Weather update:
Snow again.
Reading update:
You’d think this kind of weather would give me more time to curl up with a good book, but alas, now that the holidays are over and school is back in session, the whole family is thrown back onto the dizzying wheel of activity. Fortunately, before all this back-to-real-life frenzy began, I did manage to finish reading one book: Philip Reeve’s Here Lies Arthur.
In a previous post, I expressed doubts and dismay after early forays into this book. Let me humbly say here that I stand (mostly) corrected. I have to credit Reeve with truly excellent writing and storytelling skills; notwithstanding the fact that only one of the characters appealed to me much at all (NOT the main character, but the “love interest,” if you will, young Peredur), I had a hard time putting the book down. Partly I wanted to see how Reeve would re-cast the classic Arthurian events, but also I simply wanted to know what happened next.
One of my initial questions was, What is Reeve trying to accomplish by turning the King Arthur story so rudely on its head? One answer I found was that the book is about how legends are made, a story about the power of stories. One little gripe: I did have some believability issues with the transformation of the central character Gwena/Gwen from girl to boy and back again (and back again). But perhaps this is Reeve furthering his metafictional theme: Just as Gwena and Myrddin persuade the people of Britain to believe that Arthur is a great hero, is Reeve winking at the reader as he tries to pull one over on us?
Books-into-movies update:
My husband and I have now watched half of the HBO miniseries John Adams (based on the biography by David McCullough). I offer some halfway-point observations. The film takes a whirlwind ride through the American Revolution and its aftermath, focusing more on personality (how the events impact Adams and his family and vice versa) than on the details of the conflict itself. On the plus side, this results in some fascinating insights into the politics of the Continental Congress instead of the well-trod battleground stuff. On the minus side, I did find it mystifying how eleven years of Revolutionary history passed without the Adams children aging one day. True, one child was added (initially predicted by Abigail’s burgeoning belly, appearing the next moment as a four-year-old boy), but otherwise the children looked exactly the same on the day Abigail learned of Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown (1781) as they did the day of the Boston Massacre (1770).
Most humorous portrayal: Benjamin Franklin with his stringy gray hair and his aged French-nobility mistress. Most gratifying portrayal: Thomas Jefferson, with his nonchalant elegance, his soft-spoken and cultured intelligence, his gorgeous clothes (oh! the clothes!). In one favorite scene, he lounges at a desk while Franklin and Adams critique his work on the Declaration of Independence, his facial expression a combination of pain and affected indifference. When Franklin bluntly suggests they should use the word “self-evident” (as in, We hold these truths to be…) instead of Jefferson’s more grandiose phrase, Jefferson lifts his chin and says, “I assure you that I chose every word with care.” Priceless, and something any writer who shares his or her work can identify with. Which leads me to…
Writing update:
I sent the first section of Early First Draft of my current WIP off to my trusted critique buddies yesterday. I think I have a plot. I have 20-odd pages of text. Life is good.
