P.S. I Love You

Okay, I don’t normally go for these sappy predictable romance stories, but after seeing the movie version, I do what I normally don’t and went out and bought the book. Usually I read the book first and then make fun of how they’ve slaughtered the book at the movies. There are rare exceptions of course – Renee Zellweger was the perfect Bridget Jones, lets just not talk about the sequel.

Basic storyline goes as such: Holly and Gerry were perfect for each other but unfortunately Gerry gets a brain tumor and dies. This is not a spoiler, it all happens very quickly. The rest of the story is how Holly copes with the loss and Gerry sends her letters monthly (organised before he died) to help her ‘deal’ with his passing – Gerry’s rules for getting on with her life.

Now this is a rare occurrence where I actually preferred the movie to the book. I was really surprised when I liked the movie. I never cry in movies, usually only when an animal dies – don’t even get me onto when I saw I Am Legend. Heartless and cruel of me yes, but I just get more choked up over animals that croak it, rather than humans with all their annoying faults.

Regardless, I liked this movie and even found myself tearing up a bit. Embarrassing. So I was all prepared to really like this book, and I was disappointed when I found it rather different for a start (not the authors fault) and a bit of a poor imitation of some much better Irish writers such as Marian Keys who excels in this stuff.

I realise the subject matter was a bit of a downer, but I just felt I had no compassion for Holly who came off as kind of annoying and very self centred, and I had no love for the supporting characters either. It was all a bit one dimensional. If you look at Keys book, 'Is There Anyone Out There', which also deals with loss, the characters were a lot more well rounded and for ‘chick lit’ it was more enjoyable to read in general.

Running with Scissors

I stumbled across the author, Augusten Burrows while watching a Melbourne writers festival thingie on ABC before Christmas and although I hadn't read any of his books the interview propelled me to look him up.

He seemed to have had such an interesting (to put it mildly) childhood. During the interview he was actually more talking about the book A Wolf at the Table but I thought I should start with the most famous of his books.

Augusten is not your usual child, his parents are always fighting, his mother is a wannabe poet and his dad is distant. He knows from a young age that he is a gay and his parents soon divorce and he spends all his time with his mother.

Pretty soon she is seeing a psychologist, Dr Finch, who says she has a lot of issues and Augusten is spending more and more time at the Dr Finch's house with his menagerie of children, adopted and not, and bizarre patients some who have been living in his disgusting cockroach ridden house for years. Obviously this is where most of the weird happenings occur in the book.

The psychologist has strange methods and while Augusten paints a funny tinge over the whole situation, some of the incidents are really quite shocking. Without the humour injection the book really would just read as a tragic childhood story but Augusten makes it readable. The book basically runs through the time his parents divorce until he leaves home at around 18.

During the interview I viewed Augusten is really open about his upbringing and speaks with real honesty and I admired him for that, but I can't in all honesty say I really loved this book.

I appreciated its strangeness and the way he seems to step back from it all in some sense but some of the situations described in the book are quite confronting and it really made me appreciate my 'normal' upbringing.

I was surprised to see the cover of my book was set out like the movie poster, when I wasn't even aware it had been made into a film. After further investigating I discovered it came out in 2006 - I cannot for the life of my recall it getting any press in Australia at the time. I'm not sure if it had a limited season or if I just have a terrible memory but I'd be pretty interested to see how they handle some of the more sensitive issues in a M Rated film.

Facebook

I'll admit it, I'm addicted to the dreaded facebook. Not only does it help make my sometimes boring work days go faster but it is a good (although somewhat superficial) way of keeping in touch with my friends.
And of course also finding people you went to high school/primary school/kindy and seeing how much they've changed is always interesting/frightening.


But there are all the downsides: facebook skanks though probably not as bad as myspace skanks yet - but how many cleavage inducing self taken pictures do we need in this world. The inevitable self promotion photos (that's a complete different topic on how digital cameras have taken away any form of pictures that aren't entirely approved by everyone in them therefore taking away the more natural pics but I digress), the lame status updates where some people give way too much information, and the fact that some person you knew for 2 minutes in year 4 wants to be your 'friend'.


Do I sound a bit cynical? I was just going on about how it gets me through the workday..... anyway the point I was getting around to eventually was also the use of 'events' in facebook. You can get events for anything.

Tonight I'm attending a BBQ which was posted as an event on facebook complete with all the details you need to know and also everyone invited to the BBQ could post messages on the events 'wall' so everyone can see what's going on, what to bring etc. It's good in a way, I mean it must save on phone texts which is how we would have done it prior but it's also bad in that no one gets actual invites to places anymore with the exception of weddings.

Case in point, my birthday is coming up and I was thinking of doing cool invites with a toddler picture of myself and details on the photo (I did it for a friends hens night and it was awesome). But then I got thinking wouldn't it just be easier to do it as an event? It'd be quicker and I need to get it out soon since everybody seems to be booked up pretty early these days and its harder for us to all get together.

But there's just something old fashioned in me that wants to send out invites. I think its the formality or the tradition of it but putting it on facebook does not give me the same feeling of finality about the party. Like I could change my mind and just put something up on the wall: 'Sorry guys I'm not feeling well *cough cough* the party's off' (which is a distinct possibility for me - I'm a nervous host).

I'm not sure which I'm going to go for, time may beat me out and my invites will go the way of letters: nonexistent.
P.S. Not the picture I was going with but check out the cake!

Rosemary's Baby

I totally stayed up reading this book way past when I should have been asleep (sorry BF!). Once I got into it I just couldn't put it down.

First of all there were a few reasons I wanted to read it.

One as everyone knows it's a bit of a classic and the fact that it's out of print in Australia made it just that more intriguing.

Two, whenever I look up famous people born on my birthday for a long time all I ever got was Mia Farrow. Since up to this point all I knew of her was the fact that she was married to Woody Allen and we know that didn't end well I was curious to see the movie she is so famous for. But I promised myself to read the book before I saw the movie.

Three I love weird and wonderful books just as much as those based in reality, and this seemed the perfect book to read, having heard so much about it and never actually going out and reading it.

We are introduced to Rosemary and her actor husband Guy. They've just moved into a Gothic style apartment in New York which is notorious for some creepy behaviour in the last hundred years but it's a great place with 2 bedrooms so what the heck?

Everything is pretty good for a while, they meet some neighbours, Guy lands a great part on TV but Rosemary begins to feel distant from her husband and she has some odd hallucinations. Guy decides he'd also like to have a baby and very soon after some forced copulation (she was passed out! There are no words to describe the wrongness) they've got a bun in the oven.

To tell much more would ruin the enjoyment of reading the novel and I really recommend it. The way Levin builds the suspense is tingling and I honestly couldn't put it down. The writing is simple but that's the way the book works. You're learning every little twist along the way with Rosemary and you sometimes wonder if she is losing her mind or what the hell is going on.

It was written in 1967 and the book does not date that much. There were a few sexist issues (most notably the rape) but it is still a good read.

There is a sequel book which was written in 1997 by Levin, which I read an excerpt of but I'm not too sure about it. May be interesting just for curiosity's sake.

Trip down south

I went to Bunbury for a couple of days over the Christmas break. For those not in Western Australia, Bunbury is a city a couple of hours south of Perth where a lot of people go during the summer, due to its close proximity to the ocean (not that Perth isn’t close to the ocean, most populated places in Australia are all within a hour of the sea) and the slightly cooler temperature. We do get a bit sick of the 35C plus days here.

Anywho we didn’t do a lot it was more of a relaxing getaway with the bf having a rare 3 days off in a row. We did go down to this awesome dolphin discovery centre on the beach and get pretty close to some wild dolphins! Being a huge animal lover it was one of things I actually wanted to do when we got there and we got lucky and were actually there when a mother and calf decided to show up. Being the amateur photographer that I am I didn’t get to take many great pics but got some. BF has some expensive camera thing which takes one a thousand shots a second or something (slight exaggeration) but he had left it at the motel. Boo.

The set up is pretty good, it cost us 8 bucks to get in, practically the whole place is run by volunteers, there was some informative stuff in the front section and then we got to go down to the beach and after walking up one side of the beach (about 5 minutes one way past some kids tormenting a crab) and then while we were halfway up the other side, we see all the people gathering thigh deep in the water.

I’ve always wanted also to swim/snorkel with dolphins but the tours they can do around here seem a bit contrived, in that you’re following a tour leader pulling one of those motorised thingies and it just doesn’t seem natural or unique. I don’t know...I realise I probably won’t be able to frolic with dolphins like Flipper or whatever but still that’d be cool.

Anyway we had an awesome time and also spent the obligatory quality time together, blah blah.

Train book spotted: Monday, guy in glasses reading The Tommyknockers by Stephen King. It made me realise it's one of the few vintage Kings I haven't read and must get on to it.

The merge

I've decided to merge my 2 blogs and since this was the older one I kept it. I just found it too hard keeping two and actually writing about things I'm interested in.
So I will continue to review my bookcase but also my general ramblings.

Some unrelated good news, my lovely bf has ordered in Rosemary's Baby for me from the US as it's out of print here in Oz. It was meant to be a surprise Christmas present but took a bit longer to get here but I'm not complaining! I want to see the movie too, but have forced myself to wait and read the book first. It has finally arrived today so I have plenty of books to keep me occupied!

Boys Wanted!

I won about 15 of the pen pals series books on ebay quite a while ago and I've been slowly reading them and reliving my childhood. I thought I'd start with number one and just do them sporadically as Cher says.

I loved this series as a kid, it was so cool imagining what it would be like to go to an all girls boarding school where your main interaction with boys was through letters. Seeing as I was of absolutely no interest to boys in school anyway, you'd think it wouldn't be that different but there was also the aspect of living away from parents at such a young age - I just couldn't imagine it.
This book introduces the main series concept and introduces 4 very different main characters. Lisa, the outgoing (in my opinion bossy) one, Amy the asian american who dresses pretty funky and loves music, Palmer the rich blonde one, snobby pretty often and Shanon the quiet youngest writer type roommate. They all live together in Fox Hall and it's their first year at Alma Stephens school for girls. It was written in 1989 and those late 80s/early 90s outfits feature really heavily on the covers and its awesome. My favourite character was always Shanon, i suppose I could relate to the more shy girl although I really hated the relationship she had with Lisa who seemed to boss her around and Shanon worshipping her got a bit old.
The cover has Palmer rocking some kind of cape which you know if you're rich you can get away with that. Amy (who dresses a lot in black) stays true to form with the spiky hair. Shanon looks a bit bitchy in her various blue demin ensemble and Lisa is too engrossed in her letter to even acknowledge the reader.
Anyway Lisa comes up with the idea that they should advertise for boy pen pals from the nearby boys Ardsley academy, they eventually decide to write to 4 roommates who call themselves the unknown. Through various hi jinks we get to the climax (not before finding out Amy's favourite artist is Cyndi Lauper :P)- the first meeting. Shanon is nervous when they are taking pics to send that she sends one of her older sister who is apparently gorgeous. Did she think they would never meet? They invite the boys to a halloween mixer and she tries to get around it by wearing a spaceman suit which covers her entire face...hot. Anyway Mars (her pen pal) gets angry but they make up with some wholesome honest letter writing. Amy dressed as Joan Jett, that's actually pretty cool. Lisa goes as a peasant which is sort of my fancy dress staple (more hippyish though). Palmer went as She-Ra which is also actually great and well modern for the time if you can pull it off. "a sleeveless white leotard and a short silky skirt made out of a scarf. She also had on a gold crown and a borrowed sword from the theatre prop shop. The short shimmering cape..set off the costume as did the stunning gold dyed boots." Well if I need an idea for next year I know where to look..

This series is not as good as I remember..they rarely are but its still good old fashioned fun re reading it and having different opinions of some characters (I think Amy's probably the coolest now).