Typepad spellchecker won't work because, after installing Yahoo messenger, it now blocks the interface menu as a pop-up. Ggggrrrrrrr. I'm sure this post has typos, but I'm not planning to look for them by actually proofreading! When I'm in less of a hurry, I'll figure out how to turn of the pop-up blocker.
One of the books I picked to take with me for airplane reading on my Thanksgiving trip was:
I could not remember buying it, which is not surprising. Sometimes I buy books I've heard of and would like to read someday. They sit on my shelf for ages, usually. Then I put them in boxes unread because guests are coming and they can't stay piled up on the guest bed, on the kitchen table, in the hallway or whereever they are.
So, I realized as soon as I opened the cover that I had not, in fact bought this book. I had borrowed it.
"About time I read this and get it back," I thought ruefully. The ruefullness comes from the tension I feel reading books others have recommended or loaned me. I feel obligated to hurry and read it and return it. However, I am not a fast reader. Often as not, I rebel and proclaim, "I'm going to read a book I picked out for me, darn it!" I thought, mistakenly, that such was the case with The Girl with the Pearl Earring. Such was not the case.
The book tells the story, set in 16th century Holland, of how Vermeer came to paint the portrait of the anonymous girl with a pearl earring. The story is narrated first-person from the point-of-view of the girl. In this account, she is a maid in the Vermeer household. The book tells of her adventures as her family falls on hard times and she goes out to make a sustinence wage for her family. She may only visit them on Sundays. She, Griet, a Protestant, must endure life with the Vermeers, who are Catholics, who have horrible paintings of Christ crucified and bizarre Catholic-like customs. She's young and healthy, so she adapts. In fact, she has some interesting reactions to Vermeer's use of color, sections which add greatly to the book's charm.
Griet also avoids becoming the sexual toy of Vermeer's patron. To say more would spoil the story a little too much. That's really quite a simple story, if I can go no further in summarizing it. While it has the virtue simplicity, but I felt the story was too simple to make into a feature-length movie. I avered this view to my usual Saturday restaurant companions, complete with my two-sentence summary of the overly simple plot. I said I thought, surely, they must have added more intrigue. How could such a simple story be turned into a movie! My companion, who saw and liked the movie, assured me that, according to my description, the movie followed the book and actually left some things out!
After several weeks to think about it, I decided that I did not enjoy this book greatly because it reminded me too much of a story that might appear in an evangelical church's sunday circular targetted at teenage girls. I remember reading, and being irritated with, such stories as a young person. Not that I'm opposed to young women protecting their virtue, of course. I simply like a bit more depth to my conflicts.
I might watch the movie anyway. Perhaps I would like it better than the book.
When I asked my friend in Australia if she'd like to send me anything from the States, she wanted this book:
I've mentioned before that this book in paperback cost $20 U.S. in Australia. I could buy it for her and send it to her first class for a mere $15. (Her check for it -- completely unneccesary but she has her pride -- arrived yesterday along with an alarming letter that she's left Australia for Bali and that she'll be travelling to the dangerous areas during the second week of January.)
I could not resist reading it before I mailed it off. ZZZZZzzzzzzzz.
A middle-aged couple decides to go on a cruise rather than celebrate Christmas because their daughter has gone to South America. Mocking ensues. Of course, the daughter comes back at the last minute. Panic, last-minute preparations ensue. As I said, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
There is no way I will ever see this movie.
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