Lately I've been...

Reading
Geraldine Brook's The Year of Wonders (she's my new hero)
Sally Vickers' Miss Garnet's Angel (she's not)
Next up is A C Grayling's Enlightenment tome, Toward the Light. I'm becoming more of an unreconstructed Enlightenment product the older I get and the madder the world becomes.

Watching
The kitten climb the Christmas tree (he's obsessed)
X-Men 3 (well, I had to find out what happened to Jean Grey)
My bloody virus protection scan screen (for hours - it won't stop and it won't go away)

Listening to
Bushfire protection lectures from the local CFA
Possibly also the odd spin of Justin Timberlake

Eating
An awful lot of Christmas lunches at work
Lettuce, rocket and peas from my garden - tomatoes by next week

And also
The first reviews of Billabong Bill arrived (they're posted over here)

Atonement

I recently read a review of the new film which described Atonement as based on “Ian McEwan’s romantic epic”.
I can’t think of anything less like a romantic epic.
Well, actually I can (Chesil Beach, for one), but that’s beside the point.
That’s not even a PR person resorting to that cliché: it was a film critic. Shoddy.
Makes me wonder about interesting ways to apply some of those other standard film/book cover blurbs…
Charlotte’s Web: E.B. White’s story of forbidden love
Possum Magic, a sweeping family saga
Silence of the Lambs is a sensitive and insightful portrait
War and Peace, a fearless expose of one man’s driving ambition
Then of course there’s that hard-hitting documentary, laugh out loud, unputdownable, wickedly funny, classic, five-tissue, pageturner – Hansard.