This weekend has been wonderfully relaxing! I decided to begin outworking a slower pace of life by re-charging my favourite way... lots of stories. 11am Saturday, Helen and I snuck away and guiltily watched The Princess Diaries 2 (I am well aware that whatever kudos I may have with any of you may be down the drain now but I really enjoyed it and Julie Andrews rocks no matter how old you are.) So what if we were the only people in there over the age of 12! Pure, undemanding, entertaining fun. Next I meandered in the rain, bought some lovely shelves that I'm going to have to recruit someone to help me put up and went home to tidy my room and do all those little things I never have time for.
I managed to finish my book The Lord of Chaos by Robert Jorden AND OH MY GOODNESS IT WAS SOOOO GOOD! Does anyone else other than Josephine and I read The Wheel of time series? Jo got me totally hooked when we were travelling in Italy, and though it's my first real foray into fantasy (I don't really count Tolkein and Lewis) I'm loving it! The meganarrative is a battle between the Creator and the Dark one for the earth. The Dark one seems to be breaking free and getting increasingly stronger but the Creator sends the Dragon (Christ allegory) to battle him.
The the micronarrative is about the people caught up in the this battle. Rand Al Thor is not devine but he is the Dragon Reborn, he lives under the weight of prophesies about destiny and his two friends Matrim Cauthawn and Perrin Aybarra are similarly caught up. Three different men with three different but intertwined destinies. One has accepted his fate, one tries to control it, the last is always running away. They make plenty of mistakes but have good hearts and always seem to land on their feet.
The Lord of Chaos is book 6 of 10 in the series. I'm taking a break from the rest as I have a stack of other books I've pledged to read before I go back to it. Right now I'm on the last couple of chapters of Eats, shoots and leaves, if you haven't read it you must! It's the most entertaining thing ever written on the subject of punctuation! Hmmm, you'll have to trust me on that one...
That evening I settled down in my pyjamas to watch the OUTSTANDING Shattered Glass. (Put the Princess Diaries aside, this is the movie lover not the hopeless romantic in me speaking) I wasn't sure if I was gonna like it but it really impressed me. Based on the true story of US journalist Stephen Glass, who was accused of fabricating the majority of his stories, it's well acted and very well paced. Christian Haydensen simpers and brown noses beautifully as Glass, and convinced me that he actually can act when given enough room and a decent script (Goerge Lucas take note). I really recommend the film to all of you - even those who normally shy away from biographies. It's definitly worth a look...