Back to reality, Ooops there goes gravity

I'm quoting Eminem - nice!  It has been grey, rainy and gloomy lately.  Not surprising really it's winter in the deep dark heart of the southern hemisphere.  Today was lovely though - blue, blue sky, but so cold if you came too close your eyes would be in danger.  Snow on the hills was the spectacular reason for the very low temperature last night.  So what does one do when it's cold and rainy and you have no car and the bus service to your suburb doesn't run on Sunday and public holidays?  You read lots of books, listen to music and watch fun movies.

La faute a Fidel! (Blame it on Fidel!)

A lovely wee movie by Julie Gavras about the upheaval a young girl goes through when her thoroughly bourgeois parents decide to take a step sideways and become far more proactive in left leaning humanitarian causes such as abortion in France and advocating for Chilean activists.  It's a really cool look into 1970's French society and social change from a child's perspective.  It is also a look at how parental choices affect children, no matter how well meaning they are.  I really liked the conversation about how group solidarity was different to be a sheeple.

I would say watch it!  It is in French with subtitles in English.

Lungs - Florence and the Machine (2009)

I love Florence's voice.  I love strong interesting female vocalists and Florence is definitely one of them.  I have to say Dog Days Are Over is my favourite song - that and Rabbit Heart (Raise it up).   I also quite liked Hurricane Drunk.  There is a very modified 80's feel going on in this album.  I keep thinking I can hear Talking Heads in Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up).  I like the harp in the background and the fact that she can sing is a definite plus.  Nice to have a boogie and chill out music on the same album.

We saw her live on Jules Holland's New Year's Hootenany and frankly it rocked - this album was a birthday present for my 30 mumblemumble birthday - thank you darling man!

As an aside I-tunes has flung up Fly My Pretties and Fur Patrol - I think I need to have a chillax music night me thinks.

Holysmoke - Gin Wigmore

Now I like her - I like that she writes her own lyrics and music and I like her crusty rusty voice.  It is a plus she is good looking and hails from New Zealand.  She does get a bit thrashed on the radio but Im okay with that cause when Im in the lab doing monotonous stuff singing helps drive away the lab bench blues :D.   Her songs have strong beats and they are very catchy songs that worm their way into your head such that you find yourself singing away to them all day.  I really like Oh My and Too late for Lovers.  She's funky and kinda hot - it will be interesting to see how she develops as a musician.  Her earliest offering Hallelujah was good and I think she's brewing like a nice nana tea.

The live video isn't that flash, you can find another better version here.  She wrote the song when she was 16 - I couldn't write my name at that age :D.

Wideacre - Phillippa Gregory

In the world of Wideacre (the first of a trilogy), it pretty much sucks to be a woman, with no real rights to anything in 18th century England.  Beatrice Lacey loves her bit of land farmed by her semi gentry father - he takes her everywhere teaching her the lay of the land and how to take care of it.  Turns out she is good at it, but she's a bit of a sociopath who will do anything to control that land and see her children inherit that land.  Anything includes murder (twice), attempted murder, fraud, incest, starvation of people on her land and lots of sex.  Oh and she forces her husband to become alcoholic and steals his inheritance.   It is not for the faint of heart and she isn't a particularly likeable character but it's a great to see a strong, dark character in the pages of a nicely, nicely author.  It was a good tale, it got a bit phaffy at the end of the book, felt a bit rushed.  I would possibly read it again.  I think I have to read the rest of the trilogy now.

That's all for now.

S.

The Forgotten Garden - Kate Morton

Now I did slate this book a little to be fair.  I actually put it back on the shelf and left it there for a month or two because it just didn't grab me as it should have.  However, I went back to it due to my dwindling lack of reading material over the Christmas/New Year's break and read it from cover to cover.  I am pleased that I gave it another go and read it again however I don't think I will be in any great hurry to read it again.

The essential plot of the book revolves around three strong female characters, each damaged by traumatic events in their lives who learn the truth of their heritage in different ways.  The mysterious Authoress, abandoned and broken Nell, and Cassandra, also abandoned by her mother and damaged by the loss of her husband and child.  Each chapter is told by a different character, in a different setting (either in Australia or England) and in a different year - 1913, 1975 and 2005.  

There is a lot of jumping around in this novel and it may have that which was off putting initially.  We go from Cassandra being abandoned by her less than useful mother at the door of her grandmother's (Nell) house to Nell herself arriving in Brisbane literally off the boat alone and by herself with no knowledge of who she was or where she had come from, with only the memory of a woman called the Authoress.  The bulk of the book revolves around Cassandra's resolve to find out about the property Nell has left her and her discovery of who she is and where she came from.   The book concludes with the revelation of the big dirty and disturbing family secret (and a number of smaller just as manky family secrets),  the problem with this is that you can see the resolution coming a mile away.

This book isn't pulp fiction - it is twice the size of a small novel - at 645 pages it is a bit of a tome to be honest.  It is around the same size as a Gabaldon book without the class.  It reads as an okay attempt at gothic type literature, it justs fails to meet the mark for me.  Although having said that a number of people have enjoyed it according to Amazon.com reviews - I wondered if they were reading the same book as I was.

Verdict: Okay, just okay. I'm in no hurry to read it again.   Read it if you are killing time in an airport on a long haul flight.

S.