Neil Gaiman: Stardust

My sister lent me this in FECKING NOVEMBER if I'm not mistaken. And I read it then. Took me a day or so, no more. This blogging business is one embarrasment after another.

Anyway. So I'm not a huge Gaiman fan, although I can appreciate that he's talented and all, but his "graphic novels", or comic books as I call them, go right over my head. Hang on, I think I'm repeating myself. I think I wrote the same thing when writing about Coraline. checks* Yup. How boring of me.

So, moving on: the premise in Stardust is that there is a town called Wall in England that borders on to Faerie, and every nine years on May Day there is a market on the field on that border, to which humans and fairies go. On one such night a little half-Fairy boy is fathered and later sent to his human father to live. As an adult he falls in love and sets off on a quest into Faerie to bring back a fallen star for his beloved. Adventures, magic, violence. All there. It's pretty good actually, very imaginative and original. I like. I had some quibbles with something but by now I've forgotten. Arse.

I'm slowly working my way through the book I got for Christmas from my husband. It's taking quite long since a) I've been working a lot on my translation and b) my son has decided that sleeping a waste of time. Just noticed that book has an entire website devoted to it, must check that out and see if it improves my opinion of it.

Also and most excitingly there have been some new adaptions of literary classics on the telly! We had the new version of Jane Eyre, one of my most favourite books ever, so romantic! A bit disappointed in the series though, overly modernized and changed, and I didn't think mr Rochester was that great at all. Also, IMO they missed the whole beautiful heart-wrenching morality of Jane's flight from Thornfield Hall. Then we had the Austen films, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Now, I love Austen tremendously, and I'm also very fond of what I think of as the "first" Persuasion film (in other words, first one I saw), maybe mostly because nobody is beautiful in it. Brave and realisitic decision! *applauds* Not to mention that the novel myself is my second favourite Austen novel (first place goes to Pride and Prejudice, obviously, then comes Persuasion, then Sense and Sensibility, then Emma, then the rest). So had high hopes, but found Rupert what's-his name's acting a tad wooden. Also, the makers succumbed to the temptation of inserting new dialogue to cover the parts where men speak amongst themselves. No no no no no. You're breaking the spell, dudes. Other than that, not bad. Northanger Abbey is of course a weak(er) book, so I was curious as to how they'd film it. It was fairly well done, to have Catherine dreaming all the "novel-inspired" bits, but not great. She wasn't that great. And her sister told her that "Mama said to come in straight away", where I feel "directly" would have been more Austenish.

Okay, baby situation. Feck it all anyway.