It's a funny thing, but as the last month of school stumbles through each of it's days, I feel the excitement mounting of having my 8 year old son at home with me for the entire Summer, whilst the other Mums feel a different sort of thrill: the mounting terror of having their kid/s at home for the Summer. I can understand their feelings but they have a great deal of trouble in understanding mine.
How can I explain it ? Well, let's have a stab. First off, I really hate being hot, so Summer is my least favourite of the four seasons. Winter is the very pinnacle of comfort for me from within my colourful knitted tops, scarves and hats. In the Winter you have the choice of adding layers of clothing to achieve a happy temperature. But what do you do in the Summer when you're down to your last piece of flimsy clothing and you're still not comfortable ? Exactly. You can take a dip in a pool or jump waves at the beach but when you're having to adhere to a scholarly routine of morning and afternoon drop-offs and pick-ups, as well as squeezing groceries and other chores into those annoyingly timed hours, it's difficult to find time to spend in any form of water other than your sweat.
So, there's that. Having your kid at home for weeks means no routine so you can sit your buns in a pool any hour of the day, content in the knowledge you don't need to get out before dusk. Emergencies withstanding of course.
Another reason is that I actually enjoy having my son at home. Alright, I admit it, yes, son as in Singular, as in only one kid. But he has the same amount of energy as three children put together and he can start a discussion that robs me of increasing amounts of concentration whilst driving, a talent that will stand him in good stead in the future but which requires a good firm "Stop talking to me or we're both going to die horribly" at the current time. When he's home we play games, read books, take walks to the library, visit museums and galleries, potter around book shops, sit having chats in cafes, share chocoholic ice creams, play in the park, swim in the pool, attack each other around the house. But when he's in school, after a day of having information tipped inside his head and with me tearing around trying to squeeze as many chores into five hours as possible, we both fall into our home afterwards to sit blank-eyed on the couch wishing someone else would make the dinner or at least walk across to the TV and turn it on. We've bcome proficients at Rock, Paper, Scissors to settle who'll expend the next bout of energy after a concentrated year of school.
Last Summer I let him down badly. I procrastinated my way out of organising play-dates with his friends, a fact that was casually mentioned by each parent we bumped into unawares during the weeks off. And I spent too many mornings enjoying the lack of need to get up at the same time as his Dad ( or earlier ), meaning we didn't tend to leave the house until mid-afternoon. This year has been a turn-around, I've enrolled him in a day-camp that starts next week, he has at least two birthday parties to go to, he's met up with at least one friend each week, we've spent the majority of each day outdoors either swimming or walking somewhere and I've only had one lie-in in almost thirty days. Not bad given the half-way point is already rushing towards us.
There will come a Summer soon when he'll turn around and just tell me he's heading out with a friend and I won't see him for the entire day. Or he'll have made his own plans to do something which don't include me, or he just won't feel like doing anything other than closetting himself inside his room with a sign taped on the door clearly stating a need for privacy. And what will I do then ? Will I wander around galleries by myself, turning to empty air to point out some object of interest or snigger at unexpected nudity ? Will I shuffle out of the door, feeling lost but not wanting to be in an empty house by myself ? Will I make fruitless calls to friends who already have plans because they DO plan ahead ? I hope not. I hope he always wants to spend a few days each week heading out together in the car somewhere, planned or impromptu.
Perhaps if I make this time as much fun as possible he'll have more incentive to feel like continuing it well into his teens and beyond. I have my limits, his Dad is far more fun than I am. He enjoys going on roller-coasters whilst I stand there hyper-ventilating at the thought of standing in the queue for one. He can make-up rude, funny stories on the spot which sends them both into fits of laughter, sometimes for long enough that our son has to make an emergency dash to the toilet. They play video-games together for hours whilst I last just seconds before my character dies a messy death, asking constantly "Well, what button do I press to do this ?" to the accompaniment of exaggerated sighs from my progeny as he pauses the game yet again. His Dad is more fun in the pool than I am, they like more of the same books, and my son even says he loves his Dad more than he does me because he sees less of him. But it's not a competition. As long as he still wants to come find me I know it's all OK and he wants to find me more than I sometimes want to go find him. Sometimes I want my space but each time I think that I remind myself that some day I might have more space than I'm ready for. It's a handy thought to have. It gets me up and looking for him, asking him what he feels like doing, giving him a prod when he just wants to sit watching the same movie as the evening before. We'll have a lot of memories of our time together and that's never a bad thing to be left with.
So for those of you dreading a Summer of your own children just spend a little time thinking about the Summers you'll dread because they're not spending them with you. It's too easy to sit back and listen to the sound of bored children, thinking "Why don't they find something to do ?" Why don't YOU find something for them to do, with you ?
For anyone living in Vancouver, BC there's an excellent website with an Index of Activities, although the prices are pretty dated;
www.findfamilyfun.com
Enjoy !
Friday, July 23, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
I am a big fan of Jane Austen's original version of this book, probably reading it, on average, once a year - just as Meg Ryan's character does in 'You've got Mail' :-). I'd regretfully turned the last page on it just a week ago and watched avidly the BBC's adaptation with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth the following night. So it was providential timing that I heard that Natalie Portman was considering playing the character of Elizabeth Bennet in the zombie version just a day or so later.
Under ordinary circumstances I'd have turned my lip up at this. I'd seen the large numbers of copies of this book in local Chapters stores a few months back, the eaten away face on the picture adorning the cover, on shelves positioned in an eye-catching manner. I am a fairly indifferent fan of Natalie Portman, I don't actively seek out to see her films but have enjoyed them on a number of occasions. Two favourites which come to mind being Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium and V for Vendetta. At some point I might even watch the movie, if it is in fact coming out. But reading the book ? I hadn't been interested. But hearing this news just as I'd finished the classic telling of the tale piqued my curiosity. Perhaps there was more in it than I had allowed for.
I tried to get a copy from the library, no luck, so invested $17 in Chapters last weekend and just finished reading it today. Even though I'm about to write a review I'm not sure what I'm going to say so let's just see how this goes.
I was expecting Seth Grahame-Smith to loosely follow the original plot so was surprised, after reading the altered first line, - "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains"- to see that he was parroting Austen's work word for word. As I turned each page I kept expecting it to go off at a tangent, a sensation I experienced throughout the book fruitlessly, as it turned out. He does leave out chunks of paragraphs and sentences, changes words around and inserts zombie filled sections but the Zombie version never deviates far from the original writing. Which is both a saving grace and a missed opportunity. This might sound too contradictory but if you ever feel like picking it up you might understand what I mean.
Grahame-Smith boldly does what some of us have wanted to do for some time. He preserves the well-liked characters and ruins the lives of the scoundrels. Good wins. Nice. He subtly changes some of the characters' pasts so that they come into line with the sub-plot of the zombie plague which has been around for the last sixty ( or fifty ?) five years. This has the occasionally unwanted effect of hardening some of the characters personalities so that they leap into homicidal threats when upset or thwarted. Elizabeth is a prime example of this. Now a fully-trained fighting expert, she defends her family and fellow Hertfordshire countryfolk from the "unmentionable hordes". The very second she feels that someone has insulted her she offers to open their throats, not exactly in keeping with the original Victorian attitude of keeping emotions strictly under wraps.
Some lesser characters are swiftly killed off in the beginning chapters. A minor character is infected and another commits suicide. All very dark and depressing but not unexpected given the title. The author does a fairly good job, with his meshed-in additions, of using the colloquial language of the time. They're still easily spotted, whether you're familiar with the original or not, as they're usually concerned with people's intestines being consumed or the Bennet's chasing off ghouls with swords and daggers. You obviously don't need a working knowledge under those conditions. I had expected to find this annoying but didn't. That doesn't mean that they aren't, just that I expected this to happen and wasn't bothered by it.
One thing that was annoying though was the author's decision to slide some innuendoes in. When Darcy refers to public and private balls, when enquiring after Elizabeth's preference, I found myself wincing as she replied "I find that balls are much more enjoyable when they cease to remain private" with a blush at the double meaning. I'm not a prude and find this kind of humour funny in reality but not in the least funny within the context of the story. It happened on a few occasions, impinging on the innocence of the book. Possibly this wouldn't bother some but I sighed each time.
The illustrations dotted about the novel are good, I'm assuming they're by Grahame-Smith as I couldn't find a reference inside to anyone else and spent a few minutes on the internet searching without enlightenment. They're pretty graphic black and white sketches but do add to the book in a way that the writing doesn't always succeed in doing.
This is pure parody, of course, and can't be taken the least seriously. I didn't set out to read it with anything in mind other than the light-hearted approach intended by the author. So I enjoyed reading this in the sense that the insertions were funny at times, especially in Mr Bennet's direct insults ( as opposed to Austen's former veiled ones ) to his wife, and that some characters got their come-uppance. I agree with other reviewers that taking down Wickham was a mistake. Yes, he is a bad boy but it was an integral part of the book that his punishment be solely a disadvantageous marriage rather than Grahame-Seth's version of having him paralysed and reeking of soiled underwear. This was taking a point too far. Wickham needed to suffer a slow downturn over time, not an immediate and constant one, and there's no way that Darcy would have recommended him to a curacy given his past and the additional murderous attempt on his Colonel's life.
Would I recommend this ? I honestly don't know. If you love the original too much then No. If you love it just enough that you can handle a gentle mocking of it, then Possibly Yes. How would I rate it ? 4 out of 10. It brings enough new to the book to make it interesting but a better version would have been to leave the original story behind at some point. Which needed more courage and talent than perhaps Mr Grahame-Seth has. I can only guess.
Under ordinary circumstances I'd have turned my lip up at this. I'd seen the large numbers of copies of this book in local Chapters stores a few months back, the eaten away face on the picture adorning the cover, on shelves positioned in an eye-catching manner. I am a fairly indifferent fan of Natalie Portman, I don't actively seek out to see her films but have enjoyed them on a number of occasions. Two favourites which come to mind being Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium and V for Vendetta. At some point I might even watch the movie, if it is in fact coming out. But reading the book ? I hadn't been interested. But hearing this news just as I'd finished the classic telling of the tale piqued my curiosity. Perhaps there was more in it than I had allowed for.
I tried to get a copy from the library, no luck, so invested $17 in Chapters last weekend and just finished reading it today. Even though I'm about to write a review I'm not sure what I'm going to say so let's just see how this goes.
I was expecting Seth Grahame-Smith to loosely follow the original plot so was surprised, after reading the altered first line, - "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains"- to see that he was parroting Austen's work word for word. As I turned each page I kept expecting it to go off at a tangent, a sensation I experienced throughout the book fruitlessly, as it turned out. He does leave out chunks of paragraphs and sentences, changes words around and inserts zombie filled sections but the Zombie version never deviates far from the original writing. Which is both a saving grace and a missed opportunity. This might sound too contradictory but if you ever feel like picking it up you might understand what I mean.
Grahame-Smith boldly does what some of us have wanted to do for some time. He preserves the well-liked characters and ruins the lives of the scoundrels. Good wins. Nice. He subtly changes some of the characters' pasts so that they come into line with the sub-plot of the zombie plague which has been around for the last sixty ( or fifty ?) five years. This has the occasionally unwanted effect of hardening some of the characters personalities so that they leap into homicidal threats when upset or thwarted. Elizabeth is a prime example of this. Now a fully-trained fighting expert, she defends her family and fellow Hertfordshire countryfolk from the "unmentionable hordes". The very second she feels that someone has insulted her she offers to open their throats, not exactly in keeping with the original Victorian attitude of keeping emotions strictly under wraps.
Some lesser characters are swiftly killed off in the beginning chapters. A minor character is infected and another commits suicide. All very dark and depressing but not unexpected given the title. The author does a fairly good job, with his meshed-in additions, of using the colloquial language of the time. They're still easily spotted, whether you're familiar with the original or not, as they're usually concerned with people's intestines being consumed or the Bennet's chasing off ghouls with swords and daggers. You obviously don't need a working knowledge under those conditions. I had expected to find this annoying but didn't. That doesn't mean that they aren't, just that I expected this to happen and wasn't bothered by it.
One thing that was annoying though was the author's decision to slide some innuendoes in. When Darcy refers to public and private balls, when enquiring after Elizabeth's preference, I found myself wincing as she replied "I find that balls are much more enjoyable when they cease to remain private" with a blush at the double meaning. I'm not a prude and find this kind of humour funny in reality but not in the least funny within the context of the story. It happened on a few occasions, impinging on the innocence of the book. Possibly this wouldn't bother some but I sighed each time.
The illustrations dotted about the novel are good, I'm assuming they're by Grahame-Smith as I couldn't find a reference inside to anyone else and spent a few minutes on the internet searching without enlightenment. They're pretty graphic black and white sketches but do add to the book in a way that the writing doesn't always succeed in doing.
This is pure parody, of course, and can't be taken the least seriously. I didn't set out to read it with anything in mind other than the light-hearted approach intended by the author. So I enjoyed reading this in the sense that the insertions were funny at times, especially in Mr Bennet's direct insults ( as opposed to Austen's former veiled ones ) to his wife, and that some characters got their come-uppance. I agree with other reviewers that taking down Wickham was a mistake. Yes, he is a bad boy but it was an integral part of the book that his punishment be solely a disadvantageous marriage rather than Grahame-Seth's version of having him paralysed and reeking of soiled underwear. This was taking a point too far. Wickham needed to suffer a slow downturn over time, not an immediate and constant one, and there's no way that Darcy would have recommended him to a curacy given his past and the additional murderous attempt on his Colonel's life.
Would I recommend this ? I honestly don't know. If you love the original too much then No. If you love it just enough that you can handle a gentle mocking of it, then Possibly Yes. How would I rate it ? 4 out of 10. It brings enough new to the book to make it interesting but a better version would have been to leave the original story behind at some point. Which needed more courage and talent than perhaps Mr Grahame-Seth has. I can only guess.
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