The jacket copy on the Gene Wolfe books at the library assured me that Gene Wolfe’s most famous books are a series with the word Sun in them, but failed to explain to me which book was the first of that series. Yes, I could have looked it up on the library computers, but I was only getting his books in the first place because he was right there under W, and Sexing the Cherry was not, so I couldn’t be bothered expending a lot of effort. Again I say unto you: It is not a good strategy to get…
18 CommentsTag: David Tennant
I know! I’m so fickle! But: This does seem to be the pattern with me and the new kid. My heart is hardened against him like the Pharaoh against Moses, and I watch the clips with glowery eyes and my arms crossed, and I think angry thoughts about the new kid and his myriad inadequacies. And then, in the midst of all this, he goes and does something really Doctory and causes me to love him (briefly). But I think this clip from “Vampires of Venice” has put paid to all my negative expectations. Well, that, and the fact that…
16 CommentsThe Bible just got bumped off my five desert island books list. Sorry, Bible! It’s just that you have all that stuff about begatting and oysters, and none of my other desert island books take long breaks from being awesome to talk about stoning your disobedient sons! And you know I can’t do without Shakespeare, and The Color Purple and Angels in America are JUST SO EPIC, and Greensleeves is my favorite book of all time. You understand, don’t you? And we can still be friends? I mean when you think about it, way more people would take you to…
9 CommentsSo when I was a wee lass, struggling with greater than/less than and detesting long division that ended with remainders (this is why I don’t like math! – because lots of things end up with solutions that are very untidy and not whole numbers AT ALL), the BBC was creating a miniseries about a DJ at a mental hospital radio station and the patients there, called Takin’ Over the Asylum. And although I was too wee to care at the time, they were being surprisingly careful not to be an asshole, and getting their actors to perform four major mental…
4 CommentsInternet, I will tell you what I love. I love stories set in Britain right before, during, between, and right after the World Wars. I LOVE THEM. Cf. The Little Stranger, The Shooting Party, The House at Riverton, Baltimore, Those Who Hunt the Night, Love Lessons, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The Night Watch, etc. If you say “Britain” and “World War” in your synopsis of a book, I tend to bump it way up on my reading list. If you also say “aristocracy” and “disintegrating way of life”, I tend to put a hold on it…
10 CommentsI was just saying the other day that I never find good graphic novels to read by myself. So today I was at the library and I decided I was damn well going to learn how to be independent and find a good graphic novel all on my own. Yeah, and review it here, so other people would know about it too. Mother Come Home is a graphic novel about a seven-year-old boy called Thomas Tennant who loses his mother, and how he and his father deal (or don’t deal) with the loss. I said in my review of The…
3 CommentsBut the Royal Shakespeare Company is making a DVD of David Tennant’s Hamlet! YES THEY ARE. A DVD. And, okay, yes, Hamlet is not historically my most favorite one of Shakespeare’s plays. I have been known to say that Hamlet needs to for God’s sake DO SOMETHING ANYTHING EVER; I have been known to quote Oscar Wilde about critics of Hamlet; I have been known to tell the story of how my senior English class drove any possible liking I might ever have had for that play out of me by spending days and days and teacher-sanctioned days discussing whether…
5 CommentsI just finished the second book in my “Take Against Matt Smith Unreasonably Before David Tennant Even Goes Anywhere Project”, and I shall watch the film version this evening, taking against Matt Smith with all my might. And if I haven’t taken against him sufficiently, I’ll just, I’ll just look up videos on YouTube and make complaining comments in my head about how his HAIR is stupid and he’s completely COMMON like a little LONDON GUTTER RAT and he keeps on making PRETENTIOUS HANDS. (I just went and watched a video of him on YouTube and okay, yes, his hair’s…
3 Comments