I downloaded this after visiting Thomas Tresham's unfinished summer lodge, Lyveden New Bield, earlier this month.
June 7 2013:
I started reading last night, and am finding the first section pretty hard going. The idiosyncratic representation of the language and thought processes of "a half-witted man-child", as Neil Gaimann describes the narrator of this section almost gets in the way of what he is saying. I'm hoping it doesn't go on too long. So far it reminds me , but only a little, of Thursbitch by Alan Garner, which I love.
June 9th: I'm still struggling through this bit, and not sure how much of the story I'm following. Keep skipping pieces and getting annoyed with the syntax.
June 10th:
I skipped all of that bit - not sure the next section is going to grab me either. Things can only get better - I hope.
September 15th:
I think I shall not return to read the book.
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Les Miserables
I started to read the book, but Victor Hugo goes on a bit for 21st century tastes. I think the film covered the chapters I've read in about ten minutes.
Not impressed though - too sentimental for my tastes, too dark and dismal in colouring, and I can't remember any of the songs - they sounded the same to me.
Some pretty people, and a bit of comic relief with the landlord and his lady, but all in all, I'm glad I have seen it, and even gladder that it's over.
Not impressed though - too sentimental for my tastes, too dark and dismal in colouring, and I can't remember any of the songs - they sounded the same to me.
Some pretty people, and a bit of comic relief with the landlord and his lady, but all in all, I'm glad I have seen it, and even gladder that it's over.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Drop Dead Fred (1991)
A quote from the Wikipedia entry:
It was savaged by critics; Leonard Maltin stated that "Phoebe Cates' appealing performance can't salvage this putrid mess ... recommended only for people who think nose-picking is funny."
Well - I guess I think nose-picking is funny! A light-hearted film with serious undertones about a poltergeist-like imaginary friend, who returns to help Lizzie when her marriage breaks down. An entertaining film to while away an evening. Main characters played by Phoebe Cates and Rik Mayall. Now, how come an American kid has an English imaginary friend?
It was savaged by critics; Leonard Maltin stated that "Phoebe Cates' appealing performance can't salvage this putrid mess ... recommended only for people who think nose-picking is funny."
Well - I guess I think nose-picking is funny! A light-hearted film with serious undertones about a poltergeist-like imaginary friend, who returns to help Lizzie when her marriage breaks down. An entertaining film to while away an evening. Main characters played by Phoebe Cates and Rik Mayall. Now, how come an American kid has an English imaginary friend?
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
The Help (2012)
An engaging, too good-to-be-true, movie about racial attitudes to black maids in Mississippi in the 1960s.
Very watchable, and some lovely performances, particularly from the two main black characters, Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minnie (Octavia Spencer), the white ultra-racist, Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard) , and the white-trash Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain). Skeeter (Emma Stone) is a young writer who initiates the plot. She persuades the black maids to tell their side of the story. From this slightly improbably, but inspiring premise flows the comedy and the seriousness of the film.
In the end I found it a bit lightweight.
Very watchable, and some lovely performances, particularly from the two main black characters, Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minnie (Octavia Spencer), the white ultra-racist, Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard) , and the white-trash Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain). Skeeter (Emma Stone) is a young writer who initiates the plot. She persuades the black maids to tell their side of the story. From this slightly improbably, but inspiring premise flows the comedy and the seriousness of the film.
In the end I found it a bit lightweight.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Jane Eyre (1940 version)
Very rushed through and a lot of the essential story line and development omitted. With a young Elizabeth Taylor as Helen, the girl who dies of TB in Lowick Hall. Screen play partly by Aldous Huxley.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Dominion - CJ Sansom
The book follows members of the British Resistance in an alternate reality where Britain has surrendered to Germany, and is now a satellite state. The prime Minister is Beaverbrook. Churchill heads the Resistance.
As usual with Sansom's books we have strong sympathetic characters: David, a civil servant with marital problems, exacerbated by the accidental death of his two-year-old son; his wife Sarah;Günther Hoth, a German SS officer skilled in hunting down and capturing Jews, also with a broken marriage, and a genuine love for his adult son; Syme, a sycophantic pro-German Special Branch Englishman; Natalia, the Slovakian leader of the resistance cell. There is a clear mission - to keep a scientist with a secret out of German hands, and arrange his escape to the USA.
Interestingly, at the end of the book Sansom explains his political views - from a conservative family, he became more left-wing. His particular beef is the growth of nationalism in its many forms, which he considers to be the parent of "monster children: fascism, based on organised worship of the nation and Nazism, which worshipped not just nationality but race." He fears that it is raising its head once more "in its rawest form: all across Europe, in France, Hungary, Greece, Finland, even Holland, and most worryingly perhaps in Russia, fiercely nationalist, anti-immigrant, and sometimes openly Fascist nationalist parties are significant forces in politics again."
He fears UKIP and the SNP are aspects of this, and lays out his evidence.
But aside from the politics, the book is well-written, and a very good story.
As usual with Sansom's books we have strong sympathetic characters: David, a civil servant with marital problems, exacerbated by the accidental death of his two-year-old son; his wife Sarah;Günther Hoth, a German SS officer skilled in hunting down and capturing Jews, also with a broken marriage, and a genuine love for his adult son; Syme, a sycophantic pro-German Special Branch Englishman; Natalia, the Slovakian leader of the resistance cell. There is a clear mission - to keep a scientist with a secret out of German hands, and arrange his escape to the USA.
Interestingly, at the end of the book Sansom explains his political views - from a conservative family, he became more left-wing. His particular beef is the growth of nationalism in its many forms, which he considers to be the parent of "monster children: fascism, based on organised worship of the nation and Nazism, which worshipped not just nationality but race." He fears that it is raising its head once more "in its rawest form: all across Europe, in France, Hungary, Greece, Finland, even Holland, and most worryingly perhaps in Russia, fiercely nationalist, anti-immigrant, and sometimes openly Fascist nationalist parties are significant forces in politics again."
He fears UKIP and the SNP are aspects of this, and lays out his evidence.
But aside from the politics, the book is well-written, and a very good story.
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