Book Titles
Feb 27, 2007 Uncategorized
I imagine one of the greatest pleasures in writing a book (apart from celebrating with a whisky, putting the manuscript on your car seat then driving through the snow, having an accident and waking up in the house of a mad woman who’s gonna whack your ankles with a hammer) is choosing the art for the cover and then deciding on the book title. The cover is something you can either get horribly wrong or amazingly right. The author Christopher Brookmyre gets his titles pretty much spot on…. “All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye”, “A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil” and “Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks” are all great, but his book covers are pretty disappointing. However it’s an interesting point that the choice of book title will utterly influence whether it will go down in history as one of the best books of all time. No matter *how good* a book is, calling it “Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks” is like called a supermodel Brenda, it just ain’t gonna get to number one.
My book title? Hmm, maybe, “The Lord of the Badgers”?
My point? I don’t have one of course, but I did enjoy reading “All Fun and Games”, thanks for the recommendation! The story is about how far a normal person will go to when their family is in danger, but it’s also a story about how potential can be crushed by a cloying relationship… I’m just *so glad* that in the end of the story the main character didn’t do the decent, proper thing and stand by her man, go girl!
Fatzilla
Feb 25, 2007 Uncategorized
I’m undergoing a fight, a monumental fight between good and evil. I so hope I lose.
On one side is the good… here is the list of the good things I do
- I occasionally go to the gym
On the other side is the evil. You’re already guessing this list is going to have more than one thing on it yeh?
- Gorgeous lamb at the Royal Oak in Lavant
- The lasagne at the Fox Goes Free
- Fillet steak in The Gingerman at Drakes of Brighton
- Fillet steak with cheek of beef in JSW of Petersfield
- Amazing duck, brill, pork at Combe House Hotel
- Yummy lamb at Baliffscourt
- Everything edible at Arundel House
- Steak again at Oaks Restaurant
- Mmm noodles at Wagamama
- Pizza Hut pizza mmm
Sigh, chubster. p.s. fat cat courtesy of…. Flickr
On Turning Ten
Feb 9, 2007 Uncategorized
As if I could like Jack Dee any more, I was listening to him on the radio recently and he read from one of his favourite poems. It was *so* beautiful….
On Turning Ten (by Billy Collins)
| The whole idea of it makes me feel like I’m coming down with something, something worse than any stomach ache or the headaches I get from reading in bad light– a kind of measles of the spirit, a mumps of the psyche, a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul. You tell me it is too early to be looking back, But now I am mostly at the window This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself, It seems only yesterday I used to believe |
Children of Men
Feb 5, 2007 Uncategorized
Wow what a great film! Once again a totally believable scenario… that I’m surprised no-one has covered before in a film. This story about a barren (literally) human future 20yrs from now was so well paced and structured it never felt slow or predictable. I guess if I have to make a complaint I would have liked it to have a sad ending! I’ve never been a big Clive Owen fan until now but he played his part excellently, not too morose or hopeless and definitely no action hero. Even Michael Caine was great! The two stand out scenes were clearly the fantastic free wheel car chase and the tiny shot from a scene of torture in Abu Ghraib prison (oh, and I know my image for this posting isn’t *entirely* related, but it’s very evocative). Watch it!
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Feb 4, 2007 Uncategorized
Once again a really great horror film remake! I do remember watching the original years ago and being terrified… but this version had lots of good qualities including a good sense of humour – which I guess would be unavoidable when you’re surrounded by 1000′s of zombies!
Michael: Truck’s not gonna make it to Fort Pastor.
Steve: No, forget the truck. That place is fucked, man. Bloodbath city.
Kenneth: How do you know?
Norma: We just came from there.
Kenneth: Is everyone there dead?
Steve: Well, dead-ish.
Kenneth: Is everyone there dead?
Steve: Yeah, in the sense that they all sort of, uh… fell down… and then got up… and started eating each other.
Like a lot of good films, you can picture yourself in the situation of the characters. My first idea was to get all the food possible and lock myself in the holding cell that the Mall apparently has. But from further reading I see that they were trapped for nearly a month without hope of rescue. So it seems like the solution they came up with (get to a boat, sail off to safe island) was a pretty good idea… but also the most dangerous and scary! I’d like to think that if I was the guy in the gun shop then I could shoot a few thousand of the zombies in the head over the period of a month… hmm, that’d still leave several hundred thousand in that city alone though! I was also thinking that you could clear the area around the mall with fire bombs and driving over the zombies in the bus, hmm, risk of flat tyres then. OK OK, so I don’t have any bright ideas. Me against the entire population of the country? Pass me a gun and I’ll give it a go now!
p.s When looking for a suitable picture I found the one above from a Flickr set of knitted Dawn of the Dead scenes… which you have to admit is a terrifying concept.