You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Stuff’ category.
So I have this problem. My friend the Silvery Dude has, with his good lady wife, watched Twilight. I am now under some significant pressure, indeed, I have been dared to do likewise, because:
- it’s Buffy meets the X-Files meets the OC (allegedly)
- it’s a parallel universe of teen angst which must (apparently) be explored
- it’s part of the (and I quote) “new lovey-dovey horror sub genre malarkey”
Now some of these points may be good ones (I love Buffy; I love the X-Files); but some are also bad (I care little for teen angst; I may have riposted that said parallel universe should be plunged into the nearest singularity). Also, as I understand it, these vampires are “sparkly”
There is additional evidence which needs to be take into account:
- I am 47 years old – do I really want to be reminded about being a teenager, albeit one in love with a representative of the undead (which superficially has certain attractions)?
- My favourite vampire film is Near Dark – no sparkles
- I really enjoyed (in a creeped out way) Let the Right One In – definitely no sparkles
- I have avoided reading the books because almost everyone else has been and I am nothing if not perverse
- at the risk of upsetting any 15-year-old girls, Robert Thingy’s eyes are too close together for genuine handsomeness
- I don’t do romance
Am I being unfair? Should I give it a go? Please, please, give me some advice; I promise to abide by the majority decision……..
So this is a bit of a stop-gap post; things are still very busy at work and that means I haven’t been reading very much. It’ s on the cards that I won’t complete the Once Upon a Time III challenge as I still haven’t finished my second book with only a couple of days to go before it closes.
But there are some things worth recording:
- Finally a National Treasure is given his due – arise Sir Christopher Lee!
- Andy Murray won at Queen’s Club – roll on Wimbledon
- New stamps with designs by Dave McKean have been issued, with background supplied by one Neil Gaiman– and I got my set this morning (so I’m outed as a stamp collector)
But most importantly, I was lucky enough to get a ticket to a preview of the first episode of the new Torchwood series, Children of Earth. It was absolutely fabulous, and was followed by a discussion panel with John Barrowman and Eve Myles from the cast, the director Euros Lyn and Russell T Davies himself. A fantastic experience, but no spoilers here, I’ll review the whole series over at the Screen God once it’s been broadcast. But believe me, it’s going to be worth watching.
And I promise there will be some book reviews soon.
Just a few little bits and pieces that have grabbed my attention over the last couple of days. First things first, the good news that Alice Munro won the International Man Booker Prize. I love Alice Munro; the first of her books I read was The Moons of Jupiter back in (can you believe it) January 1986 and I’ve kept more or less up-to-date since (there may be a couple lurking somewhere that I haven’t quite got around to yet) But it’s great to see someone you admire win a prestigious prize like this, isn’t it?
Pandering to my geekery is news of the new companion for the next Dr Who. She is Karen Gillan and has been in the show before as a soothsayer in the Pompeii episode (and I’m going to have to go and look at my boxed set to see if I can find her….) The best thing in this BBC storyis the quote from The Great Steven Moffat who says she is “funny, and clever, and gorgeous, and sexy. Or Scottish, which is the quick way of saying it”. I will be using that one a lot over the coming weeks, I’m sure….. I know there’s (thankfully) a lot of Mr Tennant still to come but I am beginning to get very interested in the possibilities for the 2010 series.
It was my wedding anniversary this weekend, and the Book God and I went out shopping. Various purchases were made and it wouldn’t have been a proper day out without a visit to a book shop. The following additions to the library were obtained:
- The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt – all about Nikola Tesla; I’ve been interested in him for years, long before David Bowie played him in The Prestige….
- Mr Toppit by Charles Elton – one or two favourable reviews of this on book blogs, plus I’m pretty sure I heard him being interviewed on Radio 5 at some point
- Snoop by Sam Gosling – or What Your Stuff Says About You; whenever I go to visit anyone in their home I immediately head to the bookshelves for scout around, and this is going to reinforce my nosy parker tendencies
Now all I have to do is find the time to read them….
So it’s all been a bit quiet here at Bride of the Book God apart from the occasional meme (thank you Thursday Thunks) and a little bit of book buying, but not much reading going on I’m afraid. Work is very busy at the moment and I must admit that my daily commute has turned into standing (almost inevitable these days) with my iPod jammed in my ears vegetating to (admittedly good) music as a means of setting me up for or unwinding from the day. I will try to do better, especially as I am behind in various challenges….
However, all of this doesn’t mean that interesting things haven’t been happening; lots of movie-going (as covered here). There is also football (St Mirren narrowly avoiding relegation on goal difference), TV (catching up with Heroes and eagerly awaiting the season finale of Fringe which is on tonight), and theatre which is where we come to yesterday’s big treat.
I was lucky enough to get a ticket to Sadler’s Wells here in London to see the Northern Ballet Theatre’s performance of Romeo and Juliet, set to Prokofiev of course (one of my favourites) as part of their 40th anniversary tour. I have a love-hate relationship with some of Shakespeare’s plays and R+J is definitely one of them – why don’t they just run away I cry to myself every time I see it. But I think it really, really works as a ballet because the heightened emotional stuff is more convincingly portrayed in dance – to my mind at least. I thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle and had a little cry at the end, being hopelessly sentimental as I am.
But I really do have to get back to that tbr pile….
Your rainbow is strongly shaded violet.
What is says about you: You are a creative person. You appreciate beauty and craftsmanship. You are patient and will keep trying to understand something until you’ve mastered it.
I don’t normally do posts that are just about stuff, but it has been that kind of week really. I’ve finally caught up with my blog reading, having been out of touch really since the middle of January when my flu/trip to Glasgow/bad weather/work overload phase started. Everything is back to normal except for the work thing which is likely to continue for the rest of this year (but which I’m secretly enjoying, if I’m honest….) So I’ve resigned myself to blogging even more erratically than normal and not really commenting elsewhere (sorry guys) but you never know, if I get myself organised things might improve.
So, stuff:
- I’m really very sad that Steven Page is leaving Barenaked Ladies – I know the band will probably continue and will still be great, but it just won’t be the same
- One of my New Year’s resolutions was to buy fewer books and to read more from my tbr pile. I’ve done quite well, though helped by having my birthday at the end of January and getting my fix through the Book God’s gift-giving, but I have finally succumbed and bought two novels which I’ve been waiting for with bated breath – Drood by Dan Simmons(who can ignore a book which begins “My name is Wilkie Collins”?) and Handling the Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist (after last year’s Swedish vampires, we now have Swedish zombies). Irresistible.
- I took delivery of some Dr Who figures as shown in the picture (along with a mini-Cyberman and mini-Dalek) – this is potentially very sad when you consider that I am a forty-seven year old woman, but I choose to see it as something positive – everyone has their particular enthusiasm and mine just happens to be a very small rubber David Tennant
All that plus the Book God and I are going to see Watchmen at the London IMAX tomorrow afternoon…………….
Updated – and Criminal Minds is back on British TV so Friday nights are fun again and I no longer have to wonder about who got blown up in the SUVs…
So here we are at the beginning of March and I’ve been having a look at the challenge buttons on my sidebar and realise that there is at least one that I’m not going to complete – largely because I haven’t even started it! So goodbye Becky’s Arthurian Challenge, I had high hopes of being able to spend some time with all things Camelot (Camelotian? Camelotic?) but it just wasn’t to be. The 2nd Canadian Book Challenge is also looking a bit ropey, but I have higher hopes of making some progress there so I’m not going to throw in the towel on that once just yet…..
Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings saw this meme on another blog and did it himself for fun, and I thought at the time that I would do the same but it’s taken me a little while to get round to it.
Like Carl I was really surprised by some of the titles listed as sci-fi or fantasy but I rather like that as I’m always amused (and slightly annoyed) by authors who write sci-fi books and try to pretend they haven’t.
Anyway, herewith the list with those I’ve read in bold and those I have tbr in italics.
- Douglas Adams: The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
- Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958 )
- Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)
- Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)
- Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)
- Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984) – wonderful!
- Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987) – not my favourite of his sci-fi works
- Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)
- Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)
- Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)
- Greg Bear: Darwin’s Radio (1999)
- Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)
- Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992) – I’d have classed this as horror myself..
- Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)
- Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)
- Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
- Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)
- Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)
- William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
- Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979) – on my wish list though!
- Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)
- Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)
- Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988 )
- Lewis Carroll: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
- Lewis Carroll: Through the Lookin-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)
- Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)
- Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
- Arthur C Clarke: Childhood’s End (1953)
- GK Chesteron: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908 )
- Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)
- Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)
- Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998 )
- Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000) – I found this really, really unsettling
- Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)
- Samuel R Delaney: The Einstein Intersection (1967)
- Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968 )
- Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
- Umberto Eco: Foucault’s Pendulum (1988 )
- Michael Faber: Under the Skin (2000)
- John Fowles: Tha Magus (1966)
- Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)
- Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973)
- William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915)
- William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
- Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)
- M John Harrison: Light (2002)
- Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
- Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)
- Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943) – one of my absolute favourite novels
- Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980)
- James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justifies Sinner (1824)
- Michael Houellebecq: Atomised (1998 )
- Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
- Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)
- Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
- Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898 )
- PD James: The Children of Men (1992)
- Richard Jefferies: After London; or Wild England (1885)
- Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)
- Franz Kafka: The trial (1925)
- Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)
- Stephen King: The Shining (1977) – more horror!
- Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)
- Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
- Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)
- Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
- David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
- Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008 )
- Hilary Mnatel: Beyond Black (2005)
- Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)
- Richard Matheson: I am Legend (1954)
- Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
- Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)
- Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)
- Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)
- China Mieville: The Scar (2002)
- Andrew MIller: Ingenious Pain (1997)
- Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibwitz (1960) – long overdue for a re-read I think
- David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)
- Michael Moorcick: Mother London (1988 )
- William Morris: News from Nowhere (1890)
- Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
- Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)
- Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)
- Audrey Niffenegger: The Tine Traveller’s Wife (2003)
- Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970)
- Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993)
- Flann O’Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)
- Ben Okri: The Famished Row (1991)
- Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
- Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818 )
- Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946)
- John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)
- Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)
- Francois Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)
- Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
- Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)
- Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
- JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997)
- Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988 )
- Antoine de Sainte-Exupery: The Little Prince (1943)
- Jose Saramago: Blindness (1995)
- Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)
- Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818 )
- Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)
- Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)
- Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)
- Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
- Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
- Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)
- Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court (1889)
- Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)
- Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)
- Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)
- Sarah Waters: Affinity (199)
- HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895)
- HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898 )
- TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938 )
- Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)
- John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)
- John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
- Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)
I’m quite pleased with the number I’ve read, given that the inclusion of some of these on the list seems a little odd to me, and appalled as always by the number I have on my tbr pile.
St Mirren Park 31 January 2009
Things have been a little quiet around here lately, largely due to a mixture of
- contracting the flu (where I couldn’t do anything including reading and on the one day I dragged myself into the office for a couple of hours a colleague said I looked shocking – in a sympathetic way of course)
- spending some time with family in Glasgow (it was my birthday and I went with my brother to see St Mirren play their first match in their new stadium – see picture), and
- the effects of the bad weather on my return to London, which has had everyone in a bit of a tizzy and upset the natural order of things.
Back to normal shortly, I hope
Bride of the Book God is two today; no cakes to share with you all unfortunately but it did seem a good time to reflect on this week’s Weekly Geek theme, which is:
What does being a member mean to you? What do you enjoy about the group? What are some of your more memorable Weekly Geeks that we could do again? What could be improved as we continue the legacy that Dewey gave us?
The thing which is so enjoyable about Weekly Geeks for me is the sense of community created when we all focus on the same thing at (roughly) the same time. One of the reasons I started to blog was to encourage me to read more regularly, give me the chance to share my thoughts with other bloggers, and to find out what others had to say, and that’s reinforced by Weekly Geeks.
I’m not sure I have any particular favourites, but I did always enjoy the “housekeeping” weeks when Dewey used to encourage us all to catch up with reviews or take a look at where we were with our challenges.
And the best thing we can do in terms of Dewey’s legacy is to keep Weekly Geeks going.
Going back to the fact that this blog has hit the terrible two stage, I’m not organised enough to have thought about a competition or giveaway, but I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who stops by, whether they make a comment or not; it is very much appreciated and nice to know that, in the blogsphere (unlike real life) I’m not just talking to myself!
Bride of the Book God 