Savannah

I have just started reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.  This is going to be a great read.  I picked it up and then I didn't want to put it down.  What wonderful characters - and they're real!  It has conjured up some wonderful images already.

I've also just started a book of short stories Button Button by Richard Matheson, so will make a few comments on these next week.

I'm a bit knackered from my day out to Dreamworld, so going make a nice cuppa and curl up with a Freddo and the bizarre inhabitants of Savannah.

Mad Wombat

I know this has nothing to do with books, but this wombat is crazy!  It was hilarious watching him attack his stuffed friend.  I filmed him today at Dreamworld, it was a great day out.  You can't beat those annual passes!

Me making friends with a little Joey today at Dreamworld.  He was just beautiful.

Better Than Horror

Therese Raquin so far this is better than any horror novel I have read. 

The lovers have done the deed, or rather Laurent murdered Camille and Therese looked on.  It was quite awful and I immediately thought of The Talented Mr Ripley as it was the same scenario - out on a rowing boat. Laurent doesn’t really love Therese, he loves what she represents – something to abate his desires and a means to an end.  Laurent is a peasant; we are constantly reminded of that – his manner, his thoughts and his bearing.  He is also lazy.  Ultimately he just wants to live an idle life, but he needs an income and if he marries Therese all her inheritance (the haberdashery shop and old Madame Raquin's savings) will pass onto him.  What an arse. 

For two weeks after the murder, Laurent visits the morgue and views all the bodies that have drowned in the Seine (there seems to be a steady flow, pardon the pun), for he can’t rest until he knows that Camille has been identified and buried.  Zola certainly doesn’t gloss over this scene.  It is horrific, and even more horrific is the thought of those who come to view the corpses for the fun of it.  Unnatural death is ugly and Zola has recreated this to great effect.

Therese’s behaviour after the murder alarms Laurent and he decides to keep his distance until things settle down.  Therese is certainly hysterical and unsettled at first and as time goes by Laurent takes a mistress, grows portly, and finds himself quite contented and he begins to wonder how he let Therese take hold of his passions in such a way.  Then he considers that perhaps he won’t marry her, but his guilty conscience kicks in reminding him that Camille would have died for nothing.  There is one other thing to consider too, if he jilts Therese she might give away their secret………

This is wonderful, I am savouring every word.

I’ve started a Caffeine and Chapters themed read The Book of The Dead by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child.  I know it won’t be a great read, but it’s started out okay (I really enjoyed Preston’s Blasphemy).  This is the Same Title Different Book theme.  The other book I chose was The Book of The Dead by Patricia Cornwell, but I gave up halfway through a little while ago.  I’ll try to finish it, or I’ll get another one with this title.

I’m halfway through The Shadow out of Time by Lovecraft.  You can’t beat him, it’s so over the top but he takes it all very seriously.  He loves to use words such as ‘monstrous’, ‘unhuman horrors’, ‘abyss’ and ‘cyclopean’!

Kindred Spirits?

It is interesting that I have picked up Thérèse Raquin to read after Madam Bovary. Only a few chapters in, there are similarities with their disillusionment with life. Madam Bovary turned to adultery, and retail therapy (which eventually sent Charles broke) but Thérèse will turn to murder……

Poor Charles, Homais the apothecary (whose arsenic Emma had deliberately ingested) and close friend of Charles became distant as the gap in their social status widened. Charles was broke, he found out about the lovers and eventually died from a broken heart. Bovary’s daughter Berthe was farmed out to relatives and eventually went to work in a cotton mill. Her life could have been so different, poor kid!

Thérèse on the other hand lost her mother when she was very young, and was left with her aunt by her father who eventually died overseas. Living with her overbearing aunt and her sickly cousin in a cloying atmosphere she finds herself stifled, unable to run free and happy. It is always expected that she will marry her cousin Camille, even though they have no feelings for each other, and her life after marriage remains the same except that she now sleeps on the right side of their home instead of the left.

Camille decides one day that they will move to Paris, and his mother insists on making all the arrangements so that she can ensure her own future. She purchases a dowdy haberdashery shop in a dingy Arcade in Paris. When Therese moves in she is dismayed, and turns inward into herself. She has no interest in re-papering the rooms above the shop or to look for new carpet, she has completely given up…… until one day when Camille brings home Laurent, a work colleague, for dinner. Feeling the fluttering of attraction, Therese is always present when Laurent visits after work to paint Camille's portrait. Finally, when the portrait is finished, Camille goes out to buy Champagne and her Aunt/Mother-in-law goes to prepare dinner, and they find themselves alone. Thérèse gives herself to Laurent totally.

That’s as far as I have got, and loving how it is written. There’s more narration than dialogue so far, but the oppressiveness of the shop, the dingy Arcade and Thérèse's life are very well described. This one is on the list which is a bonus.

I finished Heart Shaped Box finally, and the worse thing was that my mind started wandering at the end, and when I realised it had finished (it was on audio) I had to go back a whole chapter and listen to it again! Talk about prolonging the agony!!

When is it Going to End?

My God, talk about dragging a story out. Heart Shaped Box is dragging on and on and on…….. it could have finished a few chapters back. I’m totally over it, it’s becoming stupid! Now it’s a cross between Stephen King and a corny Dean Koontz.

Madam Bovary on the other hand has just suffered a horrific death thanks to a dose of arsenic by her own hand. Totally unexpected. Di at book club said that when she read it she wanted to slap her! I don’t feel quite that strongly towards her, I feel sorry for her as she had a taste of the high life and couldn’t quite settle with her own dull way of life. She was just not as restrained as the rest of us would be. I think it’s Charles who needs a slap; he’s gone through the novel in a state of oblivion.

Poor Emma though, she ended up being hurt and used and only realized that there was a good man in her life – her husband - at the end There’s still a bit to read, so I’m interested to see where it will take me and how it will end.

I’ve tried to make a start on H P Lovecraft but I haven’t had much of a lunch break so will hopefully get started with it properly soon and as for The Time Traveller’s Wife, I’ve read three chapters and I'm confused already!!

I’m too distracted to write anymore, The Goodies are on ABC2 and are bringing back some very fond memories!

Problem Solved!

Right, I feel I’m back on track now. I’ve got Shadows of Death by H P Lovecraft to read in my rare lunch breaks, and my pick up/put down occasional book will be The Time Travellers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. If I like it, it will become by evening book when I have finished Madam Bovary.

H P Lovecraft is quite an interesting individual. His style is very gothic like the 19th Century sensation writers but he is actually early 20th Century. SBS or ABC did a documentary on him about a month ago. I thought it was an unusual subject for a mid week documentary however was very pleased to have stumbled across it. The author of Reanimator – which became a cult horror movie - is an absolute legend and inspiration to modern authors and movie makers such as Stephen King and John Carpenter. You just have to read ‘N’ from Just After Sunset by Stephen King to realise that it is a tribute to Lovecraft’s creations of Cthulhu and The Great Old Ones.

Lovecraft was a very solitary man, he did marry briefly and tried the social life but ultimately he went back to his small home town alone. A prolific writer, he really did not get the recognition or the reward that he truly deserved for his very original stories. They can be funny in their own way, the beast will literally be at the door but the narrator keeps on writing about how close it is, how scared he is, and the terror he is in, instead of running! While probably dated now, I’m sure I will enjoy them, I’ll just transport myself to the era that they were written to fully appreciate them.

The copy that I have is ISBN 9780345483331 with an Introduction by Harlan Ellison. Now Ellison himself is a very interesting individual. He is most famous for writing Demon with a Glass Hand for The Twilight Zone or Outer Limits, I forget which and I can’t be bothered to Google it, just relying on the old grey matter tonight. Demon with a Glass Hand and another of his stories were the inspiration for the hugely successful Terminator movies. It has taken many years but Ellison is now credited with this fact at the beginning of the Terminator TV Series (The Sara Connor Chronicles?). You can watch Demon with a Glass Hand on u-tube. I used to love the Outer Limits, they just don’t make shows like that any more. It’s all vampires these days.

What about the new Di Caprio Movie Inception? I am so excited! The premise reminds me a little of the old Dennis Quaid movie Dreamscape. I’m definitely going to see this at the movies on the weekend.

Book Club was really good tonight, a good turn out.  It was a bit cold in the restaurant, but I had a lovely lasagne even though it took me all night to eat it as I was gas-bagging so much!!

Off to bed now hopefully to get a decent nights sleep. My bogan neighbours kept me awake last night to the point I could take it no longer and I had to get up, open my bathroom window, and yell out to them to keep the noise down as we were trying to sleep. If they want to party all night, that’s fine, but when it’s a work night – take it indoors, not out on the back deck disturbing the whole neighbourhood.

Right, that’s out of my system….. but I’m making up the couch in my study tonight just in case!