Persuasion - PBS Masterpiece version

Even though I watched this only a few weeks ago on TVO, which is a publicly-owned tv station here in the province of Ontario, once I saw that the PBS station we can get on cable from the US was showing the entire Jane Austen works, well, I had to sign up for the mini-challenge and begin watching, starting tonight! I am going to watch all the films for this challenge, and read at least two of her novels, in order to complete my version of the Jane Austen Challenge, mostly because I am so familiar with her work already. (see prev blog)
Persuasion is one of my favourite books of all time, as is just about any movie version. I own the version with Anne Root and Ciaran Hinds, and will probably put this version from England's ITV channel (just made last year) on my Christmas wish list. It doesn't matter which version I watch, because it is the story that is so key, and most versions can't tamper with Jane Austen because her stories are about love. The ITV version moves some things around - there is no mention of the Wentworth brother who is a curate, that at one point Anne thinks means Captain Wentworth is married. The whole description of 'card playing' which is so key in the Anne Root version and in the book is also missing. But on the whole, the ITV adaption is faithful in tone and setting to the book, and the slow transformation of Anne as she moves from spinsterhood to a woman in love, and how her hope grows and lights her up as his love is revealed, is as powerful as ever. I love the story so much, that I don't think there are many versions that I can't watch!
Rupert Penry-Jones is another gorgeous man to add the Austen collection. And he does an admirable job of portraying Captain Wentworth as a man who was jilted once, due mostly to society frowning on a young man with no connections or money, and I came to like Sally Hawkin's portrayal of Anne during this second time of viewing this version.
I was thinking about why Jane Austen has such enduring novels and movies, and why I can read and watch her over and over, and never tire of them. This is unusual for me, for I dislike repeating things once I have done them, and I hate tv repeats of shows if I have seen them! Unless they are particularly good, which is not often, and I have a handful of tv series I collect - Buffy, X-Files, Dr Who (new version), Battlestar Galactica (new version), the Star Trek movies (someday I will get the original tv series, but right now $300 is too much).....all the Jane Austen movies but Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park. I haven't found the one version of Northanger Abbey on dvd yet that I have seen, so I am looking forward to this new ITV version of Northanger Abbey and hoping I can find it for Xmas this year. I own the Gwyneth Paltrow- Jeremy Northam version of Emma, Emma Thompson version of Sense and Sensibility, and the two versions on Pride and Prejudice - Keira Knightley's new movie version (a satisfactory 2 1/2 hour version) and of course, the one and only 6 hour Colin Firth -Jennifer Ehle version. Unfortunately we only have it on VHS and since our video player was stolen two years ago we have only bought a DVD player and not replaced all the movies yet on DVD, so it has been over two years since I last saw the full version and I am so looking forward to seeing it on PBS!!!!
I don't watch the movies only; I have read all the books (except Mansfield Park, and now I am wondering why!) at least once. Persuasion and P&P I have read several times; at least once every two years. They both, to me, are perfect books - each one explores different kinds of love and marriages that people settle for, and the people - characters - are delightful and awful and real. We have all known people like tonight's Anne's sister Mary, who refuses to acknowledge half of her husband's family because they are lower on the social scale than they are, and yet her own father barely recognizes them - but then he is the worst social snob (and character) of all, and as played by Anthony Head tonight, very unpleasant to be around, very shallow and cruel.

There are real plights depicted in Austen's books, too; in every novel there is the unmarried older woman and her worry about what will happen to her because she couldn't work in those days - today, in the words of Miranda in Sex and the City, single people end up with cats who eat them when the single people die alone in their apartments! (Which, until I unexpectedly met my second husband almost 8 years ago, I was on my way to becoming....) Widows, ill people, the bereaved, the unmarried, the unhappily married.....they all have a place too in exploring all the places people can end up in if they don't marry wisely (and I think, have some fate on their side). People marry for money, to not be alone, for protection, and these are all reasons (whether good or bad......) that still, people marry today. Her works are a study of emotions and are endlessly appealing because the main characters end up happy, with the love and choice of their life - their soulmates. We see the roles women play, the dances and society and rules of behaviour that still aren't so far from today's generation, even if today women and men have relationships and sex long before marriage, the same pain of loss and joy of love found is present today as well as yesterday. Because we all need love, and all yearn for companionship that meets our deepest needs, Austen's works speak to us and show us how people find their way. No matter how often I read her novels, they have layers of richness and meaning that I delight in. She is so accurate in her descriptions of characters that I am amazed at her perceptiveness and her wit - and what she values most of all are qualities most of us value - truthfulness, honesty, kindness, a sense of humour, a willingness to work, - who wouldn't want to be any of Jane Austen's heroine's friends?? - and loyalty - these are all qualities we all strive to have in our own natures now today.
Anyway, I didn't mean to lecture on Jane Austen, these are just some of the thoughts I have had over the years of reading her novels and watching the movies based on them. I hope you, Gentle Reader, were able to watch the first of the PBS Jane Austen movies tonight or this week sometime, and if you care to, drop me a line and tell me why you like Jane Austen so much. I'd love to hear from you!
and thanks to Becky once again over at http://blbooks.blogspot.com/2007/12/updates-on-austen-mini-challenge.html who started this challenge. Next week, Northanger Abbey!

By the Time You Read This - Giles Blunt

This was a solid, well-written, gripping mystery. From the opening chapter, the story had me in thrall. It was difficult in places to read because it deals with depression (which my family struggles with) and suicide, but this meant I could relate on a personal level with what the story was about. The main character, John Cardinal, a detective with the fictional town of Algonquin Bay, ON police force, has a bipolar wife Catharine who it appears finally takes her life at the beginning of this book. I can't say anymore without revealing crucial elements of the plot, regarding how he handles her death, but I can say the descriptions of grief were realistic, and the writing about depression, as it has been written about for Catharine throughout this series, is outstanding. This is such a good story. All the characters are interesting and the secondary story of Cardinal's co-worker Lise Delorme working on a difficult child molestation case is equally gripping and provides the impetus for the book.
I have been been giving Forty Words For Sorrow, the first book in the series, to different people to read. Now I can recommend this book as equally as good as the first!

So that is three books read in my Canadian Book Challenge, and the first one from the 'new releases' 888 challenge. Since all my favourite new books by authors are in that section, I can see how that will be the first section completed!

See below....favourite author Jane Austen (for Book Meme Thursday)

How could I have forgotten about Jane Austen??? I can't remember how I discovered her, whether I read Pride and Prejudice first, or saw the Colin Firth version on tv, or if it was Persuasion, whether it was school reading or I picked it up for fun...I really can't remember.....but she is one of my all-time favourite authors and I have read all her books except Mansfield Park at least once, some many times.....the only reason I haven't joined the Jane Austen mini-challenge is that I haven't made myself, since I watch Persuasion and P&P and read the books every other year or so.

See the new little icon to the side? The one that says I am a kinda dorky nerd Queen? I love this! I couldn't resist...and even though I am computer-challenged at the best of times (so I don't qualify for dorky since I can barely get my computer to run), I thought i might still qualify as a nerd because of my love of sci-fi....and I was right! Cool, I get to be a queen, even if it is a Nerd Queen! That's ok, because while I don't own a light sabre (my ex-husband and eldest son do however....) I can quote from the original Star Treks!!! And we all know that reading is so nerdy it is cool (according to my own blog last month.....)! I think I am the only person who actually read the Star Trek Log books that came out, books one through 12,short stories based on the original Star Trek episodes. (I was desperate for anything new about Star Trek then, it was the mid 1970's so nothing new had come out for years.....) Yep, that's me!

Oh, and I forgot about Little Women by Louisa May Alcott......I don't know how many times I read this book growing up. I think I got this for a present......Jo was my heroine, she writes stories!!

Yikes, basically I love books! Ok, not all of them, but so many.......

Booking Through Thursday

1. How did you come across your favorite author(s)? Recommended by a friend? Stumbled across at a bookstore? A book given to you as a gift?
2. Was it love at first sight? Or did the love affair evolve over a long acquaintance?

1. I don't know who gave me Anne of Green Gables as a child, I think my mother gave me some of her old Anne books and I started reading them. The very first series of books I remember finding, was Nancy Drew; I gave one of the early books in the series as a birthday present to my best friend Teresa when I was 7, except I got caught reading it before I gave it to her! My mother had to explain that we don't read books when giving them as gifts.....thus began my long affair of buying a book for someone else and another copy for me! I share books with my friends and family, of course, but these aren't gifts, just lent out. I went on to read all the Nancy Drew books that were then in print. I even went as Nancy Drew to this year's hallowe'en party, theme was 'dress as your favourite character from a book'. Alot of my favourite authors have come through recommendations from others: Ian Rankin (my boss at Books Canada, which is now closed); Janet Evanovich (my mother); Jan Burke (my mother or friend Laurie...) but most, I've found on my own - Charles de Lint, Phil Rickman, Jasper Fforde, Patricia McKillip, Stephen King, Giles Blunt, Liza Cody, Carol O'Connell, Connie Willis, that I end up sharing with others. Oh yes - my mother gave me The Hobbit when I was 10 and though it took me a few more years to read, and a family friend reading "The Fellowship of the Ring" during one visit.....I was hooked on fantasy from then on.

2.Most are love at first sight. I usually know from the first book I read if I am going to read any more of an author. I can't remember not liking an author and then going back and finding I did like them. If I don't like the author/book too bad! There are too many books being written that I will like, to give authors I don't like, chance after chance!
I've either found them in a bookstore, or seen them reviewed, or my friends will recommend it.......since I try to have people in my life who read, one of my pleasures is talking about books and finding new authors, so I have many different sources. Book reviews are a great source of new authors to read, also. And of course, this year i have discovered book blogs, which are also excellent sources of books and authors! LIke, who knew Susan Hill was writing a detective series that is getting really good reviews? If you go to Geraniumcat's blog, you will......now i'm looking to find the series to read! (Chapters had the third one a few days ago, but I want the first one....)

So, happy Thursday! Happy Reading! How did you find your favourite authors and books?

Short Story Monday - from Fragile Things, and Mrs Dalloway

Short Story Monday,first. I suddenly remembered at 11:20 pm tonight that I had signed up for short Story Monday.....and it is Monday! so I went to my bookshelf to my books set aside for reading this year, and picked at random Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman. I picked a story at random, after flipping through his introduction and realizing that I want to read a short story each Monday that grabs my attention. I saw "The Problem of Susan" and seeing it was about Susan from Narnia, and that Neil had been as bothered by her being left out as I had been upon reading the stories, I decided to see what he had to say about it.
"The Problem of Susan" is written from the perspective of Susan as an old lady, a professor of - what else, but children's literature. It is a bittersweet short story, bittersweet because Susan ends up as I always thought she would - unmarried, alone, and cold in her nature, which she must have been to turn her back on Narnia. It is a gruesome story too, discussing the train accident, and especially the lion and the witch - I have to confess I am shocked at the blatant sexuality in the second character Greta's dream, which doesn't fit the tone of the Narnia series (which I have read several times and loved as a child), and yet.......and yet, that is the reason that Susan doesn't go with them to Narnia in that last dreadful train ride, because she has grown up to lipstick and boys. In the ways of opposites, the lion and the witch are opposites that attract.....I won't say any more because I'd rather you read it, Gentle Reader! It is the darkside of fairy tales, it is death and the body the way CS Lewis couldn't write about it, and it fits what became of Susan......so now if I dream about lions or myself older tonight, I'll know this story did affect me! *for those Gentle Readers who don't know, my name is Susan, so of course I was most insulted when I read Narnia and she, of all the siblings, doesn't return to Narnia. I thought that was most unfair, and i expect I have spent much of my life trying not to be that Susan in the books! Though after reading this story, I can't decide if perhaps she didn't get the better part of the deal after all....or maybe Aslan has been waiting for her all along (as the ending suggests). As always, Neil Gaiman's writing surprises and disturbs, in equal measure.

Now, onto Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf. I had read her a long time ago in university, To the Lighthouse, which I remember liking, but not enough to read the rest of her work. And, as usual, I am doing things backwards - I have read Michael Cunningham's "The Hours", his award-winning novel based on Mrs Dalloway, and seen the movie The Hours, without ever reading Mrs Dalloway! I didn't like The Hours, I thought it was highly over-rated (as I find many National Book Award winners to be), and the movie was so-so.
So how was Mrs Dalloway? well, Gentle Reader, it was unexpected- unexpectedly interesting in places, and unexpectedly boring in others. I had to force myself to read the whole book, which was an enormous disappointment for me. It is a cold book, about people that I find difficult to care one iota about - spoiled people who are shallow and selfish. I wanted to like the book, and some of the descriptions of how sounds or light or the sun move through London, are brilliant, as is the continuing use of the sea and water. Even though the novel is set in London, there are reoccurring descriptions of the sea, and of water, but knowing as we do that Virginia Woolf took her own life by walking into the water and drowning, the use of the water images I find takes on a subtler resonance. We are not just seeing her writing, we are seeing into recurring themes in Virginia's mind. At the heart of the book are two things: the descriptions of madness for Septimus Warren Smith - which, except for his doctor and a chance observation in the park, have no relation to the characters of the book - his eventual suicide, and the party that Clarissa Dalloway, central figure of the book, is giving. The book occurs over one day, and is made up of the movement of people and accidental/chance connections that occur over that one day. Each of the characters is allowed their own time in the book in a kind of stream-of-consciousness monologue that allows us to see the other characters and the setting of London through different eyes and perspectives. It is very cleverly done, and captures the setting of Piccadilly/bloomsbury in London very effectively. I enjoyed this part of the book and the technique very much. I did not enjoy the characters at all, who none of them except for Sally, had many redeeming qualities about them. None of the characters really liked eachother, except for Rezia who is fighting to save her husband from his madness, and Sally, who has a big heart and while honest about everyone, is easily the most friendly and likeable character in the book. We only get to meet her at the end, almost by chance as she is not invited to the party but drops in.
There are interesting ideas in this book, about marriage, love, friendship, society, connections, vanity, roles people play, about youth and middle age. I'm glad I read it. I think, it is an important book in the development of women's writing, of the novel - and especially the 20th century novel - and of showing what London was like for the middle class in London in the early part of this century. I am not so sure the madness part belongs, or if it does, if the author is showing the fracturing of the self when thrown up into the extremes of life and death, in this case, the First World War. The shallowness of the rest of the book - because it really is shallow, the throwing of a party just because Clarissa feels she wants to - the emptiness and vacuousness even she allows in her rare moments to feel, opposite the struggle of Septimus to hold together some rationality and having it all swept away in madness because he can't feel the death of his comrade Evans in the War. The strongest parts of the book are when the characters allow themselves to feel, but most of the book is about their thinking - and this makes the book an interesting view of our split in the 2oth century, of human nature itself - the rules we impose on ourselves because we think we should behave in a certain way (often for others approval, in this book), and the truth of what we actually feel, which in this novel is most often the unpleasant feelings - despair, alienation, anger, hatred.
All in all, I'm glad I read it, but I am still not sure I like Virginia Woolf's writing. I admire her, and agree whole-heartedly with her views in "A Room of One's Own", but her characters are not people I would enjoy knowing. Which does show her skill as a writer!

Meme - Booking Through Thursdays

It's still Thursday, for once I am on time with this! and since it is the new year, I thought this meme was particularly relevant (thanks to Raidergirl3 at http://raidergirl3-anadventureinreading.blogspot.com/ for this one):

Booking Through Thursday

Anticipation:

Last week we talked about the books you liked best from 2007. So this week, what with it being a new year, and all, we’re looking forward….
What new books are you looking forward to most in 2008? Something new being published this year? Something you got as a gift for the holidays? Anything in particular that you’re planning to read in 2008 that you’re looking forward to? A classic, or maybe a best-seller from 2007 that you’re waiting to appear in paperback?

New books I am looking forward to reading (received as gifts for the holidays):
- Exit Music by Ian Rankin
- Widdershins by Charles de Lint
-Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay
- Something Rotten - Jasper Fforde
-The Remains of an Altar - Phil Rickman
-Fragile Things - Neil Gaiman
- By the Time You Read This - Giles Blount
- 1599 A Year in the LIfe of William Shakespeare - James Shapiro
- Farthing - Jo Walton
Except for the James Shapiro biography, the rest are authors that I read every year, and look for their new releases in paperback under the tree! These are some of my favourite authors, and I hope to find some of these will be books to treasure in years to come.
What new books am I looking forward to most this year? the latest in paperback by Janet Evanovich, Robin McKinley's Dragonhaven, and Emma Bull's Territory - all published in the fall of 2007 but I have not been able to pick up yet. I really want to read Inkheart by Cornelia Funke before it comes out in the movies!
I don't really know what is coming out this year, since I rarely buy in hardcover unless it's very special . I think I am most looking forward to reading the books in my challenges, since I have chosen them, and they are mostly books from my shelves. Reading the above books will mean the new year has arrived!

Sun and Shadows

It pays to be sick.....at least in reading time! since I have been struck with a mysterious stomach ailment - not the flu, but a virus of some kind - I've been sleeping and reading for the past two days. Mostly sleeping, yesterday. Today, I finished Sun and Shadow by Ake Edwardson, a Swedish mystery writer. Erik Winter is the Detective Chief Inspector, and Sun and Shadow is the first book in the series to be translated into English.
It was slow-moving in the beginning, but by the end it was a solid mystery story, with believable characters and events. It is set in Gothenburg at the turn of the millenium, in winter. It brought back memories of my own millenium experiences, which were in England with my newly-married spouse, and I heard the boat horns that ring all over England at midnight, along with the fireworks, for the first and only time, at the New Year. Reading about the millenium celebrations in another country was odd at first, it seemed to date the mystery, and then in the middle of the book it didn't matter. There are two sets of double murders, and by the time of the second one (which occurs on the night of the new Millenium) the mystery and the story of how Erik Winter and his team of detectives solves the murders, is all-consuming. I could almost see the Goddess of Light parading down the street in Gothenburg, see the police out in force to maintain calm, and then the panic and shock when the double-murders are discovered late in the night. Because it is winter now here in Ottawa and winter in the book, I could relate to the minimal amounts of daylight they had in the book! and the cold..... This is a police procedural at its best; we are taken into the heart of the police investigation. I did find it odd that there was not much press urgency, no panic by the populace, no real urgency from Winter's boss, in the book. It is as if Ake Edwardson was concentrating on writing from the police perspective, from Erik Winter's perspective, and not concerned about the outer world. There is very little description of Gothenburg except for the high apartment buildings that become the centre of the clues to the killer. While the gothic culture is supposed to be what is investigated, we never get to meet any real goths nor their way of life, which I think limits the book. If I compare this novel to Henning Mankell's novels (the more well-known Swedish mystery writer), there is a difference in tone and scope - Mankell explores politics, the environment, society, current events that lift the books into an exploration of people and society, which I think the best mystery novels do. Edwardson explores detective work and how it is affected by the personal lives of the detectives - to some extent, as we see Winter's life most thoroughly. It is like a cottage mystery, because the author uses other parts of society but does not use characters to comment on that way of life, so the book is not lifted into commenting on the state of the world. That is something that I think the very best mystery writers do - Ian Rankin, PD James, Raymond Chandler, Mankell; I am not going to name them all, nor all my favourites! - these are just examples of mystery writers whose work reaches beyond the limits of genre - I think! - and become books exploring human nature and the world. I have often thought that the very best of mysteries teach us about good and evil, show us the world where both exist and the long, lonely struggle of each individual to choose. Mysteries show what happens when some choose evil over good, and those that fight to right it. Sun and Shadow is a solid mystery, and a good introduction to Swedish mystery writing, along with Henning Mankell and Asa Larsson.
A very good way to begin the new year of reading, though not so good for finishing the holidays this way - ill!