Top Ten Tuesday

Ah, the Tuesdays seem to roll around so fast these days. So fast, in fact, that I completely forgot that this week's list even existed. Fortunately, I had already written most of it about a week ago (cause that's just how cool I am) so I can totally give you a list today. As always, thanks to The Broke and the Bookish for hosting this opportunity for me to make lists and do nothing useful!

Top Ten Dynamic Duos


1. Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara from Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell- Because, onscreen and in the book, there are no greater parts of this story than the bits where Rhett and Scarlett are together, being nasty to each other or just being witty and amazing, or even just kissing. You know they're amazing, don't lie!

2. Thelma and Louise- Never has a friendship been better than that between Thelma and Louise. They definitely have their disagreements, but you know that, in the end, they will always be there for each other, and will have each others backs. While the end of this film does horrify me, their attitudes towards it seem to be that they're in it together, until the very end (this will make sense if you actually watch the film, it just sounds annoyingly cryptic now, I know!)

3. Danny and Dick Hallorann from The Shining by Stephen King- They are separated for large portions of the book, but sharing a skill as they do, they are essentially the soulmates of the novel. I love the rapport that they are able to strike up in the relatively few minutes they are together, and it is touching how far Dick will go to help Danny out. Just, don't talk to me about the film, ok? It's just SO wrong!

4. President Bartlet and Leo McGarry from The West Wing- I honestly don't know how these two could live without each other, even though that is something that they do eventually have to face. The president describes Leo as his best friend, and "I'm not the kind of man who has best friends." And I crumple into a heap on the floor and start sobbing inconsolably. They are completely amazing, and they work together so well!

5. Roland and Eddie from The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King- I know you could definitely say that Roland and Jake are the pair, or even Eddie and Susannah, but I automatically think of this partnership when I think of these books. I think it's as simple as this- Eddie is the person who Roland helps to change the most, who helps to shape him into what he was always meant to be, and I think that's one of the biggest benefits of a friendship. Also, I love Eddie and Roland both so deeply!

6. Prior and Belize from Angels in America by Tony Kushner- When Prior's world is completely crumbling around him, and his (evil) boyfriend has abandoned him, Belize is the one person he has left who is there for him completely. He takes care of him, worries about him, and generally is just the best friend you've ever had. Louis totally makes him look good, but he does most of the work of looking good by himself. A completely wonderful friendship. (See my review of Angels in America here)

7. Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield from the Sweet Valley High Series by Francine Pascal- I know that, looking back, these two have somehow become really really annoying, but when I was younger and more impressionable, I thought it would be amazing to have a twin, with whom you could share everything and never be judged. To be fair to them though, when these two worked together, there was nothing they couldn't do, no problem they couldn't solve, and that to me makes them a very dynamic duo indeed!

8. Tyler Durden and 'Jack'/The Narrator from Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk- I know that if you've read the book/seen the film, then you'll see a pretty particular problem with this pairing. Nonetheless, Tyler teaches Jack so much about the world and about himself, and he would be pretty indispensable in his life. What Jack gives back in return is hard to say, but it is clear that the pair are inseparable, to the extent that Jack gets completely jealous if Tyler expresses anything like affection to another person ("I am Jack's broken heart") They're messed up, but completely adorable.

9. McMurphy and Chief Bromden from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey- Ah, yes. A friendship that has such a bittersweet ending that I don't quite know what to do with myself when I read it. Nonetheless, McMurphy has this amazing ability to make the Chief live again, properly and without any need for medication or fear. He does all this for a lot of the other patients too, but its effects are best felt on the Chief, probably mostly because he is our narrator. (My review of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is here)

10. Jo and Laurie from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott- My absolute favourite friendship ever! I so wish I had had a friend like Laurie (or, in fact, Jo) growing up, and I love how close they are able to become merely by ignoring the conventions of the day and just by doing what they want to do. I will still  never get over the way the film ends, but I am willing to accept the fact that Laurie and Jo will absolutely be friends until the day they die, which is good enough for me (also, they will never die, so they will be friends forever- awesome!)

So those are my top ten dynamic duos. How about you? Any friendships struck up in books that you can't get out of your head? Tell me below!

Devouring Films: East of Eden

(Photo Via Wikipedia)

I had about the lowest hopes one could have for a film for this, having re-read and adored the book just a couple of weeks before. I guess, therefore, it was inevitable that I was going to enjoy the film regardless of what it was like, because I had such low expectations for it. I was, however, pleasantly surprised at just how much I enjoyed the film, despite the fact that it left out basically two thirds of the book (including all the stuff with Steinbeck's actual family).

The thing is, while I wouldn't have the book without its beginning, in the film it somehow works. All the pertinent pieces of information- Cathy's evilness, Adam's dependence on and love of her, and even a little glimpse at the Hamiltons previous activities are all there, and then the film is able to tell what is essentially Cal's (James Dean) story- how inadequate he feels compared to his brother, and how much he wants his father to love and accept him. I'm not going to lie, having James Dean starring in this film was a big draw for me- he is just so damn attractive that I can hardly stand it, but more than that, he really was a great actor- you can really feel Cal's emotions just radiating off the screen, and you want so badly to tell him that he is worth a lot.

One thing that this film can't really claim is subtlety. I watched the first bit with my sister, who hasn't read the book and was only half watching it, and one of the only comments she made was "Is that his [Cal's] brother's girlfriend? They're going to end up together." Yep, that's how obvious. I wasn't exactly impressed by Julie Harris, who played Abra, but she did make it pretty obvious that Cal was the one that she wanted (ooh ooh ooh!) And who can blame the girl. Even when he's not James Dean, Cal is so loveable by the virtue of not thinking that he is- you want to hold him and tell him that it's ok because you will always love him, no matter what. Or maybe that's just me!

One thing that I thought the film would struggle with was the loss of Lee, and it did to a certain extent, but covered it up with something kind of ingenious. Whereas Cal borrows the money for the beans from Lee in the book, in the film he goes to his mother (who he isn't supposed to know about) and gets it from her instead. This adds an interesting dimension to the film, and makes Cathy seem a lot less evil than the book does, and it is also the device through which Cal is able to learn more about what happened when he was a baby, something which we see firsthand through the book. The thing about Lee is, that while I genuinely wouldn't have the book any other way, his role is sort of as a philosopher and thinker throughout the book, which is something that doesn't necessarily translate very well to film. And especially not to a film where James Dean fights a bit and just generally acts like a teenager, which he does so well!

So, the film is generally pretty faithful to the part of the book that it chooses to focus on, and I really did genuinely enjoy it. If I could only recommend one of these, then it would unquestionably be the book, but fortunately I don't have to decide between them or anything like that- so get your teeth into them both! If you've seen the film and read the book, I'd love to know what you think about the differences between them- maybe they should have had some flashbacks to some of the more dramatic parts of Adam's earlier life? Let me know what you think!

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Update: One critic in 1955 apparently said that James Dean's performance was like a "mass of histrionic gingerbread", which I think sounds hilarious, even though I'm not quite sure what it means! He's one hot lump of gingerbread is all I can say!

Mailbox Monday/ In My Mailbox

Wherein I tell you about all the amazing books I've bought, borrowed or scrounged throughout the week.
IMM is hosted by The Story Siren, every Sunday.
Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia at The Printed Page. It is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week. You can view the touring blog list at Mailbox Monday blog for the upcoming months. 


It's been a bit of a lean week for book buying as I a) try to obey my mother's 'Don't buy any more books!' rule (her house, her rules; hence why I need to move out!) and b) try to save my meagre funds until I actually have a steady, job-style income. So, I just have one library book, and one bought book to tell you about!



From the Library
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides- You may or may not have read my feelings on The Virgin Suicides,  but if you have (or did just then) then you may think this is an odd choice for a library book. In return, I would say that, it would be an odd choice for a book to buy, but I think libraries are the perfect way for me to give Eugedines a second chance, PLUS Middlesex was the book I wanted to read in the first place! It's also the place where I live, but that's beside the point really! It does sound really interesting/complex, and I am quite excited to get my teeth into it.


From the Shops
Remembrance of Things Past: Part 1 by Marcel Proust- This purchase could go one of two ways- either the book remains unread until I'm about 50 years old, or I read it, adore it, and feel enriched in my life forever. Hopefully it'll be the latter! All I know about this book is what I got from Little Miss Sunshine, so it could just be a horrifying mistake of a purchase, but hopefully it'll all be as good as 'suffering is important because it makes us who we are.' Deep sounding stuff, should go perfectly with my Stephen King challenge! 




(Book Cover via Goodreads)
So, that's my mailbox- I hope you all got only nice things in yours this week! Tell me about them below if you feel so inclined.

Devouring Stephen King: Carrie

I have decided to do something radical. Something awesome. Something that I have wanted to do for quite a while now.

I'm going to read Stephen King books. 'Woah, that's so out there' I hear you cry, and, well, you just wait a minute you impatient people because there's more. A fair bit more. What I am going to do, is read ALL of Stephen King's books. In order (well, pretty much in order, but not quite, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it), from oldest to newest. That's a lot of books people!

So, why am I doing this? My sheer love of Stephen King is one thing, and my sheer boredom at unemployment is another, but mostly I just have a fair few unread King books lying around, and that needs to change. Immediately. I'm going to keep track of my progress in the Challenges tab at the top of the page, so if you want to keep track of all the Kings I've read, then that's the place to go! If you want to join me in my crazy/awesome quest, then please feel free to, I'll link back to you and everything and stuff! (If that's at all appealing to you, haha).

So, I started with Carrie. Stephen King's first published novel, but not his first published anything (He had a fair few short stories published before he wrote Carrie), it was released in 1974, but all the action takes place in 1979. This is something that King does quite a lot, and I always find it really clever and amazing (because I'm easily impressed) he sets it in the future so it's scarier because it hasn't even happened yet! But it will, and soon! Spooky... Like a modern-day Nostradamus is our Mr King. Of course, the fact that it's now 2011 (and hence 4 years until we have hoverboards and hydratable food and other cool stuff like that) makes no difference because you can still consider that this little dating thing must have made Carrie extra scary when it came out!

But is Carrie really that scary? Honestly, I don't think so. It's far more sad than scary, and even when Carrie is at her most crazy and remorseless, I still feel sorry for her, more than I do scared of her. I'm sure this wouldn't be the case if I actually lived in her town, but I don't, and I sympathise with Carrie far more than I do with the townspeople, or the other kids at her school, who have essentially done nothing to help her, and have led her to do what she eventually does, when everything falls apart.

I think this book is written in a very novel way, by incorporating regular narrative with extracts from books, magazine articles, and later on Court transcripts, which add to the narrative by making it clear quite early on that something extraordinary has happened, and that a lot of people end up dying. What exactly this entails becomes apparent as the book progresses, and you can't help but think that the kids at school pretty much got what was coming to them (or, at least, I did, which I'm not sure is the intended message of the book!) Carrie is such a damaged character, having been the butt of all the jokes from her very first day at school, and it becomes clear that all she has ever wanted is to be accepted and liked. Unfortunately for the people who have mocked Carrie, she is telekinetic (kind of like a living poltergeist) and thus she can do quite a lot of very bad things to the people who were very bad to her- whoopsie for them!

Carrie's mother is possibly the one who does her the biggest disservice in the novel, however, by being so ridiculously religious (in a really weird interpretation of Christianity, for example, not having sex even after marriage!) that she never even gets the opportunity to fit in. Apart from that, there is also the mental and physical abuse she subjects her to, and the crazy crazy obsession with 'dirtypillows'... She's probably about my least favourite mother since Livia Soprano, and that's really saying something.

I think that, essentially what King is trying to say with this novel is that you should pretty much be nice to everyone all the time, because you never know what kind of superpowers they might have that could end up with you not so much alive. That was about the most retarded way I could have put that moral, but it's pretty much the truth- a major character is saved because, while she hasn't always been nice to Carrie, she atones for her sins afterwards, which is better than the others who have only shown her cruelty.

To be honest, Carrie could be better. I think that, allowing that it's Stephen King's first novel, it's pretty good; but when you compare it to a lot of his later works, it doesn't really stand up in terms of it's writing and scares- in story, of course, it's second to none, because, let's face it, a not so good Stephen King story is still basically better than everyone else's! Next up is Salem's Lot, a book I already like better than Carrie because there are vampires in it! Also, it's a LOT scarier...

Why I love my BA in English

I have had quite a lot of time over the last few months to scorn and hate my degree, for not being 'practical' or 'job getting' enough. Now, I've had enough of thinking like that, and it's time to admit that I love my degree- not for anything practical that it has done for me, but because of the subtle ways it has changed me, and made me think differently about the world and what my role in it should be. Far from just reading books for 3 years, it has taught me a lot about culture, society, and the bigger more important things in life, rather than how much money one earns- why we are here, what we should do with our time, what is the best way to live. You know, just little things like that. It has also allowed me to think more creatively about things, and I think that I can get the very best out of books now, in that I can think about them deeper than the story itself goes.

I found myself doing this last night, and it surprised me and pleased me all at the same time, as I considered how much I'd really learnt at University. I was reading Anna Karenina (as I am wont to do, these days) and, without giving too much away, this relatively irritating character was in a horse race which he eventually lost by accidentally killing the horse (yeah, it wasn't too pleasant!) As I was reading, I was kind of perplexed by what Tolstoy was trying to do, by literally just telling me about this horse race. When I thought about it a little bit deeper though, I found at least 5 different options of what he could be doing with this chapter, and the sheer amount of options I was able to think of really made me happy and kind of a little impressed with myself- If I put my mind to it, I can think really deeply into things, and consider them properly, and some up with the best solution (in this case, I consider that the character is so unused to losing, that having to do so in this instance is damaging to him personally, so much so that he is unable to cope with even the memory of it). If that isn't an employable skill, then I don't know what is!

So, yes. I didn't take the most employable degree in the world, but I had a lot more fun learning than someone who took, say, a management degree (this awful girl I lived with in the first year), and I think it has given me hidden skills that I'm not even fully aware of yet! I guess what I'm trying to say here is this- don't ever let anyone tell you that your English, or even just Humanities, degree isn't worth anything; and never let anyone talk you out of doing exactly what you want to do at University, even if it won't make you the most employable person in the world. You have to do what makes you happy, and if that's reading (which, if you're reading my blog, it probably is) then you should be allowed the opportunity to explore that to the furthest possible reaches, without feeling guilty or worthless because it doesn't give you straightforward employability skills. Because, what it does give you, is so much better than that- knowing that you haven't wasted three years of your life on something tedious, but in fact have spent them enriching your mind and yourself.

Then again, Avenue Q are never wrong...

Literary Blog Hop March 3-6

I'm in the throes of reading Anna Karenina (One and a half parts done, woo!) so I may not post again for quite a while! Hence, a lovely blog hop to keep you going. Hosted by The Blue Bookcase, this week they ask:

Can literature be funny? What is your favourite humorous literary book?


I think that literature can absolutely be funny. It might be a bit harder to get to the humour in a book that is 'literary' because the language can be a lot to take in at first, but once you get past that, some works of literature can be utterly hilarious (Jane Austen is a great example of this, as is Shakespeare- I love reading the footnotes of all the dirty jokes Shakespeare makes in Hamlet, and basically every other play!)   In fact, I personally think that all works of literature can benefit from having a little comic relief, even if their main purpose is tragedy- just so long as it is extremely well written humour!

My favourite humorous literary book is probably The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. It is disturbing and a bit upsetting too, but there were parts of it that made me actually laugh out loud, because they struck me as being so true as a portrait of humanity. It's a good example of how something doesn't have to be wholly miserable, or wholly hilarious, to be a good work of literature. Pride and Prejudice does come a close second, however, and I think there are still hilarities of Jane Austen that I am yet to discover and unravel- she is completely amazing!

So, of course literature can be funny! It may not be the most important role that it takes on, but it is one that stops readers blowing their brains out at the end of books. Humour can be a very good thing! How about you? Do you have any favourite funny works of literature?

Top Ten Tuesday

I LOVE this weeks top ten, because it totally relates to how I live… I have so very many books that I have bought, with complete excitement, and then just put away and left for years! I’m trying to rectify that somewhat at the moment though. So, without any further ado, here are:

The Top 10 Books I just had to Buy, but Are Still Sitting on My Bookshelf

1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy- I started reading this about 4 years ago, but since I was just starting university and had to deal with shit like Tristram Shandy and evil flatmates, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t handle the 800 plus pages as well. I have, however, just started reading it again (like, yesterday) and all signs look good! 

2. White Teeth by Zadie Smith- I have both this and On Beauty sitting in the bottom of my wardrobe (where I have to store a lot of my books) and I have no good reason for not having read them... But I will get round to them one day!

3. Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey- I think this is one of those kind of books that I bought more for the title than any actual content- it was actually by my bed for a really long time, but I moved it away and it's never found its way back into my interest... It is a thin book, though, so I will probably read it eventually!

4. Watership Down by Richard Adams- I got this because my friend told me it was pretty good... sadly, whenever I look at it and see the size of it, I do tend to think that I don't want to expend that much effort on a story about rabbits! 

5. Walden by Henry David Theoreau- I got this to help me write an essay on Thoreau, but it arrived after I had actually handed it in... consequently, it now resides by my bed, where I'm finding it really really hard to get past page 20...

6. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky- Another one of those pesky Russian authors, a book I guess I thought I should buy, without considering whether I would actually read it or not. Which I will! Just, not yet...

7. The Freud Reader- My attempt to delve further into the human mind, I actually lugged this massive book home from New York, when I bought it at The Strand bookstore. Sadly, it hasn't been opened since that time, which makes it a bit of a wasteful thing to have carried home...

8. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway- I read literally about 5 pages of this a really long time ago, but I just couldn't get on with it. I have, however, been assured that Hemingway is really super awesome, so I might try it again some day- like, when I've read all these other books!

9. Dangerous Liasons by Choderlos de Laclos- The reason I bought this book can basically be summed up in two words- Cruel. Intentions. Sadly, a film I loved when I was about 11 is not necessarily a basis for making me read a book!

10. Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela- I really badly want to read this book (so badly that I asked for it for my birthday and everything!) and I have read about 50 pages of it. Sadly, there are about 1000 pages, and every time I look at it I just feel intimidated by it. I will absolutely read it though, and hopefully sooner rather than later!

So that's my top ten for the week. How about you? Any books that you just can't handle reading, even though you definitely wanted them in the shop?