I’ve been meaning to post about this for ages and I kept on forgetting. Now we have discovered that Charlie Kaufman is writing The Knife of Never Letting Go movie, it feels timely for me to talk about my dream cast for these movies. This is going to be a little indulgent, but you know how there are some days when you are an unstoppable good idea machine, and your ideas please you so much that no amount of praise for your genius can ever be enough? Well, that’s what happened to me when my adjunct sister Lil Splotch posted…
26 CommentsReading the End Posts
You know that Philip Larkin poem? You definitely do. Even if you don’t know anything about Philip Larkin you have probably heard: This Be the Verse They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do, They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early…
32 CommentsMea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Here’s what happened. The lovely and beautiful Jeanne, who has probably the best blog name out there and is also just an awesome person, sent me The Gone-Away World for my birthday last year. It came in the mail and was a complete and delightful surprise, and I was so touched, and I started reading The Gone-Away World right away because Jeanne said it was one of her favorite books ever. Immediately had no idea what the hell was happening. There were, like, pigs? And some sort of pipe disaster that maybe had…
28 CommentsOver the past five years or so, I have discovered in myself a strong and enduring attraction for BOOKS IN BOXES. By which I mean, not that really delightful moment when you have finished a move and you finally get the joy of unpacking your books and organizing them as you see fit (although that is awesome), but rather books that come in boxes. I love box sets of books that go together, especially as a box set means the books all match, which I also love; and possibly even more, I love books that for some reason just happen…
21 CommentsWell, this was an unexpected delight. I picked up The Family Man at the library on impulse because I was stuck between two other library browsers in the L section (one had kids and one was in a wheelchair so I felt rude demanding they move for me) and waiting for one of them to clear the aisle, and I thought I had heard Lipman’s name before, and my bag felt empty and sad. Elinor Lipman’s name sounded familiar, and Then She Found Me — which the jacket of The Family Man said Elinor Lipman had also written — sounded…
27 CommentsThanks, blogosphere, for having the exact opinion of Before I Go to Sleep that I had my own self. As usual y’all were right about everything. Before I Go to Sleep is about a woman called Christine who developed amnesia following some sort of accident (she can’t remember). Every morning when she wakes up, her memories of the previous day are gone. She doesn’t remember her husband Ben, or her doctor, or any of her friends or experiences from her old life. On a good day she can remember as recently as her college years. Every day, Ben patiently explains…
14 CommentsWordPress is being a jerk, and everyone is having commenting problems. Teresa from Shelf Love has a post about what’s going on. Feel free to contact WordPress (not this minute; tomorrow) and express your displeasure. I am displeased. More importantly, my mumsy is displeased. Knock it off, WordPress! Cease at once to displease my mama! Secondly, I don’t know what to read. A while ago, I begged you to tell me something Awesome to read, and the lovely trapunto told me to read Kage Baker’s Company series, and it was all awesome all the time. (Well, almost all the time.)…
46 CommentsThe Twisted Thread is a book I’d never heard of by an author I’d never heard of, but it was marked as a book about boarding school in the library catalogue so I was all over that. It’s boarding school + MURDER + pregnancy scandal, with a side order of class tension, and you guys, I like all those things. Hence it was an excellent book for several days on the subway, though it never reached the point where it was so absorbing I couldn’t put it down and had to read it while brushing my teeth and cooking and…
26 Comments