A few reviews

Things I've read:

Irish Rebel

Classic, formulaic Nora Roberts. I didn't realise that this was number three in a series. I loathe reading books out of order, so I'm a little annoyed about that. This is one of her Silhoutte efforts, so it's fairly short and light. A little bit of steam though. And some horses. Not together, obviously, that's a genre Nora Roberts wouldn't touch with a barge pole.

Love Me, Love Me Not

I'm almost embarrassed to tell you how long this has been sitting on my TBR pile - a long, long time. It's a compilation of short stories from various authors. It's quite the hit parade of well known names, and there are some really super stories. There is a fair amount of sap, too, but then, it is a collection of stories about love. The gems are all the more brilliant for that. And not all have happy endings, which is even better.


Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Confession time. I have been meaning to read this book for a long, long time. I didn't actually know what it was about, but I had heard great things. On Friday I went to the cinema to see Like Crazy, and what should I see but a trailer for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Oh, I say to myself, I'll have to read that now. Can't see the movie if I haven't read the book (that's the rule). And then I thought, damn, going to have to buy it, but I'm not allowed to buy another book until after I've finished my next essay and done the required reading for Coriolanus (that's another rule, and there are at least three books I want so you can see how hard this is going to be). And then after the movie I went home and was admiring my bookshelves (...shut up...) what should I discover but a copy of...Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. No, I don't know when I bought it either. It was terribly good though. I can usually separate myself from my experience of reading a book. I feel the book, but usually I'm quite dispassionate about it as I think about it in the real world. But this book...it didn't upset me, exactly, and it didn't give me bad dreams. But I had sad, unexplained dreams, and that was almost worse. A really complicated, painful, sad, enjoyable read.

Things I've watched

Like Crazy

This is what I wrote about this movie on the forum I post to:

English girl in US meets guy, overstays student visa, much angst and separation as she is deported, they get married in the UK, US still denies her a visa, angst, angst, angst, the end. It was VERY emo. I thought the dialogue was very realistic, and very well paced. But it also reminded me excruciatingly of that phase we all go through in our early 20s, when we have those insanely dramatic and cringey relationships, with dramatic and cringey speeches and cutesy witticisms and ugh, I'm glad that's all over. She totally deserved to get deported, by the way, she knowingly overstayed her visa, and as we all know, You Do Not Fuck With The State Department or The Home Office, no matter how much you want to stay on Catalina Island and sleep with your emo, furniture designing boyfriend.

Perhaps I'm just too old and decrepit and cynical for a movie like this..


Whip It

I'm not sure I could even tell you the names of the characters, the movie is a bit of a blur. I think I enjoyed it, but I watched as I was editing something, and then it was 5:30 in the morning and perhaps I need to watch it again and provide a better review. I do like Ellen Page, although she always seems to play another version of Juno.

Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows 


Sigh. I enjoyed the first reversioned Sherlock Holmes a ton - I really liked Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr, and what they did with the characters. Big fan. But I fear I have been ruined for all non-Stephen Moffat versions of Sherlock Holmes forever. The fact that this movie deals with Reichenbach Falls didn't help - I could kick myself for not going to see the movie when it first came out. Then at least I could distance myself from the different interpretations of these characters.