Monday, January 21, 2008

 

Tagged

If you’ve all moved on too far with the media meme, please feel free to skip this post, if not here’s my media consumption for last week.

What I read:

Newspapers - the Saturday and Sunday Times – always the film and play reviews, although I’ll have forgotten all the ‘must-sees’ by Tuesday, book reviews ditto and AA Gill’s entertaining restaurant review. I love his writing, but sometimes his conceit and cruelty are horrible. Here he is at his most vicious on another columnist’s breakthrough diet:

What struck me as particularly poignant about this modern odyssey is that it was the clothes that X felt she’d let down[…] There was no sense of sprawling, dimpled, adipose guilt for her husband, as her fatted, sweaty bulk schlepped across the marital bed, extinguishing all thoughts of carnality.

How ridiculously pitiful and dysfunctional all this is, how utterly pathetic, how self-pitying and snivellingly vain it is to try to impress your trouser suits [...]

Well, all recipes work, if you know how to cook. The Kama Sutra works, if you know how to shag. It’s not diets that fail, it’s you, you miserable, spineless, sticky-fingered fridge magnet.

When he got to the review bit, the restaurant - Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester - didn’t fare any better, but in spite of myself, I laughed.

A slice of media I consumed a few weeks back has been giving me indigestion since. It was a letter from someone writing in with the fascinating news that since President Chavez had put the clocks back half an hour, it’s now possible to know exactly what time it is in Venezuela by turning your watch upside down. God, I wish I hadn’t read that because I’m always doing it. Go on, bet you can’t resist checking it.

Books :

La cuisine des paresseuses (the lazy woman’s cookbook)

I’m enjoying this because it’s also the lazy woman’s way to read French – a sort of token, low-brow French lesson, interspersed with some nice easy recipes and of course it gives me an excuse not to venture out onto those scary streets where I’d have to actually speak it.

The Time Traveler’s Wife

A really unusual and intriguing story where six year old Claire gets to meet her future husband for the first time when he time-travels from his 36th year. He whooshes naked in and out of her life for the next fourteen years as he time-travels at various ages, until they finally meet in the present when she’s 20 and he’s 28. Of course she knows him at once, but because he hasn’t yet reached the age of his first time-travel meeting with her, he has no idea who she is. Yeah, I know, but trust me, it’s brilliant. The great thing about being given books as gifts (this was given to me by Cliff) is that you get to read stuff you’d never choose for yourself. I thought I didn’t like fantasy, until a while ago, when I was given The Testament of Gideon Mack, which I started reading out of politeness and ended up loving, so now I’m a convert.

What I watched:

A documentary DVD called Hearts and Minds on the Vietnam war, which should be compulsory viewing for all megalomaniac presidents and prime ministers. An interview with General Westmoreland showed him urging us to understand that the Vietnamese are not like us – life is cheap to them and they don’t value it. We saw an occupying army making virtually no attempt to understand the culture of the people, chaos caused by indiscriminate and wanton destruction of homes and livelihoods, an absence of planning for the future and the insistence that the aim was simply to establish democracy, but of course any comparison between Vietnam and Iraq is nonsense.

What I surfed:

My usual blogroll, answers to the crossword and some really good food blogs I’ve just discovered. It’s amazing the trouble some people go to to cook and photograph fantastic food. But by the time I’ve gone through them all, there’s only time to make a salad.

Comments:
Time TRaveller's wife- I need to get that. Thanks Moll!
 
I think you'd also enjoy Lorelei's Secret by Carolyn Parkhurst.

:)
 
Yes Ed, you really should. I finished it last night and couldn't get it out of my head - really powerful and emotional writing.

Thanks Wendy, I'll look out for that. A couple of years ago a friend lent me a book which I hated and it was so embarrassing not to be able to say anything good about it (especially when I gave it back to her and she offered me her whole collection from the same author) that I got scared off recommendations, but some fantastic successes have re-converted me to the joys of other people's choices.
 
I picked it up a couple days back and LOVED it. Can't say I was all hip to ALL the storylines but overall it was a really good story. Extremely well written! Thanks for the recommendation.
 
Glad you enjoyed it Ed. Yeah,I agree that some of the plot lines were a bit suspect, but I can overlook that if the book's well written.
 
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