Had a relaxing four-day weekend mostly away from technology. It was warm, but nice enough that we could sit out on the back deck. A little bit of a breeze would have been appreciated, but you can’t have everything. One good thing about this drought that we’re in is that there were no mosquitoes at all. We had the citronella candles burning on Sunday just in case, but I think we could have done without them.
I read The Year of the Ladybird by Graham Joyce over the weekend. Ladybirds, for those of us on this side of the Atlantic, are ladybugs. The book recently acquired a US publisher, so it’s only available via the import market at the moment and it will reportedly have a different title over here to acknowledge the difference between English and English. The first thing that struck me was the general similarity in concept to Joyland. A man remembers an incident from his youth in the 1970s during a memorable summer when he (a) joined the circus on the American coast or (b) worked at a summer camp on the British coast. Both are coming of age novels, and both have love and intrigue and ghosts, but the similarities end there, by which I meant they aren’t clones of each other. Joyce has a story to tell that is significantly different from King’s, but they have a wonderful sense of nostalgia and wonder in common. Highly recommended.
To “cleanse my palate” before tackling a gritty crime novel, I’m reading Stranger Than Fiction: The Life and Times of Split Enz, written by band member Mike Chunn. I discovered Split Enz when their True Colors album came out, famous for having laser etchings on the disk. I became a big fan of the group and the various other efforts by the Finn brothers, including, of course, Crowded House. I find memoirs like this fascinating because they so often reveal how little planning went into things that happened. They were determined, they had talent, and good things happened for them. Bad things, too.
We watched The Impossible on Saturday, starring Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor as the parents of three kids, vacationing in Thailand when the 2004 tsunami struck and washed them all away. It’s based on the real-life experience of a Spanish family and hews fairly close to their experiences. The tsunami scenes are stunning. It’s hard to believe that it was all done with miniatures or in a water tank. I’m not exactly sure why Watts was Oscar nominated—she’s good, but she spends a lot of the film in a coma. The real standout is the young actor who plays the oldest son, who was just twelve (though the actor was at least a few years older than that).
