Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Prepare Ye The Way Of The George

I experienced Reader's Remorse. I should not have given up on George, so I repented and bought the audio book. Unabridged! I'll be listening for weeks! I'll be all, "Wow, that 35 hours and 40 minutes just flew by, didn't it?"

Friday, March 2, 2012

Sorry, George & Other Things

So I’ve given up on Middlemarch. Actually, I gave up on Middlemarch ages ago but kept telling myself I’d get back to it. It isn’t that I disliked the book, but the 229 pages I read (of 1227) obviously didn’t capture me. Middlemarch started to feel like an obligation, and I'm doing this for fun. I may get back to it someday, though I'm not counting on it.

In the meantime I’ve been reading books loaned to me by members of my book club. Seriously, what am I supposed to do when someone hands me a book and says they think I’ll like it? Why, if I didn’t hastily read the book I should seem ungrateful, and I am all about the manners. One of these books is Sarah's Key--read it in two days. Now that's what I call captivating. I'm also listening to the audiobooks of the His Dark Materials trilogy. It's been some years since I've read them so I'm enjoying them all over again.

Birdsong (book club selection for this month!) is going to be a miniseries. Of course, I’m already concerned about what they’re going to do to it. I suspect Elizabeth is out altogether. Eddie Redmayne is playing Stephen and Clémence Poésy is Isabelle. It airs in April on Masterpiece. In fact, here’s the Masterpiece link with info on all the goodies. They’re also showing two new BBC productions, Edwin Drood and Great Expectations! In news unrelated to the BBC Big Read list, Shirley MacLaine is going to be in series 3 of Downton! She’ll be Lady Grantham’s mother. Boy, that’s going to be fun. Prediction: catfight. That’s all I’m saying.

Sorta feel like I should talk about Toddlers and Tiaras now, just to balance out the highbrow. Toddlers and Tiaras is a dreadful reality show which beautifully fulfillls its purpose, that of making us look at the TV and say, "I can't believe she just did that!" It's fascinating. There, I've admitted it. Judge me if you will.

For the second year I'm watching the Decorah eagles. I can finally tell the mom and the dad apart! They're currently nesting with three eggs. Such magnificent creatures. Sometimes when I can't watch them I just listen to the sounds. Yay for bird watching via the interwebz!

This is the male

This is the female