being generally funny, we reckon this bit of hilarity slash absurdity perfectly summarizes the SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK, er… ‘way’.

Argentinian born Lalo Schifrin composed music scores for close to 100 movies, including two of my all-time favorites DIRT HARRY (1971) and MAGNUM FORCE (1973). He is also responsible for the instantly recognizable MISSION IMPOSSIBLE theme.

Those 1990’s tv ads, complete with his distinctive horse-race-commentator’s voice, were cheese-flavoured, ear & eye-worm classics from a bygone era that somehow managed to drill their way deep down into every tv viewer’s of-the-era screen hippocampus (science talk for memory folks – but I knew that you knew that.

I could watch this scene from SUPERMAN 2 (1980) featuring Terrence Stamp a hundred thousand times and never tire of it. It’s so perfect.

What’s more left to say but…

2026 kicks off with a bang and a clang not to mention a thundering thwack on SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK with the January launch of the annual SWS Short Story Writing Competition.

It’s back bigger and badder (ie. gooder) than before with boosted cash prizes. Stay tuned, won’t you!

Show me a person that DOESN’T – at least partially – judge a book by its cover and I’ll show you a person who doesn’t read books.

Yes shacksters – (if I may be so bold as to use this wacked-out and possibly stylish honourific in your… er, honour) it’s time again to celebrate the best the year had to offer in book cover eye candy. And there’s a lot to celebrate.

(A) Royally weird and wonderful, your Majesty.

(B) Waaah

(A) So many interesting trains of thought with this one.

(B) Pink Splendor! You can just about hear the squeak.

(A) Nice balance (sorry!) between image and text.

(B) Now that’s a button!

(A) Clever and more than a little bit frightening.

(B) Is that tomato aimed at the reader or the guy in the brown suit? The red splatters already there might help you decide.

(A) My nomination for Book Cover of the Year. Nicknamed ‘Death by Lolly’.

(B) Love, love the LOST IN SPACE (1960’s) vibe to this cover.

(A) So vampy! If ever a cover deserved the red-carpet treatment, this is it. The spelling of ritual is pretty special too.

(B) It’s the phallic-shaped blood drip from the nose that really seals it for me.

(A) Another BOOK COVER OF THE YEAR nomination. Those car headlights are indeed next-level illuminating!

(B) One supremely kissable cover.

(A) You want clever text placement? We give you clever text placement.

(B) I’m so mutts about this cover! (again, sorry). What a Fire-God brilliant interpretation of the book’s title.

Two hot-in-different ways beguiling book covers.

(A) “A two-year-old could do better than this cover” I hear you say. Actually, it looks like a two-year-old DID this cover.

(B) Oh my! Green is most certainly the new black.

(A) Inhale on this smokin’ hot bit of eye trickery, if you will.

(B) Love how the text gradually morphs from FEAR to LESS.

(A) The word ‘arcane’ means ‘understood by few – mysterious – secret’. Yep.

(B) If you get the symbolism of the duck, then good. I definitely don’t. What I do get and dig (haven’t heard that word in a while have you?) is the simple beauty and balance of the colours, fonts and text placement of this work of art.

This post has been brought to you by the new (old) movie KILL BILL : THE WHOLE BLOODY AFFAIR

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