Other Stories

Places to go, people to see...

Today, I am a little behind. Being stuck in bed for a week meant that I whizzed through a few books because frankly I was incapable of doing anything other than reading, sleeping, coughing, and drinking litres of orange squash. In the space of a week, I (finally) finished Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which I'm not planning to review here largely because I can't think of anything intelligent to say about it other than it took me a few chapters to get into it, it's a gory, rollicking, good fun book, the story is really nothing like the film, and if you're into a bit of Victorian weirdness then you could do far worse than to pick this one up. I'm not just saying that because I work for the publisher. Y'all know that I keep my work life and Other Stories life separate unless they genuinely overlap.

I also read the third Inspector Morse novel, The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn. Decent whodunnit. Buckets of sexism, which annoyed me. The other two books read were The Ice Palace by Terjei Varsaas, and Watch Me Disappear by Jill Dawson. Enjoyed both, and proper reviews are forthcoming, once I have time to down and formulate my thoughts and pencilled notes into something approximating a book review.

Meanwhile, I am in full-tilt MA mode, and have also been completely sucked into Vanity Fair when it comes to recreational reading. It's a big ole book is Vanity Fair, and given that I'm only getting time to get through 50 pages a day at the moment with everything else going on, then progress is not particularly speedy. However, Thursday is uni day, so at least I have an hour each way on the train to London to have a bit of read.

Talking of having a bit of a read, off you lot pop and take a gander and what's been floating my cyber-boat this week:

• I'm doing more posts on the good old OUPblog at the moment. Two this week - one on Captain Scott, the other on Prozac - with another one to come tomorrow.
• 1-15 March is the Oxford International Women's Festival. Hooray!
• 2007's Oddest Book Titles are...
• Scottish Friend and I went to see Juno last night - and it was fantastic. Knitter Friend reviewed it over on her blog too.
• The curious case of the forged biography.
• Following on from the stories I linked to yesterday, there's another good piece in The Independent today about violence against women.

A couple of these links will pop up on tomorrow's OUPblog link love post from me, so these will give you a head start. But do stop by tomorrow OUPblog post for bunnies and staircases and other stuff too.

Here is my Daemon

I love Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. The film of the first one is coming out in January (it seems like ages ago we Oxfordians were tripping over camera crew wherever we went... between that and flippin's Lewis...) and the official website has a natty little thing that finds out what your Daemon would be.

Fellow Pullman fans will know what I'm on about.

At the moment, mine takes the form of a fox, but the people who know me can say whether that's accurate or not. Here is mine just now...

So, if you know me in real life, go and answer a few questions so I know whether I really am a fox or not... (and find your own daemon of course...)

Cultural confessions, or things I've never done

Taking my lead from a thread on The Palimp, here are my cultural (and non-cultural) confessions:

• I have never read Lord of the Rings (or seen the films)
• I have never watched a whole James Bond film
• I have never seen an Indiana Jones film
• I have never climbed a tree
• I have never drunk a cappucino
• I have never finished a book by Ernest Hemingway
• I have never started a book by Kafka (despite having a couple on my shelf)
• I have never been to watch an orchestra play (although I have played in several)
• I have never watched a whole episode of Star Trek (despite Boyfriend's best efforts)

I feel my cultural soul is now cleansed. Anyone have anything else they'd like to share?

Shopgirl

I think this might be one of my new favourite films.

The lovely people at LoveFilm sent it to me from my list of DVDs to rent, and I watched it on Thursday night, as I did my yearly clear out of all the crap under my bed/in my bedside drawers. Within about 20 minutes I was ignoring the cleaning and was sitting cross-legged, surrounded by random rubbish, spellbound by this wonderful film.

It is the love triangle of Mirabelle (who works on the glove counter at Saks Fifth Avenue), Ray (a weatlhy businessman in his 50s) and Jeremy (a socially inept slacker with no direction). It is a subtle little gem that is easy to bypass, but trust me, it's worth a watch.

Filmic Update

I made the fairly hideous mistake, last week, of watching the recent movie adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Oh God. Really, I'd read the bad reviews, but was truly unprepared for the utter awfulness that presented itself to Boyfriend and me via the medium of DVD.

I'd had such high hopes for it. I *love* the books, and have done since I first read them when I was at school. I *love* the radio series, which I heard belatedly on CD. The cast of the film looked so good. But... no. Actually, the casting was all wrong. Mos Def? No, no, no. Bad idea. Bad film-makers. Don't do it again. And even though His Holiness Saint Douglas of Adams had worked on the screenplay before his untimely death (in a gym! in LA! I hope he didn't have time to consider the horror of the situation. Sorry, that's an awful thing to say), the story seemed to be told in a horribly clumsy way. *Shakes head*. It was just. plain. bad.

Actually, no, I'm being un-generous. Alan Rickman voicing Marvin was inspired. It's the rest that was bloody horrific.

On the up-side, though, we also watched Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which was, as ever, a work of true genius.

Hurrah

I am delighted to say that I have finally conquered my reading block. It was about time too, frankly, I was starting to worry I'd never get my stride back.

Bullet Points by Mark Watson was the "autobiography" of Peter Kristal, a psychiatrist who developed a way of indexing the lives of his patients in a bid to solve their problems. It also told of his lack of success in relationships, and the trials and tribulations of the complex relationship he had with his family and his best friend and rival psychiatrist Richard Aloisi. However, Kristal is the ultimate unreliable narrator, and it soon becomes apparent that all is not quite what it seems to be.

It reminded me, in that sense, of Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire (which I really most go back and read again, incidentally). It seems to me that Watson is a far better writer than he is comedian (sorry but it's true) and I really hope that more novels as good and clever as this one emerge from his devious little brain in the near future.

I also FINALLY got around to reading the latest Iain Banks novel, The Steep Approach to Garbadale. This is the story of the Wopuld family, who developed the mega-selling board game (and now computer game) Empire!. Alban has long-since left the family firm, forging his own career in forestry, but he is lured back into the family fold to start a campaign against the American Spraint Corporation from buying out the family firm. He has to confront his feelings about his family, the truth about his past, and his first love - his cousin Sophie.

I had been worried about this book, because I think every review I read said it was patchy at best. And I could see what they were saying... one of the characters, VG, had been caught up in the Boxing Day tsunami, but to be honest, I'm not sure why. It didn't seem to have any bearing on the rest of the story. There were a few instances where conversations and tableaus seem to have been written just as a platform for Banks to expouse his views on Christianity/the Iraq War/climate change. Don't get me wrong, I agreed with what he was saying, it's just that the passages seemed somehow incongruous with the main action of the narrative. They jumped out. Felt somewhat out of place and forced.

That said, other than that I thought the book was wonderful, and not half as bad as the newspapers would have you believe. The characters were drawn beautifully, and there were wonderful moments of real humour (the dotty aunts, Doris and Beryl, were fantastic).It's definitely worth reading, if you gloss over the odd rant here and there.

I have also been making use of my new Lovefilm obsession over the bank holiday weekend, and watched The Squid and the Whale and Closer. Well, I say I watched Closer... I watched half of it then switched it off in disgust. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, pants. Don't watch it. You'll never get the time back. Do something more interesting, like, say, gouging your own eyes out.

The Squid and the Whale, however, was delightful. It's based on the writer/director's experiences when his parents divorced, and it's darkly funny, slightly painful, but really quite compelling. Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels turned in some stonking performances - Laura Linney is fast becoming one of my favourite actresses, I think. Really quite moving. Save the money you would have spent renting Closer, and get this instead. I promise, you won't regret it.

Another film, by jove

I don't know what's happened to me. In the face of my continuing reading block, I am obviously taking refuge in the world of film. Last night I watched another film. Good grief. The times they are a-changing, as a crinkly man once said.

This time it was the turn of feel-good comedy flick Starter for 10, starring the always delectable James McAvoy. I'd read David Nicholls's book back in 2003 or so (around the time it was on the Richard and Judy book club - I'm not ashamed), and it was very enjoyable indeed. It was a perfect one-sitting all-nighter when I couldn't sleep. I seem to remember there had been a daddy long-legs wafting about my bedroom, and my all-consuming phobia of the buggers had me trying to sleep on the sofa until I could get a friend round the next morning to shift my multi-legged foe. But enough of my inadequacies as a human being. I liked the book. The film was... alright. Just... alright. I had had high hopes when I saw that David Nicholls had written the screenplay because it was his book in the first place, and also he has a good batting average having written for Cold Feet but I was ultimately disappointed. It had been overly simplified, and that had taken away a lot of what I enjoyed about the book. The complexities of being attracted to people, the peaks and troughs of developing relationships... all sort of made shiny and less apparent. It all looked too easy.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad film, and there are worse ways of passing an hour and a half than to rent out this DVD, but - in contrast to last time's advice - you'd be better off getting yourself the book.

Cinema Idiot

Now, I'm not a big film buff. In fact, I have seen pitifully few films, and constantly provoke cries of "You've NEVER seen x/y/z?!!" when I admit, that, no, I haven't seen whichever classic I'm supposed to have first seen aged 3 or whatever. An example: I've never seen any of the Indiana Jones films. You see? I bet you gasped.

However, yesterday evening, I did actually watch a film. And what's more, it was the second film I've seen this week: I honestly can't remember the last time that happened. Last night's filmic treat was a DVD of The Prestige, starring Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johannsen, and Michael Caine. I wanted to see it because it sort of ticks all the boxes of things I tend to like: a bit weird, Victorian London, magic... and it didn't let me down. I honestly didn't see the twist coming, which is always nice. And when the bit of the twist I didn't understand was explained to me, I thought it was really clever, rather than really pretentious. I'll have to go and watch it again... closely this time.

I actually do have a copy of the book by Christopher Priest, though I haven't got around to reading it yet. Even knowing what happens, I still want to read it, which I can only take as a good sign. However, the other film I watched this week - Notes on a Scandal - was based on a book that I had read a couple of years ago... and which I had hated. In fact, I don't think I even finished the book, I just couldn't get on with it. I didn't even want to see the film, but a friend did, so I thought "what the hell". How wrong could I be? The film was FANTASTIC. Judi Dench was an absolute triumph, and really should have won the Oscar. It was utterly gripping, right from the start. Cate Blanchett was depressingly beautiful, and she turned in another great performance. Bill Nighy is always eminently watchable. So, here's my verdict:

Don't bother with the book - just go and see the film. And it's not often I say that...

Becoming Jane

Went to see Becoming Jane last night, and I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised by how good it was. I confess my motivation for seeing it at all was (a) because I wanted to see something girly and romantic and (b) James McAvoy.

It was surprisingly passionate and atmospheric, and the acting was all pretty excellent (aside from one or two cringe-worthy accent slips), which made me invest in the characters far more than I was expecting to. Even shed a small tear at the end! I am a big cry-baby though, so this shouldn’t surprise too many people.

My only complaint is that it was just a touch on the long side – it could definitely have lost 20 minutes or so I reckon. There were at least two occasions where I was convinced it was about to end, to the point of quietly starting to reach for my scarf. But then it continued on for another 15 minutes or so, and I felt like a bit of an idiot.

So. I liked it, even if the reviews haven’t been great. It’s a lovely Sunday afternoon of a film, best watched with your best girly friends and a bucket of Maltesers. That’s my considered opinion, anyway.

Also, it has made me want to go back and read some Austen. I have a long train journey this afternoon up to my native Glasvegas, so along with Woman on the Edge of Time (only 120 pages to go!) I have packed  Mansfield Park. Lovely. There’s nothing like 6 hours on a train to get some serious reading done.