Am listening to Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time" collection. She wrote them around the time I was born and, in my opinion, they are still wonderful stories. I've read them many times but this is the first time to listen to them.
I have acquired a copy of James by Percival Everett, which is a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of Jim, the enslaved man trying to escape bondage. But as with David Copperfield and Demon Copperhead last year, I thought it would be best to familiarize (or in this case re-familiarize) myself with the original before reading the retelling. So currently I am reading Huck Finn for the first time since an American Lit class in university.
The relentless use of the N-word for Black characters and the portrayal of them as less intelligent and capable than white characters is extremely grating even to a white reader today (to me anyway) and I'm sure would be very offensive to Black readers. Apart from that, however (if one can ever really get apart from that), it's surprisingly beautifully written and thoughtful -- there's a lot I had forgotten from reading it 40 years ago!
It is, of course, intended as an anti-racist novel -- the whole narrative arc is mainly about Huck learning that helping Jim escape, which he has been taught is morally wrong because it's "stealing" another white person's property, is actually the morally correct thing to do. But like lots of novels about racism from a white person's point of view (To Kill a Mockingbird comes to mind also), the novel doesn't grapple with and maybe even isn't aware of its writer's own racism -- and perhaps, given the time in which it was written, that might be asking too much of Mark Twain. I'm not sure. I know I am mostly enjoying the reread, and looking forward to how a 21st century Black American writer will re-imagine the story, when I finally get to pick up James.
I have acquired a copy of James by Percival Everett, which is a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of Jim, the enslaved man trying to escape bondage.
@Trudy
I can't wait to hear all about it.
I just saw this: Big Jim and the White Boy: An American Classic Reimagined by David Walker, a graphic novel along the same lines. Didn't have time to buy it and might just borrow it from the library.
I have worked my way through all three of the Alyce Chaucer novels by Christina Hardyment.
Although they are not 100% in line with historical fact - far from it to be honest - they are entertaining and seem to be little-known. So they maybe deserve a word-of-mouth boost.
I have finally finished Rick Morton's "Mean Streak" about the Robodebt situation in Australia. I could only read it in short stints because my head kept wanting to explode at the injustice and self-interest of it and I kept subjecting my poor husband to slabs of it and I knew he wasn't really interested (which I find hard to understand, given our own experience of government benefits was $5.77 for one fortnight back in the 80's when he had a short period of unemployment). It seems the belief of governments that there are large numbers of people trying to rip off the system, still holds firm in the minds of many who sit in our Parliament and there appear to be no consequences for the architects of the scheme (to date, anyhow).
My next Jolly Read will be the biography of Richard Scolyer, who was joint Australian of the year with his colleague Georgina Long in 2024. They are both researchers in the field of melanoma, and have applied their methods to the treatment of his diagnosis of DIPG brain tumour, with some success to date. I think it will be interesting to read about his life and career. Of course he is hoping there will be a clinical trial established to rule out that it's not just luck that has extended his life to date.
In between the two I have slipped in Rapture by Emily Maguire. A story of a young girl the daughter of a man known as the English priest who disguises herself as a man and rises through the ranks of church hierarchy will the inevitable undoing. Well written and enjoyable and I hoped for a less disastrous ending, but life - even a fictional one- is not always as we wish it!
I'll have to find something light and cozy for my next read!
At the moment I’m a couple of chapters into Arenas and Monsters, the fourth book of the Steel and Thunder series by the awesome Dominic N. Ashen, about the fantasy world adventures of the orc Khazak Ironstorm, and his human slave and lover David. I’ve been slowly getting back into novels and prose, rather than just dwelling on the internet.
I’m really liking it! The fifth one should come out this next year…
I also really really need to read ADHD is Awesome, by Penn and Kim Holderness. I've had it on my Kindle for months but I literally keep forgetting it exists. Arguably reading it will help in some ways with that very issue...
Today I slipped in a really fun book called The worst house on the worst street, about a couple of men who hated their corporate jobs and decided to invest in property as their superannuation (pension) scheme.
It talks about the dreadful properties they bought, the people they met along the way (some of them gems and some not) and had me laughing out loud as their naivety about how much things cost, how jobs take at least twice as long as you think they are going to (speaking from my own experience of working on our own homes).
It made me feel good to know others have had the same experiences as us, the dust, the exhaustion, the throbbing hands after days and days of painting. I loved that at the end, it wasn't really the end, they still enjoyed a good project and seeing the potential to make a home beautiful. I realise that some might find it trite and silly, but if you like a good laugh, I would really recommend it.
Read more of ADHD is Awesome and also snapped up and started a book called Unf*ck Your Habitat, because my habitat is in profound need of being unf*cked. I had some Kindle points, and some money back on my Amazon card, so it was about 65 cents rather than 10 dollars…
I’m sorry the link below is so long but I’ve tried three times now to copy it in a shorter way and it’s just not working and I don’t have time in the six minute window to edit it down to something that works better…
I've just started Karla's Choice by Nick Harkaway, John le Carre's son. I had been a bit reluctant to get into it, being a big fan of le Carre, but so far he's doing well with his father's style and characters.
I've just started Karla's Choice by Nick Harkaway, John le Carre's son. I had been a bit reluctant to get into it, being a big fan of le Carre, but so far he's doing well with his father's style and characters.
Just want to say I love your name!! Narnia for the win!
Thank you, CM. There used to be quite a few Narnian characters on these boards, but they haven't appeared much lately: possibly, as I was, lurking while trying to think of something interesting to say!
Discovered that Barbara Hambly had 2 new short stories out, so did a quick bit of shopping and downloaded them both 😁 One Antryg Windrose, one Winterlands. Both available via smashwords in most formats AFAIK. (I just need epub, but think they do Kindle too). Read both over dinner.
She's done 4 Darwath shorts as well, and I'm pretty sure smashwords has them too (if you don't already have them!). A few Benjamin January ones as well, although some of those are Rose doing things whilst Benjamin is out of town - makes a nice change of viewpoint.
Read about a chapter of each of my three books today (the ADHD book, the habitat book, the gay orc/human master/slave fantasy adventure romance book). Plus some comics…
I've just remembered and found Judi Dench's book which I bought before Christmas and have not started. I think I'll do that before I get onto the Richard Scolyer autobiography.
I have acquired a copy of James by Percival Everett, which is a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of Jim, the enslaved man trying to escape bondage.
@Trudy
I can't wait to hear all about it.
I just saw this: Big Jim and the White Boy: An American Classic Reimagined by David Walker, a graphic novel along the same lines. Didn't have time to buy it and might just borrow it from the library.
Hope the novel is awesome.
Finally got a chance to post on this, though I finished reading James several days ago. I did enjoy both the re-reading of Huck Finn -- if you can get past the n-word, it really does hold up surprisingly well, except for the tedious ending where it feels like Twain felt he had to bring back his popular character Tom Sawyer and give him some comedy routines to do that really sap the energy from the Huck/Jim story.
James was an enjoyable and interesting take on the story. It doesn't stick completely to the plot of Huck Finn, partly of which you can explain as "Jim saw/experienced/remembered different things than Huck did," but some of which is clearly the writer just deciding to tell a different story. I liked the idea of the reverse code-switching all the enslaved Black characters were doing -- putting on dialect and mannerisms to make them seem less intelligent and less threatening around white people.
If I have a criticism of the book, it's that I wanted more -- there is a lot of backstory (including one HUGELY important reveal) that I felt the reader should have known more about. Can't say more for fear of spoilers if anyone wants to read it, but it's the sort of thing I'd really love to discuss with someone who has read it.
I followed up that pairing with another "classic novel/modern re-telling" pair: I reread Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (which, like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I'd had no cause or desire to reread since university) and then read Laurie Lico Albanese's novel Hester. I thought this was going to be a re-telling of The Scarlet Letter from Hester's POV, but it turned out to be a fictional recreation of the circumstances that might have led Hawthorne to write the book, from the POV of a (fictional) woman who might have inspired the story.
I had my real life book group last night and we discussed the last two books we've read Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt (quite enjoyable, especially the parts written from the point of view of the octopus) and The Seventh Son by Sebastian Faulks (disappointing; apparently it's not his best but I don't feel particularly inclined to try another). The next book is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak which I've glanced at and have mixed feelings about already but it's not fair to judge a book by the blurb on the back and a flick through the pages.
My current bedside comfort reread is Elizabeth Goudge's The Bird in the Tree.
Mr R has passed over Box Office Poison - a history of film flops. The original reviewer claimed to find it hilarious, but I think it's rather sad so far.
I had my real life book group last night and we discussed the last two books we've read Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt (quite enjoyable, especially the parts written from the point of view of the octopus) and The Seventh Son by Sebastian Faulks (disappointing; apparently it's not his best but I don't feel particularly inclined to try another). The next book is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak which I've glanced at and have mixed feelings about already but it's not fair to judge a book by the blurb on the back and a flick through the pages.
I enjoyed Remarkably Bright Creatures! I also remember loving The Book Thief, but it has been many years now since I read it.
I'm about halfway through The man who pays the rent and I'm loving Judi Dench's recollections. I think it would be hugely helpful to those who've never read Shakespeare before as her thoughts and context make it very real and I think as a younger person, I never really got it in the way that I have after reading her thoughts. A worthwhile read and not at all heavy going and her anecdotes are so funny. I loved the one about dropping a suggestive note into the lap of one audience member, only to find he wasn't the person she meant to give it to. Hilarious!
Sorry to double post, thought I should clarify. The hilarious bit was Judi telling this story against herself, not that she was making an audience member feel uncomfortable.
Just received an email for a winter reading list from a print magazine I like a lot. I now want to buy at least seven of the ten listed books. I haven't read anywhere near all of the most recent hauls of books I've bought. I still want these seven books. This is pure "tsundoku," and I can't bring myself to feel badly about it. If I buy the books, though, Mrs. The_Riv will not approve, LOL.
I've actually bought books, left them unread, yet recommended them to others and loaned-out my own copies. I have then used this absence of physical, unread books to purchase additional books that are mostly unread. Maybe this issue is worse than I think!
Just finished reading My Brother, My Land: A Story from Palestine. Looks at how the Israeli/Palestine conflict has affected a family from 1967 to just before the recent Gaza incursion. Disquieting from a Western perspective.
I was lucky enough to see Robin Wall Kimmerer speak at Hay Festival last year - I love her book Braiding Sweetgrass, which talks about Native American plants and her work as a botanist and teacher with a Native American background. Also on sale at the Festival was her other book, Gathering Moss, which concentrates just on mosses, and which I've only just got round to starting. I'm looking forward to "seeing the world through moss-colored glasses" as the preface puts it.
I mentioned I was reading John Julius Norwich’s History of Venice on the 2024 thread last fall. I was enjoying it but after a while it became just one war after another. I think it may well have been at its best in giving a sense of the original foundation of Venice and how its geography gave it a history quite different than any other Italian city. Ms. Marsupial gave me Jan Morris’s book on Venice for Christmas and I am looking forward to reading it. Strangely I don’t think I’ve read anything by her longer than a magazine article.
I’m currently working my way through Christopher Albert’s The Secret World, a history of Intelligence that starts with Old Testament and ends with the 21st century. It’s 800 pages which is longer than I thought it would be when I asked for it for Christmas… like the JJN book it feels like the kind of the book where the author feels the need to tell you everything he knows and at some point the forest starts to get lost for the trees. I suspect this is part of why I never tried to complete the history part of the double-major I started in undergrad and did something else instead…
I also remember loving The Book Thief, but it has been many years now since I read it.
I'm struggling with it at the moment as there are so many other things I want to be reading. I probably need to set aside a couple of hours to engage with it properly.
Just finished Box Office Poison, a history of Hollywood flops. Since I don't go to the pictures much, I hadn't heard of a lot of them. A not uninteresting read nevertheless, but more one for the cinema-literate.
I'm still working my way through Judi Dench's man who pays the rent (Shakespeare) and one comment she made that I thought was particularly good was in response to a question about themes in the plays. She was very quick to point out that as an actor one is not writing an essay, you are there to portray the character as well as you can and bring them alive to the audience.
I've never seen any Shakespeare performed, not even on dvd, so now having that thought in my mind I might have to scratch through the dvds I claimed from Dad's place and see if I can find something there to look at. I can't see myself going to the theatre any time soon.
Ooh! @Cheery Gardener, my favorite Shakespeare DVD/ VCR tape, is the 1989 Henry V!
That was one of my daughter's favorite movies, as well as Star Trek IV with the whales. We could recite most of the dialogue, we watched them so many times.
There are all sorts of versions of Midsummer Night's Dream on DVD. There's even one where Gwendoline Christie (famous for playing Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones) played Titania, though they swapped it round so she got most of Oberon's lines, and Oberon fell in love with Bottom!
I've got quite a few starring David Tennant. He was brilliant in Much Ado About Nothing with Catherine Tate, and his Richard II was excellent. He was very good in Hamlet, too. I liked it better than the Kenneth Branagh version, though the Kenneth Branagh version of Much Ado About Nothing is excellent, and so is his Henry V.
I've got quite a few starring David Tennant. He was brilliant in Much Ado About Nothing with Catherine Tate, and his Richard II was excellent. He was very good in Hamlet, too. I liked it better than the Kenneth Branagh version, though the Kenneth Branagh version of Much Ado About Nothing is excellent, and so is his Henry V.
Tennant and Tate are the definitive Beatrice and Benedick, for me. I love their version, although I love most productions of Much Ado where those two are well-cast.
Recently there was an exhibition at Hay Castle about the life of April Ashley, a trans woman who lived locally, and I picked up a book called A Little Gay History of Wales, by Daryl Leeworthy. I was expecting it to be quite light hearted, but it's actually very well researched. It even mentions some places I know (I never would have guessed that the Drovers Arms in Howey, near Llandrindod Wells, had been known for its gay clientele in the 1970s!), and it starts by talking about the movie Pride, where South Wales miners were supported during the Miners' Strike of 1984 by a gay and lesbian group from London.
I've never seen any Shakespeare performed, not even on dvd, so now having that thought in my mind I might have to scratch through the dvds I claimed from Dad's place and see if I can find something there to look at. I can't see myself going to the theatre any time soon.
It's well worth searching out performances. Not quite the same on DVD but still worth watching if you can't get to a theatre (except for Ian McKellen's take on Richard III which is just weird).
The comedies in particular are much better on stage. My daughter was on the verge of being put off Shakespeare for life by her GCSE English teacher, when she (grudgingly) agreed to go to a performance of Twelfth Night with us. She laughed most of the way through (though she thought Feste's revenge on Malvolio was over the top) and decided there was something to be said for The Bard after all.
I'm reading Richard Osman's We Solve Murders at the moment. Very promising so far.
Some good full performances were put on YouTube by the national theatre during the pandemic, as a public service, they may well still be available - it would be worth a look. It was during lockdown whilst the theatres were closed.
I'm not well-read classics-wise, but after Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights reappeared on my YouTube, I borrowed it from the library. Just finished part I. As I said to a friend yesterday, unlikeable characters, but I love that. Very different. Looking forward to the "Heathcliff, it's me Cathy, I've come home now. So cold; let me into your window" section (no doubt picturing the wondrous Kate dancing!)
Cadfael, The Devil's Novice, being re-read for some enjoyable summer reading also.
All I know about it is it by Stephen King and the one book I read of his terrified the shit out of me (not a good thing for me... I'm a wuss!) so I'm not clicking that link! 😄
I can imagine what may be happening, though...
Ooh! @Cheery Gardener, my favorite Shakespeare DVD/ VCR tape, is the 1989 Henry V!
That was one of my daughter's favorite movies, as well as Star Trek IV with the whales. We could recite most of the dialogue, we watched them so many times.
Branagh St Crispin's day speech is superb, better than Olivier's in my opinion.
I'm not well-read classics-wise, but after Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights reappeared on my YouTube, I borrowed it from the library. Just finished part I. As I said to a friend yesterday, unlikeable characters, but I love that. Very different. Looking forward to the "Heathcliff, it's me Cathy, I've come home now. So cold; let me into your window" section (no doubt picturing the wondrous Kate dancing!)
Cadfael, The Devil's Novice, being re-read for some enjoyable summer reading also.
Wuthering heights. I have never seen a film or tv programme that covers more than the first half of the book.
Starting a non-fiction book: Silent Film's Last Hurrah: The Remarkable Movies of the Long 1928 by David Meuel. It is "a history and critical appreciation" of the last days of silent films (which technically goes into 1929--hence the term "Long 1928" covering late 1927 through early 1929).
The transition to sound had its difficulties. While major cities would have had theaters wired for sound, a lot of smaller theaters across the U.S. did not, so until they could install sound equipment, they needed silent films. International sales of silent films were relatively easy (just slip in title cards in the appropriate language), which could not be done with sound films. Late Silents had beautifully fluid camera movement--which was lost in the early sound films because the camera (being noisy) had to be put into a soundproof box, resulting in very static images. And, of course, there was the issue of everybody needing to gather around the microphone to be recorded...
But silent films during the "Long 1928" were at the pinnacle of its art form, telling a story with a minimum of title cards and just letting the images tell the story. They are well worth viewing.
Still struggling with The Book Thief and have resorted to watching some YouTube reviews. They have all, so far, waxed lyrical about it so I really must make an effort. There are so many other things I want to be reading...
If it was me I'd have given up by now. Life is too short to waste on reading books that don't speak to you, however many other people have raved about them.
If it was me I'd have given up by now. Life is too short to waste on reading books that don't speak to you, however many other people have raved about them.
Same here. It’s why after multiple unsuccessful tries, I’ve accepted that no matter how great and important The World considers Huckleberry Finn, I find it unreadable and the effort unnecessary. Life is indeed too short.
Comments
The relentless use of the N-word for Black characters and the portrayal of them as less intelligent and capable than white characters is extremely grating even to a white reader today (to me anyway) and I'm sure would be very offensive to Black readers. Apart from that, however (if one can ever really get apart from that), it's surprisingly beautifully written and thoughtful -- there's a lot I had forgotten from reading it 40 years ago!
It is, of course, intended as an anti-racist novel -- the whole narrative arc is mainly about Huck learning that helping Jim escape, which he has been taught is morally wrong because it's "stealing" another white person's property, is actually the morally correct thing to do. But like lots of novels about racism from a white person's point of view (To Kill a Mockingbird comes to mind also), the novel doesn't grapple with and maybe even isn't aware of its writer's own racism -- and perhaps, given the time in which it was written, that might be asking too much of Mark Twain. I'm not sure. I know I am mostly enjoying the reread, and looking forward to how a 21st century Black American writer will re-imagine the story, when I finally get to pick up James.
@Trudy
I can't wait to hear all about it.
I just saw this: Big Jim and the White Boy: An American Classic Reimagined by David Walker, a graphic novel along the same lines. Didn't have time to buy it and might just borrow it from the library.
Hope the novel is awesome.
Although they are not 100% in line with historical fact - far from it to be honest - they are entertaining and seem to be little-known. So they maybe deserve a word-of-mouth boost.
My next Jolly Read will be the biography of Richard Scolyer, who was joint Australian of the year with his colleague Georgina Long in 2024. They are both researchers in the field of melanoma, and have applied their methods to the treatment of his diagnosis of DIPG brain tumour, with some success to date. I think it will be interesting to read about his life and career. Of course he is hoping there will be a clinical trial established to rule out that it's not just luck that has extended his life to date.
In between the two I have slipped in Rapture by Emily Maguire. A story of a young girl the daughter of a man known as the English priest who disguises herself as a man and rises through the ranks of church hierarchy will the inevitable undoing. Well written and enjoyable and I hoped for a less disastrous ending, but life - even a fictional one- is not always as we wish it!
I'll have to find something light and cozy for my next read!
I’m really liking it! The fifth one should come out this next year…
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CLKWSL5Q?binding=kindle_edition&ref=dbs_m_mng_wim_sft_tkin_thcv
I also really really need to read ADHD is Awesome, by Penn and Kim Holderness. I've had it on my Kindle for months but I literally keep forgetting it exists. Arguably reading it will help in some ways with that very issue...
https://www.amazon.com/ADHD-Awesome-Guide-Mostly-Thriving/dp/1400338611
It talks about the dreadful properties they bought, the people they met along the way (some of them gems and some not) and had me laughing out loud as their naivety about how much things cost, how jobs take at least twice as long as you think they are going to (speaking from my own experience of working on our own homes).
It made me feel good to know others have had the same experiences as us, the dust, the exhaustion, the throbbing hands after days and days of painting. I loved that at the end, it wasn't really the end, they still enjoyed a good project and seeing the potential to make a home beautiful. I realise that some might find it trite and silly, but if you like a good laugh, I would really recommend it.
I’m sorry the link below is so long but I’ve tried three times now to copy it in a shorter way and it’s just not working and I don’t have time in the six minute window to edit it down to something that works better…
https://www.amazon.com/Unf-Your-Habitat-Youre-Better/dp/1250102952/ref=mp_s_a_1_12?crid=OP8YU2FTX6O6&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.yvTM6wnVbG-WETN_RTwSrlpHJNfTSWYLEgAmT5nVgwrYzAM72Wn7DA2XrnLptNvTa9011CnteKtxmXAkTw93GTODeoJJAhAPGn6P_vHEHqB74o0pDF52iMqnixAbUdqMF39im0Qx24Wt_3JFU5wfzCo9tIToztLifl8Yz1UosW2Lkr7Enkn7Db4ukTajMqkTffax643IRj_E_R--eE3Fnw.6qdLMhSSEdEELeCUq5FlgIhxCt2yG3se--XT1PETqQg&dib_tag=se&keywords=unfuck&qid=1735972883&sprefix=unfuck,aps,881&sr=8-12
Just want to say I love your name!!
Finally got a chance to post on this, though I finished reading James several days ago. I did enjoy both the re-reading of Huck Finn -- if you can get past the n-word, it really does hold up surprisingly well, except for the tedious ending where it feels like Twain felt he had to bring back his popular character Tom Sawyer and give him some comedy routines to do that really sap the energy from the Huck/Jim story.
James was an enjoyable and interesting take on the story. It doesn't stick completely to the plot of Huck Finn, partly of which you can explain as "Jim saw/experienced/remembered different things than Huck did," but some of which is clearly the writer just deciding to tell a different story. I liked the idea of the reverse code-switching all the enslaved Black characters were doing -- putting on dialect and mannerisms to make them seem less intelligent and less threatening around white people.
If I have a criticism of the book, it's that I wanted more -- there is a lot of backstory (including one HUGELY important reveal) that I felt the reader should have known more about. Can't say more for fear of spoilers if anyone wants to read it, but it's the sort of thing I'd really love to discuss with someone who has read it.
I followed up that pairing with another "classic novel/modern re-telling" pair: I reread Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (which, like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I'd had no cause or desire to reread since university) and then read Laurie Lico Albanese's novel Hester. I thought this was going to be a re-telling of The Scarlet Letter from Hester's POV, but it turned out to be a fictional recreation of the circumstances that might have led Hawthorne to write the book, from the POV of a (fictional) woman who might have inspired the story.
My current bedside comfort reread is Elizabeth Goudge's The Bird in the Tree.
I enjoyed Remarkably Bright Creatures! I also remember loving The Book Thief, but it has been many years now since I read it.
I've actually bought books, left them unread, yet recommended them to others and loaned-out my own copies. I have then used this absence of physical, unread books to purchase additional books that are mostly unread. Maybe this issue is worse than I think!
By the way, here's NAUTILUS' 2025 Winter Reading List. #SorryNotSorry
I’m currently working my way through Christopher Albert’s The Secret World, a history of Intelligence that starts with Old Testament and ends with the 21st century. It’s 800 pages which is longer than I thought it would be when I asked for it for Christmas… like the JJN book it feels like the kind of the book where the author feels the need to tell you everything he knows and at some point the forest starts to get lost for the trees. I suspect this is part of why I never tried to complete the history part of the double-major I started in undergrad and did something else instead…
I've never seen any Shakespeare performed, not even on dvd, so now having that thought in my mind I might have to scratch through the dvds I claimed from Dad's place and see if I can find something there to look at. I can't see myself going to the theatre any time soon.
That was one of my daughter's favorite movies, as well as Star Trek IV with the whales. We could recite most of the dialogue, we watched them so many times.
I've got quite a few starring David Tennant. He was brilliant in Much Ado About Nothing with Catherine Tate, and his Richard II was excellent. He was very good in Hamlet, too. I liked it better than the Kenneth Branagh version, though the Kenneth Branagh version of Much Ado About Nothing is excellent, and so is his Henry V.
Tennant and Tate are the definitive Beatrice and Benedick, for me. I love their version, although I love most productions of Much Ado where those two are well-cast.
It's well worth searching out performances. Not quite the same on DVD but still worth watching if you can't get to a theatre (except for Ian McKellen's take on Richard III which is just weird).
The comedies in particular are much better on stage. My daughter was on the verge of being put off Shakespeare for life by her GCSE English teacher, when she (grudgingly) agreed to go to a performance of Twelfth Night with us. She laughed most of the way through (though she thought Feste's revenge on Malvolio was over the top) and decided there was something to be said for The Bard after all.
I'm reading Richard Osman's We Solve Murders at the moment. Very promising so far.
Cadfael, The Devil's Novice, being re-read for some enjoyable summer reading also.
I’m imagining this scene from Salem’s Lot. Probably different.
https://youtu.be/vV1V0U41HI4?si=UqC7nIvJBIuU4wWj
I can imagine what may be happening, though...
Spoiler on Cathy from Wuthering Heights:
Branagh St Crispin's day speech is superb, better than Olivier's in my opinion.
Wuthering heights. I have never seen a film or tv programme that covers more than the first half of the book.
The transition to sound had its difficulties. While major cities would have had theaters wired for sound, a lot of smaller theaters across the U.S. did not, so until they could install sound equipment, they needed silent films. International sales of silent films were relatively easy (just slip in title cards in the appropriate language), which could not be done with sound films. Late Silents had beautifully fluid camera movement--which was lost in the early sound films because the camera (being noisy) had to be put into a soundproof box, resulting in very static images. And, of course, there was the issue of everybody needing to gather around the microphone to be recorded...
But silent films during the "Long 1928" were at the pinnacle of its art form, telling a story with a minimum of title cards and just letting the images tell the story. They are well worth viewing.
“Aack!”*
Wait, wrong Cathy.
* comic strip reference