vodkafan

Hi dtrpath and welcome. I have seen your posts all over so I came to see if you had done an introduction post. Have you ever read any Jack Vance? He was a great American writer he only died last year.

That's a real funny photo. It makes you think that he might be a fun person to be around in real life as a pal

Not heard of that one- is it a rip off from the plot of Nightmare On Elm Street?

75p for the lot?

Trainspotting.

Is that Cumberbatch?

Postal Pleasures: Sex, Scandal and Victorian Letters 3/5 Kate Thomas This is another book about aspects of 19th century writing that I read for research purposes. One of the facts it revealed to me was that the writer Anthony Trollope was in fact a postman and that he invented the pillar box! This was a bit heavy in places and is in fact more of a scholarly thesis-type essay, properly referenced. Still, very useful.

It must be good my work pc won't allow me access

Saw We Were Soldiers. I really think this is one of Mel Gibson's worst movies. The battle scenes were good but the whole movie was stuffed full of cheap moralizing mixed with sugary sentimentalism (as soon as somebody introduces themselves and tell a bit of their life story you know they are going to die before the film is over) with a huge dollop of "God is on our side!" on top. And Gibson's acting is simply awful. This one is going to be traded in ASAP.

Yes I never tire of watching this! I am a fan of Mark Strong (Septimus). I saw him once on the London Underground. I wish I had said hello.

I agree that a film has to stand fast as a good story before anything else. Avatar was derivative of course-it is basically Pocahontas in space- but it was very well done, had a moral and clear -cut villains and heroes for children (my kids love the film) and is visually enjoyable to look at. I just think he's going to blow it by doing any more.

I like the specsavers advert where the old farmer shaves his faithful sheepdog instead of the sheep and at the end he still doesn't realise what he has done.

I been reading up about the sequel to Avatar....looks like it will be 3 more films just to cash in....what made me groan is that Cameron is planning to bring back three of the characters who died in the first film! Even if they make that convincing it makes it sound like it is going to be a formula film for sure...

He missed the best bits of the country!

In The Cage 3/5 Henry James The first Henry James novel I have read. Unusually the heroine is not named throughout the book. She is a working class girl who handles the telegram messages from the upper class people who do not realise that she is able to piece together their whole lives over time and is privy to all their secrets. I think James made her anonymous on purpose to prove a point. She becomes fixated on the illicit affair of one couple in particular and even makes herself known to them, even delaying her impending marriage for the vicarious thrill of being slightly involved in the affair. It is a novel that explores the ramifications on Victorian society of new technology: Private messages that used to be sent by letter between one person and another are now handled by several nameless people of lower rank. This is something we have now grown used to without thinking: our emails and web browsing are all logged and watched.

Long Time Coming 1/5 Edie Clarke I started this because it was on my kindle I must have downloaded it as a freebie or a special offer but had forgotten the subject. It was a standard romance with a ghost in it for added measure. I don't even know why I carried on reading it. I think I was hoping for more of the ghost. There was nothing wrong with the writing, the story was just boring for me.

Started watching Factory Girl last night but was so boring had to turn it off. Andy Warhol seems like an idiot. Watched Stardust again just for fun. Watched a bit of Apocalypto. Incredible film.

Master And Commander

Edward Scissorhands.

Dredd is!

I don't feel that the book covers influence me much any more, although they used to when I was younger. If I have not heard of the author I am always persuaded or not by the blurb. If I have read and liked another book by an author I am much more likely to just take a chance on it though.

I very much enjoyed the Dragon Tattoo trilogy by Steig Larsson and on a lighter note, the Dido Kent mysteries set in the Regency period.

I wouldn't say that I disliked it but I have read very little, 2 or 3 and only in the last year or two....I could be persuaded to read some more, but the premise/characters would have to grab me on the blurb..the Dido Kent mysteries or Agatha Christies' I would read anyway, having read a couple already. It's more modern ones that would be a hard sell to me. Ah just thought of something! One thing I do very much dislike is where an author creates a series of expendable characters just so they can have a gory ending. For instance I found James Herbert stories followed this formula: you get a one page description of someone at the start of a chapter , a little potted life history then two pages later they are dead in some horrible way.

Capital 4/5 Maureen Duffy This is a satisfying little Cadbury's Cream Egg of a book! I enjoyed it a lot. When it was written it was a bit experimental. Where to start? OK, I will start with Emery. He is a lecturer at Queen's College in London, part of the academic establishment, safe in his knowledge of the 18th Century, where history is well known , cut and dried. We know him through the long, rather stuffy letters he writes to his wife (or girlfriend) who has gone away for the summer. He is jolted out of his boring steady existence by the appearance of Meepers. Meepers is an elderly man who served in the war and spent time in a German prison camp. He was wounded and now has a metal plate in his head which means he doesn't feel emotions like normal people any more; but instead he can see ghosts, all the countless dead of London through the ages. He becomes a self taught expert on the Dark Ages and feels that his mission is to write the history of these long dead ghosts. (It is not really clear if they talk to him or he is just aware of them pressing on him wherever he goes in the city: I prefer the latter) . Meepers writes a paper and submits it to Emery, who rejects it without reading it; he is contemptuous of Dark Age history as it is too speculative and cannot be proven. He dismisses Meepers as a crackpot. This encounter happens before the action in the book starts. There are some other incidental characters in the story, but the other main character is London itself. I really really like the way the author tells the story of some of the inhabitants of times past, but relates them moving through modern day places; for instance the prehistoric family walking up Oxford Street and through Hyde Park; as if all the times all exist at once. This gives us a sense of what Meepers sees. (it very much helped that I had read Sir Walter Besant's History of London before this-it is possible to visualise the great ancient Middlesex Forest stretching Northwards away from the river, and the mentions of the Lea and Fleet rivers) Meepers infiltrates some of Emery's lectures as a student, which shocks Emery and frightens him not a little. He doesn't know what Meepers wants. In fact Meepers has a half-baked plan to use the University's computer to feed in all his knowledge, but he does not know how. He is living like a hermit about the city in abandoned buildings and garden sheds, living off the city and his wits like the old soldier he is. That is another little stroke of genius; he is like a ghost himself. But then something happens which forces the two together and they become near-friends, or at least not enemies. This part is written really well in my opinion; it gives both the characters much dignity. Up to this point, although I liked Meepers I didn't like Emery at all; he is pompous and small minded. After this I liked him a lot more. But what they have in common is that they both love the city and are worried that its soul is being lost in modernity. Emery decides to help Meepers. But Meepers also becomes a catalyst for Emery, who decides to change his life. I won't say what happens to Meepers, you must read it for yourself.

Haha that's funny! We don't don't even know what books we got! I am the same.