Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Gatsby, Good Omens and Catching Up

Guys, I am behind on blogging about stuff! I am very behind! This is a catch-up post. After you read this, you will be up to date on my goings on and we can all be goings on with our lives. And I will blog more frequently. Promise.

  • I finished my librarian training and I start work tomorrow and I am SO EXCITED.
  • I finished reading Good Omens by the illustrious Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. It was VERY GOOD. I finally understand what all the fuss is about. I don't know if I should go through the trouble of reviewing a 22 year old book here, but I will just say it was: very funny, very poignant, very very clever, and extremely enjoyable. A unique take on Revelations and the apocalypse and so nice to read when all we seem to get these days are zombie apocalypses. Guys, the Bible did the apocalypse first, and it was scary as all get out. And Good Omens made me think about the apocalypse again, but in a new, cool and interesting way. Zombie apocalypses just don't hold a candle in my mind.
  • ...that being said I'm about to start World War Z by Max Brooks which is about... the zombie apocalypse... *sigh*
  • Also reading: Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler. I can't get enough of Daniel Handler. I just started this and so far so good. This one I absolutely will review. 
  • Also also reading: The Adventure Time Comics. Just finished issue 4. These comics are so well written (by Ryan North of Internet Comic Fame, and my first internet celebrity crush) and capture the tone of the TV series so well, I challenge you not to fall in love with them. I hope you accept. 
  • The end of Sherlock Series 2 just finished airing in the US and now I finally feel like I can talk about the ending out in the open to everyone. If you haven't seen it yet, don't talk to me about Sherlock. I might spoil it. Even if I try not to, I still might. It's a bad habit. To be fair, my whole relationship with that show could be categorized as a bad habit.
I think that's it. I can't come up with anything else. Now I'll act like a real blog. This is the trailer for a movie titled The Great Gatsby:


I have very mixed feelings about every frame of this trailer. I will say that Leonardo DiCaprio looks more like Gatsby than I thought he would. And Carey Mulligan looks like she might make a good Daisy, even though I think she's a little young ( I did just watch her play a silly, frivolous Isabella Thorpe in 2007's Northanger Abbey; she played naive and foolish very well and that may bode well for her as Daisy.) Toby McGuire is just not my Nick. At all. Or my anyone for that matter. And I'm worried about the trapeze artists, and the glitter, and Gatsby throwing his shirts. And hopefully it will all come together and be one big beautiful Baz Luhrmann film and not.. a mess of symbolism and excess and flapper dresses. I'm not above bringing my heavily annotated copy of the novel to the theater and getting up to go read it somewhere if the movie goes horribly awry, that's all. Ugh. 

XOX

P.S. Northanger Abbey was so good! It was introduced to me as "fluffy and silly and wonderful" and it was all of those things. I'll be sure to write something up about it later, as it will give me an excuse to talk about JJ Feild as Henry Tilney who is very nearly my favorite Austen leading man. 

-Em

No comments:

Post a Comment