Reading

Lessons in Laughing Out Loud by Rowan Coleman

I’m not sure what the author was aiming for here. I started this thinking it would be a Chick Lit book with a heroine who is plus sized. The heroine is overweight but it’s because she eats too much, not because she’s large boned. I was getting the feeling that by the end of the book, she would slim down. I have no problems with that but this seemed like it would be the weight version of those books with an unattractive woman who merely needs to get contacts, let her hair loose and get a clothes makeover in order to dazzle. Also, by the 100 page mark the hero (yes, I skipped to the end and peeked) had appeared only once. I debated continuing – the heroine’s boss was a delightful bitch who stole every scene she was in – but it was just too depressing at this point what with the heroine whinging on about her weight and her problems and getting dumped on by everyone. DNF

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The Midwife of Venice by Roberta Rich

This is a book which Jane sent me unsolicited so I had no expectations going into it. For me historical fiction is usually either spectacular or a clunking bomb. This one turned out to be a winner. The period details seemed correct, interesting and dropped into the narrative with a delicate touch. The characters are intriguing and I quickly came to care about them and their fates. This is a book I didn’t want to end. Full review posted this morning.

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The Return of Jonah Gray by Heather Cochran

Jonah Gray doesn’t actually go anywhere in this book. His “return” is his tax return as investigated by IRS agent Sasha Gardner. There’s a lot more to the book besides tax codes and deductions as Sasha has a lot going on in her life besides waiting to audit Jonah. Some is funny, some is bittersweet but I found myself riveted to the book and the bold chances Cochran takes with the plot. Full review to follow.

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Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore

I’m only one chapter into this one and already I can tell it’s going to be very different from the usual Moore offering. Before I go any further, I think I need to brush up on my late 19th century artists especially Vincent Van Gogh and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec so that I can catch more of the subtle jokes that Moore has supposedly included.

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Master and God by Lindsey Davis

Davis is a long time favorite author of mine who’s written the wonderful Falco historical mysteries set during the Flavian dynasty in ancient Rome. With this book, she’s doing something slightly different from those and – I believe – more like her book “Course of Honour.” The story follows the lives of two people during the reigns of Titus and then Domitian – the second and third Emperors of a dynasty of only three. Gaius is a Praetorian Guard while Lucilla is a hairdresser to the powerful at court. Between them, they manage to be in on most of the important happenings going on and perhaps might find a romance at the end of it all. I’m only a third of the way in but so far it’s fascinating.

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Watching

Gavin and Stacey – a UK comedy about a young Englishman who corresponds with a young Welsh woman for 6 months before they finally meet and begin a romance in person. They hit it off so well, that by the end of the first season they’re already married. I watched this first season while it was still streamable from Netflix and now need to move the next seasons up in the queue. A surprise delight is Alison Steadman in the role of Gavin’s mum. New to me are Ruth Jones as Nessa and James Corden as Smithy – Gavin’s and Stacey’s BFFs who say they hate each other yet end up hot smexing each other every time they’re in the same city.

Burke and Hare – It has Simon Pegg plus Andie Serkis and is directed by John Landis. How could it go wrong? That’s what I’m asking. How on earth could this have been as bad as it was during the 30 minutes I suffered through? Not only was it not funny, it was unfunny meaning for me it tried and painfully failed.

Nurse Jackie – a dramedy about a NYC nurse played by Edie Falco. Jackie is a wisecracking old battle axe of a nurse who’s seen it all and isn’t impressed by hotshot young doctors. She’s a great mentor to new nurse Zoey, a loving mother to her two daughters, a true friend to Dr. O’Hara of the Jimmy Choos, a loving wife to her husband Kevin and has been sleeping with Eddie the ER pharmacist while popping pills on the side. Jackie’s got issues. Season three just became available at Netflix and I can’t wait to see how the intervention goes.

Chariots of Fire – I can’t believe I’d never watched this one either but honestly I hadn’t. And after finally seeing it, all I can say is that tastes certainly differ. This won an Oscar? Really? Because it about put me to sleep. File it under “would probably have enjoyed it more if I’d seen it back in the day.”

Baking

What else have I been up to? Making biscuits, that’s what. I’m a Southerner born and bred yet I blush to admit that I’d never once attempted making biscuits from scratch. That’s what older female relatives, church homecomings and Biscuitville are for. Nevertheless, after our post on Australianisms I decided to give it a go. Armed with a bag of White Lily all purpose flour and Alton Brown’s recipe I finally made my first batch of biscuits. They might not be the prettiest biscuits ever baked but mah Gawd they are good.

Related posts:

1. What Jayne has been reading and watching in early October
2. What Jayne is reading/watching in early September
3. What Jayne is Reading and Watching in late December and early January

Flawless by Carrie Lofty – A book about a bastard heroine involved in the diamond trade in south Africa in the late 19th century. How more interesting can a premise be? Not much in my opinion which makes the fact that I gave up 150 pages into the story that much more disappointing. Lust, lust, lusting and more lust filled most of those first 150 pages and really nothing was shown of Viv’s diamond business until page 125. By that point, I found I didn’t care. Oh, and the chummy relationship the heroine and her Viscount husband appear to have with the servants aided things not at all. DNF.

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Heart Strings and Diamond Rings by Jane Graves – Funny, filled with realistic dialog and featuring four cats. I went into it with no expectations but had a lot of fun reading this one. Enough fun that I plan to go back and read the preceding books at some point. Full review to come.

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Lawman by Laurie Grant – This is another Harlequin Treasury reissue. It’s 1869 Texas and Cal Devlin is finally returning to the hometown he left to fight for the Union. Livy Gillespie is the girl who not only didn’t wait for him but who ordered him off when she learned whom he would fight for. Now they’re both older, wiser and scarred from what happened in the years between. This is a slower paced book from 1997 and one which, after I got used to that, I found myself enjoying. Full review to come.

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Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey – Darlynne mentioned this novel in our last Open Thread for Readers and the excerpt she provided got me to try it. Stark (called Sandman Slim while he was “Downtown”) is back from 11 years in hell, literally, and he’s out for revenge against his former friends who sent him there and specifically the ones who killed the only woman he’s ever loved. Fast and filled with biting humor and fantastic one liners, this one started great then wound down a little as it went on. Kadrey avoids big info dumps, allowing us to discover Stark’s world and his past as we go along which I liked. Rules for this world are laid down then broken plus all sorts of new paranormal creatures are introduced as the story goes along which I didn’t like. Also, Stark is revealed as not quite what he and we thought he was. I plan to read the next book in the series since I already have it but it will determine how much farther I go with the series – providing the series goes past two books. B

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I’m now reading the new Kathy Love paranormal Devilishly Hot, the Nora Roberts contemporary The Next Always and Addison Fox contemporary Baby It’s Cold Outside arcs. So far, I’m liking but not loving the first two and have just started the Fox but so far, so good.

*****

Paul – In my review of “Hot Fuzz,” Maili mentioned that she views that film – as compare to “Shaun of the Dead” – as an embarrassment for Pegg and Frost. It wasn’t for me but after viewing this movie, I understand what she’s saying. In “Paul,” Pegg and Frost play two Englishmen on holiday to the US. They’re SF fans and after attending Comic-Con and various SF pilgrimage sites in the US Southwest, they come across a real space alien who is running for his life from MiB. As they try and help him to reach a place where a space ship can pick him up, they run across various other characters including a Fundamentalist young woman with whom Pegg falls in love. Parts are funny but the film is overloaded with puerile humor and is obviously Out. To. Make. A. Point. about Fundamentalist Christians – who are mocked – and beer guzzling rednecks – who are humiliated. I’m far from Fundamentalist but this part went beyond any amusement. Beer guzzling rednecks, on the other hand, can be humiliated until the cows come home.

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Ondine – Darlynne recommended this film to me and I wish I could say I enjoyed it but sadly I couldn’t even finish it. Syracuse, an Irish fisherman, brings up a mysterious lovely woman in his net while out working. She can’t remember anything about her past and nice man that he is – where are these men in my life? – he takes her to his deceased mother’s country cottage to stay. His young daughter Annie is one of these preternaturally wise young characters who quickly starts to imagine the woman is a selkie – even though those are Scottish and they’re in Ireland. This is basically as far as I got – 40 minutes into the film – when I just couldn’t take not understanding one word in three of the dialog. Irish accents are lovely to listen to, so they are, but only if you can figure out what the hell is being said. Since it only comes with Spanish subtitles, I was out of luck. One part I did really like was Syracuse’s time spent in at confession with his parish priest played by Stephen Rea.

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Stray Dog – This is a fairly early Akira Kurosawa film done shortly after the end of WWII. A Tokyo detective has his service Colt stolen while on a crowded bus. Humiliated, he works to track down the criminal who has rented the gun from an underworld gangster and suffers shame and guilt as that man’s crimes escalate. Part police procedural, part film noir, part view of life in post war Japan, I found myself riveted to it and to Toshiro Mifune as the young policeman who took one path in life while the criminal, who suffered many of the same setbacks in life, took another.

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The Lives of a Bengal Lancer – “Gary Cooper, Franchot Tone and Richard Cromwell head the cast as a trio of British soldiers in this sweeping saga set in colonial India. While stamping out an insurrection in the country’s northwest frontier, the men wrestle with one another. They also struggle with their internal dissonance. The adventure film racked up eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director (Henry Hathaway) and Best Screenplay.” I rented this because it’s such a famous film but at the 30 minute mark I hit the pause button then sat there thinking “I’m not enjoying this. It’s boring. I’m tired of Cooper’s character harshing on one soldier while exchanging snarking comments with Tone’s character. Meanwhile the rest of the cast is either doing the ‘stiff upper lip, old boy network’ thing or barking commands at the natives.” That’s when I decided that this is an older film which, to me, just hasn’t stood the test of time.

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Related posts:

1. What Jayne is reading/watching in early September
2. What Jayne is reading/watching at the end of August
3. What Jayne is reading/watching in mid August

So I’ve started a quest to see more Simon Pegg movies and put this one in my Netflix queue. It’s got a lower star ranking than does “Hot Fuzz” or “Shaun of the Dead” so I went into it with lower expectations. Luckily for me, it exceeded those expectations by being a fun and touching film.

Dennis Doyle (Simon Pegg) is, not to put too fine a point on it, a loser. Five years ago on the day of his wedding to his pregnant girlfriend Libby (the lovely Thandie Newton), he panicked and did a runner. Now he’s discovered that she has someone new in her life and it might be serious. Whit (Hank Azaria) is everything Dennis isn’t: successful, considerate, in shape and the perfect boyfriend plus he loves Dennis and Libby’s son Jake (Matthew Fenton, who is adorable).

Desperate to get back into Libby’s life, Dennis vows to run the same marathon Whit will be running. The catch? Dennis is in terrible shape and the race is only 3 weeks away. Can he, with the help of Libby’s cousin Gordon (Dylan Moran), who’s bet a bundle on him, and his landlord Mr. Gosdashtidar (the hilarious Harish Patel), shape up and actually have a hope in hell of finishing the race? And if he can, what might that lead to?

Okay, this isn’t quite as good as either “Shaun” or “Fuzz” but it’s charming in its own way. In addition to being a rom com, it’s also about Dennis’s relationship with his son and how Dennis changes himself. Yeah, some of his motivation is the fact that Gordon has bet heavily with a few fairly shady characters on Dennis finishing the race and that Mr. Goshdashtidar can wield a mean spatula to Dennis’s backside to “encourage” his training sessions, but in the end it’s Dennis who makes the decision to try and change himself for the better.

Hank Azaria is fabulous playing the straight man whose layers are slowly peeled away. Part of the tension in the film is wondering if he’s really as great as we first see him to be and worrying over whether Dennis truly has a chance to try and win Libby back. Without turning into a shrew or a hardhearted woman, Thandie Newton gets the exact look of disillusionment with Dennis’s antics needed to convey how badly he hurt her.

The film pokes fun at all the “training to win” movies (watch for Dennis’s first workout session and when he’s trying to drink eggs) then adds Pegg’s own fantastic bits (dealing with the rash he gets “in the scrotal zone” while at work). He plays his character straight which also gets us past some of what would otherwise be silly or cloying moments in the film. The finale of the marathon might strike some as too “feel good” but there’s been enough fun along the way to balance it all out.

If most any other British actors (Hugh Grant’s endless, stuttering romantic comedy roles immediately come to mind) had played Dennis, I doubt I would have enjoyed the film half so much. It’s Pegg’s earnest befuddlement that sells the show. It’s the fact that he begins as such a complete loser (watch for what the little old lady in Libby’s bakery calls him) and really has little room to sink much lower that allows him to rise to the point where we’re cheering him on and hoping for a reconciliation.

I love the fact that the film ends with hope. As the director, David Schwimmer, and Pegg said, the movie could have been sandwiched between two weddings. But instead, they chose to have Dennis win the chance to maybe win Libby back. It’s a feel good ending without us being forced to “feel good.” For those who are beginning to work their way through Pegg’s oeuvre, this is a nice stop along the way.

~Jayne

Related posts:

1. Friday Film Review: Shaun of the Dead
2. Friday Film Review: The Big Easy
3. Friday Film Review: My Best Friend’s Wedding

When I looked ahead on the October calendar and saw that this last Friday would be the day before Halloween, I realized I needed some kind of horror film or monster film or, well you get the picture, to tie in with it. But since that genre isn’t something I normally watch and I wanted some romance in the film, I was a bit panicked. “What can I watch?” I muttered as I chewed a fingernail. A quick check of my Netflix queue and the day is saved. I’ll watch “Shaun of the Dead!” I said.

The plot is fairly simple. Shaun (Simon Pegg) is a 29 year old appliance salesman who’s having problems with his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) who is dissatisfied with their relationship, primarily because it revolves around going to “The Winchester,” Shaun’s favorite pub, every night. She wants something different, a nice dinner at a nice restaurant somewhere other than the pub. But Shaun screws even that up and tops it off by giving her flowers, complete with card, that he’d bought for his mother. She dumps him and Shaun and one of his flatmates, Ed (Nick Frost), head to the pub to drown Shaun’s sorrows.

The next day, something weird seems to be going on in the streets of London. At first they’re almost deserted, though Shaun barely notices anything different until he and Ed see a young woman in their small flat garden. They eventually realize she’s a zombie then retreat inside where the telly news announcer informs London that zombies are taking over the country and the only way to kill them is to remove their heads or destroy their brains. Armed with this knowledge and some weapons improvised from the garden shed, they dispatch her and another zombie. Worried about Shaun’s mother (Penelope Wilton), Liz and whether or not they’ll have to kill Phillip (Bill Nighy), Shaun’s stepfather who’s apparently been bitten by one of the undead, the two devise a plan to pick everyone up and drive to the Winchester where they think they’ll be safe.

But with the numbers of the undead flesh eating zombies growing, is there anywhere in London that’s safe?

As I said, I don’t watch horror films beyond the occasional “Hammer” film so a lot of the delicious homages to the film genre passed right over my head. But don’t worry, you don’t need to be a fan to enjoy this film. Pegg and his co-writer Edgar Wright, who also directed the film, also include a number of other homages to British TV shows and video games. Again, if you catch these it’s great but you certainly don’t need to know all the references to have fun with the movie. I had a great time picking out various actors and trying to remember where I’d seen them (It’s “Dawn” from “The Office!”).

The gore is fairly low key and generally consists of face paint and off screen deaths until the final scenes at the Winchester. Here, with Shaun and the others using the namesake rifle from over the pub bar, things get bloodier. The death of one of their number who gets dragged outside by the zombies is fairly graphic but it’s over quickly. In the storyboard “Plot Holes,” which are part of the DVD extras, we learn that another person actually survives being hauled amongst the undead.

We never actually learn how the zombie apocalypse begins and the ending features a major deus ex machina, but the film is so funny and enjoyable that I don’t care. At times, such as when Shaun is battling his way to Liz’s flat, I was literally holding my sides laughing as I screamed, “It’s like whack-a-mole!” The scene in the Winchester when several of their hearty band bludgeon the zombie pub owner to the beat of Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” is hilarious.

Recently, DA has received offers of a number of zombie books for review and Jane mentioned that zombies seem to be the new vampires of UF. Hopefully they’re not like these zombies or I’d have to ask, as an aghast talk show host character does in the film, “You sleep with that?!” But if you’re looking for a great film for Halloween, do check this one out. I’m off to watch it for a second time now.

~Jayne

FTC discloser – I rented this from a movie rental service though I plan to buy my own copy.

Related posts:

1. Friday Film Review: Tremors
2. Friday Film Review: Cluny Brown
3. Friday Film Review: My Best Friend’s Wedding