Loved this film - the actors were great, the story moving and funny and the ending just right! This scene with Jean Arthur and Cary Grant just after a pilot has died is just perfect!
Sunday, 28 February 2010
The Abstinence Teacher
Ruth is a sex education teacher in a high school who is increasingly frustrated by the new abstinence curriculum. Tim is an ex-musician, ex-addict who is struggling with his faith and his marriage. Tim is also the football coach of Ruth's daughter and when the team prays at the end of a football match, Ruth and Tim's life collide.
The Abstinence Teacher is a thought-provoking book, not in a shout-the-loudest-speaker corner way but a gentle chat with someone you admire but disagree with way. Perrotta is more interested in seeing how his well-rounded characters make choices rather than using them as a way to score points in this complex debate about religion in America. The novel is also satisfying sloppy; not neat and happy endings just the feeling that the two characters that you have grow to love will continue to muddle through just as they always have.
"Later, after Tim left, she realised - though maybe it was a less of matter of realising than of being able to admit it to herself - that she'd secretly been hoping to find herself enmeshed in one of those corny "opposites attract" narratives that were so appealing to writers of sit-coms and romantic comedies...
Luckily for Ruth, this ridiculous fantasy crumbled immediately upon contact with reality"
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In Between Talking About The Football
This short story collection is about life in a small Scottish town; the drinks and the drunks, the highs and the lows, the girls and the boys, most importantly the music and the fitba'.Gordon Legge has a real knack of writing about characters and events, so much so that you find yourself believing that these characters exist and what Legge is actually writing is snapshots of his own life. While he depicts Scottish life with all its positives and negatives it is done with a real love of this gallus nation that shines through the stories. The first story, Summers on the Dole, really shows what it means to have and be a mate and how life gets in the way (not bad for two pages!)
"The Big Man recalled the stories and The Tank made them funny. Hamish claimed to have done it all and Stuart looked like he had. Wendy never shut up and Grant hardly said a word: Wee Harry's the smartest guy you'd ever meet and Mikey's brains were in his dick.
There were nutters to be avoided, hangers-on to be ignored and casualties to be dumped"
Sunday, 21 February 2010
Article; Let them eat steak slice
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/caitlin_moran/article7025443.ece
"Being a teenage girl is hard. I could probably argue that it’s harder than being in a war. After all, the Taleban never pretend to be friends with the British forces for six months, and have sleepovers at each other’s bases — while all the time secretly spreading rumours that the British Army has one breast bigger than the other, and an uncle who’s a paedophile. Landmines, or everyone on a school coach trip shouting “LESBIAN!” at you? It’s a tough one to call."
Caitlin Moran
Hysterical and very true!
"Being a teenage girl is hard. I could probably argue that it’s harder than being in a war. After all, the Taleban never pretend to be friends with the British forces for six months, and have sleepovers at each other’s bases — while all the time secretly spreading rumours that the British Army has one breast bigger than the other, and an uncle who’s a paedophile. Landmines, or everyone on a school coach trip shouting “LESBIAN!” at you? It’s a tough one to call."
Caitlin Moran
Hysterical and very true!
Hush Hush
When her Biology teacher decides to mix things up a little Nora had no idea exactly what the consequences would be when she is partnered with the mysterious, dark Patch. As she draws him deeper and deeper into his world, the dangers for Nora gets bigger and bigger. Sigh. I made a promise to myself never again to read a book that I didn't enjoy, life is too short and there are too many good books in the world to waste time on rubbish writing. So there must be something in this book that I enjoyed - or maybe it is my masochistic streak coming out because looking back on it, I really didn't like this book.
I think it is maybe an age thing, I didn't really get the whole forbidden love thing and there were points in the plot that I just wanted to scream "Get on with it" There is a lot of interesting stuff here but nothing is really developed in any interesting way.
"I reached to turn up the radio. Of all things, there had to be something better to do than ruin our evening by inviting Patch, albeit abstractly, into it. Sitting beside him for one hour every day, five days a week, was plenty more than I could take. I wasn't giving him my evenings too"
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The Devil You Know
Felix Castor is a hero in the Philip Marlowe sense; a loner who lives by his own complex but honest moral code. And while the novel deals with supernatural events it is essentially a detective novel as Castor unravels the difficult case at the Bonnington Archive. It is a brilliant pace-turning read that sucks you into the story as convincingly as Felix gets sucked into the case. Like The Heart Shaped Box, the true horror is from the ghosts but from the humans and the evil that is done by them - the description of what happens to the young girls in the story will stay with me for a long time.
"When I asked Dobson for the money he owed me for the performance, he punched me in the mouth. I took that in my stride: no teeth loosened, only a symbolic amount of bloodshed. I probably had that coming. He went for the camera next, thought, and I went for it too: me and that Brownie go backa long way, and I didn't want to have to go looking for another machine with such sympathetic vibes."
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Saturday, 20 February 2010
Heart-Shaped Box
Judas Coyne lives a quiet life, retired from the fast-paced and risky world of rock n roll he lives in a farm with his dogs, his assistant, girlfriend and his collection of macabre artefacts. When his assistant finds a ghost for sale on an auction site he buys it little realising the horror that would be unleased on him and everyone he knows.A little tip, do not read this book at night, especially when you are in a house in Shetland where cats yowl at three o'clock in the morning. This book is scary and haunting and lingers in your head like, well like Craddock's ghost. What is really good about this book is that is not just horrifying on a supernatural level but also explores the horror that human beings can perpetrate on other humans.
"The dead man faded back into existence long enough to wink. Then the breeze rose in a soft rush, and high above, the sun broke through for good, at a place where the clouds had been pulled into strings of dirty wool. The light shone strongly on the road and the dead man was gone.
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Frankenstein's Aunt
The village of Frankenstein is living in peace, they have defeated the monster and Henry Frankenstein is on the run. However the villagers haven't counted on Frankenstein's aunt who is determined to clean up the castle and the family name, she may just need a monster to help her...Have you ever had a daft conversation that makes you laugh and every statement just makes you laugh more? This book is that conversation in print. Daft, stupid and crazy loaded on crazy - perfect Saturday morning reading with a cup of tea!
The writing is great, full of fabulous description and phrases, and with my teaching head on, great gothic elements!
Great work of literature? Nah! Fun, witty read? Yup!
"It was a damp night with low clouds racing across the sky, the thunder rumbling but still in the distance. Lightning lit up the whole sky with a flashing breathless blue light, the laps of thunder apparently coming from on high and then in long cracking tumbling waves descending into a rumbling mumbling rolling on the horizon, the rain pouring down, rustling and rattling in the undergrowth round the castle. A sharp bluish-white light shone out of the narrow windows in the laboratory tower."
Saturday, 6 February 2010
Everlost
We all know that when you die you see a bright light and head towards it, but what if something happens and you get knocked off course? When Nick and Allie die and get stuck in a strange, shadowy world called Everlost they have no idea that their desire to get home will have such a huge impact on those who reside in Everlost.
Having previously read Unwind by Neal Shusterman I was looking forward to reading this book; looking forward to a fast-paced, character based quirky thought provoking read. I wasn't disappointed - this book is a thriller at its heart and you race to find out what is going to happen, but like all good books, the ideas within the book keep popping into your head. The twists in the story are believable but breathtaking - at a few I even chuckled at the way he takes the story and twists and pulls it, like someone wringing out a dishcloth. Like the poor children who sink down to the core of the earth, this book has sunk into my brain and even now, over a week after I finished it, the characters and story keep popping into my head.
"Snow felt different than rain or sleet as it passed through Allie. It tickled. As for the wind, she felt it, and it was indeed cold. But like all other weather conditions, feeling it and being affected by it were two different things. The cold did not, could not, make her shiver. And yet as unpleasant as it seemed for the living people fighting the snowstorm, Allie wished she could be one of them."
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