Sunday Summary: Migraines, steam trains and Shakespeare... IN SPACE!

Well, here we are on another Sunday afternoon, and LOOK! THERE IS A SHINY YELLOW THING IN THE SKY! (Which reminds me, I have a machine full of soggy washing that needs to go out on the line - which I'm sure you really don't need to know about.) I've had a bit of a rough week, with the migraine to end all migraines - it started up on Good Friday and lasted at least a week. At some point it probably stopped being a migraine but even now there's just enough residual effects to say, "Get used to me, this is your head now." Thanks, brain.

So last Saturday, the day before Easter I had to take the day off from work, meaning that I inadvertently had the whole bank holiday weekend off, though I couldn't really enjoy it, being tucked up in bed, unable to sleep, but also unable to read or watch DVDs or do anything that involved looking at things. 


Monday I was a bit better, and me, my sister, two cousins and one cousin's fiancee went out to the Isle of Wight Steam Railway for the day. When my mum was growing up, her family owned an old train carriage, which had been turned into a holiday chalet called Sunny Siding, and lived in a field near the sea. I never got to visit it as a holiday home, as it was sold back to the railway when the farmer wanted his field back, and it spent a long time being restored, with added disabled access (subtly hidden in the period design) and went back on the rails in the early 2000s, with a big family outing for the official opening. Unfortunately I was off on a university visit that day. But my cousin's fiancee Libby is a big steam train nerd (she will fit right at home in our family) and so we spent a lovely bank holiday at the steam railway centre at Haven Street, which also had a falconry display, my sister got to hold a tiny little owl called Chive, and there was a very attractive man working there who was dressed as a pirate for reasons I was unable to determine. Then, after our train ride (in the family carriage, naturally) it was off to the local carvery for a very late lunch or perhaps early dinner. 

Me, Jenny, Stewart and Jeremy

What else I've been up to:

Reading: Mostly sci-fi magazines, rather than books, thanks to the aforementioned migraine, though I was most displeased with Morrison's for displaying them under "Men's interest." Fortunately, the other shops' magazine departments are - mostly - displayed by subject rather than gender. I also read the second Geek Girl book by Holly Smale - how has it taken me so long to read this brilliant series? - and finished Tess Gerritson's Gravity, a thriller set on the International Space Station. There is a high body count, but a satisfying resolution, although perhaps best not read when you're ill. Also, the main character is called Emma Watson, so of course I pictured the actress, if a bit older and with an American accent.

Watching: Dabbling about on Netflix, watching odd episodes of Buffy. I also caught part of the new Thunderbirds Are Go! The original Thunderbirds was the first of many obsessions when I was seven, and I'm very suspicious of any remake, especially when they've made the famous puppet characters into brightly-coloured CGI and (possibly) killed off Jeff Tracy! What I saw did not fill my purist heart with confidence, but I'll watch a few episodes properly before making any judgement. It can't be worse than if they were to make a live-action adaptation, make Alan Tracy a teenager and focus all the attention on him. Which of course would never happen. Nope.


Looking Forward To: going to see Return to the Forbidden Planet in Portsmouth. This was going to be tomorrow, but I realised that the only way home would be by taking the midnight car ferry, arriving on the Island at 1AM, which would be fine by me, but I'm going with Judith who starts work at 7AM the next day. So we changed our tickets to Friday, which has an earlier showing. I was in a school production of that show when I was in year 8 and have such fond memories. Whenever I hear any of the songs on the radio or in a shop, it lifts my mood right up. If you're not familiar with it, Return to the Forbidden Planet is Shakespeare's The Tempest... IN SPACE. With rock'n'roll! It'll be great to watch it from the audience this time.

Other Doings: You may be aware that colouring has suddenly become an acceptable pastime for adults, just in the last few months, largely thanks to the Secret Garden colouring book by Joanna Basford. It is recommended as "art therapy," a way of de-stressing and taking your mind off things. I can confirm it really works; Friday I woke up feeling very miserable and lonely. That day my Anne of Green Gables colouring book arrived, which I had ordered through Hive, and I spent the rest of the day (and also yesterday evening) colouring in the pictures. It's got an abridged version of the story, not just pictures, and I love it. It was Anne of Green Gables, it existed, therefore I had to have it.

Sunday Summary: Weather, Werewolves and Manic Pixie Dream Girls.

London: 

If 2013 will be forever remembered as the year we had no spring, then the winter of 2014 will be chiefly remembered for its storms and floods (at least here in the UK. I understand the USA has been experiencing freak snow.) Last weekend I had made plans to stay with my sister just outside London, but the weather forecast was not good. I'd booked myself a late evening train, and all the reports pointed towards having to cancel. However, when I left work on the Saturday night to find it dry and a bit windy, I decided to risk travelling, and aside from a bit of rollercoaster-tummy on the ferry, I had no trouble getting to my destination (though my train time had been altered, causing a bit of confusion, in order to accommodate a couple of extra stations.) I got to her flat just after 10PM, where she was at the ready with copious amounts of curry and her Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVD. She has befriended the staff at her local Indian restaurant/take-away, and ended up with a whole load of freebies "so there's enough for everyone." How many of us did they think would be eating?

In actual fact, the weather stayed fine the whole time I was in London: a bit cold, a bit drizzly, but OK, though the Thames was horribly flooded between Kingston and Richmond. I met up with friends on the Sunday and they pointed out where the cycle path usually was, and the road. All were underwater, with a car parked in the river with a council notice stuck to its back windscreen (probably saying: "your car is getting wet, please move it.")

And now... the weather:

I thought we'd got off quite lightly on the Isle of Wight, but yesterday, various friends posted photographs on Facebook of some of the coastal towns' flooding, particularly in West Cowes, where the high street was underwater all the way up to Sainsbury's (which is a bit of a walk from the seafront and the ferry terminal.) Apparently the military were helicoptered in to help out. Checking the local news site, I've also just found out that Ventnor Undercliff is being evacuated due to landslides. I've been unaffected by it all, as I live in the centre of the Island and uphill.

Shopping!

One of my Christmas presents was a gift card for Foyle's, so I travelled into London with my sister on the Monday morning, before heading back home via a shopping trip to Southampton later that day. I'd planned to spend it on The Girl With All The Gifts by M. R. Carey and Attachments by Rainbow Rowell, but astonishingly, I couldn't find either of these titles in the famous five-storey bookshop. Not that it was too hard to find something else to spend my voucher on: eventually I settled on The Explorer by James Smythe, which I remembered seeing reviewed on Ellie's book blog, and Dream London by Tony Ballantyne, which was an impulse buy. It is brand-new to me, but looks bizarre, unsettling and fascinating. I bought The Girl With All The Gifts in Waterstone's on Oxford Street (the little one in the Plaza, which I like better than the one with the funny Twitter account; it has a friendlier atmosphere, I think) but could not find Attachments in any of the big stores in either London or Southampton. Not to worry, though, as there was a copy back on the Isle of Wight.

Since I've lost both my local HMV and Blockbuster, I have to do my DVD-buying whenever I get the chance. I'm especially disappointed in the loss of Blockbuster for boxsets - there are so many series I want to watch, but don't want to shell out £20 or so if I don't know if I'll like them. I found the first series of Battlestar Galactica in HMV for £6.99, and a second-hand season one of Heroes in Southampton's CEX. (Now, why don't we have a CEX on the Island? It is needed.) Both of these are things I've been curious about for a while, and did not mind spending just a little more than it would have cost to rent them. In the meantime, I've been continuing watching Buffy and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

What I read:

Last week I read through two decent but underwhelming teen novels: Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher, and Severed Heads, Broken Hearts by Robyn Schneider. I'd read Pitcher's My Sister Lives on the Mantlepiece (or, more accurately, let David Tennant read it to me when I had a migraine) and was very impressed, but unfortunately Ketchup Clouds didn't live up to expectations. I couldn't figure out how old the narrator was supposed to be: her voice came across as much younger than the events she was reporting. I suppose this is fair enough: she must be between fourteen and sixteen, an age where childhood and adulthood sit very uncomfortably together. The cover story alluded to a girl haunted by a terrible secret, but the plot focused more on the run-up to the tragedy than its aftermath, and though beautifully written, it was a storyline that didn't really interest me.

Severed Heads, Broken Hearts is a very John Green-esque coming of age story, funny and affectionate, but unfortunately spoiled for me by the awareness of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. Last year, the Internet got quite indignant about Manic Pixies, declaring them to be a sexist portrayal of women, that they appear only in relation to men and don't get to tell their own story. I don't necessarily agree with this argument: characters look different from the outside than from the inside. If Cassidy, or Alaska Young, or Margo Roth Spiegelman were the protagonists, rather than the love interests, would that in itself stop them from wearing the "Manic Pixie" label? Can you think of any characters who could be "Manic Pixies" if they were shown from another perspective? I wonder if even my beloved Anne Shirley would come across that way, if her story was told from the perspective of Gilbert Blythe. Jeane from Sarra Manning's Adorkable is an interesting version of the character, as the narrative switches between her point of view and the boy's. Also, are there Manic Pixie Dream Boys? Augustus Waters springs to mind. And let's not forget all the supernatural creatures in the form of a teenage male, who are seen only in relation to a teenage girl. An Interchangeable Magical Boyfriend Creature is very different to a vampire, werewolf or faerie narrator who happens to have a girlfriend. Does this mean there is no place for the trope? Nine out of ten times, when I think analytically about tropes, it enhances my reading experience, but occasionally it ruins it. Cassidy Thorpe is a textbook Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and though I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, the controversy of the trope made me enjoy Severed Heads, Broken Hearts a lot less than I might have done a year ago.

Glen Duncan's The Last Werewolf has been sitting on my to-read pile for a couple of years, so I decided that if I was going to read it, I should hurry up about it. It is very dark - perhaps not surprisingly for a book about a man who turns into a ruthless killer once a month! My preferred version of the werewolf legend is when the person and the wolf are pretty much separate - and that the wolf looks like a wolf, not a weird hybrid. The Last Werewolf uses the hybrid version, which extends into narrator Jake's human life as well. He cannot compartmentalise his human and wolf selves, so he's developed a very nihilistic worldview to cope with his changed nature. So he kills people every month: he has come to terms with this in order to survive. The Last Werewolf is bleakly philosophical, darkly poetic; not always a pleasant read, but it's good to have another version of the werewolf legend to compare with the Lupins, Ozzes and Elenas.

Though I wouldn't call myself a Tom Hiddleston fangirl, I do like him a lot as an actor and a person. He's been acting in Shakespeare's Coriolanus recently, which I haven't been lucky enough to see, but the Twitter-talk about it prompted me to read the play. As is often the case with Shakespeare, I was blown away by how applicable this story of ancient Rome still is today: the tragedy of a powerful man whose fatal flaw is his underestimation and disdain for the ordinary folk. This isn't one of Shakespeare's plays where every other line is a famous quotation, but it does include the words "to fob off" (exactly as one would use it today) "thwack" and "sprightly."

Month in review: January

I started 2014 full of ambitious resolutions, but you know how it is with resolutions: you're lucky if they last a week. In short, my main plan was to say yes more, but also to know when it's OK and right to say no. So far, I've managed to stick to a lot of my goals, and get into some good habits. I've started swimming once a week, and already I'm noticing the difference, feeling fitter and achieving more lengths every time. I swam 500 metres this week, which is a personal best for me. Let's see if I can do 550 next week. I'm really enjoying it; it is soothing and relaxing, a good way of winding down after a busy day at work.

Not that it's been that busy at work; after the Christmas madness, we are returning to something vaguely resembling normality, and it's been very quiet. Not that I mind; continual customers are exhausting. I've had my hours cut back down to three days a week, though, a downside of the quiet time of year (at least as far as money is concerned. On the other hand - more reading time!)

Winter post-Christmas is generally quite a gloomy time, and so far this year the weather has been pretty disgusting, with storms and floods galore. Often the winter gets me down, but I've decided to make the most of the long evenings, reading books and catching up on DVD box sets. This winter is the third year in a row I've really got into a Joss Whedon series. 2012 introduced me to Firefly, and last year it was Dollhouse. This year I've gone back to the one that made Mr Whedon's name: Buffy the Vampire Slayer - only 17 years late! I remember watching and enjoying the first couple of episodes when I was 13, but for some reason I never got into watching it regularly. I'm partway through the second season now, and although I have a vague knowledge of some things that are to come, remembering my school friends raving about it when it was new, most of Buffy and her friends' adventures are a complete mystery to me. Charlotte suggested I write update posts as I watch the series (and you can all laugh at my ridiculously wrong predictions and wonder whether I've been living under a rock for the last couple of decades.)

I auditioned for a role in the new Isle of Wight Shakespeare Company's Much Ado About Nothing last Sunday. I haven't heard back from them, and so am assuming I've been unsuccessful, but it was great fun trying out and meeting interesting new people (including one who I've interacted with online but never met in person before.) We started off with some warm-up and workshopping exercises, before auditioning in front of a panel with a prepared piece. I've done auditions before, but usually reading from a piece of paper. This time, I saw the audition piece beforehand, a valuable thing with Shakespeare, as it gives you the chance to learn the lines and, if any of the meaning is unclear, do some research. I may not have got a part, but I didn't disgrace myself and am very pleased with how it went.

I've also got into a regular writing routine, aiming for 500 words per day on a story about two sisters, starting in 1999. It's been very interesting looking back to that time and seeing how much things have changed. The plan is to follow the sisters over a fifteen-year period, but so far I'm not sure how all the pieces fit together. It's still early days yet. I've missed a couple of days' writing, but have managed to write over 12 000 words. Of course, I expect to cut a lot out in the edits.

January's Reading Stats:

8 books read

8 books acquired

3 female authors/5 male authors

5 new reads/3 rereads

5 British authors/2 American/1 Canadian

2 kids' books/ 4 adult fiction/1 non-fiction/1 play

Favourite book: N0S4R2

Least favourite book: Mindstar Rising

Sunday Summary: Slumps, Slayers and Shakespeare

It feels like ages since I've written anything on the blog. I've not exactly been in a reading slump, but it has taken me a long time to get through the two books I was reading: my least favourite Harry Potter book, and a science fiction book called Mindstar Rising. After a pretty bad start, Mindstar shaped out to be pretty all right, but the plot was too reliant on fictitious technology which confused me and lost my interest. The book's best part was the description of the landscape, an England after global warming has wreaked havoc on the environment and flooded much of the east of the country. It was interesting to see a future visualised from the 1990s. I noticed that there were no mobile phones, and the student grumbling about not getting a big enough student grant made me chuckle rather sadly. They weren't paying him enough to study? Oh, sweet summer child...

I've got back into my writing with a vengeance this year, aiming for 500 words per day (but with weekends off.) My story so far is centred around a geeky teenage girl at the turn of the millennium, and I'm drawing on a lot of my memories of high school. And if I'm writing about a geeky teen in 1999, then I really need to brush up on my Buffy the Vampire Slayer knowledge. Would you believe I never watched it? That is a shameful confession from such an incurable nerd and Whedonphile as myself. I've never been a big fan of the "chosen one" trope (Even in Harry Potter it is a thing to be endured for the sake of the rest of the story) or of vampires. I've borrowed the complete boxset from Judith and have whizzed through the first season in three days flat. Yes, the vampires are cheesier than a fondue, but I've started to really like some of the characters. Buffy is awesome: cute and petite and girly, but who will suffer no nonsense for either vampires or school bullies. If you think back to when the series was new, it is refreshing to have the pretty blonde teenager chasing the monsters rather than vice versa. I also love Giles and Willow (aw, Willow is adorable!) but Xander is showing definite signs of Nice Guy Syndrome. And as for Angel - well, he doesn't sparkle, I'll give him that.

One of my friends is a founder of the new Isle of Wight Shakespeare Company, and after a lot of dithering, I decided to audition for a part in their first production, Much Ado About Nothing. I saw that play in London in 2011, starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate, and Joss Whedon produced a black-and-white film of it last year at his house with a cast made almost entirely out of the stars of his shows: Angel, Firefly and Dollhouse. Much Ado About Nothing is one of my favourite Shakespeare plays (although why does Hero take Claudio back? Foolish girl!) Benedick and Beatrice are the prototype bickering couple, setting the standard for every other romantic comedy duo since, and Beatrice is a wonderful character, probably Shakespeare's most rounded and modern heroine. Of course, there is no way I'll actually get the part of Beatrice, or any major role - I'm not expecting even a minor part - but I know I'd regret it if I wimped out.

15-Day Book Blogging Challenge: Day Eleven

Day 11: Show off! 5 of your best blog posts!

1. The 50 Greatest Harry Potter Moments.

This one is what it says on the tin. My definitive top fifty moments from the entire series, both books and movies - but if I've forgotten one of your favourite scenes, lines or characters, let me know!

2. When Children's Books Were Two-And-Sixpence

An old post from the days before I actually had more than a couple of followers, before I'd found a book blogging community. In which I rant about kids' classic books being updated for a modern audience.

3: Adults: Why do you read YA?

From 2010, I wrote this post shortly after I'd rediscovered that teen fiction was not all shallow fluff. Also contains pictures of me as a scrawny teenager for you to laugh at.

4. Theatre: Much Ado About Nothing

A review of William Shakespeare's comedy, as performed in London by a certain Mr D. Tennant and Ms C. Tate. Be warned: contains fangirling.

5. V for Vendetta

A review in my very occasional "Graphic Novel Novice" series, this review compares book and film, setting the book against the context in which it was written, and how the different versions of the story complement each other.

Shakespeare - Bill Bryson

Straight off the back of my Hollow Crown-fest, I found Bill Bryson's book in a wonderful secret second-hand bookshop in Winchester. I am reluctant to call it a biography, because, as the bookseller commented, everything that anyone knows about William Shakespeare the man, can fit into a four-page brochure. Bill Bryson makes it clear in the opening pages that there is not much to tell - "he is at once the best known and least known of figures," his life chronicled by a few scraps of parish records and legal documents. That being so, why bother with a 200-page book when four pages will do?

Shakespeare's works have captures the minds and hearts of people across the globe for four hundred years, and it is perhaps characteristic of our celebrity-obsessed culture that we want to know every possible detail about the person who created them. Well, prepare to be disappointed. Short of Shakespeare's private diary or love-letters being suddenly unearthed in Stratford - unlikely - all we can really know about him as a person can be found in these snippets and hidden in his writing. And it is dangerous to assume that a writer's work is autobiographical. It's called imagination, a writer's greatest tool. "We can know only what came out of his work," writes Bryson, "never what went into it."

Yet despite having few facts to work with, Bryson's book reveals a lot. Written in a clear, journalistic style, Bryson investigates what we do know about William Shakespeare, chronicling previous efforts to search for the man behind the words. He examines the evidence, scrutinising what we think we know about the Bard and sorting out what is known from what is likely, possible, or myth. What is unusual, Bryson points out, is not how little we know about Shakespeare, but how much has been preserved, compared with his contemporaries.

Though he cannot tell us much about Shakespeare's life that I didn't already know, Bryson fills in the gaps, not with conspiracy theories, but with historical detail, writing of London in the reign of Elizabeth I and then James I, describing the culture of the theatre as context for Shakespeare's life. We can't know the specific details, but we can have an idea of the social and political backdrop against which he wrote.

Bryson is particularly scathing about the popular idea that William Shakespeare was not actually the author of the works bearing his name, which was not even questioned until two hundred years after his death, when anyone who could say yea or nay was out of reach. He points out that the first person to claim Shakespeare was a fraud was a rather dotty woman who based her opinion not on any research or examination of evidence, but by going to places once visited by Francis Bacon, her chosen author, where she "absorbed atmospheres." Erm, whatever that means! It's quite worrying that the theories have gained such credence. Bryson is similarly dismissive of the other theories, comparing the claimants' characters, writing styles and personal backgrounds with those found in Shakespeare's plays. Perhaps the most interesting revelation in the book came near to the end, when Bryson picks out the details within the plays which stem from a rural upbringing, images that would not come so naturally to any of the noblemen (or women) who anti-Stratfordians would cast as the author of these works of genius.

Bryson concludes that "it is possible, with a kind of selective squinting, to endow the alternative claimants with the necessary time, talent and motive for anonymity to write the plays of William Shakespeare. But what no one has ever produced is the tiniest particle of evidence to suggest that they actually did so." 

Katie's Adventures in Storyland III

Dear blog, I have neglected you for a shameful length of time. I must apologise, once for my silence and again for the lack of a proper review post now. The truth is, I've been stuck in my biggest reading slump for as long as I can remember. All through November I've had the same book on the go, The Stars' Tennis Balls by Stephen Fry. Now, I love Stephen Fry, and can get quite stuck into this book when I pick it up, but am finding 101 things I'd rather do than pick it up. Usually when this happens, I've got more than one book on the go, but I've read only one other thing alongside the Fry, and that a reread of C. S. Lewis's The Silver Chair. 

I've not been exiled from Storyland, however. Most of my reading time has been spent in editing my friend Elaine Berry's third Wight Moon book (you can read my review of book one here.) What time has been left - when I've not lost myself in the internet's labyrinth - has been spent catching up on film and TV.

Though finished now in the UK, I spent several Sunday evenings losing myself in series three of ITV's costume soap opera, Downton Abbey. Minor spoilers follow.This is escapism pure and simple, a world I can lose myself in - even if I can see most plot developments a mile off, and usually have one character who causes me to shout at the screen every time they appear. In this season, Matthew bore my wrath for making such a martyr of himself for the first few episodes, and when he came to his senses, Lord Grantham took over. If I hear him say, "So you're against me, too," one more time, I might well have to break something. But I suppose this is part of the enjoyment of it - that, and Maggie Smith's wonderful performance as Lady Violet. (I love Maggie Smith.) But though I could have foreseen most of the plot developments, there was a particularly cruel one that came completely unheralded, astonishingly not even hinted at in the media beforehand. Weirdly, though, I woke up the morning that episode aired having dreamed that I'd read of a certain character's leaving the show and rumours circulating on the internet of them being "killed off." (The internet always hints of people being killed off when the actors leave a show, but it doesn't often happen.) Watching the episode later that day, I off-handedly mentioned this dream, but expected everything would come right in the end. It always does. As I said, Downton's plot twists generally aren't twists at all. But that one time, the plot did not take its usual, predictable and fluffy turn, but went down the route of tragedy.

Although I've never been much into the James Bond franchise, I went to see Skyfall with some friends the other week and was pleasantly surprised. Now, perhaps I have a short attention span, or perhaps films are made too long nowadays, but even in the best movies, there usually comes a point when my mind wanders and I just want to get to the final action. Excluding a moment towards the end when I was silently screaming at the villain "WHY WON'T YOU JUST DIE?!" I was hooked from the prologue right through to the end. The plot is quite basic - Bond hunting down a villain - but the backstory brought an unexpected depth to the characters that kept me emotionally invested. This is a Bond who is not always suave and smooth-talking, who doesn't instantly recover from wounds, an M whose authority is questioned, who is not immune from regret. Some of the action scenes are breathtaking in their sheer audacity, but there is also a back-to-basics approach - why waste time and money coming up with strangely-specific gadgets, when a radio and a gun will do the same job, or a London Underground map will provide the answers? There are new faces to old names - Ben Whishaw is wonderful as a Q who looks like he's just graduated from university, an adorably geeky Q with a cardigan, spectacles and a sharp tongue. ("What were you expecting, an exploding pen?")

Ben Whishaw had come to my attention earlier in the year, when I watched his portrayal of King Richard II in The Hollow Crown, a BBC series of four of Shakespeare's history plays, presented together as a saga. I only watched two installments live, but bought the box set with birthday money, and it has reawakened my love of Shakespeare - the language, the stories, the human experience. Although the Internet has gone wild over Tom Hiddleston, who played Prince Hal, later Henry V, it was Whishaw's Richard that I found fascinating to watch. Softly-spoken, but utterly ruthless, melodramatic and changeable, his Richard was both abhorrent and pitiful. Rory Kinnear, too, must not be forgotten, playing a very understated Henry Bolingbroke who is a man of few words, but says just as much in a look as Richard does in some of his soliloquies. These are two names you must look out for in future, actors who deserve to be huge.

Katie's Adventures in Storyland II

Winter is coming, the nights are getting darker and the bookshops are getting busier. This can mean only one thing - a new Cecelia Ahern book! (Actually it means many things. Christmas. Crunchy autumn leaves. Woolly jumpers. Hot chocolate.) Though I am usually averse to chick-lit, Miss Ahern's novels come at just the right time, when I am in need of some reading material that is fluffy and comforting, but without being utterly mushy. And her book covers are so pretty! How can you resist something that looks like this?

One Hundred Names is an original concept: journalist Kitty Logan asks her dying friend and mentor what is the one story you always wanted to write? The only answer is a list of names, and Kitty has to search all across Dublin to find the story that links these hundred people. One Hundred Names is quite a short novel, and I wondered whether Kitty would actually meet all hundred people on the list. Of course she doesn't, but the characters she does meet are lovable and memorable, a selection of people of all walks of life. Ultimately, the great mystery of the novel turned out not to be very surprising at all - I guessed it early on, but this in no way affected my enjoyment of the story. This book is all about the journey and the people, with an uplifting message that everybody, without exception, has a story to tell.

In between the other books I've been reading in the last couple of weeks, I have been spending some time with the Andreas girls in Eleanor Brown's The Weird Sisters. This is a quite gentle tale of three sisters, very different in temperament, who return to the family home when their mother falls sick, each bringing their own struggles and secrets with them. The Weird Sisters was quite a slow read, but by the end I found myself really invested in the Andreas family. Rose, Bean and Cordy are really Rosalind, Bianca and Cordelia, named for Shakespearean heroines by their obsessed father.

The family is an eccentric one, structured around Mr Andreas' love of the Bard which, though not fully shared by his daughters, plays a huge part in their identity. Trivial matters and deep truths are wrapped in a blanket of quotations - a delight for a literature-lover like myself who also sees the world through the lens of story, but I can see how it could prove irritating to a reader of a different disposition.

What stands out for The Weird Sisters among other family stories is the narration. Though scenes featuring one sister is a standard third-person, the sisterly relationship is almost a fourth character and is a fluid, omniscient "we" that could refer to any two of the trio, or all three. The sisters bicker and fight, are filled with envy and resentment for each other, but their identity is as one part of three. A crucial theme of the story is of the three girls finding where they belong in the world individually, not just in relation to the other two.

After reading a novel with its plethora of Shakespearean quotes and references, I had to return to the Bard himself, and so to the library I went to look at its selection of plays. I have read, studied and watched several of the Comedies and Tragedies, but I had never read any of Shakespeare's History plays, so I chose to read Julius Caesar. Much to the disappointment of my father, I have next to no knowledge of Roman history, so I went into Caesar with only the knowledge that the title character is murdered. In actual fact, Julius Caesar only appears in about three scenes of his play, and his death occurs halfway through. The story revolves around the conspiracy and assassination of Caesar - the build-up to the event, and its aftermath. If there is a protagonist, it must be Brutus, moralist and betrayer, but there are no heroes, only villains and anti-heroes. Reading this play, I found it difficult to take sides, but only impartially watch a historical event replayed in iambic pentameter. Still, Shakespeare humanises the great names of history, showing multi-faceted characters. Take Caesar: arrogant before the men, gentler and perhaps more vulnerable at home with his wife, shown for his strengths as well as his weaknesses in soliloquy, and all this in three short scenes.

Of course, Shakespeare wrote for the stage, not for the page, but I get as much pleasure from reading his plays as I do watching them, being able to enjoy the poetry and philosophy of his words at my own leisure, rereading favourite lines or passages I did not understand the first time. But although Shakespeare has a reputation for being long-winded and impenetrable, I do not find him so. Caesar is a relatively short play, without any padding, but each scene building plot, tension and character, as tightly-crafted as the best thrillers.

I read the Arden Shakespeare edition (pictured) but was not happy with the method of footnoting. This is evidently a study edition, with lots of useful notes taking up half the page - but I prefer to read the play straight through, with notes at the end of the book instead, where I can look them up if I want, or not if I don't want. They were not only a distraction, but also presumed upon the play not being read as a thriller, being free with the spoilers for the benefit of students on a reread (if it is not incongruous to talk of "spoilers" for a 400-year-old play whose events were centuries old even at the time of writing.)

It's Friday! Let's talk literary lovers.

It's a beautiful day here on the Isle of Wight, and I've spent the last two days in the garden with my nose in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, being lucky enough to have a four-day weekend this week. (Hurrah!)

Despite my crazy to-read list (which I swear has a life of its own and is possibly breeding without my help) I've been back in the bookshops again - quite aside from when I've been working! - and invested in four new YA books: Paranormalcy, Ballad, Amy and Roger's Epic Detour and What I Saw And How I Lied. I've made a start on Amy and Roger, but I'll give these books more attention when I've finished the Potter series.

At GReads, Ginger asked:

Mr and Mrs: Who are your favourite book couples?

Firstly, I have a confession to make: I'm not a big fan of the mushy stuff. (Shocking, I know!) For the most part, romance in books is a thing to be tolerated as long as it doesn't get in the way of the plot. So I don't tend to get excited about most couples. A lot of books are full of lovable, funny, lively or sweet characters who pair up and make each other happy. But for me, it takes more than that for me to think of them as "a couple" rather than "two characters who fall in love with each other." There has to be a special dynamic between the characters, people who complement each other. Their relationship is almost like a third character itself, where together they are stronger than each person apart. Which is not to say that either character is nothing without the other! If you've got two non-characters, then you get a non-relationship.

I think it's quite rare to find that kind of special relationship in modern teen fiction, probably because there is such a prevalence of love triangles. As I once tried to explain to a former Creepy Stalker trying to ask my advice on which of two girls he ought to ask out: if there's any question about it, if it's not obvious, then surely neither one is right to be with right now. That's my take on it, anyway.

So, who are those literary lovers whose relationship is so strong it softens even my hard heart? 

Exhibit A: Anne Shirley and Gilbert Bythe, from the Anne of Green Gables series. They meet when Anne is eleven years old, and Gilbert makes a very poor first impression when he makes fun of her red hair, causing her to smash her slate over his head. Anne doesn't speak to Gilbert for years after this insult. Yet he's always present in her mind, as an enemy and a rival in school, even though she might protest her indifference to him. They become friends eventually, however, and it's quite clear that Gilbert thinks Anne is something special. But to Anne, Gilbert is just a very dear friend - or so she thinks. But he will keep appearing in her thoughts and getting in the way when she's trying to daydream!

[Anne's "home o'dreams"] was, of course, tenanted by an ideal master, dark, proud and melancholy; but oddly enough, Gilbert Blythe persisted in hanging about too, helping her arrange pictures, lay out gardens, and accomplish sundry other tasks which a proud and melancholy hero evidently considered beneath his dignity.

Bless her, she's in love and she doesn't even realise it! The great thing about the Anne series is that it doesn't just end with the happily-ever-after of a typical "romance," but shows them through their engagement living apart, married life and onto their own children, their love staying strong through good and bad times, and even when they might not necessarily be feeling "in love."

Exhibit B is drawn from the Bard himself: Benedick and Beatrice, the original love/hate relationship from Much Ado About Nothing. Both swear that they will never marry, show disdain for the opposite sex and put all their energy into trying to score points off the other - but they are so perfectly suited. No one else can match them in wit, and I have the impression that their surface antagonism hides a real enjoyment from their banter and wordplay with each other. It doesn't take a lot, really, for them to be persuaded into love with each other. To quote C. S. Lewis: "They were so used to quarreling and making it up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently." Here's their first scene together, as portrayed by Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson.



Runners-up:


Arthur and Molly Weasley - Harry Potter series. Ron's parents have been married for over twenty years and brought up seven children, and it is quite clear that Molly wears the trousers in the family. An angry Mrs Weasley is not a sight anyone likes to see up close, and Mr Weasley appears to be a typical hen-pecked husband, but the couple have a real love for each other which shines through, even when Mrs Weasley is shouting at her husband again for meddling with the muggle technology that he is so fond of. 


Sam and Sybil Vimes - Discworld novels. When we first meet Sam Vimes, Captain of the City Watch, he is an angry, cynical drunk who is going nowhere. Lady Sybil Ramkin - is a jolly-hockey-sticks type of noblewoman who dresses in her scruffiest clothes and looks after sick dragons. She is a sensible, motherly woman who is able to stand up for herself and her loved ones, maybe a toned-down version of Molly Weasley. It's clear that Sam and Sybil need each other. Vimes is too forceful a character to allow himself to be wrapped around his wife's finger, but she can firmly but gently persuade him to do things he doesn't want to, when no one else can. It is Sybil, and Vimes' love for her that saves him from the darkness inside himself.

Finally - a late addition to my favourite couples list - Faramir and Eowyn - Lord of the Rings. We don't get to see much of them together; in fact they don't even meet until near the end of the book. Eowyn is always described as a cold, strong, beautiful woman; she's full of love for her country, Rohan, as much courage and skill on the battlefield as her brother, but always she is forbidden from proving her worth because she is a woman. She is in love with warrior king Aragorn - or in love with the idea of him - and full of despair for the future. Then she meets Faramir, who does not view her with condescension, but respect and admiration for a remarkable woman. He offers her hope, and when she allows herself to fall in love with him, she is able to let down her guard without worrying about looking weak. Both know what it is to carry all of the burdens of their family and none of the glory - Faramir, though a respected soldier and wise, clever man, was always overshadowed by his elder brother Boromir. This is a marriage of equals, and the scene in which they realise their love for each other has always made me go a little bit swoony inside.

Theatre: Much Ado About Nothing (Wyndham's)

Preview showing.

One cold day in January I was mooching around my room, probably reading or using my laptop, when all of a sudden my ears tuned into the radio news: “David Tennant and Catherine Tate are to be reunited on stage, playing sparring lovers Benedick and Beatrice in Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing…” I confess, I actually squealed and did a little happydance. Much Ado About Nothing wasn’t a Shakespeare play I’d seen or read before, but I’d heard a little about it. When I told my dad, who had studied the play at O-Level, he knew immediately which roles they had been cast in. The characters seemed to have been written for the duo. (Perhaps they were…)

Now, we know he's met Shakespeare when travelling
with Martha Jones. Maybe he popped back to see
his old mate with Donna Noble one time...?

But, strange as it seemed, it didn’t occur to me for a few hours that I could actually see the play. Once that lightbulb lit up, I was on the internet, but so was everyone else, so I tried the phones. Lots of twinkly music later, I decided to give myself another two minutes. Two minutes passed, and then… a person! And I had tickets! And I was one excited bunny.

After many months of waiting, the day came around. My best friend and I had decided to wear nice dresses and stay in a hotel overnight – but just before we got to the hotel, the heavens opened! It looked like we would have to reconsider. My shoes were little more than ballet slippers, not good for splashing through puddles. With a few minutes to go, the rain stopped and we decided to risk it. But as we stood on the station platform, it seemed we had made a bad choice. Rain emptied down once more, and the sky exploded into a thunderstorm. Oh dear. Instead of heading to Foyle’s – the wonderful bookshop up the road from the Wyndham’s Theatre, and grabbing a bite to eat in Leicester Square, we grabbed some food at the station and took the tube straight to the station. We arrived with about ten minutes to go before the doors opened, just enough time to eat our food. And then – we were there!

I had been worrying that something would go wrong - surely it was too good to be true? - but we were ushered in without a problem, and made our way into the stalls. Entering the theatre, I was shocked that it was a lot smaller than I had been expecting. We were six rows back from the stage, and on the end of the row – but the rows were fairly short meaning we got a fantastic view.

Review may contain spoilers.

Much Ado About Nothing is the tale of two couples: young Claudio and Hero, whose love is tested by the evil Don John’s lies, and the older Benedick and Beatrice whose relationship consists of trading insults, and whose friends think it would be a laugh if they could be persuaded to fall in love with each other.

This production was updated to a 1980s setting, with its location Messina being translated to being a bit of a party island. Lyrics from Shakespeare’s songs – not only from this play – were set to a variety of ‘80s-style pop and rock arrangements, for both drama and soundtrack. I've had the finale number, "Sigh No More, Ladies, Sigh No More," in my head all day.

Though perhaps Claudio and Hero are supposed to be the “main” couple and provide the most drama, it is the older couple who are the real stars. It seems that Benedick fancies himself as a wit, and a bit of a ladies’ man, but the sharp-tongued Beatrice is more than a match for him. Catherine Tate plays the role pretty much as her fans expect: tomboyish and mouthy and seemingly with more anger in her words than the smart-ass of a Benedick. Seeing her in the role makes you aware of what a modern, interesting character Beatrice is, and I had the impression that she was bitter about the expectations of her sex, battling with her tongue when denied a sword. Tate and Tennant’s banter was perfect, a sort of verbal Wimbledon Final match between pros, although the dialogue was not always audible over the audience’s laughter.

Need I point out that David Tennant was superb? Such a versatile actor, hilarious both in his delivery of his lines, and in his unspoken acting, quietly frightening when angry – I would not want to be on the receiving end of that stony glare – and charming when Benedick finally confesses his love for Beatrice. And, worryingly, he looks better in a mini-skirt and lace tights than I ever would. Perhaps.

Hero was played by West End newcomer Sarah Macrae, who did a great job of playing the pretty, innocent love interest caught in the middle of Don John’s scheming. As the drama came to a head at their wedding ceremony, I found myself glowering at the unkind Claudio, and most of Hero’s friends-and-relations who were so quick to condemn her. Still, Tom Bateman managed to evoke a little sympathy for Claudio in times, once he’d realised his mistake – although shame on Hero for taking him back without question!

The best scenes for me were without doubt those in which Benedick, and later Beatrice, overhear their friends discussing the other’s love for them. After some brilliantly staged slapstick moments, Tennant ended up with paint all over his face, and Tate found herself dangling from the ceiling, trying to assault the gossipers. Benedick's attempts at songwriting with the aid of a little plastic keyboard were brilliant, as was his lack of control over said instrument when interrupted mid-ballad. Hero’s wedding dress also amused me - being set in the 1980s, it was of course a Princess Diana-inspired beast with a ridiculous train, which Beatrice proceeded to wrap herself up in when suffering from a mysterious disease causing her to sneeze at the word “Benedick.” The dress also gave a double meaning to the comparison of Hero with “Diane in her orb.”

Note also needs to be made of John Ramm as the watchman Dogberry, who reminded me very much of Sergeant Colon of Ankh-Morpork, and let me not forget to note that he is an ass!

When I was at school, first studying Shakespeare, I was informed that his comedies are defined by ending in weddings, and the tragedies by ending with a stage full of corpses, but it took quite some time to understand that Shakespeare’s comedies are actually funny! This production made no doubts about that, with a superb cast delivering a witty script so as to cause louder laughter than you may expect if you expect Shakespeare to be “boring, cultural stuff that no one actually understands.” Yet I was drawn emotionally into the play too, feeling anger and pity for those wronged by the villain Don John and rejoicing in a happy – if contrived – ending (if happy it can be for poor Hero marrying the awful Claudio.) The play received a standing ovation, and the cast seemed to really enjoy performing it.

After the show, I took a detour round the back of the theatre “just in case” any of the cast decided to make an appearance at the stage door – which they did. Although not as big a crowd of fangirls – for most people I saw were female and between about 16 and 25! – as I could have predicted, I didn’t manage to speak to Mr Tennant or Ms Tate, or get an autograph. It would have been nice, of course, but it was too busy for an autograph to be more than a squiggle on a programme anyway. I didn’t want to be a demanding fangirl shouting “David! Over here! Catherine! Sign this!” But I’d have liked to thank them personally - and say, "Nice tights!" Still, I saw them up close, close enough to touch if it weren’t for the crowd. Miss Tate has glorious hair. In the flesh, Mr Tennant is very tall and very skinny but looks remarkably ordinary - if a rather eye-pleasing ordinary who looks like David Tennant!

What Katie Did: a general update

What Katie Read: Skippy Dies by Paul Murray.

See, there's this boy, right.
Called Skippy. He dies.

This crazy, sprawling epic is set in and around a prestigious old boys' school and follows staff, students and other local characters in the events leading up to and following the death of Daniel "Skippy" Juster. Seemingly unconnected characters all had their own stories to tell, and gradually all came to fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw. Murray uses a mixture of unusual narrative techniques: alongside the ordinary third-person narration are chapters written in the second person - "you" - the first book I've read to use this, and stream-of-consciousness. Despite this, Skippy is quite intelligible, although some of the consciousnesses we see into are decidedly disturbing, horrible, twisted places. In the end, though, I couldn't be sure what to make of this book. There was so much going on, and it was so many different things: blackly comic, bleak, tragic, innocent and at the same time as obscene as only fourteen-year-old boys can be. Then, after the tragedy, shocking revelations come to light. Not shocking because of being unexpected - given the setting and date of writing, these secrets were almost inevitable - but due to the way they are handled, and because this didn't come from one man's twisted imagination but based upon reality.

I wouldn't recommend Skippy Dies to everyone, as it is horrible in places, and despite its humour in the first part, I reached the end with an impression of disgust and despair. Still, it is an interesting, sometimes amusing, sometimes tragic interesting, well-written and thought-provoking piece of work.

What Katie Watched: Glee and Doctor Who

Once again, I'm late to the party. I tried to avoid the phenomenon of being the last person to discover a new story/band/TV show, but after watching the first two episodes, predicting an adultery storyline and misinterpreting a throwaway line as being much filthier than it actually was, I wasn't too impressed. Then I tried again for season two and got myself hooked, and ended up renting series 1 from Blockbuster to catch up. I've always had a thing about school stories, and the American High School of TV and film seems such a more glamorous, story-worthy place than the bog-standard 13-18 comprehensive I attended. I guess the grass is always greener. Interesting to notice that the American preppie style of fashion seems to be the in thing at the moment. TopShop, H&M, et al are full of High school style sports jackets, short red cheerleading-type skirts and anything out of Rachel Berry's wardrobe, such as polka-dot blouses with cute little rounded collars.

The latest series of Doctor Who opened with a huge two-part story that is comparable to most seasons' finales. Ten minutes in, spmething unthinkable happened, and I was in denial. But due to the laws of timey-wimey and Steven Moffat's magnificant brain, there are still many, many unanswered questions of "what happens next?" and "what happened to lead up to this point?" Unfortunately, it's hard to follow up on such an opener, and stand-alone episodes that would be great in an ordinary season just seem to fall a bit flat, when what you really care about is the big story arc. However, last week's episode, "The Doctor's Wife" was written by Neil Gaiman, and what a cracking story it was! Full of Gaiman's trademark humour and horror, we get a new point of view on the Doctor's life story. I could tell Gaiman was a fan of both old series and new, and although some people complained that the title was "misleading" (which it was) I thought that it was perfect, its meaning perfect and in fact I had predicted the identity of "The Doctor's Wife" as a "mad crazy theory" the day before, after picking up on a clue from the previous episode.

Fangirl much?

What Katie Listened To: Rumours by Fleetwood Mac

Just before Spotify changed The Rules to limit how often one can listen to music for free, I had this album pretty much on repeat, so I was thrilled to see Glee dedicating an episode to this album, causing me to buy it for myself. The album tells the real-life story of the band's relationship breakdowns - with each other! - but instead of letting their emotions break up the group, they turned them into some amazing music. Go Your Own Way, Second Hand News and Songbird are my favourites at the moment, but the other tracks follow close behind, and I'm sure they are liable to change.

What Katie Planned:

I've got a much-needed week of holiday from work, in which I intend to spend a lot of my time catching up on my reading. Since my Lent book-buying embargo, I've added some half dozen or so books to my collection as well as a few borrowings from libraries and friends.

Contrary to labelling, Catherine
Tate is the redhead and David
Tennant is the furtive-looking one
with facial hair.



Currently I'm reading The Woodcutter, a crime thriller by Reginald Hill who wrote the Dalziel and Pascoe detective novels. So far, it is remarkably different from the run-of-the-mill mystery I was expecting to read, and is the second book in a row to feature at least some second-person narration - unusual. Hodder books sent me Cold Light by Jenn Ashworth to review, so that will appear online in the next week or two, as will part two of Whitney's Tenant of Wildfell Hall read-along.

On Thursday I'm off to the theatre to watch some Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing starring the wonderful pairing of David Tennant and Catherine Tate as Benedick and Beatrice. I absolutely cannot wait.