New Year Greetings.

Yes, folks, it's a new entry at last for the new year.

Obviously, haven't been in the blogging mood as of late. Because it's been the holiday season where I've been travelling all over the wilds of Pennsylvania. Because the insanity known as school has begun. Because I've been seeing movies and watching dvds. Have seen Tristan and Isolde and Casanova. I liked them both in different ways. Tristan was better than anticipated and I didn't need valium as I was fearing. Casanova was period fluff ala Dangerous Beauty. Have also been rewatching Buffy again as one of my friends is now hooked.

Have also been reading. The last seven books I read were
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Monday Mourning by Kathy Reichs
The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss
The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin
Confessions of a Cineplex Heckler : Celluloid Tirades and Escapades by Joe Queenan
It's not Easy Being Green by Jim Henson
Admittedly, GOF was more of a re-doing. I had read it before and I was listening to it on my CD player. I finished it halfway through my trip. What a shock. I still really love it and it's the most satisfying one thus far. The reading was done by Stephen Fry and he did it quite well. Some of it was quite British. Now I need a new book for the gym.

The Kathy Reichs one was a new murder mystery that I was trying out. I liked the portrayals of Montreal and its tensions between the English/ French Society. I was less jazzed about the relationship between Temperance and Ryan. Don't buy it. And some of the trauma to women was hard to read as I was reading it in bed. I need to read something happy.


The Time Traveller's Wife and Eats, Shoots and Leaves are both books that many, many people recommended to me. TTW is very good. It's the kind of book that I would have loved in college and discussed endlessly in dorms and halls over tea. There are some things I have issue with and it's quite sad. But it's quite original and her gimmick works. The Lynne Truss one is highly snide and I laughed out loud while reading parts of it. I love the discussion of the comma. Unfortunately, I've internalized her grammar stuff and am doublechecking my grammar while typing. So all I see are of clauses and misusing semi-colons and becoming comma happy.


The Nanny Diaries I picked up while I was housesitting and got into it. It's a bit trashy and it doesn't end well. It's a lesser chick lit classic. But it does suck you in and you feel bad for the child, Grayer, who's been raised by awful parents and is cool despite that fact.

The Queenan book is the third I've read of his. I loved his diatribe on baby-boomers (Balsamic Dreams) and his anglophile book (Queenan Country). I love the part in BD where he's talking about hearing "Volare" in a coffee shop and wanting to know if it's ironic or intentional or not. The British one ebbs and flows. But I laughed at a lot of it. The most recent is one I picked up while Christmas shopping. It's about films and he discusses the problematic notion known as Irish cinema, all the decapitated ears in cinema and The Mirror Has Two Faces. It's quite scathing, in a good way.

The Henson book is one bought for a present and read quickly. It's sweet and uplifting. Plus, it has parts from the "Frogs in the Glen" and "Can you Picture that" and "Moving Right Along."Those are all some of my favorite ones. Plus, Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas. It's definitely one of those where you're humming along as you read. It's interesting where my knowledge of Henson ends as I know damned little about Fraggle Rock. I think it came out at a time, like the Smurfs, when I was into being older and not as into that kinda stuff. But I'm sure FR was good.

Actually, Jem was even worse. What the hell? She's a rock and roll star and a spy? Sure, that happens. Look, I've watched some really flimsy shows in my time, but even I thought that concept was a bit too out there. And when I watched Bewitched two episode parter and Rocky and Bullwinkle, I was concerned that things would end well. Admittedly, I was fairly young at that time.

Oh and other news. The alternative rock station, 101.5 that I liked okay, has become a talk radio station. They didn't always play good stuff, but they had some good stuff, when it wasn't Nickelback. Meanwhile, when I was back and home and listening to good old WLEV (which changed on the dial) I heard songs that I'm 80 percent certain I heard when they "premiered" on its original channel, like Phil Collins's "One More Night" or White Lion's "When the Children Cry." Oh, the horror.

Speaking of music, Blondie's "Heart of Glass" is on. Tres Classique. As my faux french pops up again. Now it's Styx's "Time on my Hands" which I did hear in Pa.