Books and movies

I am slowly re-entering blog world. One of my New Year's resolutions perhaps should have been to define what exactly this blog is, because at the moment it seems to be just whatever takes my fancy, but perhaps I will just leave it as 'whatever takes my fancy' and make that a category. Tonight I am keen to just watch a few episodes of Bleak House. I love it! And so I need to redeem my negative comments on the book in an earlier post - though I have still not finished the wretched book, and perhaps I won't. But the DVD series is intriguing and done very well. It has now taken me beyond the point at which my reading stopped so I am very keen to find out the final state of things.

For Christmas I got the BBC Daniel Deronda on DVD, which I have mentioned earlier. That too was very good. Except they have taken ideas that lie even below the subtext in the book, and turned them into actual dialogue in the movie in order to convey them. This doesn't always work - IMHO. It detracts from the subtleties of the plot, and even from the integrity of the characters at several points (there are things it may be wise to think, but indiscreet to say). The most disappointing thing is the escalation of the relationship of Daniel and Gwendolyn into the realm of the improper. In the book Daniel may be naive, but is innocent in his dealings with Gwendolyn. In the movie the line is most certainly crossed, and we seem meant to think the line is crossed.

So, that is my DVD viewing of late. At the moment I am reading my book Did I Kiss Marriage Goodbye by Carolyn McCulley (see below). It is EXCELLENT! It would have to be one of the most real, practical and challenging things I have read in a long time (or perhaps it is that where I am collides with the book). I'm reading it way too fast just to get the gist of it at present (in between packing and Bleak House) and will have to come back to it more slowly to digest each chapter - so I won't write some half-baked blog post about it now. But it's the sort of book that has almost inspired me to start a book club.