• Film

    The Book Thief Trailer

    I didn’t even know they were making a movie based on The Book Thief, which I read this time last year, but this was released a few days ago: I was really digging the trailer until the 90s voiceover started, but it does really look promising. It seems they’ve dropped Death as the narrator, which is a shame as that really added a lot to the story in my opinion, but I can see that being tricky to film. And who knows, maybe he there but just wasn’t featured in the trailer. Geoffrey Rush as Hans is a terrific choice, I think.

  • Books Read

    Mother Night

    Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut Published: 1961 My fourth Vonnegut, and I’m more in love with his writing with each one. This is the fictional autobiography of Howard W. Campbell, who is being held in an Israeli jail for crimes against humanity. He was born in America and moved to Germany as a adolescent. As Hitler began gaining power, he stayed in the country and worked as a playwright, but as the war drew near he was approached by an American spy to work undercover for them. He worked on the radio, sending coded messages out under the cover of Nazi propaganda. Unfortunately, he was maybe too good at his…

  • Books Read

    The Ocean at the End of the Lane

    The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman Published: 2013 Narrated by: Neil Gaiman A man returns to his childhood home after attending a funeral and finds himself drawn to the neighbouring home of a little girl he once knew but had forgotten. Memories start flooding back, and he remembers himself as a young boy stumbling across a tragic scene, one that allowed the unworldly access to our world. I don’t think I was in the right frame of mind for this novel. I love Neil Gaiman and have read everything by him, except for most of his comics (and his Duran Duran biography obviously), but something…

  • Books Read

    Housekeeping vs. The Dirt

    Housekeeping vs. the Dirt by Nick Hornby Published: 2006 Nick Hornby’s thoughts on his monthly reading and book buying habits continue with this second collection of his Believer column. I still wasn’t entirely sure what the Believer was, so I just hopped over to their website and had a quick look. I’m very pleased to announce that it’s not a Christian magazine, as I had briefly suspected. They describe the magazine as follows: The Believer is a monthly magazine where length is no object. There are book reviews that are not necessarily timely, and that are very often very long. There are interviews that are also very long. We will…