Is it a coincidence that my second-favorite twitterer and overall brainy and lovely ( in a fluffy, moist kind of a way) writer Stephen Fry comments on the death of former Big Brother inhabitant Jade and just one day before I got around starting to watch Dead Set? Here´s a trailer.
I loaded tons of stuff from the assistant director´s DVD collection onto my computer when we were shooting that mystery series two weeks ago. Among those films and series were some English productions, most notably "Lost in Austen" about a girl who gets sucked into the world of Jane Austen and the 2008 Zombie mini-series "Dead Set" which centers around some of the survivors of a zombie rampage. It´s wickedly funny as the set that´s dead is the British Big Brother house (of course social and TV critique ensues) but it´s also a quite gory little series which entertains me to no end.
That said and also to ease the pain of other impatient souls: German amazon buyer will probably have to wait till middle of June until Pride and Prejudice and Zombies will be shipped. How cruel is that?

It´s been exactly one month since I went from this cripple



( to this baby. )

( I got awesome post from America. )

( And I got tagged. )

Now that the winter has arrived, there´s even more reason for abandoning a walk in the neighborhood for a good book. Isn´t it crazy, I had one centimetre ice on my car during daytime.
I´ve just finished listening to two books by Ben Elton (of whom Hugh Laurie once said that he discovered him as a serious actor - if that isn´t justification enough to listen to them).
I expected much of the books seeing as he is not only a productive but also pretty successful writer of novels and screenplays. Fortunately I wasn´t let down.
The first one was Inconceivable, his more or less autobiographical novel which dealt with an infertile couple and was later to be turned into the film Maybe Baby. The film amused with a great cast (Emma Thompson and Rowan Atkinson are always amazing), hilarious scenes and a really engaging emotional story.
But in case you´ve already watched the movie you probably won´t miss much with the book. The story is told entirely through the diary entries of Lucy and Sam. This idea works out quite well in the beginning where you get direct responses by both to everything that happens in their life. You really get into their relationship because you´re able to compare how differently both really see the situation of their infertility. Lucy´s desperation is even more affecting in that way. Unfortunately toward the end, where the outer action overtakes the inner conflicts this device completely fails to let the reader empathise with the whole solution of the situation.
The audiobook is still a lot of fun though because it´s being read by Emilia Fox and Hugh Laurie. And my favorite moment surely is, hearing Hugh Laurie complain about some abhorent doctor ("Great guts!"; later played by Atkinson) with the words "Stephen Fry would play him perfectly." I had a serious self-referential-loop-fangirl moment there. The audiobook also offers some good jokes about the BBC that were left out in the film.

The next book was hugely entertaining throughout. Past Mortem is a murder mystery that features a lot of cheesy 80´s music and a great plot. At first I had the feeling that the characters were somewhat stereotypical but I was lead on to believe this. As the story unfolds Ed Newsome, the New Scotland Yard Detective we are following as he is trying to track down a serial killer, and all the other characters: his co-workers, the suspects and friends become wonderfully quirky. Be warned though, some scenes are incredibly graphic, like ewwwww. But they fit perfectly into the whole thing. I knew who the killer was way before he or she was revealed but that doesn´t do harm to the book; it only makes you feel smart.

Speaking of Ben Elton:
Have today´s song themed.
We Will Rock You Musical - Fat Bottom Girls
( There´s more comedy here... and Jimmy Carr. )

In my first Television class ever I learned that the first male gay kiss on American television was "peformed" on the NBC sitcom Will&Grace. In addition to being a quite funny and witty show that exposes many of our shallow human desires which backfire and trait the ideals we try to hold up, Will&Grace did an extraordinary thing in their second season. For the first time in the history of American television two men kissed on-screen. Or maybe it wasn´t as extraordinary but long overdue? After all, there were two gay men among the main characters. So it was this kiss I was thinking about the other day after I had seen an episode of Blackadder:

( Not that there is anything wrong with that. )

And if someone ever tells me again that 'Eskimos have over twenty words for snow, you know?' to make some obscure point about cultures, I´m going to fetch something woody too. A club, preferably. There are so many things wrong with this myth.

edited for a link listing the various forms of snow - thank god there are people with a brain.
http://www.mendosa.com/snow.html

MacTla snow burgers
hahatla small packages of snow given as gag gifts
or even
fritla fried snow

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

1) Look at the list and underline those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Bold the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've only read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

( Click for random book list )

John Cleese is also a funny man and he wrote to the American citizens some time ago.
I know Americans aren´t as ignorant as he´s saying but it´s just so utterly hilarious.

Finished Dürrenmatt´s 'Der Richter und sein Henker' ( The Judge and His Hangman) I probably didn´t get half of the allusions and foreshadowing because I always read it before I went to bed and was very tired most of the time. Anyway, what beautiful and understated light imagery throughout the whole book. But would such a book be successful if it would have been published nowadays? We´re used to the most outrageous plot twists today, aren´t we? Have to think about this one.