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brUSsels by benbenbenbenben
brUSsels, a photo by benbenbenbenben on Flickr.
I did two important things this past week:

1) I went to Brussels for four days and had a lovely time (to the point where I'm considering a return for a long, immersive experience)

2) I signed up for a free online course through Brown University in the U.S. called The Fiction of Relationship.

The course just started today so please join if you feel like reading some classic literature in the coming weeks and writing a few peer-reviewed essays!

I'll try to write a review of Belgium some time this week.
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A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for LoversA Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Z, a young woman from a small village in China, is offered a trip to England by her parents so she can learn English and improve her prospects in life. She arrives in London during a typical grim winter in the mid-noughties, oblivious as to how to behave and comprehend this Western capital. Her hostel is dire and the students in her English course label her a pariah because of her inability to behave in a "Western" way.

Z spends most of her time trying to decode this new world with a Chinese-English dictionary - and the novel itself is also divided this way, with each chapter starting with a word and its dictionary definition (relevant to the chapter in question) that sheds light onto Z's uncovering of this world. Often, Z's misunderstandings are meant to be humorous, but because Z is such a nutter - and a slightly unsympathetic one - the humour is a misfire.

One evening, she strikes conversation with a much older man in a cinema and very soon she's his lover. He's a van driver and part-time artist based in Hackney. They fall madly in love, things get kinky, summer arrives, she travels across Europe under his suggestion (to improve her understanding of the West)... then things get complicated.

The novel is based on Xiaolu Guo's own experience of moving to London in 2002 and keeping a journal. There are some pleasures to be found in its description of Hackney, and an interesting twist relating to the older lover. The cover is deceptively chick lit - this novel is anything but.

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The Song of AchillesThe Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I found this to be a beautiful and touching retelling of the mythological love between Achilles and his faithful companion Patroclus, from their first meeting as boys into their adulthood. Miller, an Ancient Greece scholar, poured into the novel all that is known about their lives and the roles they played in the Trojan War (as told in Homer's Iliad), with a bit of creative imagination thrown into the mix. Her style is very light, full of similes that evoke the period and the gods and entities that walked the land. She tells the story through Patroclus' eyes and by the end, as the Trojan war comes to life, you can't stop reading out of fear for what could happen to these characters you've grown to know and like.

Mary Renault, who also specialised in same-sex love stories (most famously the trilogy about Alexander the Great and Hephaestion's love) would have adored this novel. Maybe Miller is her natural successor? They are both fascinated by a long gone time when a man's love for another wasn't a problem as long as his duties to family and country were attended to. In Miller's novel you also get the added benefit of fantastical figures walking among men as portents of victories or disasters, or sometimes simply because they love too much the mortals they are bound to and can't escape them. This is Ancient Greece after all and tragedy is never too far away.

Teen girls have the fantastical creatures in "Twilight" to keep them up at night. Teen gay boys now have "The Song of Achilles", except that this is a very well written story that should please everyone, of all ages. I dare anyone not to be moved by the final page and I'm already playing cast director in my mind as to who should play these characters in the film version (which, if Zeus is fair, should already be in pre-production.)

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The Fear IndexThe Fear Index by Robert Harris

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Opening with a quote from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and set in the rich enclaves of Geneva (where Frankenstein was originally written), this thriller follows an unlikeable physicist (and billionaire) - Dr Alex Hoffmann - through 48 hours of his life as his world begins to fall apart. Hoffmann, married to a beautiful artist who's about to launch her first exhibition, co-runs a successful Hedge Funds Investment company alongside a smooth talking Brit good at bringing in rich investors. But when his mansion is broken into by a maniac wielding a knife, he finds himself slowly hunted (and driven mad) by someone with a personal vendetta.

My edition of this novel came with a Q&A by Richard & Judy with the author, bookclub questions and a further article where Robert Harris talked about his fiction writing. I wasn't at all surprised to learn that The Fear Index is already in development to become a motion picture. The entire novel reads like a Michael Crichton "techno-thriller" with the expected twists and turns, sex scenes, grubby killings, police chases and Hollywood ending.

Because it was written with cinema in mind, character development sits behind plot. Robert Harris does have one big, and interesting, concept based on the recent banking crisis and the misuse of our technology but no space is left for characters to leap off the page. The storytelling is decent and the pace picks up towards the end but the original idea that holds the story together isn't strong enough to make this a memorable read.

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The Girl Who Played with Fire (Millennium, #2)The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The second installment in Larsson's Millennium trilogy is a disappointment. It's partly not his fault: the English translation is sloppy and unreadable in parts - probably a rush job due to the success of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in the Anglo market.

Larsson widens his cast of characters for the continuing adventures of hacker extraordinaire Lisbeth Salander and journalist Mikael Blomkvist, retaining most of the ones introduced in the first book while introducing new ones - police officers and members of a gang involved in sexual exploitation. Larsson just isn't very good in juggling so many characters and the plotting turns contrived and reliant on deus ex machina to keep it moving - a let down from the tight storyline in Dragon Tattoo. At over 500 pages, it feels like a stop gap for whatever is to come in the 3rd book.

One thing that also struck me in this second book is Larsson's lack of style. He's a great storyteller and very good at creating memorable characters (like Salander), but his writing is bland and unliterary (maybe a good thing for crime novels?) The language is quite cliché in parts, but again it could be the translator's fault. His subject matter is always fascinating though. He explores the growth of the extreme-right in Europe, racism, crime that reaches all the way to the top. His two main characters - the journalist Blomkvist who is almost a self-insertion and the intriguing and messed up hacker Salander - are the perfect companions to lead the reader into these dark worlds.

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My boyfriend and I are looking to escape London. Sometime next week, hopefully off this island. We've looked at trains, buses and airplanes. We've looked at Last Minute deals, suggestions by friends on Trip Advisor and on Livejournal, work colleagues tips - anything... it's been hard!

Our latest plan is to take a train to Portsmouth, a ferry across to France and spend a few days over there. But we can't find an available hotel room...

In the meantime, I've been blessed with sunshine in London during this first week off work. I've been to ice cream festivals (with [livejournal.com profile] fj), walks around Regent's Park followed by beers and burgers (with [livejournal.com profile] suzi, [livejournal.com profile] clay, [livejournal.com profile] sarah and [livejournal.com profile] rattler), sunbathing in Victoria Park with my boyfriend, gym sessions, yoga classes, pizza at the Lauriston, pints outside the BFI while watching the crowds go by, some fiction writing, some movie watching, some video game playing and a LOT of resting.

I'm hoping to go swimming in Hampstead Heath tomorrow - my first time there. It's part of my plan of using this time off to do fun things around London I've never done before, while taking advantage of the good weather.

An old friend from uni arrives tomorrow night and spends the weekend with us. I foresee walks down Regent's Canal to Broadway Market, lunch at London Fields, some dancing in the evening, breakfast at the Pavillion Cafe in Victoria Park... all the money I could have spent in some Greek restaurant I'm going to spend right here, in London's EastEnd.

Icona Pop

May. 13th, 2012 05:06 pm
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Seriously catchy dance pop from Sweden, written by the frankly brilliant Charli XCX.

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Guy Ritchie, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, 2011
Gosh, what a perfect holiday film! You don't even need to have seen the first one to like this one or understand it. That chemistry that worked so well in the first film between Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr is in full force here, with a big wink to all the people out there writing Sherlock/Holmes slash fiction.  Who nearly steals the show, though, is Jared Harris, who plays the magnificent villain Prof Moriarty, intent on bringing destruction to Europe like a steam punk Bond villain. Moriarty lays one problem after another in front of Sherlock Holmes and Watson, forcing them to travel across Europe - Austria, France, Switzerland - with the help of gypsies in the hope of foiling his plans.

There's a somewhat amusing cameo by Stephen Fry as Sherlock's brother (who keeps calling him "Shirley") but the film really left me wanting to read Conan Doyle's original work, and even Boris Akunin's Fandorin series (this Holmes has a lot of the Russian sleuth in him.)  There are some great one liners (mostly about Brighton), some laugh out scenes and a few jumps - as mindless fun goes, you can't do better than this. Looking forward to the 3rd one.
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The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and LossThe Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss by Edmund de Waal

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This biography deservedly won the Costa Book award for best non-fiction in 2010. Edmund de Waal not only writes beautifully but he takes the material he researched - in this case his entire father's family going back to the mid 1800s' - and distills it into a page turner.

The hare with amber eyes is one of hundreds of netsuke owned by his elderly gay uncle in Japan, which Edmund inherits after his death. Through these beautiful, tiny sculptures Edmund traces the history of his family - from the grand salons in France where they crossed paths with Manet, Renoir and Proust under the weight of the Japonism popular at the time - through Vienna and its fall to the Nazis. Because Edmund's family were originally Russian Jews - never allowed to forget their background despite their secularism - there's a growing tension in the book as you know that the concentration camps are just around the corner and their idyllic, rich lives will soon come to an end.

There's a neat, moving twist in the story: the secret as to how the netsuke survived the Second World War and the ransacking of the family's mansion. It had me thinking about my own family and how little I know about my ancestry. Also, it made me think of the objects we have around us and how disconnected we are from who created most of them, the journeys they took to get to us, and the cost (sometimes human) involved.

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Dir. Marco Kreuzpaintner, Summer Storm, 2004
What a sweet little movie.  It's like a combination of American Pie with that classic Brit film from the 90s Beautiful Thing.  It's set in the German countryside, where a group of students in a rowing team go compete against groups from other parts of the country.  Two boys in the group are Best Friends Forever, even going as far as date girls who are also Best Friends Forever.  Thing is, one of the boys starts to discover he has deep feelings for his best friend.  To complicate things further, when they arrive at the camping site where all the other rowing teams are based one of the teams - Queerschlog - is made up of cute, out-and-proud, gay boys that don't mind stirring shit up.  Cue comedy of disasters, mistaken identities and broken hearts in this lovely, low key coming of age story.

It's the sort of perfect film for a Sunday afternoon.

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Most Brasilians dream of one day visiting Portugal just as I imagine most Americans wish to eventually cross the ocean and take pictures of themselves outside Buckingham Palace. It's one of those things that is drilled into us from school: this is the country that discovered you, that you fought against to gain your independence, that you now have a special relationship with thanks to shared history and language.


Last week, at the height of the riots across the UK, [livejournal.com profile] wink_martindale and I hopped into a plane in Stanstead (terrified we'd encounter rioters as we took the No. 8 bus at 4am to the train station) and flew to Spain for 8 days of traveling down the Iberian coast to Lisbon. We visited Bilbao, Gijón, Ferrol and Galicia in Spain; and Braga, Aveiro, Lisbon and Porto in Portugal.


Spain and Portugal are very similar to France in the widespread restaurant and café culture, except that they mostly specialise in sea food. Alcohol is very cheap and the food is mostly excellent, sometimes really great. Watch out though for the bread and butter placed at your table without your request - if you eat from it, you pay for it.  We found the Spanish and Portuguese to be friendly and helpful.


The Portuguese are obsessed with that American reality show "The Biggest Loser" - they have marathons of it on the telly as well as their own version of it. In stores, you see all sorts of Wii games dedicated to the show. I'd always heard that their tellies were filled with Brasilian soaps but I didn't spot any. Fado was played in touristy restaurants, Arcade Fire in the ones used by residents.


I didn't like Lisbon very much: it was decadent, decrepid, dirty, crumbling, depressing and a little creepy. But I also saw loads of potential there for rejuvenation - it needs some kind of artist revival that breaks through the hashish haze and brings life and vibrancy back to the streets. This bit of urban art was sweet and inspiring, reminding me of projects here in London that involve community residents: it was an exhibition of photos of elderly residents that lived in the hills surrounding the city's castle; a sort of remembrance. We also saw some great graffiti, including this strange altar in a dead end alley. Sadly, there was also a lot of rubbish tagging that spoiled the beautiful, historical buildings.  Loads of grand homes that would be worth millions in London were completely abandoned, boarded up, trashed.



Porto was lovelier and I want to visit it again. Beautiful beaches that are close to town, loads to see - our day and a half there wasn't enough.  I'd like to go back for a week and have time to spend days on the beach, swim, discover all of Porto's bookshops and history.
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Fair PlayFair Play by Tove Jansson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Tove Jansson is famous for writing the universally loved Moomin books but she deserves to also be known for her stories and novels for adults. What most people don't know is that Tove was gay and had a long and loving relationship with another artist, Tuulikki Pietilä. In her seventies, Tove wrote her final book, this short collection of interconnected stories that paint the life and love of two women, Mari (Tove) and Jonna (Tuulikki).

Like her other collections, The Summer Book and A Winter Book, the stories mostly revolve around an island in Finland where Tove and Tuulikki lived most of their lives. Little episodes meditate on art, love, life, death and friendship. One of my favourite stories is "In The Great City of Phoenix", when the two women travel through America and end up in a faded hotel called the Majestic. Verity, the chamber maid who likes to play tricks on the guests, is brought to life in just a few sentences and could have easily had a whole book dedicated to her.

Such an easy, pleasurable read.

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With the divine powers granted on me I command you, Livejournal, to rise from the dead. Rise, rise and live again!

And you, Russian cyberpunks - I foresake you. I cast you into the wild pigs that roam Siberia. I curse you to roam the land and roll in mud for the next thousand years.  Begone! Out of my sight! Leave our beloved Livejournal alone!
commonpeople1: (Elvis)
Apparently there's a music genre called Cold Wave with my face all over it? Why wasn't I aware of this?! 

I suppose it's better late than never: 'Cold Waves and Minimal Electronics Vol.1'

I'm currently listening to Frank (Just Frank)'s album The Brutal Wave and will have a review soon:

commonpeople1: (Jehovah's Witness)
Sarah Lund and her sweater

Tonight's episode of The Killing is going to be epic. I hope nothing happens to Sarah's sweater!

I tried to say the show's name in its original Danish to a Swede last night.  You can imagine how misguided that was.

Sarah's sweater explained.  I don't have much trust on the upcoming American version but I'll probably watch it anyway... after I've finished the BBC Pride and Prejudice DVD that just arrived (weeeeeee!)



I'm going back on my promise to never again talk about the show...
commonpeople1: (Sea)
I've mentioned recently how The Killing is brilliant TV (currently on the BBC). This guy at the Independent agrees with me.

Honestly, just watch it. You'll know what I mean when you can't pull the hooks out.

Speaking of great Danes, I discovered this singer recently on Late Junction (thank you BBC again!) which I think some of you may like:

 

Agnes Obel Riverside music video from porkfish on Vimeo.

Her whole album from 2010 is available on Spotify and is worth a listen. The kind of sound you want late at night with hardly any lights on.

commonpeople1: (Schiele)
Boris Akunin's Special Assignments

Boris Akunin, Special Assignemnts, 1999
Akunin's novels on the adventures of Russian detective Erast Fandorin are a pleasure to read. Setting them in the 1880s, Akunin enjoys veering them from humor to horror, pastiche to tragedy, in a matter of pages. Fandorin is blessed with uncanny good luck, strength, beauty and the mind to catch criminals, but the complications from his loved ones and life in Moscow often put him in dilemmas that are nearly impossible for him to resolve. It makes for an excellent page turner.

Special Assignements are two novellas that revolve around Fandorin's new assistant, Anisii Tulipov, and two very dissimilar criminals. The first novella is about the Jack of Spades, a conman as smart as Fandorin who enjoys duping the rich and the poor for high stakes. The second is about... Jack the Ripper! A perfect holiday read.

Eurovision

Feb. 13th, 2011 11:05 am
commonpeople1: (March of the Dead)
Why can't the UK send someone of the caliber of Jedward to compete at the Eurovision? Blue are beyond dull.

This new song by Jedward reminds of Britney Spears and Marilyn Manson. I think they have a good chance of winning. Wasn't that backing singer with the mohawk in Belle Amie?

May 14, in the diary.

Killer TV

Feb. 9th, 2011 12:29 pm
commonpeople1: (TV)
Sarah Lund Forbrydelsen


The BBC is showing at the moment a great Danish crime series from 2007 called Forbrydelsen, "The Killing". [livejournal.com profile] wink_martindale and I were looking for something crime-related to watch on the iPlayer and stumbled upon it - what a find!  It's a mixture of David Lynch's "Twin Peaks" with Helen Mirren's "Prime Suspect" series.

I'm a sucker for strong female characters who know better than their male counterparts in the police force.  Sarah Lund is just like that.  While her colleagues are quick to place blame and shout at suspects, she follows rational lines of argument and looks at the bigger picture.  She's got a stroppy son and a boyfriend who wants her to move to Sweden but she just. can't. let. go. of. the. job.  She's got a new partner who's a pain in the ass and often messes up the investigation, but she somehow manages to turn things around each time and put the police back on the right track. 

If Sarah is a bit like Mirren in "Prime Suspect", the story's crime and the way we learn about the community surrounding the victim is revealed like Twin Peaks, with gruesome details and secrets unravelled episode by episode.  It's a really good series for any of you who enjoy a good thriller.
commonpeople1: (Schiele)
On my train ride to Toulouse I sat beside a girl with a dog on her lap. On my train ride to London yesterday I sat beside a girl with a cat on her lap. The dog was called Diana and was as blond and shaggy as her owner. She got slaps whenever she growled at loud small children wandering past us. Her owner's laptop had Dexter's cast members as its desktop image. I think the cat was called Emel and it was quiet, dignified and gorgeous. Its owner fell asleep often but the cat never tried to jump away. The three children in front of us kept peaking over their seats at it.

We stayed with [livejournal.com profile] wink_martindale's sister and her french boyfriend in a modern apartment by the river. Our blinds went up and down with the help of a remote control ("I feel like I'm in L.A.!") Later in the week, Wink's other sister and her husband joined us from London (there was minor drama with this because of all the flights being canceled thanks to the snow). They stayed with Wink's parents, who were in an apartment nearby rented specifically for the holiday.

Our typical day consisted of breakfast followed by walks through Toulouse and its shops. We did most of our Christmas shopping there. The city's centre ville reminded me of a Parisian neighbourhood, perhaps Le Marais sans les pédés. The architecture hinted at medieval but had very modern homes, pretty shops and restaurants. At night, we had dinner back at one of the apartments.

The whole point of the trip was to have a Christmas dinner with the french boyfriend's family. They consisted of the boyfriend's brother, parents and grandparents (a couple in their eighties and a "papi" who was 93) . Real characters - a very boisterous, fun-loving group of people who spoke perhaps 5 words of English between them. Thank god for my previous french courses! They gave us a banquet on Friday that consisted of a whole bunch of sea food I'd never eaten before in my life. I had a go at oysters, bigorneaux huîtres (small snails for you and me), langoustines (just the meat in their claws) and bulots (large snails that look like fuzzy, pinkish snot). And a pie that contained fish brains. It all tasted good, but what a trial! When the plates arrived, I felt like Indiana Jones in that scene from the Temple of Doom. All this food was topped with trays of cheese and dessert - and a lot of great wine and champagne.

The eve ended around 4am. We returned the next morning as soon as we woke up for more sea food, foies gras ("just keep telling yourself it's hummus"), haricots verts, gratin dauphinois (potato bake) and a franken roast that was delicious, composed of duck, pig and a few more animals. It was prepared by the young brother, who is a butcher. Again, followed by cheeses, dessert (ice cream and fruit salad). Plus the usual wine and champagne.

We took loads of pictures but the camera is still with Wink. When he's back in London (on the 3rd) I'll upload the photos and post a link. Tomorrow morning a friend from Brasil arrives to stay with me for a week or so. It's her first visit to Europe. I'm looking forward to seeing London through her eyes.

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