Last Saturday we had our housewarming party, and this was the ideal opportunity to start baking again after quite a long pause. I decide to bake a carrot cake and a key lime pie, as these are two strong favourites.
Sadly, and also quite upsettingly, the key lime pie failed. I have never really had an entire cake or pie fail on me, but this was just completely inedible: the inside was still liquid after a full night in the fridge, soaking through the entire biscuit base (which was actually one of the best I'd made in years! ah well...).
After the sad disposal of said pie in the dustbin, I quickly had to come up with another cake to make, or we would have had lots of hungry guests. I flipped through my Mary Berry's Baking Bible, desperate for a recipe that didn't include things I didn't have, and I found the Almond and Chocolate Chip Cake.
Now the ingredients that Mary Berry lists are as follows:
175 g self-raising flour
175 g softened butter
175 g caster sugar
3 large eggs
50 g ground almond
175 g plain chocolate chips
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
flaked almonds, for sprinkling
Of this list, I used exactly 2 things in the same amount as she ordered: the eggs and the flaked almonds. As I didn't have any ground almonds, I used some almond paste I still had left over from Sinterklaas. As this consists of equal amounts almonds and sugar, I dispensed with the caster sugar, upped some of the amounts, added some other stuff, and came to the following:
200 g self-raising flour
200 g softened butter
250 g almond paste
25 g cocoa powder
3 large eggs
100 g chocolate chips
1 packet backing powder
flaked almonds
Just throw everything in a bowl, mix thoroughly, put into a prepared baking tin (buttered and with backing parchment on the bottom), sprinkle almond flakes over the top and bank for 1 hour at 180 degrees C.
I added the baking powder because the almond paste was pretty heavy and dense, and I was afraid the cake wouldn't rise properly. In fact, it did rise, and it was nice and moist on the inside, sweet, chocolaty, with a hint of almonds. Pretty good, for a I-need-a-plan-now! cake.
Sadly, no pictures, as this was kind of a rush job, but I'll probably make it again some other time, and show you then!
Thursday, 2 May 2013
Friday, 12 April 2013
Workaholic
Okay, okay, I'll admit it. I'm addicted. Not only to chocolate and reading and British humour, but also to working. My contract says I have to work for 24 hours, but most weeks I easily make 30, often more. Why? Because it's fun. I like my job, I like the people I work with, I like sorting out the difficult backlog and dividing projects up into smaller bits and seeing those smaller bits completed and finally the big thing completed and having happy co-workers and managers when the thing that they didn't have the time or energy for to fix is finally done. But it's more than fun, it's addictive.
I've always been that way, having things done and handing stuff in at least 2 days before the deadline. Whenever we got an assignment in which you could choose your own topic, I thought about it on the way home and e-mailed my topic to my instructor as soon as I got home. Even if it was week 3, and the essay wasn't due until week 16. And then I would finish the essay itself somewhere around week 14, when others were frantically trying to come up with a topic.
So it's the truth: I like to work. I like to be busy, to create things, to think things through, to solve problems. I'm a workaholic.
Which is nice, most of the time, especially for your co-workers and group mates. It's sometimes less nice for your blood pressure, or the amount of sleep you need, or your social life. And sometimes it's less nice for you yourself, when you get a burn out or suddenly find yourself at 2 am working on some report that isn't due until next week, realising you haven't seen your friends in over a month and haven't cleaned your toilet in even longer.
I've never found myself there, I do seem to have some sort of track-keeper that goes off when I've been working too much, and makes me relax and take my mind of things for a while. Also, as I mentioned before, I really like my job, so it doesn't always seem like 'work'.
The thing is, when I don't like doing something, it really hits me hard. When I try to find excuses not to prepare things, or arrange things, or contact people, which makes that I find myself unprepared or grumpy or sleepy at an important moment.
This was the case with my teacher training. I liked doing it while I was doing it, teaching, but the whole preparation and filling-in-forms and reading difficult didactic textbooks really wasn't my thing. So I didn't put any time, or energy, or effort into it. I just tried to wing it, which is not something you can do in front of 30 12-year-olds. At least not until you've had some practice.
So I quit. This is really weird for me, because I hardly ever quit anything studywise or workwise. Actually, make that never. But for the first time, work was costing me more energy than it was giving me. It made me grumpy and demotivated and tired and trying to avoid the work I had to do. So quitting was the only way forward.
And I feel really good about it. It feels like a weight has been lifted, and I'm finally free to move again. Ironically, the first thing I did was accept a really big assignment from my publisher, which I will have to do in my own time. But that's okay, because I like doing it. And now, I can do what I like to do 5 days a week!
I've always been that way, having things done and handing stuff in at least 2 days before the deadline. Whenever we got an assignment in which you could choose your own topic, I thought about it on the way home and e-mailed my topic to my instructor as soon as I got home. Even if it was week 3, and the essay wasn't due until week 16. And then I would finish the essay itself somewhere around week 14, when others were frantically trying to come up with a topic.
So it's the truth: I like to work. I like to be busy, to create things, to think things through, to solve problems. I'm a workaholic.
Which is nice, most of the time, especially for your co-workers and group mates. It's sometimes less nice for your blood pressure, or the amount of sleep you need, or your social life. And sometimes it's less nice for you yourself, when you get a burn out or suddenly find yourself at 2 am working on some report that isn't due until next week, realising you haven't seen your friends in over a month and haven't cleaned your toilet in even longer.
I've never found myself there, I do seem to have some sort of track-keeper that goes off when I've been working too much, and makes me relax and take my mind of things for a while. Also, as I mentioned before, I really like my job, so it doesn't always seem like 'work'.
The thing is, when I don't like doing something, it really hits me hard. When I try to find excuses not to prepare things, or arrange things, or contact people, which makes that I find myself unprepared or grumpy or sleepy at an important moment.
This was the case with my teacher training. I liked doing it while I was doing it, teaching, but the whole preparation and filling-in-forms and reading difficult didactic textbooks really wasn't my thing. So I didn't put any time, or energy, or effort into it. I just tried to wing it, which is not something you can do in front of 30 12-year-olds. At least not until you've had some practice.
So I quit. This is really weird for me, because I hardly ever quit anything studywise or workwise. Actually, make that never. But for the first time, work was costing me more energy than it was giving me. It made me grumpy and demotivated and tired and trying to avoid the work I had to do. So quitting was the only way forward.
And I feel really good about it. It feels like a weight has been lifted, and I'm finally free to move again. Ironically, the first thing I did was accept a really big assignment from my publisher, which I will have to do in my own time. But that's okay, because I like doing it. And now, I can do what I like to do 5 days a week!
Sunday, 7 April 2013
Carving out a garden
Yesterday was the first properly spring-y day we've had the whole year (except 2 really warm days in February that were just too much out of sync to count), so we decided to do some stuff in the garden. When our house was renovated, the builders pulled out every plant in the garden and made a new path to the shed, but left everything else bare. Which means that the only green thing in there were some sad patches of grass, and the pots containing the plants that we took with us from our old garden.
So off we went to the garden centre to buy some new plants. Apart from some lavender, rosemary, thyme, strawberries, and seed packages, we also came home with a neat little bird house and 120 litres of soil, which we reckoned would be enough to get us through the day.
Back home, we started to turn the soil. This was more difficult than it sounds, because after about 5 cm of earth you get into this really dense grey clay that has been sitting in a big lump for the last 500 years and doesn't really want to be anything else than a big lump. Also, there used to be a pretty big tree in the garden, and although that was cut down and removed the roots are still firmly embedded in the clay, leaving strangely yellow vines of very hard wood. That's about 50% of the garden, the other 50% is just white/yellow building sand, about as infertile as the Sahara. So after 15 minutes, the 120 litres of black soil had disappeared, mixed in to create a strangely grayish mixture.
We continued to loosen up the ground, in the process discovering the shards of what must once have been a complete window, several pens, marbles, Christmas decorations, wrappers, bottle caps, stones, bricks, solidified pieces of cement, foil, and other things you do not want in your garden if you intend on eating what you put in the ground. We now have a full trash bag of 'foreign stuff' and are only about a quarter done. I am very curious what other things will come up.
We put in some of the new plants and some of the old plants (which one of our cats has attempted to dig up already) and went back to the garden centre, where we bought another 200 l of soil. Just to be on the safe side. I mean really, you can never have to much fertilised muck stacked up in the back of your garden.
Today appears less sunny than the weather reports would have us believe, but we still have a load of strawberry plants and other things ready to be put in, so we'll continue to carve a garden out of the clay and yellow sand for the coming weeks. We also still have to clear out and sort out the shed, which is now just filled with stuff that we didn't have room for anywhere else. And then we're going to buy a nice hard-wooden garden furniture set to replace the white plastic one that I bought for 10 euros at thrift shop when I was living in my student room.
Let's hope the summer will be long and warm enough for us to enjoy the fruits of our garden labours, edible or otherwise!
So off we went to the garden centre to buy some new plants. Apart from some lavender, rosemary, thyme, strawberries, and seed packages, we also came home with a neat little bird house and 120 litres of soil, which we reckoned would be enough to get us through the day.
Back home, we started to turn the soil. This was more difficult than it sounds, because after about 5 cm of earth you get into this really dense grey clay that has been sitting in a big lump for the last 500 years and doesn't really want to be anything else than a big lump. Also, there used to be a pretty big tree in the garden, and although that was cut down and removed the roots are still firmly embedded in the clay, leaving strangely yellow vines of very hard wood. That's about 50% of the garden, the other 50% is just white/yellow building sand, about as infertile as the Sahara. So after 15 minutes, the 120 litres of black soil had disappeared, mixed in to create a strangely grayish mixture.
We continued to loosen up the ground, in the process discovering the shards of what must once have been a complete window, several pens, marbles, Christmas decorations, wrappers, bottle caps, stones, bricks, solidified pieces of cement, foil, and other things you do not want in your garden if you intend on eating what you put in the ground. We now have a full trash bag of 'foreign stuff' and are only about a quarter done. I am very curious what other things will come up.
We put in some of the new plants and some of the old plants (which one of our cats has attempted to dig up already) and went back to the garden centre, where we bought another 200 l of soil. Just to be on the safe side. I mean really, you can never have to much fertilised muck stacked up in the back of your garden.
Today appears less sunny than the weather reports would have us believe, but we still have a load of strawberry plants and other things ready to be put in, so we'll continue to carve a garden out of the clay and yellow sand for the coming weeks. We also still have to clear out and sort out the shed, which is now just filled with stuff that we didn't have room for anywhere else. And then we're going to buy a nice hard-wooden garden furniture set to replace the white plastic one that I bought for 10 euros at thrift shop when I was living in my student room.
Let's hope the summer will be long and warm enough for us to enjoy the fruits of our garden labours, edible or otherwise!
Saturday, 30 March 2013
The read-on moment
So I've been reading The Hundred-Year-Old Man who Climbed out of a Window and Disappeared, the novel that ' everybody' has read and that is still in the top 10 of English novels at my local book shop (where, probably, about 10 people buy an English book a week, so it may not be a very accurate representation), and to tell you the truth, I didn't like it very much.
The writing style interesting, typically Scandinavian (even in translation this shines through), and it takes a while to get into. Jonasson likes to explain things that are very very obvious. He likes to give so many details that when asked you could actually tell which colour someones toe-nails were painted. He likes to make most of his characters either very stupid or very weird. All of this is amusing, funny even, when you start to read, but as you get to page 50 you start to think: is he still using this trick? I'm kinda done with it now!
Around page 150, I was seriously contemplating not reading any more. I hardly ever put down a book without completely finishing it, but this might have been one of those rare cases.
But then, somehow, he made me read on. It was not that the story gripped me (I won't spoil too much, but it is sort of a murder-mystery combined with Forrest Gump, only in this world, Forrest would be one of the normal guys compared to most of the characters), you can see where this story is going from about chapter 2. No, his writing style somehow got better, more natural, less in-your-face typical. The annoying little side-steps and superfluous 'of course' and minute detail somehow worked. It felt like Jonasson himself was struggling to get to this part of the novel, and now that he was half-way, and knew where it was going, he could somehow relax and write better.
Which is funny, because that is exactly what happens when I write a novel.
But leaving that aside, for me, every novel has sort of a 'read-on' moment, when you get totally immersed in the story and just cannot put it down. For some novels, this is the first line, such as "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much" or "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her" (if you don't know where these are from and do care, look them up). Sometimes it takes a while, such as with A Game of Thrones, the novel that a friend had been bugging me to read for months some time around 2004, and when I finally started, it took quite a while for me to like it (I've re-read it several times now, and it still takes a while). Several Neil Gaiman novels have the same effect. Other novels you can't really appreciate until you've finished them, and then you have to go back and re-read them. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was one of those for me, and The Remains of the Day too.
It makes me wonder whether everyone experiences these 'read-on' moments, and whether they're actually the same moments for everyone. And are they really the moments an author was fully confident that their story was going to work, or are they imposed upon the novel by the reader?
With my next new novel, not sure which one it's going to be, but I'll try to pick a good one, I'm going to try and keep track of this. I still have to finish reading about the 100-year-old first, although that does not seem like such a problem anymore now.
The writing style interesting, typically Scandinavian (even in translation this shines through), and it takes a while to get into. Jonasson likes to explain things that are very very obvious. He likes to give so many details that when asked you could actually tell which colour someones toe-nails were painted. He likes to make most of his characters either very stupid or very weird. All of this is amusing, funny even, when you start to read, but as you get to page 50 you start to think: is he still using this trick? I'm kinda done with it now!
Around page 150, I was seriously contemplating not reading any more. I hardly ever put down a book without completely finishing it, but this might have been one of those rare cases.
But then, somehow, he made me read on. It was not that the story gripped me (I won't spoil too much, but it is sort of a murder-mystery combined with Forrest Gump, only in this world, Forrest would be one of the normal guys compared to most of the characters), you can see where this story is going from about chapter 2. No, his writing style somehow got better, more natural, less in-your-face typical. The annoying little side-steps and superfluous 'of course' and minute detail somehow worked. It felt like Jonasson himself was struggling to get to this part of the novel, and now that he was half-way, and knew where it was going, he could somehow relax and write better.
Which is funny, because that is exactly what happens when I write a novel.
But leaving that aside, for me, every novel has sort of a 'read-on' moment, when you get totally immersed in the story and just cannot put it down. For some novels, this is the first line, such as "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much" or "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her" (if you don't know where these are from and do care, look them up). Sometimes it takes a while, such as with A Game of Thrones, the novel that a friend had been bugging me to read for months some time around 2004, and when I finally started, it took quite a while for me to like it (I've re-read it several times now, and it still takes a while). Several Neil Gaiman novels have the same effect. Other novels you can't really appreciate until you've finished them, and then you have to go back and re-read them. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was one of those for me, and The Remains of the Day too.
It makes me wonder whether everyone experiences these 'read-on' moments, and whether they're actually the same moments for everyone. And are they really the moments an author was fully confident that their story was going to work, or are they imposed upon the novel by the reader?
With my next new novel, not sure which one it's going to be, but I'll try to pick a good one, I'm going to try and keep track of this. I still have to finish reading about the 100-year-old first, although that does not seem like such a problem anymore now.
Wednesday, 27 March 2013
Teacher training
First of all, I am clearly not dead. Dead to the world, maybe, as we moved more than 3 weeks ago and still do not have any connection to the Internet, which is the main reason for my looooong silence here, but certainly not dead. On the contrary, I have been very very busy.
The good news is that my dissertation has officially been finalised and discussed and graded, and that I will pass my MA degree cum laude, or with honours, or whatever the equivalent English term is. Which is very nice, but mostly to me personally, as in the job market today everything that counts is experience and good ideas, and not so much whether you passed with flying colours or just scraped by.
So apart from my officially-3-days-a-week-but-actually-5-days-a-week job at the publisher's, I'm also doing a teacher training internship. This is a sort of basic course that the university offers for everyone interested in education and possibly becoming a teacher one day. It consists of a 3-hour seminar and a one-day-per-week internship at a local (or not-so-local, if you're unlucky) secondary school. I was lucky, I got a school that is a 5 minute bike ride from my home.
It is, however, kind of a weird school. As our local supervisor told us: this used to be the school you went to if you couldn't make it at any of the others. It's a bit go-happy, with more emphasis on children being happy and expressing themselves (looooots of music and art going on) than getting high grades. Kind of hippiesque. Also, very badly organised, with some students muttering about room changes and lack of information and what not by saying: "Well, you know, it's the <name of school which I won't mention>". For example, we'd prepared two lessons for last week Monday, only to hear on Friday that there were no lessons for those classes on that day, because they had the day off. Something they'd just decided, somehow, and forgot to mention. Finally, few digital advances have made it into this school, so I'm just using a blackboard and a crayon, and digital whiteboards or whatever can be found in just a few of the rooms, which are usually booked. So all great fun.
Now I'm taking the course and doing the internship to see whether teaching is for me. Many people have told me over the years that I would be good at it, that it would totally suit me, and I've always told them no. Most of my family is in education, most of them complain a lot about it, and I didn't feel like it was my thing. But then another teacher told me: "You'll never know, unless you try!" Which is really true. I've never stood in front of a class and explained something to them, or told them to get to work, or whatever. Who was I to say that it was not for me?
Well, now I have stood in front of a class and explained something to them and told them to get to work. And I'm not sure what to think of it.
Let me start by saying that at this school, there is somewhat of a pact between teachers and pupils. Teachers don't get too angry or strict, and students don't let things get out of hand too much. Everybody accepts one another, but nobody really goes out of there way (the spirit in some of these classes amazes me: there are the big-mouths who know everything and make fun of everything you try to teach them, but when someone puts their hand up and tells you they got the answer wrong or don't understand something, the big mouths just shut up and let you help them. Never ever, when I was in secondary school, did you put your hand up and tell the teacher that you didn't understand. Not in front of the rest of the class).
Now I'm wondering whether the fact that they did as I told them (even though they clearly didn't want to) is in part because of they're used to not making things too crazy and being polite to others. At the end of the lesson our coach (their real teacher) asked them what they thought about the lesson, and they told me it was good, refreshing, interesting, useful. Not sure if they really meant this, or were just being polite.
So there is a bit of insecurity there. Also, I'm not sure what I think about it myself. I don't have this whole idealistic idea of 'spreading knowledge'. I like to explain stuff to people, but mostly to interested people who've asked me about it, not to 30 bored 15-year-olds who would rather be playing video games or shopping and are constantly doing stuff on their phones.
Which I totally understand: I was exactly the same in secondary school. Which is why I'm not usually the one correcting them ("David, please put your phone away" "Ladies in the back, please pay attention" "Guys, stop chatting please"). I'm the one thinking: I would be chatting too, and there are a couple who are paying attention, who do need my help, so why not just talk to them?
Not really the educational spirit one is looking for, I think.
After the first 3 classes, I rode home and thought: This is not for me, I'm going to quit. But the thing is, I'm not a quitter. Also, I still don't know whether this is or isn't for me. I have a funny feeling it isn't, but I can't say after just 3 classes (co-taught, there is another intern standing next to me who is doing half of the teaching, which is fun and handy but also slightly annoying, as her teaching style and personality are quite different from mine, and I feel like we're clashing sometimes). So I'm going to try at least another day (3 more lessons) and see what comes out of it.
My coach, by the way, was raving. "Clear explanations, you got them to work, excellent, great first time..." Maybe this is my own insecurity or hunt for perfection, but I didn't believe her. My fellow intern did, by the way, but she is 100% convinced that she's going to be a teacher and she's going to love it, so it's easier for her. Me, I'm still not sure.
The good news is that my dissertation has officially been finalised and discussed and graded, and that I will pass my MA degree cum laude, or with honours, or whatever the equivalent English term is. Which is very nice, but mostly to me personally, as in the job market today everything that counts is experience and good ideas, and not so much whether you passed with flying colours or just scraped by.
So apart from my officially-3-days-a-week-but-actually-5-days-a-week job at the publisher's, I'm also doing a teacher training internship. This is a sort of basic course that the university offers for everyone interested in education and possibly becoming a teacher one day. It consists of a 3-hour seminar and a one-day-per-week internship at a local (or not-so-local, if you're unlucky) secondary school. I was lucky, I got a school that is a 5 minute bike ride from my home.
It is, however, kind of a weird school. As our local supervisor told us: this used to be the school you went to if you couldn't make it at any of the others. It's a bit go-happy, with more emphasis on children being happy and expressing themselves (looooots of music and art going on) than getting high grades. Kind of hippiesque. Also, very badly organised, with some students muttering about room changes and lack of information and what not by saying: "Well, you know, it's the <name of school which I won't mention>". For example, we'd prepared two lessons for last week Monday, only to hear on Friday that there were no lessons for those classes on that day, because they had the day off. Something they'd just decided, somehow, and forgot to mention. Finally, few digital advances have made it into this school, so I'm just using a blackboard and a crayon, and digital whiteboards or whatever can be found in just a few of the rooms, which are usually booked. So all great fun.
Now I'm taking the course and doing the internship to see whether teaching is for me. Many people have told me over the years that I would be good at it, that it would totally suit me, and I've always told them no. Most of my family is in education, most of them complain a lot about it, and I didn't feel like it was my thing. But then another teacher told me: "You'll never know, unless you try!" Which is really true. I've never stood in front of a class and explained something to them, or told them to get to work, or whatever. Who was I to say that it was not for me?
Well, now I have stood in front of a class and explained something to them and told them to get to work. And I'm not sure what to think of it.
Let me start by saying that at this school, there is somewhat of a pact between teachers and pupils. Teachers don't get too angry or strict, and students don't let things get out of hand too much. Everybody accepts one another, but nobody really goes out of there way (the spirit in some of these classes amazes me: there are the big-mouths who know everything and make fun of everything you try to teach them, but when someone puts their hand up and tells you they got the answer wrong or don't understand something, the big mouths just shut up and let you help them. Never ever, when I was in secondary school, did you put your hand up and tell the teacher that you didn't understand. Not in front of the rest of the class).
Now I'm wondering whether the fact that they did as I told them (even though they clearly didn't want to) is in part because of they're used to not making things too crazy and being polite to others. At the end of the lesson our coach (their real teacher) asked them what they thought about the lesson, and they told me it was good, refreshing, interesting, useful. Not sure if they really meant this, or were just being polite.
So there is a bit of insecurity there. Also, I'm not sure what I think about it myself. I don't have this whole idealistic idea of 'spreading knowledge'. I like to explain stuff to people, but mostly to interested people who've asked me about it, not to 30 bored 15-year-olds who would rather be playing video games or shopping and are constantly doing stuff on their phones.
Which I totally understand: I was exactly the same in secondary school. Which is why I'm not usually the one correcting them ("David, please put your phone away" "Ladies in the back, please pay attention" "Guys, stop chatting please"). I'm the one thinking: I would be chatting too, and there are a couple who are paying attention, who do need my help, so why not just talk to them?
Not really the educational spirit one is looking for, I think.
After the first 3 classes, I rode home and thought: This is not for me, I'm going to quit. But the thing is, I'm not a quitter. Also, I still don't know whether this is or isn't for me. I have a funny feeling it isn't, but I can't say after just 3 classes (co-taught, there is another intern standing next to me who is doing half of the teaching, which is fun and handy but also slightly annoying, as her teaching style and personality are quite different from mine, and I feel like we're clashing sometimes). So I'm going to try at least another day (3 more lessons) and see what comes out of it.
My coach, by the way, was raving. "Clear explanations, you got them to work, excellent, great first time..." Maybe this is my own insecurity or hunt for perfection, but I didn't believe her. My fellow intern did, by the way, but she is 100% convinced that she's going to be a teacher and she's going to love it, so it's easier for her. Me, I'm still not sure.
Friday, 15 February 2013
Bridget Jones's Diary
Yesterday it was Valentine's Day, and with Valentine come the sappy romantic comedies on tv. Now in my opinion there are only very few good romantic comedies (Notting Hill, Love Actually, When Harry met Sally, You've got Mail), and yesterday one of the good ones was shown on television: Bridget Jones's Diary.
Now the novels is of course better than the film. Helen Fielding's wit and genius are so detailed and intricate that it could never translate well to the screen. There are so many asides and extra characters and extra small things in the novels that could never be crammed into a film, and I'm happy that the film makers did not even try, but just took a different approach.
You may not be aware of this (having never read Bridget Jones, or Austen, or just never had the inclination to think about it), but Bridget Jones is modelled on Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice. Fielding did this on purpose, and it is quite easy to see once you know it. The big giveaway is of course Mark Darcy, named after Mr. Darcy, and I won't tell you anymore because I know the enjoyment of going through the novel yourself and discovering these little hints and links.
Anyway, in the film, another sort of link was made. First of course, Mark Darcy is played by Colin Firth, the big Mr. Darcy actor from the 1995 BBC Pride & Prejudice series. But few may remember Hugh Grant, who is Daniel Cleaver in the movie, as Edward Ferrars in the Sense & Sensibility adaptation of the same year. This basically puts the two big love interests of the two big Jane Austen movies up against each other, and makes the whole movie a big nod to the Austen film culture springing up around the time. Moreover, Bridget's mum is of course played by the same actress that played Mrs. Dashwood in that same film.
In the sequel to the novel (The Edge of Reason, reportedly Fielding is working on the third novel right now, due to come out this autumn), Bridget actually interviews Colin Firth, as she loves watching him in his role of Mr. Darcy in that same BBC Pride & Prejudice adaptation. Now I thought that they'd have to keep this out of the film, as you can't have Bridget interviewing Colin when Colin was actually Mark Darcy. But sure enough, they kept the interview, albeit in the Deleted Scenes. This form of self-mockery, which started with the novels, translated to the film, came back through the sequel and it's film, is precisely what Austen might have enjoyed, given the ironic comments found in her novels.
Now the novels is of course better than the film. Helen Fielding's wit and genius are so detailed and intricate that it could never translate well to the screen. There are so many asides and extra characters and extra small things in the novels that could never be crammed into a film, and I'm happy that the film makers did not even try, but just took a different approach.
You may not be aware of this (having never read Bridget Jones, or Austen, or just never had the inclination to think about it), but Bridget Jones is modelled on Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice. Fielding did this on purpose, and it is quite easy to see once you know it. The big giveaway is of course Mark Darcy, named after Mr. Darcy, and I won't tell you anymore because I know the enjoyment of going through the novel yourself and discovering these little hints and links.
Anyway, in the film, another sort of link was made. First of course, Mark Darcy is played by Colin Firth, the big Mr. Darcy actor from the 1995 BBC Pride & Prejudice series. But few may remember Hugh Grant, who is Daniel Cleaver in the movie, as Edward Ferrars in the Sense & Sensibility adaptation of the same year. This basically puts the two big love interests of the two big Jane Austen movies up against each other, and makes the whole movie a big nod to the Austen film culture springing up around the time. Moreover, Bridget's mum is of course played by the same actress that played Mrs. Dashwood in that same film.
In the sequel to the novel (The Edge of Reason, reportedly Fielding is working on the third novel right now, due to come out this autumn), Bridget actually interviews Colin Firth, as she loves watching him in his role of Mr. Darcy in that same BBC Pride & Prejudice adaptation. Now I thought that they'd have to keep this out of the film, as you can't have Bridget interviewing Colin when Colin was actually Mark Darcy. But sure enough, they kept the interview, albeit in the Deleted Scenes. This form of self-mockery, which started with the novels, translated to the film, came back through the sequel and it's film, is precisely what Austen might have enjoyed, given the ironic comments found in her novels.
Friday, 8 February 2013
Life, and things
I've read quite some blogs over the past few years, and every once in a while there's a looooong pause followed by a "Not dead!" kind of post, in which the author exuces him/herself for the long silence and vents on all the things they have been doing in the meantime, and tells the reader that everything will be better from now on. This is exactly that kind of post, except that I can't tell you that everything will be better, because I'm expecting everything to get even worse for a couple of weeks.
So what have I been doing? In short: working. That's right, I've got my first fully grown-up job as a project manager for several science school books. It's 3 days a week, which means I'm expected to sit in an office 3 days a week (or attend meetings elsewhere). In practice, it's 7 days a week, since I've got people emailing me about important things almost every day (sad fact: the first thing I log into when I start my computer is my work email, not my private email). This week was my first week, and as all first weeks go it was pretty confusing and energy-consuming, but at least I now have a basic idea of what I am expected to do, how I am expected to do it, and who I am working with. Sadly, the person whose work I'm taking over has not been able to come in due to a back problem, so I've been trying to figure these things out mostly on my own. But now I know, so that's good.
In other news, on Wednesday evening I sent out my dissertation yet again, hopefully it's now good enough to go to the second reader, which means it is nearing completion.
On the house front, things are moving slowly but steadily to the desired end. We (that is to say: mostly my parents and boyfriend's father, as 'we' have been busy working) have painted and drilled and hammered and sanded (sooooo much sanding) until the top floor is entirely done, and most of the first floor (that's second floor to Americans) too. On Monday the carpet guys will come to install (is this the right word?) the carpet, so then these floors will be reeeeaaally almost done. Most of the hallway downstairs is also done, plus half of the living room walls, and with the carpet in there we still hope to move the last weekend of February (or the first week of March). This weekend we will clean the whole thing, as it is veeery dusty (did I mention the sanding?), so that the carpet can go in nice and clean.
And once it's in there we can start packing things and moving things, as the place we live now is steadily filling up with piles and piles of books and other stuff which does not fit into the closets anymore.
Oh yeah, did I mention the two classes and short internship I'm taking this semester start next week? Lots of reading to do!
Anyway, I think that pretty much sums it up. Lots to do, all fun things, all things that make me happy, but also all things that leave me very little time for other stuff, let alone for thinking about other stuff. So it might be quiet for a while longer here, until we settle into the new home and my dissertation is finally approved. Then hopefully, we will have some more breathing space!
So what have I been doing? In short: working. That's right, I've got my first fully grown-up job as a project manager for several science school books. It's 3 days a week, which means I'm expected to sit in an office 3 days a week (or attend meetings elsewhere). In practice, it's 7 days a week, since I've got people emailing me about important things almost every day (sad fact: the first thing I log into when I start my computer is my work email, not my private email). This week was my first week, and as all first weeks go it was pretty confusing and energy-consuming, but at least I now have a basic idea of what I am expected to do, how I am expected to do it, and who I am working with. Sadly, the person whose work I'm taking over has not been able to come in due to a back problem, so I've been trying to figure these things out mostly on my own. But now I know, so that's good.
In other news, on Wednesday evening I sent out my dissertation yet again, hopefully it's now good enough to go to the second reader, which means it is nearing completion.
On the house front, things are moving slowly but steadily to the desired end. We (that is to say: mostly my parents and boyfriend's father, as 'we' have been busy working) have painted and drilled and hammered and sanded (sooooo much sanding) until the top floor is entirely done, and most of the first floor (that's second floor to Americans) too. On Monday the carpet guys will come to install (is this the right word?) the carpet, so then these floors will be reeeeaaally almost done. Most of the hallway downstairs is also done, plus half of the living room walls, and with the carpet in there we still hope to move the last weekend of February (or the first week of March). This weekend we will clean the whole thing, as it is veeery dusty (did I mention the sanding?), so that the carpet can go in nice and clean.
And once it's in there we can start packing things and moving things, as the place we live now is steadily filling up with piles and piles of books and other stuff which does not fit into the closets anymore.
Oh yeah, did I mention the two classes and short internship I'm taking this semester start next week? Lots of reading to do!
Anyway, I think that pretty much sums it up. Lots to do, all fun things, all things that make me happy, but also all things that leave me very little time for other stuff, let alone for thinking about other stuff. So it might be quiet for a while longer here, until we settle into the new home and my dissertation is finally approved. Then hopefully, we will have some more breathing space!
Monday, 28 January 2013
Happy 200th birthday!
Pride & Prejudice is 200 years old today (Penguin has a nice post on their cover art throughout the past age, for those visually inclined). Last year, Sense & Sensiblity celebrated the same milestone, something we commemorated in our "Jane Austen: fiction, history, fans" course. The other novels will follow suit, ending with the post-humously published Northanger Abbey and Persuasion in 2018.
I think it is amazing that novels which were written 200 years ago still resonate, and are still relevant and exciting today. People are still drawn to these novels and discover new subjects, angles, and layers in them. These are not just romantic novels for teenage girls, these are novels that paint a detailed, honest, sometimes ironic, often humerous, picture of the lives women in Austen's time. I have read them many times, am writing my dissertation about them, and will probably continue to read and love them for the rest of my life.
If you've never read any of her novels, but always wanted to, this is the perfect opportunity. Start with Pride & Prejudice, the most popular, accessable, and least 'layered' of them all. 200 years of enthusiastic readers cannot have been wrong.
I think it is amazing that novels which were written 200 years ago still resonate, and are still relevant and exciting today. People are still drawn to these novels and discover new subjects, angles, and layers in them. These are not just romantic novels for teenage girls, these are novels that paint a detailed, honest, sometimes ironic, often humerous, picture of the lives women in Austen's time. I have read them many times, am writing my dissertation about them, and will probably continue to read and love them for the rest of my life.
If you've never read any of her novels, but always wanted to, this is the perfect opportunity. Start with Pride & Prejudice, the most popular, accessable, and least 'layered' of them all. 200 years of enthusiastic readers cannot have been wrong.
Sunday, 20 January 2013
Alpha vs beta
In the Netherlands, there exists a differentiation between 'alpha' and 'beta' people. This difference starts in secondary school, when you have to choose between an 'alpha' or 'beta' profile, the first including mostly languages and/or creative subjects, the second being the science subjects. It is almost impossible to combine the two, especially since most schools now offer 4 'streams' you can choose from: nature & mechanics, nature & health, economics & society and economics & culture (the last one is a combination of things I still fail to understand). Once you're in a stream, your somewhat fixed, and it's almost impossible to take courses from any of the other streams (as classes are planned on the same time, e.g., 'chemistry is 3rd period, so we can plan arts history then as well, as nobody will want to take both'). But also further in life, people can ask you whether you are a typical alpha or beta person (or 'gamma', if you're into psychology) and then judge you as creative or logical or social or anti-social accordingly. You are put into the 'alpha' or 'beta' box and stay there.
I know this system does not exist in most other countries. I know, because I've tried to explain it to so many foreigners, who have looked at me blankly as I struggled to make it clear. It isn't clear. It's not really a 'system' either, it's just a way of labelling people, putting them into boxes to make things easier.
Of course, there are some people who do not fit in either of these boxes. I was at a talk by someone who studied Dutch, history and geography, and there was another person who studied economics and English. All of these things are not easily 'married' in the Dutch educational system, but do still belong to the 'alpha' box. It becomes even more difficult when you try to live in both boxes.
In secondary school, I took the 'nature & health' profile, but I added German and Spanish on to that, because I really enjoyed science but I also really enjoyed languages. I studied Biology, which went pretty well, but when it turned out (during my research MSc) that this was not the way I wanted to spend my life, I studied English Language & Culture after that. I enjoy science, reading about science, and discovering things, but I also love languages, reading, writing, and creating. Strangely enough, I do not enjoy the 'scientific' side of languages: linguistics. It is a weird combination.
Now it seems that weird combination has landed me a job. As there are so very few people who combine an interest in science with an interest in language, there are also very few people who can write scientific school books. And I've been doing an internship at a publisher for school books. And they mentioned they needed people who had affiliation with both 'beta' subjects and language, and whether I knew someone. I mentioned that I knew myself. Somehow, this led to me getting a temporal position at the 'beta' department for secondary education.
The interesting thing is, the third person I met in this department studied chemistry and arts. That is crossing the alpha/beta division even more than my biology and English. So now I'm starting to wonder what we're trying to achieve with this alpha/beta divide. Clearly, there are many people who do not fit in these standardised boxes. So making the world easier to grasp by trying to put secondary school pupils in one of four streams may be throwing a way a lot of good things, as people are not encouraged to stimulate other parts of their interests. They may enjoy biology and chemistry, but also history and geography, and now they have to choose. This may cause frustration, but also lead to poorer results because they have to take the 'full package' of what comes with the stream, regardless of whether they also like for example maths. If you choose a 'beta' stream, you have to take the whole thing. I was able to compliment my science profile with languages, and after 9 years of university have finally managed to find a place where I can use both. But how many people have to suppress or ignore part of what they love to do because they do not 'fit' in the system?
If we are the only (that I know of) country actually using this weird system, maybe it's time to look critically, and dispose of it. There are no 'alpha' or 'beta' people. There are just people, with loves and interests, and they should be able to study and learn everything they want.
I know this system does not exist in most other countries. I know, because I've tried to explain it to so many foreigners, who have looked at me blankly as I struggled to make it clear. It isn't clear. It's not really a 'system' either, it's just a way of labelling people, putting them into boxes to make things easier.
Of course, there are some people who do not fit in either of these boxes. I was at a talk by someone who studied Dutch, history and geography, and there was another person who studied economics and English. All of these things are not easily 'married' in the Dutch educational system, but do still belong to the 'alpha' box. It becomes even more difficult when you try to live in both boxes.
In secondary school, I took the 'nature & health' profile, but I added German and Spanish on to that, because I really enjoyed science but I also really enjoyed languages. I studied Biology, which went pretty well, but when it turned out (during my research MSc) that this was not the way I wanted to spend my life, I studied English Language & Culture after that. I enjoy science, reading about science, and discovering things, but I also love languages, reading, writing, and creating. Strangely enough, I do not enjoy the 'scientific' side of languages: linguistics. It is a weird combination.
Now it seems that weird combination has landed me a job. As there are so very few people who combine an interest in science with an interest in language, there are also very few people who can write scientific school books. And I've been doing an internship at a publisher for school books. And they mentioned they needed people who had affiliation with both 'beta' subjects and language, and whether I knew someone. I mentioned that I knew myself. Somehow, this led to me getting a temporal position at the 'beta' department for secondary education.
The interesting thing is, the third person I met in this department studied chemistry and arts. That is crossing the alpha/beta division even more than my biology and English. So now I'm starting to wonder what we're trying to achieve with this alpha/beta divide. Clearly, there are many people who do not fit in these standardised boxes. So making the world easier to grasp by trying to put secondary school pupils in one of four streams may be throwing a way a lot of good things, as people are not encouraged to stimulate other parts of their interests. They may enjoy biology and chemistry, but also history and geography, and now they have to choose. This may cause frustration, but also lead to poorer results because they have to take the 'full package' of what comes with the stream, regardless of whether they also like for example maths. If you choose a 'beta' stream, you have to take the whole thing. I was able to compliment my science profile with languages, and after 9 years of university have finally managed to find a place where I can use both. But how many people have to suppress or ignore part of what they love to do because they do not 'fit' in the system?
If we are the only (that I know of) country actually using this weird system, maybe it's time to look critically, and dispose of it. There are no 'alpha' or 'beta' people. There are just people, with loves and interests, and they should be able to study and learn everything they want.
Friday, 18 January 2013
Tuinvogeltelling 2013
Aan al mijn Nederlandse lezers: dit weekend is weer de Tuinvogeltelling! In de krant stond dat er dit jaar een record gebroken kan worden, omdat door de kou veel vogels onze warme tuintjes bezoeken om voedsel te vinden. Na het record op de langste file kunnen jullie nu ook deel uitmaken van het record van de meeste getelde vogels!
Dus nestel je komend weekend een halfuurtje op een plekje met goed uitzicht op je tuin en turf alle vogels die je ziet (meer uitleg op: http://www.tuinvogeltelling.nl/). Draagt bij aan de wetenschap, een mogelijk record, en het geeft weer een halfuurtje rust en mindfulness :)
Dus nestel je komend weekend een halfuurtje op een plekje met goed uitzicht op je tuin en turf alle vogels die je ziet (meer uitleg op: http://www.tuinvogeltelling.nl/). Draagt bij aan de wetenschap, een mogelijk record, en het geeft weer een halfuurtje rust en mindfulness :)
Friday, 4 January 2013
Making it our own
Right, it has been awfully quiet here for the past two weeks, and I think it will be for quite some time to come. During the past Christmas holidays, we've been really busy DIY'ing in our new home, which is finally starting to look somewhat more like a home and less like a place that lots of people lived in, painted weird colours, damaged, moved out of, builders changed bits and bobs on, dragged dirt around, left, and left sitting for 2 months. Just 2 more days to go, and then we have to go back to work/internship and we won't have that much time to do stuff anymore, so we've been going as hard as we could. Trying to make it our own.
I've moved around a couple of times now, and each time it was to a house (or room, when I was a student) I wanted to change absolutely everything about. I cannot imagine just moving into a house that is already 'done', especially if other people lived their first. Even if I love the colours on the wall and the curtains they left hanging and the floor, I would still try to change most of it. Because to me, it is like they are still living there. I really have to tear out the old wallpaper and paint and smell and feel of the previous inhabitants, and put in my own, before I can feel comfortable.
Now with this house, anyone would have done that. Firstly, it smells of disuse and dirt and just generally, musty un-used house. Secondly, it's slightly decrepit in places, with holes in the walls and bits falling out and stuff. Also, it is painted in all the colours of the rainbow. And I mean literally every colour. To make the fun complete, the previous owners also painted over things you're not supposed to paint over, like using wall paint for beautiful old wooden beams, spray painting a radiator shiny silver, and smearing the openings of the screws of the wall sockets shut. Yup, it's been fun.
Most of the second floor (that's third floor for Americans) has been done now, except for the floors which we will do last. Most of the first floor has been painted, and the bathroom was delivered today. On the ground floor, basically nothing has been done but plaster up some holes and tearing out all the tiles in the old bathroom (we don't need a bathroom on the ground floor, so it's going to go). Because on Monday, the 'real' builders will start, smashing down walls and building new walls, bricking up doorways and making other new doorways, and installing the bathroom. When they're done, we can do the last bits (haha, 'bits') and then hopefully we can move some time in February. If we haven't fallen to pieces by then. But at least the house will be well and truly ours by then!
I've moved around a couple of times now, and each time it was to a house (or room, when I was a student) I wanted to change absolutely everything about. I cannot imagine just moving into a house that is already 'done', especially if other people lived their first. Even if I love the colours on the wall and the curtains they left hanging and the floor, I would still try to change most of it. Because to me, it is like they are still living there. I really have to tear out the old wallpaper and paint and smell and feel of the previous inhabitants, and put in my own, before I can feel comfortable.
Now with this house, anyone would have done that. Firstly, it smells of disuse and dirt and just generally, musty un-used house. Secondly, it's slightly decrepit in places, with holes in the walls and bits falling out and stuff. Also, it is painted in all the colours of the rainbow. And I mean literally every colour. To make the fun complete, the previous owners also painted over things you're not supposed to paint over, like using wall paint for beautiful old wooden beams, spray painting a radiator shiny silver, and smearing the openings of the screws of the wall sockets shut. Yup, it's been fun.
Most of the second floor (that's third floor for Americans) has been done now, except for the floors which we will do last. Most of the first floor has been painted, and the bathroom was delivered today. On the ground floor, basically nothing has been done but plaster up some holes and tearing out all the tiles in the old bathroom (we don't need a bathroom on the ground floor, so it's going to go). Because on Monday, the 'real' builders will start, smashing down walls and building new walls, bricking up doorways and making other new doorways, and installing the bathroom. When they're done, we can do the last bits (haha, 'bits') and then hopefully we can move some time in February. If we haven't fallen to pieces by then. But at least the house will be well and truly ours by then!
Friday, 21 December 2012
Book-based films
Yesterday I finally went to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. I read the novel (in Dutch) when I was around 12 and re-read it again a couple of months ago (in English) and loved it both times. The second reading was done with the upcoming film in mind, already thinking about what they would leave out, and change, and how much I would hate them for it. Turns out, they didn't leave anything out. Even more, they added stuff.
Now I won't write a review of the film here, as I think everybody who is remotely interested will have seen it (or go to see it) and form an opinion on their own, and those who are not interested won't be interested in my opinion one way or another (I have a colleague who openly admits to "never having gotten through the first Lord of the Rings movie" and "not liking Harry Potter all that much either"). I want to talk about films based on books.
There seem to be a lot of those around lately. The Hobbit being the main example, but the glorious, lovely, you-should-read-this-if-you-only-read-one-other-book-in-your-whole-life Life of Pi has also been put to film ("that would be the LAST film I'd ever watch", my non-fantasy reading/watching colleague said), and then there is Cloud Atlas, considered equally unfilmable but still to be found in a cinema near you (I'm currently reading the novel) and of course Anna Karenina (why oh why Keira Knightley insists upon working with Joe Wright and only Joe Wright is beyond me). Not sure why we're getting so many book-based films, maybe the studios are getting a bit anxious where they put their money, so they're only betting on stories that have already sold themselves? The Dutch film industry appears to be focusing on 'deciding moments in Dutch history' (with the Willem Barentz' journey to Nova Zembla, the 1953 storm, and now the bombardment of Rotterdam) or sappy love stories all revolving around one of the few internationally famous actresses we have, and otherwise there are a lot of action movies (James Bond (technically also book-based), and Tom Cruise appears to be doing some running around again), and strangely enough very few thrillers or comedies around. Not sure if this is always the case around Christmas, must be, as we're all longing for nice fantasy (that includes romantic) stories that end well, or high-action movies that end well (don't they all).
Anyway, with book-based films, you can mess it up so badly I'm surprised at how many good examples there are. Firstly, you can stick too close to the book. The first Harry Potter movies did this, and they sadly collapsed under their own weight. Then you can get too far away from the book, changing important plot elements or characters and just making it too weird. Like the Lord of the Rings film that had the eagles fly Frodo to Mount Doom and just drop the ring in. Kind of missing the story. Then you can 'interpret' the novel in a new way, which might shed a new light on the story but usually leaves your viewer quite baffled, like the Joe Wright Anna Karenina version set entirely in a theatre (I haven't seen it, I don't intend to, but I've heard enough about it).
Somehow, you need to keep the essence of the story, the characters, the atmosphere, and then make it work in another medium. I think Atonement is a good example, as they changed some important bits (the whole final part of the novel has been changed from a first-person narrator description to a television interview) but still staid true to the story. And then they added some bits, like the colours that show each character's personality, and the beautiful soundtrack, which makes the story work even better. And you can still go back to the novel, and read that and enjoy that, and it can exist side by side with the film without either one being better; they're just two different interpretations of the same story. I think Peter Jackson did the same with his Lord of the Rings films, and again with The Hobbit. The main issue here is that the viewers have already seen what comes next, so the creeping shadows and darkness that you can't read in The Hobbit (which is, after all, a children's book) have to be superimposed upon the story. But the humour is kept, and the characters are the same, and the story too, roughly, it just all plays out on a bigger canvas. And you can still go back and read The Hobbit and marvel on the bits that Tolkien stretched out over pages and pages while they don't really matter and find that the main climactic battle is over in a couple of pages and still enjoy and love it in it's own right, and then watch the movie and see the whole visual interpretation of it without either one 'spoiling' the other.
I'm so very much hoping that they did the same with Life of Pi, which is a very philosophical novel with an essence that is hard to find, and a story that might not work so well visually, as it takes place mostly inside the head of the main character. But still, I think it can be done. And the reviews are good, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Only once have I encountered a film that I thought was better than the novel, and in that case I'd watched the film first and read the novel later. It was a Dutch film, Phileine zegt sorry, based on the novel by Ronald Giphart. In the film, several separate characters from the novel were combined, several disjointed events were connected and relocated, and the many separate climax scenes were also combined, making the 'life lesson' that the main character goes through much more distinct. Sadly, the book was just a big boring drag after watching the film. Not sure if I would have liked the novel better if I'd read it before watching the movie, but just to be sure, I'm now sticking to 'source material first'. Which is why I'm reading Cloud Atlas at the moment, so I can watch the film with what it's based on in the back of my mind. A bit of a puritan approach, but hey, book-based films just are in a place of their own.
Now I won't write a review of the film here, as I think everybody who is remotely interested will have seen it (or go to see it) and form an opinion on their own, and those who are not interested won't be interested in my opinion one way or another (I have a colleague who openly admits to "never having gotten through the first Lord of the Rings movie" and "not liking Harry Potter all that much either"). I want to talk about films based on books.
There seem to be a lot of those around lately. The Hobbit being the main example, but the glorious, lovely, you-should-read-this-if-you-only-read-one-other-book-in-your-whole-life Life of Pi has also been put to film ("that would be the LAST film I'd ever watch", my non-fantasy reading/watching colleague said), and then there is Cloud Atlas, considered equally unfilmable but still to be found in a cinema near you (I'm currently reading the novel) and of course Anna Karenina (why oh why Keira Knightley insists upon working with Joe Wright and only Joe Wright is beyond me). Not sure why we're getting so many book-based films, maybe the studios are getting a bit anxious where they put their money, so they're only betting on stories that have already sold themselves? The Dutch film industry appears to be focusing on 'deciding moments in Dutch history' (with the Willem Barentz' journey to Nova Zembla, the 1953 storm, and now the bombardment of Rotterdam) or sappy love stories all revolving around one of the few internationally famous actresses we have, and otherwise there are a lot of action movies (James Bond (technically also book-based), and Tom Cruise appears to be doing some running around again), and strangely enough very few thrillers or comedies around. Not sure if this is always the case around Christmas, must be, as we're all longing for nice fantasy (that includes romantic) stories that end well, or high-action movies that end well (don't they all).
Anyway, with book-based films, you can mess it up so badly I'm surprised at how many good examples there are. Firstly, you can stick too close to the book. The first Harry Potter movies did this, and they sadly collapsed under their own weight. Then you can get too far away from the book, changing important plot elements or characters and just making it too weird. Like the Lord of the Rings film that had the eagles fly Frodo to Mount Doom and just drop the ring in. Kind of missing the story. Then you can 'interpret' the novel in a new way, which might shed a new light on the story but usually leaves your viewer quite baffled, like the Joe Wright Anna Karenina version set entirely in a theatre (I haven't seen it, I don't intend to, but I've heard enough about it).
Somehow, you need to keep the essence of the story, the characters, the atmosphere, and then make it work in another medium. I think Atonement is a good example, as they changed some important bits (the whole final part of the novel has been changed from a first-person narrator description to a television interview) but still staid true to the story. And then they added some bits, like the colours that show each character's personality, and the beautiful soundtrack, which makes the story work even better. And you can still go back to the novel, and read that and enjoy that, and it can exist side by side with the film without either one being better; they're just two different interpretations of the same story. I think Peter Jackson did the same with his Lord of the Rings films, and again with The Hobbit. The main issue here is that the viewers have already seen what comes next, so the creeping shadows and darkness that you can't read in The Hobbit (which is, after all, a children's book) have to be superimposed upon the story. But the humour is kept, and the characters are the same, and the story too, roughly, it just all plays out on a bigger canvas. And you can still go back and read The Hobbit and marvel on the bits that Tolkien stretched out over pages and pages while they don't really matter and find that the main climactic battle is over in a couple of pages and still enjoy and love it in it's own right, and then watch the movie and see the whole visual interpretation of it without either one 'spoiling' the other.
I'm so very much hoping that they did the same with Life of Pi, which is a very philosophical novel with an essence that is hard to find, and a story that might not work so well visually, as it takes place mostly inside the head of the main character. But still, I think it can be done. And the reviews are good, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Only once have I encountered a film that I thought was better than the novel, and in that case I'd watched the film first and read the novel later. It was a Dutch film, Phileine zegt sorry, based on the novel by Ronald Giphart. In the film, several separate characters from the novel were combined, several disjointed events were connected and relocated, and the many separate climax scenes were also combined, making the 'life lesson' that the main character goes through much more distinct. Sadly, the book was just a big boring drag after watching the film. Not sure if I would have liked the novel better if I'd read it before watching the movie, but just to be sure, I'm now sticking to 'source material first'. Which is why I'm reading Cloud Atlas at the moment, so I can watch the film with what it's based on in the back of my mind. A bit of a puritan approach, but hey, book-based films just are in a place of their own.
Wednesday, 12 December 2012
Book endings
I've recently read two of the 'hot' novels of our time; The Casual Vacancy by J.K.Rowling and Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan (if you are now wondering where I find the time to read such huge novels; so am I). I loved both novels, but found problems with both endings.
With The Casual Vacancy (as with the Harry Potter novels), I was immediately immersed in the story (although I had to flip back and forth to remember who everyone was several times), and it kept me riveted towards the end. With Sweet Tooth, it took me a while to get into the story (it also took the story a while to get moving), but once I got into it, about halfway through the book, it swept me along. For both novels, this is partly because you expect them to end badly, and you can't help but want to know whether it does. The Casual Vacancy just contains so many destructive people, who hate both themselves and each other, and are willing to do anything to get their own ideas pushed through. For McEwan's novel, well, he's McEwan. Most of his novels end badly, or in some huge revelation you never saw coming.
Sadly, with both novels, the ending disappointed me.
I won't give anything away, but in The Casual Vacancy, the focus is on a large group of main characters and some secondary characters, and the ending of the novel consists of the musings of one of these side characters, which then throws another light on one of the main characters. It is nicely written, but not the climax you are looking for. It just shows that you as reader were right all along; that main character was more likable than any other character in the novel realised. But no other character (apart from said side character) realises this, so there is no real growth or process or catharsis, and you end up on a low instead of a high.
In Sweet Tooth, as I was reading the ending, I got the feeling that this novel would turn out to be some Inception-like loop, which would give a whole new perspective on the novel, and novel writing, and make you wonder if what you'd read was actually real, or a story, or a story about something real, or something that never happened and actually could not exist. But then, in the final two pages, this was blown away by some simple references, and it turned out that McEwan had pulled the same trick as he did in Atonement (but slightly different, of course).
This made me sad. It made me sad because it means that he really will never write something as good as Atonement and Saturday ever again (Solar was the absolute low point, followed by Sweet Tooth) and it made me sad that he (and his editor) did not see this metaphysical loop-like possibility of finishing. He wanted to write an account of the 70s, his experience of the 70s, and that is what he did, so he could not pull it out into something that might or might not be real.
His writing is still great, I love his style and the way his words flow and the way he describes a scene and a character and the small details that make everything real, and he will remain my favourite author for quite some time to come, I think, but still, it is sad to see someone past his high point. But everything has to end some time.
With The Casual Vacancy (as with the Harry Potter novels), I was immediately immersed in the story (although I had to flip back and forth to remember who everyone was several times), and it kept me riveted towards the end. With Sweet Tooth, it took me a while to get into the story (it also took the story a while to get moving), but once I got into it, about halfway through the book, it swept me along. For both novels, this is partly because you expect them to end badly, and you can't help but want to know whether it does. The Casual Vacancy just contains so many destructive people, who hate both themselves and each other, and are willing to do anything to get their own ideas pushed through. For McEwan's novel, well, he's McEwan. Most of his novels end badly, or in some huge revelation you never saw coming.
Sadly, with both novels, the ending disappointed me.
I won't give anything away, but in The Casual Vacancy, the focus is on a large group of main characters and some secondary characters, and the ending of the novel consists of the musings of one of these side characters, which then throws another light on one of the main characters. It is nicely written, but not the climax you are looking for. It just shows that you as reader were right all along; that main character was more likable than any other character in the novel realised. But no other character (apart from said side character) realises this, so there is no real growth or process or catharsis, and you end up on a low instead of a high.
In Sweet Tooth, as I was reading the ending, I got the feeling that this novel would turn out to be some Inception-like loop, which would give a whole new perspective on the novel, and novel writing, and make you wonder if what you'd read was actually real, or a story, or a story about something real, or something that never happened and actually could not exist. But then, in the final two pages, this was blown away by some simple references, and it turned out that McEwan had pulled the same trick as he did in Atonement (but slightly different, of course).
This made me sad. It made me sad because it means that he really will never write something as good as Atonement and Saturday ever again (Solar was the absolute low point, followed by Sweet Tooth) and it made me sad that he (and his editor) did not see this metaphysical loop-like possibility of finishing. He wanted to write an account of the 70s, his experience of the 70s, and that is what he did, so he could not pull it out into something that might or might not be real.
His writing is still great, I love his style and the way his words flow and the way he describes a scene and a character and the small details that make everything real, and he will remain my favourite author for quite some time to come, I think, but still, it is sad to see someone past his high point. But everything has to end some time.
Monday, 10 December 2012
Pushing papers around
So this internship I'm taking is about preparing for the working life that comes after university, more particularly, the working life in a publishing company. But interestingly, most things I'm learning have nothing to do with the work itself, but more with the things happening around it, such as 'going to lunch with colleagues', 'having a meeting with people from different backgrounds' and 'interacting with people on cold, stormy Saturday mornings when everybody wants to be in bed but they have to be at some stupid conference they don't want to be at'.
Another thing I'm starting to learn about: office bureaucracy. Today was a case in point, one that drove me almost mad. Now I'm not going to give you any names or specifics, but it's handy to know that the company I intern for is a publisher of educational books, and that they have a lot of their materials online.
Now some time in September, my supervisor got an email from a teacher saying that there were mistakes in one of the answer sheets in the online database, and that she was annoyed by this. She mentioned one specific case, and then said something about 'grammar assignments in the upper levels' also containing mistakes. I removed the mistake from the mentioned exercise and my supervisor emailed back asking the teacher whether she could be a bit more specific about where the other mistakes were. The teacher replied grumpily that she was not planning on telling us.
So about a month after the first email, my supervisor asked me if I could check all (that's right, all) answers for the higher level questions, to see if there were any mistakes. I did this, and emailed her with the mistakes. Then about 2 weeks later she emailed me asking whether I could correct these mistakes. I had thought some specialised author was going to do this, but it turned out I could just do it myself. So I did.
However, there was one question where there was no answer at all, it was simply missing from the answer sheet. I marked this question and send everything back to her, saying that I could not correct this question as I did not know the original author's intentions. She got back to me this morning, saying that the author in question is no longer working for the company (the questions were made in 2007), so I should just do the best I could. So I did, and finally, this afternoon, I was able to email the completely corrected files to IT to be uploaded. A full 3 months after the initial email from the teacher.
I got an immediate reply from our regular IT editor that I should contact another editor, as this was not her area of work. Okay, I thought, just one more email and then I'm done. I resend the email to the second editor, crossed my fingers, and got an immediate reply. Success! I thought. But no, it was an out-of-office reply, stating that the editor would be on holiday until the 2nd of January...
Taking into account the multitude of email this person is going to have after an month's absence, I should be happy if the files are uploaded before my internship finishes. That will be a full 4 months after the teacher initially send her email. All the work I've done on the project could be condensed to about 6 hours. So all the rest of it, the emailing, the waiting, the misunderstandings, the miss-sending, all of that took up the rest of the 4 months.
I'm now starting to see how it is that in such huuuuge companies, stuff always takes longer than you expect. It also makes me less grumpy at our mortgage guy, who delayed our mortgage by 10 days. 10 days is peanuts, I now know, it could easily have been 4 months!
Another thing I'm starting to learn about: office bureaucracy. Today was a case in point, one that drove me almost mad. Now I'm not going to give you any names or specifics, but it's handy to know that the company I intern for is a publisher of educational books, and that they have a lot of their materials online.
Now some time in September, my supervisor got an email from a teacher saying that there were mistakes in one of the answer sheets in the online database, and that she was annoyed by this. She mentioned one specific case, and then said something about 'grammar assignments in the upper levels' also containing mistakes. I removed the mistake from the mentioned exercise and my supervisor emailed back asking the teacher whether she could be a bit more specific about where the other mistakes were. The teacher replied grumpily that she was not planning on telling us.
So about a month after the first email, my supervisor asked me if I could check all (that's right, all) answers for the higher level questions, to see if there were any mistakes. I did this, and emailed her with the mistakes. Then about 2 weeks later she emailed me asking whether I could correct these mistakes. I had thought some specialised author was going to do this, but it turned out I could just do it myself. So I did.
However, there was one question where there was no answer at all, it was simply missing from the answer sheet. I marked this question and send everything back to her, saying that I could not correct this question as I did not know the original author's intentions. She got back to me this morning, saying that the author in question is no longer working for the company (the questions were made in 2007), so I should just do the best I could. So I did, and finally, this afternoon, I was able to email the completely corrected files to IT to be uploaded. A full 3 months after the initial email from the teacher.
I got an immediate reply from our regular IT editor that I should contact another editor, as this was not her area of work. Okay, I thought, just one more email and then I'm done. I resend the email to the second editor, crossed my fingers, and got an immediate reply. Success! I thought. But no, it was an out-of-office reply, stating that the editor would be on holiday until the 2nd of January...
Taking into account the multitude of email this person is going to have after an month's absence, I should be happy if the files are uploaded before my internship finishes. That will be a full 4 months after the teacher initially send her email. All the work I've done on the project could be condensed to about 6 hours. So all the rest of it, the emailing, the waiting, the misunderstandings, the miss-sending, all of that took up the rest of the 4 months.
I'm now starting to see how it is that in such huuuuge companies, stuff always takes longer than you expect. It also makes me less grumpy at our mortgage guy, who delayed our mortgage by 10 days. 10 days is peanuts, I now know, it could easily have been 4 months!
Wednesday, 5 December 2012
Facing the difficulties
Today, the 5th of December, is usually a day of joy in The Netherlands. It's Sinterklaas, meaning presents, poems, sweets, chocolate, and family time. As there are no small children 'believing' in Sinterklaas in my family anymore we celebrated it last Friday, but many of my internship colleagues are leaving early, and there was a Sinterklaas walking around the building handing out pepernoten and sweets just an hour ago.
But today, its more a day of misery. Bad things seem to be happening all around me; people getting fired, plans going awry, things they've worked towards for months suddenly being cancelled or changed... I won't go into specifics, as these are not my personal things, but somehow, they all come at the same time.
I've had some bad stuff myself; yesterday I agreed with my supervisor that I am going to completely rewrite my MA dissertation, which will take a lot of work, as I am basically starting all over again from scratch. This is something I decided on my own, and I'm happy with that decision, so it's not completely a bad thing, but still, it threw me for a while. And then today, the guy at the bank told us that we won't be getting our mortgage at the time we thought we would, so we wont be able to sign our contract and get the key on the date we'd planned, so now we've had to move everything around, from the signing day to the day the contractor is going to inspect to the day we actually start working.
This was more than annoying, this was actually enough to make me quite angry, as the bank guy told us the stuff would be done/available by a certain date, and now he was telling us that they were very busy, and had to do overtime, and were understaffed, and boo-hoo, and he couldn't make it. They should have seen this coming weeks ago, as the mortgage laws are going to change by 1 January 2013, and lots of people are wanting to get in on the old system while they still can. And moreover, him working overtime is none of my problem, we're paying him to do this work, so he should be doing it (in time!).
But in neither cases I really got angry. I got annoyed, but not in the shouty "I won't talk to you because you're ruining all my plans but I will shout at you until you give me what I want" way that some people have. I get annoyed for about 10 seconds, and then I switch into practical "okay, this is not the way we'd planned it or wanted it, but this is the situation we have, so how can we make it work anyway?" Pragmatism. I never knew I was pragmatic until faced with these kinds of things, and I'm happy I am, because being angry and/or annoyed and/or shouting your head off at the person who needs to help you doesn't get you anywhere.
But that doesn't take away from the fact that some people are having a really bad day today, and that there's a wall (a mountain, more like) of stuff coming up for me to do, all of it over the holidays, meaning no rest for the interning, dissertation-writing DIY-ers. I hope I can retain the positive view on things that I have now, which is mostly based on "I/we'll figure it out in the end". And you always do.
But today, its more a day of misery. Bad things seem to be happening all around me; people getting fired, plans going awry, things they've worked towards for months suddenly being cancelled or changed... I won't go into specifics, as these are not my personal things, but somehow, they all come at the same time.
I've had some bad stuff myself; yesterday I agreed with my supervisor that I am going to completely rewrite my MA dissertation, which will take a lot of work, as I am basically starting all over again from scratch. This is something I decided on my own, and I'm happy with that decision, so it's not completely a bad thing, but still, it threw me for a while. And then today, the guy at the bank told us that we won't be getting our mortgage at the time we thought we would, so we wont be able to sign our contract and get the key on the date we'd planned, so now we've had to move everything around, from the signing day to the day the contractor is going to inspect to the day we actually start working.
This was more than annoying, this was actually enough to make me quite angry, as the bank guy told us the stuff would be done/available by a certain date, and now he was telling us that they were very busy, and had to do overtime, and were understaffed, and boo-hoo, and he couldn't make it. They should have seen this coming weeks ago, as the mortgage laws are going to change by 1 January 2013, and lots of people are wanting to get in on the old system while they still can. And moreover, him working overtime is none of my problem, we're paying him to do this work, so he should be doing it (in time!).
But in neither cases I really got angry. I got annoyed, but not in the shouty "I won't talk to you because you're ruining all my plans but I will shout at you until you give me what I want" way that some people have. I get annoyed for about 10 seconds, and then I switch into practical "okay, this is not the way we'd planned it or wanted it, but this is the situation we have, so how can we make it work anyway?" Pragmatism. I never knew I was pragmatic until faced with these kinds of things, and I'm happy I am, because being angry and/or annoyed and/or shouting your head off at the person who needs to help you doesn't get you anywhere.
But that doesn't take away from the fact that some people are having a really bad day today, and that there's a wall (a mountain, more like) of stuff coming up for me to do, all of it over the holidays, meaning no rest for the interning, dissertation-writing DIY-ers. I hope I can retain the positive view on things that I have now, which is mostly based on "I/we'll figure it out in the end". And you always do.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)