Miss Potter (2006)

If you’re looking for a couple of hours to relax and enjoy the tale of an extraordinary woman, take a look at “Miss Potter”. Beatrix Potter (Renee Zellweger), the author and beloved illustrator of the Peter Rabbit books, isn’t the only one that comes to life in this movie – her illustrations do too. This movie is pleasing to the eyes and ears and is definitely a family film (PG) that has no earth-shattering surprises or convoluted plot. It’s a simple story of how Potter fell in love with her publisher Norman Wayne (Ewan McGregor) and how they worked as a team to get her work published – despite all odds. The film has a magical feel which I think is supported by the chemistry between Zellweger and McGregor. I liked this movie despite the mixed reviews and would encourage anyone to give it a try. Just don’t expect anything more than a simple heartwarming story.

The healing road …

Over the years, my musical tastes have changed. After I got married, I discovered the undiscovered territory of progressive rock, namely the “Canadian power trio,” Rush. Neil Peart is Rush’s drummer and lyricist, and a published author. In the late 1990s Peart lost his only daughter in a car accident, and ten months later, his wife to cancer. Overwhelmed with grief and without direction, he took a hiatus from the band and for two years traveled 55,000 miles throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Belize. Peart’s travels and reflections are recounted in Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road.

Peart is very introspective by nature; at times this view into his inner life makes for painfully honest reading. He is also a gifted travel writer, and the accounts of his journey are enjoyable and sometimes very witty. My only concern about this book is that it’s probably not possible for many of us to take a two-year break from our “regular lives” to work through our sadnesses and difficulties.

All it all, it was an insightful look at a (reluctant) celebrity’s passage through grief into healing. And it had my favorite kind of ending …

 

Just when we were having fun consuming …

I recently picked up “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore’s bleak but ultimately promising documentary on global warming.  In light of record bad weather from the Koreas to the Tri-State, this video is a wake-up call for us all.  Gore’s truth is steeped in heavy factual waters and when unemotionally measured is a bitter drought to take.  Definitely should have won the award for best use of a graph in a powerpoint presentation.  If you haven’t seen this video, get it, if you have, I hope you are working on your carbon signature.

Blog, me?!? You blog!!!

Blog entries are short and sweet, but still provide meat for a good debate.  That is why many voices are needed to help a blog survive.  Variety is the spice, and with all of us, we could have a pleasant blend.  Remember, it isn’t always how you say it, it is what you say it about.

Thursday Next Series

I finished reading Jasper Fforde’s First Among Sequels last night.  This is the fifth book in his Thursday Next series, which starts with The Eyre Affair.  I first discovered the series listening to an audiobook of The Well of Lost Plots, got hooked, and went back and read the earlier books.  This is a very unusual series, and I slightly prefer listening to someone else read it than reading it myself, but either is good.  Thursday Next is a secret agent in fiction area of the BookWorld (a place Jasper Fforde has made up where all the books ever written or conceived are stored, in all their editions, and where things like grammatasites or word storms cause problems in the books and have to be dealt with).  In addition to the usual literary references, humor, play, and suspenseful plot, First Among Sequels deals with issues such as reduced reading rates, shortened attention spans, instant gratification, identity, and financial or power motivations instead of value motivations, etc.  It’s both a hoot and a thought-provoking, troubling view of society/culture.

Mysteries and Thrillers

I read mostly Mysteries and Thrillers.  A few recent titles I can recommend (summaries are from our Library catalog records):  Audiobook of The Woods by Harlan Coben – Scott Brick is a wonderful narrator, and Coben a very good writer, so this one rocks; audiobook of The Dangerous Hour by Marcia Muller (When one of her investigative operatives is arrested for credit card fraud, Sharon McCone’s efforts to prove the woman’s innocence are complicated by evidence that points to a larger conspiracy), female narrator took me awhile to get used to, but now enjoying. 

 Hooked (Barely escaping with his life when he receives a warning note telling him to flee an Internet café that subsequently explodes, a San Francisco writer recognizes the note’s handwriting as belonging to his believed-dead girlfriend, a realization that enmeshes him in a web of manipulation and conspiracy) by Matt Richtel, This is one of the best books I’ve read recently.

Play Dead by David Rosenfelt (Rescuing a golden retriever from euthanasia, wisecracking New Jersey defense attorney Andy Carpenter learns that the dog was involved in a previous owner’s murder conviction and is persuaded by the man’s sister to reopen the case)  A Welcome Grave by Michael Koryta (Following the murder of a prominent attorney, Cleveland private detective Lincoln Perry is called in by the victim’s widow to help locate the attorney’s estranged son, only to find himself the prime suspect in the killing of the missing man).  Lincoln Perry and Andy Carpenter are both wise-ass detectives.

Final Payment by Steven Havill (Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman has her hands full with her son scheduled for his first public piano concert on the same day as a local bike race, a situation complicated when she and former sheriff Bill Gastner find the body of one of the nation’s top bicycle racers) The latest in the Posadas County mystery series.

Here If You Need Me

 

I read a very well-written, poignant memoir over last weekend: Here If You Need Me by Kate Braestrup.  I’ve been noticing that it is getting a lot of publicity lately, so  it might become quite popular, too.  I think deservedly so, although I’ll be interested to see how it does here in relatively conservative Evansville.  It’s written by a Unitarian Universalist minister who serves as chaplain for the Maine game wardens.  Her husband had been a State Trooper who was killed in an auto accident while on duty, leaving her to raise their two children and carry on with his dream of becoming a minister.  The chapters are short, thought-provoking, and having to do with the sorts of issues and stories she experiences while being there for family waiting to see if their loved ones are found dead or alive after getting lost in the wilderness.