Great Expectations on Masterpiece

Saw part one and loved it! Miss Havisham is so spooky! Much more so than the way I read her. Joe Gargery is lovely - I'm glad they got that right. Pip is lovely, too. The child playing child Pip did a wonderful job. His looks and movements were perfect. He communicates so much through body language, and it must be hard for a child to act on that level. He does it well. Can't wait for part two!

If you're in the US, you can see it here until May 1st.

Miss Havisham
:cue ghostly music:

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?"

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

Book Thirty-Five - Middlemarch - Part One

Isn't the English countryside beautiful? This is my desktop background at work.
Not that I'm writing blog posts at work. That would be wrong.

Middlemarch, an early 19th century English town, contains quite a number of interesting characters. A few snippets for your enjoyment -

A man's mind—what there is of it—has always the advantage of being masculine,—as the smallest birch-tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm,—and even his ignorance is of a sounder quality.

Hence he determined to abandon himself to the stream of feeling, and perhaps was surprised to find what an exceedingly shallow rill it was… he concluded that the poets had much exaggerated the force of masculine passion.

I am not a fan of these stereotypes. If we dislike being considered as a stereotype ourselves we can hardly stereotype others. Besides, I've known men who are vapid and women who are vapid; men who are brilliant and women who are brilliant. I don't believe we need to keep having this discussion, yet I still frequently hear stereotypes of one gender or the other. There now, my political rant for 2012 is over.

Middlemarch includes a letter of proposal which pales in comparison to Frederick Wentworth’s. Just a snippet of this one –

For in the first hour of meeting you, I had an impression of your eminent and perhaps exclusive fitness to supply that need (connected, I may say, with such activity of the affections as even the preoccupations of a work too special to be abdicated could not uninterruptedly dissimulate); and each succeeding opportunity for observation has given the impression an added depth by convincing me more emphatically of that fitness which I had preconceived, and thus evoking more decisively those affections to which I have but now referred.

My, my dear sir, I do believe you have hidden a compliment in there somewhere. Was it intentional?

Not he! Humphrey finds everybody charming. I never can get him to abuse xxxx.* He will even speak well of the bishop, though I tell him it is unnatural in a beneficed clergyman; what can one do with a husband who attends so little to the decencies? I hide it as well as I can by abusing everybody myself.

Spoken by the wife of Humphrey (the poor dear). Sounds like a Mrs. Norris, doesn't she?

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts—not to hurt others.

I like the sentiment but am not a fan of the narrator suddenly stepping out of the scene and speaking to the audience. 

… for we all of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them.

This struck me but I’m not quite sure what to make of it.

Re: medical standards -

Also, the high standard held up to the public mind... did not hinder quackery from having an excellent time of it; for since professional practice chiefly consisted in giving a great many drugs, the public inferred that it might be better off with more drugs still, if they could only be got cheaply...

Aren’t we the same today? We want a pill for everything and I’m no different. I do not understand why, in the 21st century, a drug has not been invented to prevent my hair from becoming gray. I got my first gray hair at 25 and it's only gotten worse since then. Do you have any idea how much time and money I expend to keep my hair its natural color? It’s absurd. Give me a pill, someone. I’ll even be involved in the clinical trial. 

*Name removed to prevent spoilage

Birdsong & Great Expectations - New BBC Productions!

Birdsong is one of the best books I've ever read and it's finally being made into a movie! The female lead is Clémence Poésy (Fleur in the Harry Potter movies) and the male is Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Wraysford (I'm unfamiliar with him). It also features Matthew Goode who I saw in Imagine Me and You, a most excellent movie. The new Great Expectations production is directed by Mike Newell (another HP movie connection) and stars Ralph Fiennes as Magwitch, Helena Bonham Carter as Miss Havisham (I cannot wait to see her take on this character!), Robbie Coltrane as Mr. Jaggers, and Sally Hawkins as Mrs. Joe (she was Anne Elliott in the 2007 adaptation of Persuasion).

PBS' Masterpiece Theater will air both Birdsong and the new Great Expectations! I don't know about you, but I need something to look forward to. January is always difficult - there's a let down after the holidays and the new year looms large. There are indeed great expectations in January.

A Christmas Carol, The Movie, or Mr Dickens Meets Gonzo

Mr Dickens: Mr Gonzo, I must object…

Gonzo: Sorry to interrupt, but it’s just Gonzo, you can drop the Mister, Mister.

Mr Dickens: As you like. Gonzo, I must object…

Gonzo: How did you like my portrayal of you? I thought it was a clever device to fill in the gaps in the action with narration. Great book, by the way.

Mr Dickens: Thank you, that is very kind. However…

Gonzo: I think the addition of Rizzo was brill, don’t you? You wouldn’t believe how many people emailed me saying it’s the first time they ever laughed at a rat!

Mr Dickens: Actually, that’s one of the things I wish to address. In the time period in which the novel is set, rats were…

Gonzo: I’m not sayin’ rats are ever welcome visitors, just that Rizzo was pretty funny, all things considered.

Mr. Dickens: I bid you good day, sir.
*puts on hat and storms off*

Gonzo: I got the last word with Mr Charles Dickens? Boy, I am good! Now, where’s that chicken? Come here, my little Dickens Chicken!

Book Thirty-Four - Rebecca - Part Four

Daphne du Maurier
From dumaurier.org

Daphne, you ingenious sneaky little thing! This story has as many twists and turns as the drive to Manderlay. When I finished it I had to go back to the beginning again.

Rebecca is a story of love, trust, friendship, betrayal, lust, loneliness, kindness, impulsiveness, and offers quite the example against putting all your eggs in one man, er, basket. It is also one of those books in which I kept looking down at the page numbers toward the end and thinking, there's no way she can wrap this up before the end of the book! There isn't time! I knew there wasn't a sequel so the novel had to end but I didn't see how it could. And du Maurier, master of description, gives us only two lines of description at the end. Brilliant.

The movie is next up in my Netflix queue. Directed by Hitchcock, it stars Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. Netflix anticipates it is a 3.8 (out of 4) for me. Can't wait!

Guess how we're meant to feel about this character

Random question: in the US we call a party at which everyone comes dressed as someone else a costume party. In the UK this is called a fancy dress party. Why is that? If you come dressed as a pirate you're probably not fancy, now are you?