books about death and crime, mostly

Hey, my dashboard changed! My hands are flapping about in a helpless manner. This feels weird. Unsettled whimperings.

I started reading Rebecca this evening - whoo boy.  Danvers has just taken her on the horrible tour of Rebecca's room.  The atmosphere is incredible.  I'm sure a lot of people probably say they relate to the main character - but I'm going to say so too.  Maybe because she's young and awkward, I just see a great deal of similarity between us.  I feel a bit desperate to please people sometimes, and I bump into things and hide from people.  Schoolgirlish, self-concious. And I'm not good about clothes and hair and things like that.
Maybe I'm in a morbid kind of mood or something, but I'm getting terribly wrapped up in the story.  I need to see the movie after this.  I think Hitchcock is almost the only person who could have got the particular feel of this book right in a film.  It sometimes seems like he's driving off fumes, if you know what I mean.   He can put a fat lot of sinister thoughts into your head with a quite remarkably tiny pinch of scary images.  (Of course, I'm saying only he could have done Rebecca right and I haven't seen it, but I'm basing this bold and completely un-researched assertion on the feel I've gotten from the Hitchcock films I have seen.  And didn't it get an academy award?  The only one he got?  Or am I making this up?)

Okay, I have an awesome life.
Last night I went to a meeting of the Orient Express book club at Barnes and Noble.  Oh yes.  On the way there, I decided that I wanted it to be either:
1. So horrible that it was funny
2. Young-ish people obviously reading scary psycho books, so I would know after getting a peek at them that I shouldn't even sit down
3. Or actually good.  Pleasantly geeky

It was the latter.  They're all at least fifty years old, and have been meeting for twelve years.  They were very friendly.  The leader lady told me that they read for pleasure - don't dissect things (yessss!).  They go to mystery dinner theatre shows.  The leader asked me if I'd read any mystery books lately, and I mentioned Dorothy Sayers.  "Oh, which version of him do you like better?" She asked me.  And - get this - I KNEW WHAT SHE WAS TALKING ABOUT!  I felt like a genius.  (To explain - when Dorothy Sayers wrote Lord Peter Wimsey, she made him a cross between Bertie Wooster and Fred Astaire and intended to do a few books and then marry him off and be done.  But, from what I've read, she got attached to him and, in the later books, made him a more complete character.  Some people like the early, more Bertie Wooster LPW more than the more human later one. I don't know which I like better.  From a pure, shallow enjoyment standpoint, the Bertie Wooster version is more fun.  But I am hugely attached to the more human version too.  So I don't know.  That's what I said to the leader lady.)

I am so going again.  I have to find a mystery book involving some sort of royal personage.  The club reads books by topic, so you don't have to buy anything.  Nice, I think.  It's a sort of title-swop, I suppose.

Also, I am reading A Short History of Nearly Everything.  You already know, dear blog, that I adore - worship - Bill Bryson.  I have dithered about how hilarious and witty he is, and how I feel well-traveled and somewhat brainier when I come away from his books.  Now, I can say (with incredulity) that he is actually capable of making me take an interest in science.  Or at least make me want to keep reading a very long book about it.  Right now I'm reading a bit about how Yellowstone park is basically one enormous volcano. (The sort that look like a champagne glass below the surface, from what I understand.  The name begins with a c and sounds like caldera or something similar.)  From the hints he is giving, I think we will probably all die if it blows.  Oh well.  At least it would be quick and exciting, what?

"Not long after I moved with my family..."

I did something mildly awesome a few weeks ago.

Yeah.  I saw Bill Bryson. That's who that is. And that grinning idiot next to him is me.

How, you might reasonably ask, did I manage to do this in Arkansas?  Well, Mr. Bryson gave a reading at University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. I had no idea that he was visiting.  My mom told me the saturday before that I had to get all my homework done because we were going somewhere on Monday.  I did so, and we drove for three hours.  When we got into the auditorium I was ordered to look down at the floor.  I was told afterwords that people were carrying books around for signing.  I have excellent self-control, however, and didn't see.  I didn't know what was going on until a guy got up and said, "And now, Bill Bryson." 

It was great.  Unless I sit next to an extremely voluble Emma Thompson on a very long plane flight, it was the high point of my life. 

So, that's all for now.


P.S. I am not actually that geeky looking.  The, uh, lighting was bad.  In real life I am remarkably attractive in an ugly sort of way. 

Happy Thunderbolt Kid Day!

This may have been, like, a one-time thing, but in 2006 the mayor of Des Moines, Iowa declared this day "Bill Bryson,The Thunderbolt Kid, Day".  All those commas are actually in the title.  For some reason it seems excessive to me, but I can't think how you could do it otherwise.  I don't care if it was supposedly only Thunderbolt Kid Day in 2006 - I celebrate regardless.

This day we celebrate the genius of Bill Bryson.  Mr. Bryson, your books alone have extended the life spans of readerly people by ten years at least if laughing is as good for us as Prevention magazine says it is. Your efforts to save rural England and put an end to littering are equally commendable.  Thank you for everything, especially Katz. 

I JUST THOUGHT YOU WOULD LIKE TO KNOW, BLOG, THAT THE FOURTH OF OCTOBER - A DAY WHICH BEFORE TEN MIUTES AGO WAS GOING TO BE HORRID (A MONDAY, THREE QUIZZES, TWO ASSIGNMENTS) - IS NOW OFFICIALLY GOING TO BE THE BEST DAY IN A VERY LONG TIME.  WHY, YOU MIGHT ASK? BECAUSE, ON THAT DAY

THIS IS A PIECE OF NEWS THAT MERITS ALL CAPS. REJOICE AND BE GLAD IN IT.

Tuesday:
I bought the book this afternoon.  And I would like to add that this is the first book I have ever, EVER bought in hardcover the day after it came out.  EVER.  Now you see how truly important and marvelous this happening was, don't you?  I hesitated to buy sunglasses for five bucks this afternoon, but paid twenty two dollars for this book.  But it was worth it.  I like to think that Mr. and Mrs. Bryson will use the money I spent to go out to breakfast or buy a new toaster or something.

Read by...

Ugh.  I think my least favorite Austen character is Anne Elliot's horrid sister Mary.  I despise her.
I'm going through an Austen phase, re-reading all the books (except for the only one on my book list, bad person that I am) and I'm enjoying them terribly.  I've always said I didn't like Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion as much as, say Emma, but they were so lovely.  I actually listened to them on audiobooks from the library - read by Nadia May.  Since we've been taking moments to acknowledge the greatness of people these days, let's take a moment  for the great audiobook readers of the world.






A long moment. They deserve it.






Prunella Scales for Emma and Nadia May for all the rest of the Austen books.  Nadia May for Till We Have Faces. Wonderful, wonderful Nigel Lambert for Dog Friday (the best book on tape ever, possibly) and There's a Viking in My Bed.   When I was a kid, my family swore eternal devotion to Jim Weiss, reader of The Cat of Bubastes,who also reads a set of endearingly oddball short stories (in which he sang as well. If I recall correctly, one song ran, "Snow white, Rose Red joy was sure to follow from the life they led.  Rose Red, Snow White something-something-else will find delight!").  Geoffrey Howard for his exceptional, suitably scary Out of the Silent Planet.  Whoever reads the version of The Screwtape Letters my library has on tape.  I worshiped Kate Maberly (still do, as a matter of fact) for Catherine, Called Birdy.  Listened to it almost every day for a year or two. The tapes are so worn that, every once in a while, her voice suddenly pitches down about three octaves.  I expected Jeremy Northam's read of The Silver Chair to be excellent and, big surprise! it was. Tim Curry is fabulous, and Daniel Handler reads excellently.  Listening to the author is usually a let down, but Lemony Snicket and Bill Bryson are both delightful readers. I could go on and on and on about good books on tape.  Or, audiobooks, I ought to call them.  But in my head they're still books on tape.  I'm a 90's kid.

Let me end by saying I LOVE AUDIOBOOKS.  I am a huge geek about them, and I don't care who knows it.  They make car trips ten thousand, and house cleaning a hundred thousand times more enjoyable.

Okay, last thing.  On the way to Disneyland last week, we stopped at Starbucks for breakfast (because we are the stopping kind.  We believe in gum and snack runs.)  And, right next to the Starbucks was an old Hollywood video, turned into a sale bookstore.  So what did we do? What would any sane person do?  Go in, of course. I love cheap books.
But, the point of this very long tangent is that, while in this shop I found this:

A little teensy book on tape!  You plug headphones in on the side! And only one dollar.  The audio quality isn't the best, but it's still pretty sweet.  And the absurdity of a line on the other side of it which reads "Written and read by the author" doesn't even annoy me.  I love audiobooks.  I'd like to go back to that book shop too.  Good stuff.  I got Ibsen and a huge book of Hercule Poirot mysteries for a dollar each.  Also, there's something pleasantly absurd about pouring over shelves of books with a giant Nicole Kidman head looking down at you.