Jane Austen and the Vampires
Have you ever wondered how vampires look so tidy when they can't ever see their reflection in a mirror? Another of life's little mysteries. Back to that later.
A friend emailed today to say what a perfect day he'd had driving around for miles and miles singing along with Bruce Springsteen. Somehow that manages to encapsulate all my ideas of hell in one sentence. I am spending my holiday alternating between watching Jack Bauer save the world from nerve gas in Season 5 of 24 and lying on my bed reading and eating ice-cream. I am reading a book a day pretty much which perhaps says more about my choice of literature than my reading speed. Yesterday I amused myself with the original novel (by PD James) the movie Children of Men was based on. It was very good but I could see that the movie writers had followed the usual formula: summarise the book in one paragraph then get someone who hasn't read the book to write a screenplay based on that summary. The book and the movie were both entertaining but it was hard to see much of a connection between the two.
Today's offering had an attractive cover with a prominent quote from a critic (or the author's mum) saying, "If I could eat this novel, I would..." Jim often refers to my 'eating books' because I seem to get through them so quickly perhaps I should be checking out the calorie count.
The book? It's called The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler. Here's a sample:
Bernadette was our oldest member. Just rounding the bend of sixty-seven. She'd recently announced that she was, officially, letting herself go. "I just don't look in the mirror anymore," she'd told us. "I wish I'd thought of it years ago...
"like a vampire," she added, and when she put it that way, we wondered how it was that vampires always managed to look so dapper. It seemed more of them should look like Bernadette.
Today I am wearing a pair of shorts that Jim threw out as being too old and shabby and a t-shirt with attractive coffee stains. Here's to growing old gracelessly.
Anybody reading anything interesting?
A friend emailed today to say what a perfect day he'd had driving around for miles and miles singing along with Bruce Springsteen. Somehow that manages to encapsulate all my ideas of hell in one sentence. I am spending my holiday alternating between watching Jack Bauer save the world from nerve gas in Season 5 of 24 and lying on my bed reading and eating ice-cream. I am reading a book a day pretty much which perhaps says more about my choice of literature than my reading speed. Yesterday I amused myself with the original novel (by PD James) the movie Children of Men was based on. It was very good but I could see that the movie writers had followed the usual formula: summarise the book in one paragraph then get someone who hasn't read the book to write a screenplay based on that summary. The book and the movie were both entertaining but it was hard to see much of a connection between the two.
Today's offering had an attractive cover with a prominent quote from a critic (or the author's mum) saying, "If I could eat this novel, I would..." Jim often refers to my 'eating books' because I seem to get through them so quickly perhaps I should be checking out the calorie count.
The book? It's called The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler. Here's a sample:
Bernadette was our oldest member. Just rounding the bend of sixty-seven. She'd recently announced that she was, officially, letting herself go. "I just don't look in the mirror anymore," she'd told us. "I wish I'd thought of it years ago...
"like a vampire," she added, and when she put it that way, we wondered how it was that vampires always managed to look so dapper. It seemed more of them should look like Bernadette.
Today I am wearing a pair of shorts that Jim threw out as being too old and shabby and a t-shirt with attractive coffee stains. Here's to growing old gracelessly.
Anybody reading anything interesting?
posted by Kay @ 6:50 PM
1 Comments:
At December 29, 2006 3:42 PM,
Anonymous said…
Reading anything interesting?......Christmas in Wales means the obligatory reading material for the entire holiday period is.......the Radio Times, of course! How else would we know when 'White Christmas', 'The Great Escape' and 'Mary Poppins' is on the TV yet again!
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