Sunday Summary (19/4/15)

I was making plans for this post as I walked home from work yesterday evening; it was going to be a Five Things That Made Me Happy This Week theme. Then I logged onto the internet to find that Death had visited yet another one of my "safe" places, a story world which shaped my very being, this time taking Canadian actor Jonathan Crombie, who was best known as Gilbert Blythe in Anne of Green Gables. It seems Mr Crombie passed away this week from a brain haemorrhage at the age of 48. (Younger, I could not help observing, than Gilbert was in Rilla of Ingleside. That's not right.)

It's not easy for someone to satisfy me as the romantic love interest of a story which has had my heart since I was eight years old, but as soon as I saw Crombie as Gilbert, there could be no other. ** I only knew of Mr Crombie from that one role, but what a role it was, and how well he fitted it! I had fantasies of bringing him and Megan Follows back to the world of Anne if ever I was to finish my screenplay of Rilla of Ingleside and get it turned into a miniseries. And of course, my condolences go out to his family and loved ones.

But onto happier subjects. Despite the best efforts of Royal Mail, my Ninja Book Swap parcel finally turned up this week, and in fact its sender was the same person I'd sent my parcel to: Sarah in Ottawa. I have to say Bex and Hanna did a wonderful job of pairing us up; Sarah is brilliant; I follow her on Tumblr, and she is one of my favourite posters on there. *waves fangirl flag.* She sent me two books: The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane, and The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. I can't wait to read them, and because they came from overseas, they are different editions to the ones I've seen in this country and very pretty! Also included in the parcel were a postcard, a cardboard Bookmobile - she's studying to be a library technician - which is on my bookshelf, a Book Nerd badge (which I've added to the collection on my favourite customised bag) and an Anne of Green Gables poster! (Have I mentioned how much I love Anne? Maybe once or twice? A week? Since I was eight?) Thank you so much, Sarah!

On Friday I went over to Southsea to see a touring production of Return to the Forbidden Planet, which is a rock'n'roll musical loosely based on Shakespeare's The Tempest and set in space! In 1999, when I was thirteen and in my last year of middle school (because we used to have middle schools on the Isle of Wight) this was our school play, and it has so much nostalgia for me. If I looked back at my diaries (which I have long since destroyed) I suspect that I'd find it was a difficult time of teenage angst, the pains of unrequited crushes and being a relatively unpopular kid, but my abiding memories of that summer are of long sunny days, an innocent time, and not being quite so lonely as I would be in high school, when my little group of friends ended up going our separate ways. Ours was far from being a perfect production. We had a parent in to play Prospero, the lead, and adult musicians (including my dad on the guitar.) One of the leads could not sing, could not act, and could not even be heard, and was probably cast in a prominent role entirely due to being the biggest boy in the school. But it was the most fun I've had in a school play, even just being in the chorus, shoved off to one side of the stage, and I was madly in love with a boy called Sam, who had long eyelashes and danced with me once out of pity at a school disco. Even now, if I hear most of the songs on the radio, they automatically make me smile: "Teenager in Love," "Great Balls of Fire," "Good Vibrations" or "She's Not There," to name but a few.

But none of this could compare to sitting in the King's Theatre and hearing the songs combined with mangled Shakespeare, dreadful puns, ...enthusiastic... accents. This felt like the proper context for these songs. The cast were magnificent, especially those playing Cookie, the ship's cook with an unrequited crush on Miranda (daughter of mad scientist Prospero) and the robot Ariel (a combination of Ariel and Caliban from the original Tempest). The music was played by the cast, a very multi-talented group. And the casting of "Chorus" - the pre-recorded narrator - was a stroke of genius in the context of a rock musical about space: Brian May from Queen.

Watching Return to the Forbidden Planet from the audience, I realised how much I hadn't quite appreciated as a chorus member. I still knew the songs inside out (although this [production had a couple of substitutions, as well as reinstating one or two that had been on the soundtrack cassette I have since, regrettably, lost, but which we had not used. But the plot still managed to surprise me in some places, where I had not been present for the acting rehearsals, or our cast had played things differently (and, I suspect, slightly bowdlerised) or the things I'd simply forgotten. And now I have sixteen years' extra Shakespeare knowledge and two of Star Trek fandom. I played a mental game of "identify the original quote" throughout the show, and was astonished that the "Live long and Prospero" line I'd thought was an ad-lib in the school play, was in fact in the script. I suppose you couldn't not put it in. All in all, I had an evening of tremendous fun and nostalgia, boogieing away to my heart's content in my chair by the end. I can recommend going to see Forbidden Planet if it comes to your town.

* and, if you insist, also in "The Continuing Story," if you wish to acknowledge that one's existence. As far as I'm concerned, it occupies the Pit of Oblivion alongside Star Trek Generations and the live-action Thunderbirds movie. Or would, if any of these things existed!

**The webseries Green Gables Fables, which is a modern-day vlog adaptation of Anne does a pretty good job with its casting too. I was slow to be won over to GGF, but somewhere along the line I came to love it, and to love the new generation of fangirls to discuss the Anne books and adaptations with in the sort of minute detail that I love. This was, after all, why I started this blog in the first place.

Sunday Summary: Pratchett and Presents

Hello to you all. I hope all of you who are enduring unusual heat and humidity are finding ways to deal with the weather. (I will not complain. I complain when it is cold and grey and dreary. I will not complain about the sunshine. The air conditioning timer at work apparently being set for Sunday trading hours on Saturdays - that I will complain about.) I had been very worried about some changes at work, but so far - so far - it is all going quite smoothly and I'm still enjoying my work for the most part.

I spent my days off this week at the beach and in the sea - it is absolutely gorgeous swimming now, and I found a new favourite beach, the morbidly-named Small Hope beach in Shanklin. My seaside reading has been Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. I have certain favourite books which I read and reread on a semi-regular basis (the Watch books, the Witches books, Going Postal, Monstrous Regiment) but I've decided this week to go back to the start and fill in all the gaps. ("You mean there are Discworld books you haven't read?!" has been the response of everyone I've told about this plan. I suspect this was partially influenced by blogger Mark Oshiro's latest mammoth project which is the entire Discworld series from start to finish. (He is also watching Star Trek, and posted his first entry, I believe, a year to the day after I first started watching the original series DVDs.) If you're not familiar with Mark, I urge you to check out his sites, in which he reads and watches favourite books, films and TV shows in a state of complete ignorance, and is utterly adorable. It's the closest thing to discovering a new story for the very first time, all over again.

I was often advised to start my Discworld reading with Mort, which was "where it gets good." The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic are interesting to read which a good knowledge of Pratchett's later books, seeing how things have changed. The style of the first book, in particular, is more openly parodying the tropes of the fantasy genre (I saw definite nods to H. P. Lovecraft and the Dragonriders of Pern books,) when later on he uses the fantasy setting to comment on the real world. A lot of thought has clearly gone into the world-building, whereas later, when readers are familiar with the setting, the focus shifts to the characters and a depth of message beneath the humour and the puns. Oh, the puns!

Exhibit A: They had dined on horse meat, horse cheese, horse black pudding, horse d'oeuvres and a thin beer that Rincewind didn't want to speculate about.

Exhibit B: "Rincewind, all the shops have been smashed open, there was a whole bunch of people across the street helping themselves to musical instruments, can you believe that?"

 "Yeah," said Rincewind, picking up a knife and testing its blade thoughtfully. "Luters, I expect."

I received my Ninja Book Swap parcel a couple of weeks ago, from Sophie: The Shock of the Fall, by Nathan Filer, whose name I keep on misreading as Nathan Fillion. I've had my eye on that since it was first published, picked it up and started reading it at work a few times *whistles innocently* but never got around to buying it, despite it being on various different special offers at different times. She also sent me a brilliant card and an adorable wooden postcard of Alice in Wonderland and a bar of Lindt Lindor, which sadly has long since ceased to exist. That is my favourite chocolate out of all the many kinds of chocolate I love, but it wasn't going to last very long in the July heat, so I put it out of its misery sharpish. So thank you, Sophie!

Sunday Summary: It's been a while

Hello all. Hope you're doing well. I haven't written a Sunday Summary post lately. I've been working a lot recently, which has been (or will be) good for money reasons, but bad for having anything interesting to say about my life. Still, I've managed to fit in a Bout of Books readathon around it, during which I read a not-too-shabby three books, and finished my very belated Buffy the Vampire Slayer catch-up which I started just after the new year.

Now my colleagues are all back at work, I've got three days off, the first time in a while that I've had more than one day off at a time. My reading has slowed right down since the readathon. I've just started The Lies of Locke Lamora on Hanna's recommendation, although she did point out that it takes a while to get going. I haven't got that far into the book yet, and although I am enjoying it when I do read it, it's still in the world-building and introducing-characters section and pretty slow going. The narrative switches between the titular Locke as a child thief who proved to be too light-fingered and troublesome even for the Fagin-esque gang to which he belonged, and an extended sequence of an adult Locke setting up a confidence trick on a rich nobleman. I'm finding Locke's backstory more interesting and easy to read, and suspect that this confidence trick's main purpose is to give the reader an overview of the world's political situation without seeming too much like masses of exposition. But I'm still waiting for the plot to start. (I might be wrong, and all this might be the catalyst for something bigger. Only way to find out is to read on.)

 So, what does one do when one is taking a long time over a book? Why, go out and buy a whole load more! I've been pretty good about letting my to-read pile grow smaller rather than bigger, but when is sank beneath the twenty books line, I took myself and my canvas book bag shopping and came home with some shiny new goodies. After enjoying From A Buick 8 a lot more than I'd expected, I found another Stephen King book in The Works for £1.99: Full Dark, No Stars, which is a collection of either short stories or novellas and which Neil Gaiman reviewed on its release. Also, Doctor Sleep, the long-awaited sequel to The Shining, has finally been released in paperback, and both Waterstone's and WHSmith are selling it for half price at the moment. How could I resist?

Haruki Murakami is another author whose name I keep on finding on my favourite blogs. I read 1Q84 last year or the year before, which was very weird and imaginative, if a bit long. I'm still not entirely sure how much I liked it, but evidently enough to want to see what else he can do, as when I found Sputnik Sweetheart on a recommendations table, the last copy ended up on my book pile. And I enjoyed The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul so much when I read it last year that when I found author Deborah Roderiguez' non-fiction account of her own experiences in Afghanistan, The Kabul Beauty School, re-released with a beautiful new cover, I had to have that too!

This week, Bex persuaded me to join in with the lastest Ninja Book Swap, organised by herself and Hanna. I took place in the Trick or Treat book swap last year, which was brilliant, so I really didn't need to have my arm twisted. If you want to join in, you've only got until the end of today to sign up (details here.)

Now I've finished with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, last night I started a new adventure, the science-fiction show Fringe. I didn't have a lot of foreknowledge of this one, except that Pacey from Dawson's Creek and Denethor from Lord of the Rings investigate weird stuff and battle lens flare (as it is from J.J. Abrams of Lost fame, and also the Star Trek reboot.) It usually takes me about three episodes to make up my mind about a TV show, and so far I've just watched two. I've borrowed the box set from my sister's friend Bob, and am not sure yet whether I'll watch after season one. I'm enjoying it, but haven't yet fallen in love with it. I'm not a scientifically-minded person at all, and even I can tell that the "fringe science" here is ridiculous. Flux capacitors, warp drives, timey-wimey detectors that go ding when there's stuff... no problem. But Walter Bishop's particular brand of mad science is stretching my suspension of disbelief. Still, there's no doubt the writers had a lot of fun with it, and it is pretty entertaining, if gruesome in places. I'll stick with it and see how it goes.