Saturday 18 August 2012

Hot Tips for August!

This week I have been highly entertained by 'Vexed' the second series - showing on BBC2.  It is an interesting comedy take on a detective duo - the girl is bright and driven and sporty, the guy is a complete MCP - a blast from the past in terms of his attitudes and treatment of women.  The rest of the cast appear to be 'playing it straight' but he is cartoon-like version of a TV detective and it is hilarious!  A favourite scenario was in the third episode when he is investigating a missing person and he and his partner visit the distraught wife on an information-gathering exercise and he cannot stop staring obviously at the woman's cleavage and he keeps implying that her husband is deceased rather than just missing.  Priceless - and his ability to jump to the wrong conclusions is epic!  Give it a chance - catch it on BBCiPlayer - I think you'll be pleased you did .

Reading wise, I have just finished re-reading Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Crusie,  and  what a joyride of a book it is!!  It makes a great holiday book, not least because it is jam-packed with sex and gossip and small-town plotting!  I have very recently read 50 Shades of Grey (which I found slightly disappointing considering all the hype it has enjoyed) and I promise the sex scenes in this book are more frequent, more realistic, slightly less graphic and all the hotter for it!!
I have read several books by Jennifer Crusie http://www.arghink.com/   and she writes delicious heroes truly in the smouldering 'Darcy'style - and her male lead characters always know how to 'make the bed rock'!!  My Mother -a book reviewer and writer herself - introduced me to Jenny Crusie's writing and was a big fan  (being one of the Cherries on her chat forum), and I want to spread the word too about the classy wit in Jenny's books.  I would also recommend  'Faking It' and 'Bet Me', 'Tell Me Lies' and 'Fast Women' as fabulous books well worth a read.

I must highly-recommend 'Revenge' which I have been watching  avidly on E4 since the series began - I think we are almost at the end of the first series now - it is set in the Hamptons so the people are seriously rich, and many of them very powerful, but so many of them are badly 'bent' - they are evil  and devious, they deserve to get their come-uppance.  The lead girl and her arch nemesis are venal plotters, the like of which we haven't seen since Dynasty and Dallas - how delicious!! I see from Jennifer Crusie's blog she is as much a fan of this as I am - hurrah! we are kindred spirits on several levels (she loves Gilmore Girls too!!  woo-hoo!)

Emily-Go Girl!!  Get Revenge!

'Queen' Victoria - we are all longing to see her de-throned!!



 




Friday 10 August 2012

2nd Post - holiday reading the sequel!

Even though I was loving reading the Mortal Instruments series - which I praised up in my previous post - I am one of those people who tries to spin out a good thing so, in between books 2 & 3 I read something completely different [it's gotta be another genre of book completely otherwise I find myself mixing up the characters or plot!].  I dipped into Slipstream by Kate Bingham - a tale set in the 80s or early 90s about a trio of girls who become friends at a girl's boarding school and spend their last summer before getting their A  level results together on an ancient narrow boat.

My friends and family are, of course aware that I went to a girls' boarding school - so much  of the  action/drama struck a chord with me - the hanging about feeling bored, the clothes swapping, the music practice rooms, the glamour of smoking just to flout school rules - even girls getting crushes on totally unlikely male members of staff, just because men are a rarity in the school community!  It's all here and I loved it!  There are secrets which unravel, seemingly mundane details which later piece together into important jigsaw pieces, and the girls are so real with  good qualities and faults - they grate on each other and fall out before coming back together as strong as before.

I'd say this book was aimed at women, but not specifically at teens, it seems to straddle between both audiences - the angst and confusion of dealing with feelings of love and jealousy spans a huge age range - some of us are still learning well into adulthood. It reminded me a little of when I first read
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 - how you have to read between the lines to understand the true meaning of what Adrian has seen or overheard to get the true depth of the story.    Adrian's take on life was truly ground-breaking - and will still have me laughing out loud if I pick it up now and read a few excerpts.  



Wednesday 8 August 2012

My First Post!

I have just got back from a deliciously lazy week in Portugal, where I did not trouble myself to do anything except read, eat and lie in the sun!  Absolute bliss!  Yes I did watch some of the prime moments of the Olympics and talk to my family also but still!  I gorged myself on books which is heaven on earth for me!

 Firstly I must recommend the Mortal Instruments series www.cassandraclare.com, the first of which "City of Bones" I had read in the month prior to my trip - giving me time to visit my local library and borrow the 2 books which followed. I enjoy Harry Potter and all manner of vampire and wereweolf stories, so this book was right up my street, but as I read it I felt strong echoes from Star Wars too!   I lap up Supernatural the TV series and loved Constantine [what's not to like about Keanu Reeves all 'kick-ass' and yet on such a self-destructive path?] so I was a 'rapt' audience who had done her homework for most of the legends and concepts.
 The main Shadowhunter characters are so sassy and 'together' that is sometimes hard to remember that they are teenagers,but  who wouldn't have wanted to be like Isabelle or the golden Jace in their fumbling youth? Clary and Simon are refreshingly  human in their teen confusions and insecurities and soon some interesting love 'dynamics'  develop.  I have no complaints characters wearing their hearts on their sleeves and putting their emotions under a microscope in the context of a teen plot - it only becomes wearying in more adult stories where I sometimes feeling a touch of scorn that the main character is not more worldly-wise.
Suffice it to say that I raced through books 2 and 3 City of Ashes, City of Glass, as if I was gorging myself on a giant bar of delicious chocolate (Toblerone perhaps?!)  Thank goodness Cassandra Clare has written more of their adventures, and 2 prequels to satisfy my appetite.   Apparently there is a film next year (of the first book) but I shall watch it with trepidation - who hasn't ground their teeth in despair when the hero and/or heroine is nothing like the person they had visualised?  or found that the complex layers which make a book so wonderful to immerse oneself in get stripped away and made less subtle for a film-going audience?  But still, you have to watch it to see for yourself don't you?!