Sunday Sundries: No looking back, only looking forward

Guys! It's Sunday again, who can believe it?! Well, I can but whatever, this week has gone sort of blissfully quick.

This might not be a good thing if, say, you'd been on holiday for the whole week or something, but I was not and I AM THIS WEEK (Before you get too excited for me, I'm going to Didcot, which probably doesn't mean anything to you BUT basically all they have there is a power station and a train station, BUT the point is that FRANCES is there so it's basically the best place.) So yeah, just one more (half) day at work and then I'm GONE from this... county. Which is cool.

Since I missed Sunday Sundries last week because of the MINI-READATHON (it was pretty awesome, everyone should do the next one) I didn't get to update you on some familial medical things (I know you're disappointed) and that's fine because OF COURSE there are extra ones to report this week- so here goes: this Wednesday my grandad got released from a week long stay in the hospital for pneumonia (in the SUMMER. I don't know either), my nan's entire arm is a bruise because her blood was too thin or something (I'm a little bit sketchy on the details) and my auntie is going into hospital on Tuesday to have a big old operation because obviously all of these things have to happen at the same time because having room to breathe would be too much of a luxury!

In practical terms, none of these things really mean I have to do anything differently, but I mean, you guys have families so you know that, when things are going on with them you worry about them even when you know there's not really anything you can do. I like to think of it as a side effect of loving people- you get all the benefits of loving and feeling loved, but you also get the worry and troubledness if anything happens to them. On balance, it's better than just not caring about anyone ever because what would that even be like? Sort of like...

All the times? Only, like, less hot? (True story: I am not as hot as Skarsgard. Weirdly.)

Anyway, yeah, so a low-grade worry thing is going on. BUT I am trying not to do that because worrying is a useless activity and looking back is even worse (See, I remember what my title is! Eventually!) so I'm focusing on the excitement of the coming week rather than anything else. YAY DIDCOT!*

OK, basically I'm just blabbering now, so here are a few other things to round things off:

• It's kind of a good thing I didn't do a Sunday Sundries post last week, because it basically would have just been a GIANT love blab about Orange is the New Black, which I watched in, like 4 days? AND I STILL LOVE IT BUT IT'S BEEN ENOUGH TIME TO CONTROL IT A BIT NOW. But anyway, if you've also been watching it, I have for you Larry's actual essay in the NYT, and this guide to the cast (I basically read it and went 'I love her!' 'I LOVE her!' 'I LOVE HER!!' because I have issues)
• Speaking of OITNB, did we all know that it was actually a book first? From what I understand it's REALLY different from the TV show, but I still want to read it. Because it's a BOOK.
• I'm linking you to this article about Stephen King's Family Business basically to try and make me actually read it, but it looks pretty awesome! And there's also this about the connections in Stephen King books, (totally stolen from Kayleigh) most of which I knew about but some... Not so much. Also I just finished re-reading Bag of Bones and I FREAKED OUT at a couple of the connections there. It was awesome. 
• This Daria trailer with Aubrey Plaza as Daria is basically the best thing. SOMEONE PLEASE MAKE THIS MOVIE.
• There's no point even telling you how excited (and then also sad) I am that Breaking Bad is back next week for its last 8 episodes, but please just enjoy this Aaron Paul gifset and actually, well, just this whole tumblr, really.

That's it! Laura out! I'll be back next week with some tales of my summer holiday (there will be burgers) and, well, I guess I'll post some reviews in the week... I just really stupidly wrote two ON PAPER WITH MY HAND (and made it really hurt, by the way) and now I'm too lazy to type them. Such is life. 

*It's just occurred to me that I probably shouldn't be telling you where I'll be/even telling you I'm going away... BUT Didcot's a big enough place to hide in, and the rest of my family will be in my house so NO STEALING, STEALERS. Basically.

Devouring Books: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

"Humans can be fairly ridiculous animals."

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is just the latest in the long line of 'this is how we should be eating' books that for various reasons I choose to read, a lot (See also: Skinny Bitch, Eating Animals) and it covers food issues I hadn't even thought about before (mainly because we're not really trained to think about them anymore) namely, seasonal eating. Considering how into food issues and things I am, I feel like I should have been IN LOVE with this book, but... Things didn't really turn out that way. You'll see.

So. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle ostensibly follows Barbara Kingsolver and her family as they go through one year of eating only things that are in season and locally grown. Helping with this is the farm they own, on which they grow their own produce, and the fact that the book begins with their move from Arizona (where, I very reasonably assume, nothing grows) to... I want to say Virginia, but I can't remember exactly where and I can't be bothered to find the book to tell you. But somewhere greener, anyway. And the book is basically their trials and errors and what they ate and how good it felt and la la la la etc. All that was fine.

I so so completely agree with so much that's in this book, I'm pretty sure we should be eating seasonally for the sake of our palates and um, THE WORLD. Like, last night I had pasta and vegetables for dinner, and the vegetables were tenderstem broccoli and asparagus and they came in a joint pack thing, and on the packet it said Peru/Kenya. Peru. And Kenya. I did some research (Google) last night and Kenya is 6,600 miles away and Peru is 6,160 miles away IN THE OTHER DIRECTION.

And clearly this is ridiculous and I shouldn't be allowed to eat like that, and it shouldn't really even be a thing that's allowed, but it is and I can't stop it, but I can make choices that means I'm not involved in a system where my food has been flown nearly 13,000 miles to get to my plate.

So clearly I applaud Kingsolver's whole mission and her ideals and yeah, seasonal food tastes better and so on (although I haven't ever had a bad piece of asparagus, and I'm not sure I've even eaten it in season but this is SO NOT THE POINT). But ugh, dude, Barbara Kingsolver and her ideals. (I KNOW. I KNOW.) I mean, I have some issues and they're mainly hypocrisy issues, and I might just be being a weenie about them, but I really feel like I have some points here. So just listen up.

FIRSTLY- the entire book is based on the idea that,  essentially, if you can't get it from within 100 miles of where you are, you shouldn't be having it. You'd think there'd be no exceptions to this, which is weird because I vividly remember a section of this book where Kingsolver's husband says 'for things like tea and coffee and spices that don't grow locally/in the US, you should totally buy fairtrade versions of them'* And you know what? No. Either EVERYTHING that's flown in from abroad is bad, or nothing is. You can't just pick and choose what you'll accept being ferried across the world because, I don't know, you really really like coffee. That's just STUPID.

SECONDLY- part of the objection to non-locally grown produce presented in the book are the amounts of petrol burnt to get it to our plates, which, you know, I have no objections with. But over the course of the book, the Kingsolvers take both a road trip and a flight to Italy, without once mentioning the amount of pollution caused by human travel. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that they shouldn't ever have holidays or things like that, but if EVERYONE did that? It wouldn't be good, and it wouldn't have been non-fitting for them to somehow justify their travel, like by planting 100 trees after it or something.

THIRDLY- Kingsolver tries to argue that Farmer's Markets are cheap. Farmer's Markets (at least in the UK) are not cheap. And I'm not even saying that's a good enough reason not to buy stuff from them (although for a lot of people it's the reason why they CAN'T) but saying that the things they sell are cheaper than you would get them in the supermarket is just not true.

FINALLY- (and it very nearly was finally- I almost threw the book down in disgust after this) the meat thing comes up. OBVIOUSLY I have feels about eating meat, and Kingsolver does too- She stopped eating CAFO animals (basically, factory farmed ones) many years ago, which essentially meant not eating meat, at the time. So I was like 'YEAH!' But then, Kingsolver kind of undermines this (seemingly to make herself feel better about eating meat again, which she does) by ridiculing the entire idea of vegetarian and veganism. And I was kind of shocked, actually, because up until that point I was like 'yep, evil food industry' and 'yep, baaaad pollution' and then she starts spouting shit like:

"To envision a vegan version of civilisation, start by erasing for all time the Three Little Pigs, the boy who cried wolf, Charlotte's Web, The golden calf, Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Next, erase civilisation, brought to you by the people who learned to domesticate animals. Finally, rewrite our evolutionary history, since Homo Sapiens became the species we are by regular binges of carnivory."

And I just honestly and truly fail to see how this is at all relevant! It's not that vegans try to rewrite history (and, GOD FORBID we lose the Three Little Pigs because that's a thing that would happen and makes complete sense...) AT ALL, but that they CHOOSE to eat in a certain way that seems less harmful to the planet than just eating whatever the fuck you want and why does that sound familiar... OH YEAH, IT'S WHAT YOUR ENTIRE FUCKING BOOK IS ABOUT?! I mean, really. So annoying.

But apart from making me want to stab her in the face? I don't know. I feel like I want to recommend this purely because there's quite a lot of information in it about the EVIL that is the food industry (in the US, but you KNOW it's happening everywhere) that I may have already known about because I know too much, but you might not, and also just because I really find myself agreeing more and more with this whole eating seasonally thing, and WOAH why don't we do that anymore, it makes no sense. But all those other things really did piss me off...

Ok, I've got it. This book is good as an introduction to how we should probably be eating, but if you're already kind of well informed and/or a non-meat eater who threatens the existence of Charlotte's Web (seriously?) I'd probably give it a miss. As it is, I'm not sure I'll ever forgive Barbara...

*I'm totally paraphrasing. Obviously...

Devouring Films: The East

Before I talk about The East, it's pretty important that I talk about Brit Marling's hoodie in The East:

I LOVE IT and it is now my mission in life to get an inexpensive black hoodie, sew some lace onto it and wear it with the hood up all winter. Hey, we've all got to have dreams. And it'll look FAB with my other mission to join an eco-terrorist group and stick it to the corporations and stuff.* YEAH!

Now. The real deal about The East. OBVIOUSLY I really only wanted to see it because Alexander Skarsgard is in it (I know, I know, YAWN) but but but (and this is important) I wouldn't just like it for that reason. Like, I might watch it more than once for that reason because, you know, YUM, but in the end, I'm not going to say I like a film if I don't, no matter who's in it. It's because of this I could be SO scathing about The Astronaut's Wife (and I am crazy about Johnny Depp) and part of the reason I didn't even bother writing a review for the Straw Dogs remake that Skarsgard was also in (the other reason is laziness. But I really didn't like it.)

And you know what? I liked The East. I really did. It was one of those times where, leaving the cinema on a Skarsgard high, I wasn't entirely sure how I felt about the movie aside from that part where Skarsgard was in the bath and... Other parts, but a few days later when I found myself thinking about some of the issues actually explored in the film, it suddenly clicked and Ah! I did like the film for its storyline and things aside from stellar casting decisions! Which is honestly a relief to know.

So, the story. The East starts and ends with Brit Marling's character, Sarah, and it's really all about her journey- an ex-CIA (FBI? I forget) operative, now working for an actual private company as an undercover agent whose job is to infiltrate The East- a left wing group that targets evil corporations to try and repay them with some measure of the things they've done to others. Even though Sarah completely disagrees with some of their methods, she comes to sympathise with their aims and to question everything she once thought was true about the world and about her life.

And that's just the core of the film, and surrounding that is The East itself. Kiiiind of led by the charismatic (read: beautiful) Benji (Skarsgard) and all gathered around the same goals and a commitment to a certain (read: communal, hippy-esque) way of life, they're kind of a beautiful group. There are people of almost every ostracised group in society represented, and as you learn more about certain characters, their motives for wanting to be a part of such a group become increasingly clear- and sometimes in heartbreaking ways.

For what it's worth, I kind of loved them all- even though I definitely have some issues with their methods, I have incredible empathy and love for basically all of them, and you know what, let's just say it, I totally get where they're coming from. The people behind corporations are almost NEVER held responsible for their actions, purely because they have 'The Corporation' to hide behind, and it's kind of disturbing to realise the things they can get away with. (I don't know how much, or if any of the stories told in The East are true, but I know enough about such things to know that they very easily could be). The East are really just trying to balance the scales here, and can I blame them for it? Not really.

Slight feminist moment- This film didn't even need to try to pass The Bechdel Test because there were plenty of women in the group, the lead character is a woman and, imagine this, she's a woman who has more on her mind than finding a man to marry her! GASP! (Whether or not this is because she's already engaged is neither here nor there). It's actually refreshing to realise you've just watched a film where, for example, Sarah and Izzy (Ellen Page) haven't had a conversation about who likes Benji more, and where as a group they talk about things that actually matter as opposed to who's sleeping with who (my own thoughts: everyone is either sleeping with, or want to sleep with, Benji. But I would say that). I attribute most of this to Brit Marling being one of the writers, and I love her for it and now I kind of want to watch everything she's done? Yeah, that.

On reflection, then, I liked The East for more things than Skarsgardian abs, and that's about the highest praise I can give a movie. It's the first movie for a long time I can remember even thinking about for longer than about 5 minutes, and it's way smarter than it needs to be, but not so smart that it becomes inaccessible. And if you don't like gender equality in your cults then I don't know what to do with you.

*Shit, people like monitor the internet, right? I'm totally kidding, scary Government types! I'd never break laws and stuff! Unless someone really pissed me off, that is...

MINI-READATHON TIME!

Finalement: The Next Day
I definitely missed out on the last hour of reading because maaaan I needed sleep, but I did get started on Seven Little Australians and so far I am CHARMED by it. But fun was had, and I think I really needed some uninterrupted (other than by munching on things) reading time so YAY EVERYTHING!

And THANK YOU TIKA for hosting, you were awesome as always!

Pages Read: 150 PLUS 28% of Tiny Beautiful Things, so what, maybe another... 75? Ish. I don't know things.
Snacks: I have checked and I only had 4 mini-muffins, which I think shows an incredible amount of restraint. The mini oreos and mini m&ms? Not so much.
Books read from: 3
Books Finished: 2! I'm pretty pleased, I've been reading TBT for MONTHS, it seems.
Enjoyment level: about 50 million unicorns.

Halfway Through-ish: 8.51pm
Heyyyyyy, I've read some stuff! I finished Bag of Bones and got to the edge of crying, and then read some of Tiny Beautiful Things and got even closer to crying. I WILL NOT CRY, DAMMIT (I probably will. But I'm going to read Seven Little Australians soon, it looks really cheery!)

This is a really good time to have a halfway point for me, because it is time for Les Revenants (The Returned) which is like the only TV programme I watch with my mum and it's awesome and creepy AND counts for the readathon because it's in french so hellooooo subtitles! So I won't be around for an hour, basically, except maybe on twitter in the ad breaks. But then I will be back and everything will be good again!

ALSO pretty much all I wanted from the mini-readathon was to finish Bag of Bones, and since I've done that I feel pretty chuffed with myself *struts around a little* Also, I'm high on mini-muffins. Mmmmm...

Pages Read: 134 PLUS 9% of my Kindle book (do I know how to look at page numbers? ... Not really. I don't FULLY understand my Kindle yet...)
Snacks: 3 or 4 mini muffins and allll the mini m&ms. Which was not enough mini m&ms at all.
Actual food: Leftover pizza and hummus and cucumber. It was nice!
Naps: Not quite, but I did nearly fall asleep towards the end of Bag of Bones. Sugar makes me sleepy, ok?

Starting Point: 5.13pm
Ok, I'm totally a tiny bit late BUT I was visiting my grandad in the hospital so I know I'm forgiven (he's not too bad, he just has pneumonia IN THE SUMMER like a crazy medical anomaly person, so yeah. But it's cool.) ANYWAY, the important thing is that I am READY TO READ NOW and I might have already eaten some mini-m&ms (quick story- I used to have them in my christmas stocking when I was little and so every mouthful is like Christmas morning- it's AWESOME!)

Quick addition to the snack pile- I bought some mini-muffins and am using a tiiiiny mug to drink water out of (that I'm filling with a 2 litre bottle. Unnecessary effort? Maybe, but it's all for you guys.) LOOK HOW CUTE IT IS!

So it's really no hardship. BUT ANYWAY. Time to finish Bag of Bones, I'd say. See ya in a bit!

Pre-game
My title might be... overstating things a bit, since I basically have to wait for everyone to wake up before we can start, and start time is in, oooh, 6 hours? But nonetheless, I am getting things ready both online and in reality so that I can just read my little heart out when the time finally comes for me to do so (or, like, go on twitter a lot and stuff. I'm not fussy.)

LET US SEE WHAT I SHALL BE READING

Aw, a mini-stack for a mini-readathon! As has become tradition I will now justify why they are mini:

• Bag of Bones by Stephen King- A lot of the story revolves around various children (AND I only have about 100 pages to go and I wanna reeeeead it).
• Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner- Seven LITTLE Australians, see? 
• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green- Teenagers. They're like small people.

AND THEN I had this sudden burst of inspiration last night, and I ALSO might read some of:

TINY Beautiful Things! Smart, am I right? (Also I only have 28% of it left to read and YAY for finishing books.)

And, most importantly, I have a few mini snacks:

Mini-Oreos and Mini-M&Ms because apparently I'm fully American today! But seriously- I bought the mini m&ms before I was even sure the mini-readathon was happening again, and have saved them ALL THIS TIME (I don't actually know how long that is. But preeeeetty long.) So anyway, BASICALLY I'm very excited to eat them. These are all I have at the moment, BUT Rayna has been talking about mini-muffins on twitter and DAMMIT NOW I WANT SOME so that might have to happen. 

But basically: I'm excited and ready for it to be 6 hours in the future now!

p.s. It hasn't started yet so you can totally still sign up to mini-read with us! 8 hours of pure reading goodness, how can you resist?! Sign up at Tika's blog.

Devouring Books: Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M: Audrey Hepburn and Breakfast at Tiffany's by Sam Wasson

"There were human beings, and there was Audrey Hepburn."

I can't remember where I first read about Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M., but I know my main thoughts about it were essentially 'I like Breakfast at Tiffany's, I'll put it on my Amazon wishlist!' And there it might have languished forever had not the LOVELY Bex bought it for me for a reason I can't even remember- It definitely wasn't my birthday, and it wasn't Christmas either, but other than that I honestly don't know. But the point is that I'm really really glad she did because it's kind of become my favourite book about films ever? Yeah, that.

So. As is probably clear from the title, this is a book about Breakfast at Tiffany's- it follows Audrey Hepburn, Truman Capote, and other key figures involved with Breakfast at Tiffany's from their early careers, through making the film and beyond. Whilst I wouldn't necessarily say that you should read it if you don't care about Breakfast at Tiffany's, I did find it incredibly accessible and so very interesting, mainly because it did go beyond the borders of the movie and into the wider lives of the people behind it and the state of Hollywood at the time it was made. 

Because that state? Not so good. And by 'not so good', I mean that in 50s Hollywood, there were INCREDIBLY strict guidelines about what was and wasn't allowed in films, and what wasn't allowed was pre- or extra-marital sex or even a hint of such a thing, and a lot of other fun things besides (although smoking, of course, was practically encouraged, so there's that). All of this was still fully in force when Breakfast at Tiffany's was made, and it explains SO MUCH about the film- why, even though Holly is a prostitute, they can't ever say she's a prostitute, and why the end has to be the way it is- I don't want to ruin anything, but let's just say, marriage as opposed to sex.

I learnt so much trivia about the film from this book (George Peppard was a nightmare to work with, Audrey Hepburn nearly didn't take the part, nobody wanted the screenwriter, nobody wanted the director, nobody wanted Henry Mancini) but what was really best about it was that Wasson presented it all in a way so it didn't feel like trivia, but like you were actually along for the crazy ride with all the people involved. What this does mean is that he ascribes emotions and thoughts to actual people that they might not actually have had, and normally I hate that- BUT here it was so well done that I couldn't really argue with it, and the majority of these things were at least based in fact, and presented in such a way that it was impossible to roll my eyes at it. In fact, I did whatever the opposite of rolling my eyes at it would be... Just... Reading it with static eyes? 

Anyway... I'm sure that the story of most movies is the story of opportunities almost missed and actors almost not cast and songs almost not written (MOON RIVER) but very few of those movies turn out to be an almost watershed moment in cinematic history and that's why this book doesn't feel superfluous. I feel like its effect is so great that, even if people haven't seen it, they've heard of it, and if they haven't heard of it (come on, don't be shy) they've seen photos like this:

And believe they know everything about it. Fun story about this photo- Tiffany's allowed scenes from the movie to be shot inside Tiffany's (for the first time ever, no less) as long as they could borrow Audrey Hepburn for their own publicity and that's basically where this comes from- it has barely anything to do with the film. SEE HOW INTERESTING THIS BOOK IS?

Basically, you're not really going to want to read this unless you've seen Breakfast at Tiffany's or, I guess, are a Truman Capote fan and want to know all about his part in all of this, but really, you should definitely watch the film and then read this. There's nothing quite like knowing just how different it could have been as a movie (Marilyn Monroe instead of Audrey Hepburn?! WHAT?) and how much of a struggle it was to get it as perfect as it kind of is, and you know what? This book is kind of perfect too. Read it, read it, read it, read it. Because I don't have anymore words to describe its excellence, but it really is so good.

Devouring Books: What Maisie Knew by Henry James

"What was clear to any spectator was that the only link binding her to either parent was this lamentable fact of her being a ready vessel for bitterness, a deep little porcelain cup in which biting acids could be mixed. They had wanted her not for any good they could do her, but for the harm they could, with her unconscious aid, do each other."

Before I tell you all about What Maisie Knew, I have to tell you What Laura Knew- namely that a movie version is coming out in August (a mere month away!) starring the rather dashing Alexander Skarsgard (and there are probably some other people in it too, I don't know) that I've known I wanted to see for about a year. So, when Penguin did one of their 50% off sale things at Christmastime last year, I snapped up a copy of What Maisie Knew and intended to read it straight away.

Six months later, I finally picked it up, and now I have read it! *Pauses for applause* And a whole month before the movie comes out, too. I'm calling that a win! I've read some Henry James before (The Europeans, The Turn of the Screw) and I liked them fine, but both of those are shorter than What Maisie Knew, so I didn't really know what to expect. Actually, that's not true- I thought I did know what to expect, but what I got was something else entirely and it maybe wasn't as... Good as I thought it was going to be.

Ok, here's what I'm really dancing around- I don't really like James's writing style. His sentences are never ending and sometimes seem to have  overused the Thesaurus function in Word (just like 'Baby Kangaroo' Tribbiani*) even if Word didn't exist until about 100 years after Maisie was written. I could feel myself rushing through sentences and paragraphs because there were just. So many. Unecessary words. I don't like to rush through books in such a way so DAMMIT JAMES, no. And I don't know if this is just a personal 'Laura can't read big words' thing, or if this is a legitimate criticism of James's work, but if it's how I feel then it IS legitimate so there.

Let's put the actual writing aside for juuuust a minute, because there were things about the book that I actually did like. I liked how modern the story felt- parents getting divorced and using their child as ammunition feels like something that maybe didn't happen so much in 1897, but I'm willing to bet it happens a lot more now OR, at least, there are more opportunities for it to happen now. I also liked (and this is kind of the selling point of the whole selling point of the book) how the story is told through Maisie's eyes, which doesn't mean we get a childlike rendition of events, but more that 'What Maisie Knew' is ALL we know. It's clear that many, many things are happening when she's not there, but it's pretty much up to the reader to decide on the exact nature of said things, which means you keep thinking beyond the lines of the narrative. Which I like. Obviously. 

And then, there's Sir Claude. Can we just pause for a moment and appreciate this description of him:

"She felt the moment she looked at him that he was by far the most radiant person with whom she had yet been concerned."

Oh, RADIANT, you say?

 Ok, bad example. But YES Sir Claude's modern equivalent is Skarsgard and it seems sooort of like perfect casting. But anyway- I don't love Sir Claude because of his radiance OR the fact that I pictured him as tall, blonde and hot as fuck, but because, of all the adults in Maisie's life, he seems to be the one who is best for her, and who does the most for her. And this doesn't mean that he denies all his own urges for Maisie's sake (because he doesn't) but just that he loves her the best/at all, and that's really what she needs. And, as her stepfather, he's not even obligated to do anything for her, really, and yet he still manages to give her more positive attention than her mother and father combined.

We shan't talk about the part where he sort of takes her to France without her parents' permission because I'm sure that was way less classified as kidnapping 100+ years ago. And besides, I don't think her parents cared where she was...

Ahem. But anyway, Maisie and Sir Claude really seem like two good eggs (well- it remains to be seen even by the end of the book whether or not Maisie has been ruined by her parents' shenanigans, and I'm inclined to think she might have been...) in a sea of selfish and/or hateful characters. Even the nannies Maisie has with her respective parents are locked in a ridiculous feud that seems to only increase the damage to Maisie, and is just another reason that Sir Claude seems to be the best for her. Plus, there's his damn radiance, and everything...

Aside: On how excited I am for the movie- I'm really excited. And NO, not just for Skarsgard, you perverts. Nope, when I was reading, I was excited because I could see exactly how this could be adapted for a modern situation, mostly because it's already a modern situation, and kind of fits today's time better than its own. And I know that I potentially love a lot of the changes the film has made- like how Maisie's parents are both people with Big Careers, which is why they hardly ever see her, and how Sir Claude (who, we assume, marries Maisie's mother for her money) is a bartender who her mother pays to look after her and HEY see how that works? Also, he's still radiant. So there's that.

So. There's no ignoring the fact that I don't like James's style *nervously eyes The Portrait of a Lady and The Bostonians and why do I have so many books by Henry James, again?* BUT in this case I'm willing to overlook that because I do really like the story that I had to speed read to get through. If a different writer had been involved, I might have LOVED it, but they weren't so I'll take what I can get. Maybe most importantly, it's gotten me all excited for the movie, which was my main reason for reading it in the first place and I can't really ask for anything more than that, can I?

*Don't even TELL me that you don't come here to read Henry James being compared with Friends because I KNOW YOU DO

Sunday Sundries: I FINALLY GOT AN IPHONE AND NOW EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!

Happy Sunday greetings girls and... well, it's mostly girls who come here, I guess. But greetings to ALL anyway! I am full of the joys of all the seasons at the moment because, yes, it's true, I got an iPhone this week (an iPhone 5, no less!) and now everything in the world is better.

I feel sort of gross being SO excited by a product which is 1) crazy expensive (or... free with the right contract, WINK) 2) rife with issues surrounding its manufacture (but then, what products AREN'T rife with issues? Not many, I'd say) and 3) that EVERYONE (in grossly rich countries, like, ooh, the UK) already has. 

But, the thing is, this grossness is completely counteracted by the facts that 1) I have wanted one for SO LONG. Longer than I've maybe waited for any one item of awesomeness. I've been trying to work out just how long that is, and I think essentially I've wanted one since they came out but I've never been able to afford it. NEVER. Delayed gratification= the best. 2) It is SO. GOOD. I am DYING about how good the camera is, especially since all I've had recently is an iPod touch camera (it's a... three years old iPod touch and the camera is not good) and I may or may not have wandered around on Wednesday night comparing the two cameras. There is no comparison.

I mean, just look at this flower, omfg.

Let's just say I heartily recommend it as a phone and leave it there because how long can one person talk about one electronic device? (A long time. The answer is a loooooong time.)

OTHER THINGS ARE ALSO IMPORTANT. Ummmm... It has carried on being really hot this week, and my workplace has continued not to buy any fans or install any air conditioning. So, after a Wednesday where I worked all day and nearly expired, I took matters into my own hands and took in a fan from home. YEAH I know how to fight the system (I did suggest a strike, but no one seemed keen... Losers.) The one benefit of the good weather was spending the majority of my mornings reading Gone With The Wind, which I FINALLY FINISHED (oh yeahhhhhh) and that was verrrry nice.

Also I did things outdoors with friends both last weekend and this weekend and look at me doing stuff! Must be the weather... Speaking of which (again) there were a few mornings this past week where I woke up reaaaaally early for no reason (other than, I think, pollen) and THOSE are the mornings where I wrote some blog posts long hand, so if the next few don't make any sense, then that'll be why... 

This week! Stuff. I'm working two full days and going to pick up my new glasses AND sunglasses which will hopefully prevent any more walking-into-lamppost issues that may or may not have happened the other week. It's pretty important that people who can't see don't wear non-prescription sunglasses. THAT'S the kind of advice that saves lives, people. Basically what I'm saying here is that I don't have anything spectacular planned for this week, but I hope that you do and that it's awesome.