For Christmas I got Smoke and Mirrors (with a very cool cover), The Underdog (which comes before Fighting Ruben Wolfe and Getting the Girl, and which I did not know existed), Jane Eyre (this so incredibly cool copy with cool, spooky drawings – much nicer than the copy I have now, which is paperback and I got it when I was eight), a first edition of the letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (so sweet!), Deerskin, and a hardback of The Mummy Case, which is brilliant of course. And then I got Wall*E and Atonement and this movie…
3 CommentsAuthor: Gin Jenny
This is one of about five billion books my father got for my mother for Christmas. My mother loves to get a bunch of books for Christmas, so this year my father made a humongous effort to think of and buy books for her that she would enjoy, so at the end of the day she’d have a great big stack of new books to read. What’s nicer than that, eh? And I swiped it today and read it on the drive to the farm for our family Christmas. (Hm, that paragraph sounds ridiculously wholesome. I made a sneery face…
4 CommentsI read about this ages ago over at Sassymonkey’s blog, and I thought it sounded brilliant. The writer permitted his son to drop out of high school, drop out of high school, and stay home and watch films with him. And he knew all what films to watch, so he could pick out loads of really good ones. That’s genius. I wouldn’t ever know what films to watch, even if I were inclined to permit my offspring to drop out of school, which I really don’t think I would be. I am always a bit distressed – I have probably…
1 CommentMy mother mentioned this book as something she might want for Christmas, if it was any good. My mother is impossible to buy for so I made a specific effort to acquire it at the library and read it, to screen it for her. It’s all about how Edgar Allan Poe fakes his own death, and Charles Dickens comes to America, and there’s a conspiracy, and numerous Irish people, making trouble. People from the homeland are apt to behave in this fashion. (My people were Irish. I know British people object strenuously to claims of this sort, but I can’t…
2 CommentsI read about Charles Palliser on this website, but The Unburied, which is the book she actually reviewed, wasn’t at the library. So I got this instead. It is full of London, so I thought that would be a point in its favor. I think of London almost every day, because I miss it so much and I want to go back. And also it is gorgeous and perfect. London’s lovely perfection is not so much in evidence in The Quincunx. The protagonist, John Huffam, spends a lot of time being really unhappy in (Victorian) London, due to the seedier…
4 CommentsDoctor Who is absolutely brilliant. I don’t know why I never watched it before. What a weirdo I was until relatively recently, spending all my time not watching Doctor Who. So if you have never seen Doctor Who before, you should just go ahead and find it, and watch it. I’m in love with it. There are dozens and dozens of episodes to watch, so you can probably just start anywhere. I’m watching The Mind Robber right now, and it is charming. As I type this, the absurdly adorable Zoe and Jamie (they are traveling around with the Second Doctor)…
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