New Year's Eve with bookishness
Dec. 31st, 2014 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylA gentle end to the year, with my day spent reading and lazing around.
The parents took themselves off to a matinee performance of The Imitation Game which they liked a lot — although pater said they it seemed to make out that Turing had done absolutely everything at Bletchley, whereas there were actually something 10,000 people there during the war.
Somewhat inevitably mater told me that Turing reminded her of me, but when we unpacked things it transpired that she only meant that he was portrayed as somewhat pedantic. (I suspect that this false resemblance owes more to Benedict Cumberbatch than Alan Turing: I've also been told that Cumberbatch's Sherlock reminds people of me; because there's nothing like being told that you resemble a high-functioning sociopath to make you feel good about yourself)
On their return the parents whipped up a few curries from Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Nation, including an excellent cold starter involving chickpeas and pomegranate seeds. JF came for New Year's Eve supper, on condition that she didn't have to stay until midnight, and we had an extremely civilised evening talking about books and trekking.
We indulged in a bit of fanishness over Scarlett Thomas, who we both love, and, while talking about writers whose books engage with literary matters, J mentioned that she knows Sarah Moss, whose novel Cold Earth I absolutely loved and which has stayed with me and continued to prod at me ever since I first read it.
Talking about some of the things I'd read this year, I said that I'd re-read Susanna Clarke's masterpiece Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell ahead of the forthcoming TV adaptation (and, now that the Callander has flipped over, I suspect I'm going to read it again this year). It turned out this was an easy sell: although she hadn't read the book, J had read and liked Clarke's short story collection The Ladies of Grace Adieu and as a specialist in 19th century literature, I thought she'd probably enjoy Clarke's (to my untrained ear) excellent pastiche of Austenian sensibilities.
After an extremely nice evening, J left for home and I dithered about whether to go to sleep or whether to see the new year in. In the end I got an early happy new year text from R and her snoring springer just as I was flossing my teeth and by the time I was done replying, I thought I might as well wait out the last few minutes of 2014.
Here's hoping 2015 is a good one!
The parents took themselves off to a matinee performance of The Imitation Game which they liked a lot — although pater said they it seemed to make out that Turing had done absolutely everything at Bletchley, whereas there were actually something 10,000 people there during the war.
Somewhat inevitably mater told me that Turing reminded her of me, but when we unpacked things it transpired that she only meant that he was portrayed as somewhat pedantic. (I suspect that this false resemblance owes more to Benedict Cumberbatch than Alan Turing: I've also been told that Cumberbatch's Sherlock reminds people of me; because there's nothing like being told that you resemble a high-functioning sociopath to make you feel good about yourself)
On their return the parents whipped up a few curries from Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Nation, including an excellent cold starter involving chickpeas and pomegranate seeds. JF came for New Year's Eve supper, on condition that she didn't have to stay until midnight, and we had an extremely civilised evening talking about books and trekking.
We indulged in a bit of fanishness over Scarlett Thomas, who we both love, and, while talking about writers whose books engage with literary matters, J mentioned that she knows Sarah Moss, whose novel Cold Earth I absolutely loved and which has stayed with me and continued to prod at me ever since I first read it.
Talking about some of the things I'd read this year, I said that I'd re-read Susanna Clarke's masterpiece Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell ahead of the forthcoming TV adaptation (and, now that the Callander has flipped over, I suspect I'm going to read it again this year). It turned out this was an easy sell: although she hadn't read the book, J had read and liked Clarke's short story collection The Ladies of Grace Adieu and as a specialist in 19th century literature, I thought she'd probably enjoy Clarke's (to my untrained ear) excellent pastiche of Austenian sensibilities.
After an extremely nice evening, J left for home and I dithered about whether to go to sleep or whether to see the new year in. In the end I got an early happy new year text from R and her snoring springer just as I was flossing my teeth and by the time I was done replying, I thought I might as well wait out the last few minutes of 2014.
Here's hoping 2015 is a good one!
