Domesticity

My weekend plans got changed at the last minute yesterday, when hollyione's car broke down, rendering it incapable of bringing her and her daughter here to stay. That was a pity, as I'd been looking forward to seeing my friend, but then again an unexpected free weekend can be pretty handy sometimes. So I've been putting it to good use attending to domestic matters.

I have:

• Done four loads of washing.
• Mended / shortened / hemmed five curtains.
• Successfully extended my Sky cable, so that I can now have the TV where I want it, rather than where the wires will stretch to.
• Vacuumed the house.
• Bought some very tasteful paints in complementary colours.
• Applied them to the two curtain pelmets which my Dad made for me a few weeks ago.

I've now reached the limit of what I can get done in the painting department for the moment, as each coat takes 16 hours to dry properly, so you basically have to wait a day in between them. But my pelmets are starting to look very nice already, and since I've sorted out all the curtains which need to hang from them now it is only the painting that I need to finish. By mid-week, they should be all up in place and looking very posh, and I will be able to shift my full attention to the next domestic task I need to accomplish - buying some furniture. I mean, I'm getting by, but I'm still using cardboard boxes as a wardrobe and sleeping on a rather tiny single bed. I miss the quality of weekend lie-ins you can get on a really good double, and am sick of having to rotate carefully and precisely on the spot every time I want to turn over, or risk falling out onto the floor!

So yes - there is some serious browsing of furniture catalogues to be done in my near future. For the time being, though, you will forgive me if I use the afternoon to catch up on some overdue LJ posts. Apologies for the spam, but they are only book reviews - feel free, as of course you always are, to skip if you're not interested.

11. Graham Greene (1938), Brighton Rock

I interrupted reading this book in July to read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in preparation for the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and then interrupted Half-Blood Prince in turn when I still hadn't quite finished it on release night. So for a while there, I had three books on the go at once, nested within each other - not something I normally do. I also actually finished reading it before going on our canal holiday, but just haven't had time to write it up before now.

Despite the interruptions, though, I enjoyed it very much, and didn't have any problem slotting straight back into the world of the novel when I returned to it. Greene manages to write with such compelling and convincing detail that the reader not only sees everything he describes, but feels it all as well. I'm sure I would recognise any of the characters from this novel if I met them in the street - and not only that, but I would feel as though I knew them intimately too.

I think my favourite aspect of his writing is the way his language manages to be fresh and unpredictable without getting pretentious or over-the-top. Here's a good example of what I mean:

Nine o'clock in the morning: he came furiously out into the passage; the morning sun trickled in over the top of the door below, staining the telephone.

There, the word 'staining' is surprising enough to make you notice it and think about it - but it's not intrusive or forced, because it also instantly makes you think "Yes. Yes of course, that's so right - that is what light does as it touches a dusty, half-shadowed surface." Plus it picks up beautifully on the themes of innocence and sin, shadowiness and scrutiny which run through the course of the novel. Incredible stuff.

I've yet to read a Greene novel I haven't liked, and will continue to work my way through his oeuvre as time goes on. To that end, I list here all of his novels which I've read so far, in the approximate order I read them, so that I can check back against it if necessary:

• The Power and the Glory
• The Human Factor
• A Burnt-Out Case
• Stamboul Train
• The End of the Affair
• A Gun for Sale
• Brighton Rock

Still plenty to go, though!

12. Niccolò Ammaniti (2003), I'm Not Scared (English translation by Jonathan Hunt)

I read this book on the canal, and for a book group which has just started up at work. I'm actually not too sure how long I'll stay in the book group, for two reasons: 1) I didn't feel particularly drawn to any of the other people in it at our initial meetings, and 2) I was in a book group once before in Oxford, and ended up letting it drop because I read so slowly that as soon as I have to read one book a month for a group, I find that I have almost no spare reading time left over to read anything else that I want to read for myself. But I'll give it a proper chance for a few months, anyway. And in the meantime, I count myself better off for having read this as our first group choice.

It's basically the story of a terrible crime, told from the point of view of a nine year old boy who is slightly too young to really grasp the full enormity of what's going on, but nevertheless sees and discovers enough for an adult reader to put together the pieces which his narrative voice can't. This lends a great pathos to the story, because frequently it is quite clear to the reader that the entire quiet-if-impoverished lifestyle which he has known to date is about to be ripped apart - but he does not know this yet, and remains preoccupied with his childish hopes, fears and adventures as everything unfolds around him. I've rarely read a book which carries off a child's-eye viewpoint so convincingly and to such clever effect. The language used, the events emphasised, the emotions experienced, the narrow physical horizons of the story were all entirely those of childhood - and yet an utterly adult story was conveyed by them all the same.

Actually, given the child-like language especially, I rather wished that we were reading it in the original Italian instead of in translation, as I think that the short, simple sentences would have been at just the right level for me. Still, I can always read the Italian version for myself if I want to - and as I say, the English translation is well worth reading.

Doctor Who audio drama: Shada (Big Finish Productions 2003)

BBC webcast version here; info about the original interrupted production here; Wikipedia page here.

This doesn't fit under my 'books read 2007' tag or my 'films watched 2007' tag, but I'm going to blog it anyway so that I can remember what I thought of it. The CD was a much-appreciated birthday present from hollyione, and I listened to it on the canal on my mp3 player.

As far as I remember, this is my first experience with a Doctor Who audio CD, though I've seen a couple of web-casts before. It's therefore also my first experience of Paul McGann's Doctor other than the movie, and you know what? I was pleasantly surprised. I didn't hate him in the movie, actually - it was rather things like Eric Roberts' ridiculous Master that grated there. But it wasn't really enough to judge his performance on properly. Here, in the context of an audio drama, he gets a decent, regular Doctor Who script to work with - and he does it very well. He reminded me of a sort of cross between Five and Six, with Five's youthful derring-do and Six's slight smugness. Which doesn't sound entirely complimentary, actually, but I do mean it to be. What I'm trying to say is that he sounded like a proper Doctor, and I think I 'get' the people who are avid fans of his Eight now.

Of course the prime attraction of this particular story for me was the fact that it was written by Douglas Adams. Obviously, anyone who's read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency will recognise the character of Professor Chronotis, and there are a few other characteristically Adamsish elements, like conversations with over-logical ship's computers and someone being presented with a cup of liquid which is 'almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea' from a vending machine.

On the whole, though, someone looking for more in the vein of Hitch-Hikers or Gently will be disappointed - Adams clearly wasn't trying to produce anything particularly innovative here, but merely to earn a living by writing a fit-for-purpose script. The best character, Chronotis, he quite rightly took and reused elsewhere, and indeed did better things with him in the process. As for the rest, it's a fairly standard Who script, with a kidnapped assistant (sorry, Romana - even though you're a Timelord, your sex apparently still condemns you to be feak and weeble), a megalomaniacal villain, some thuggish minions, a psychic battle and some cute shenanigans from K-9.

That said, it's pretty good Who, and I very much enjoyed curling up with it in my berth in the evenings. I'm certainly open to more audio plays, more of the Eighth Doctor, and more of Adams' Who scripts as a result.