it's more timeless than you'd imagine

Books After bashing out over a thousand words of my essay today and watching the Tom Hanks film Big for connected reasons (if you haven't seen the film in while go back and rewatch -- it's more timeless than you'd imagine), I decided to go out and see what the world looked like. Or as this is interpreted inside my brain visit the local Borders and surrounding retail park for some late night shopping. When I say local I mean in Speke, a half hour bus ride away. But it's open until ten o'clock and there's a Starbucks so it's as close to late late night shopping in Liverpool as you're going to get.

I managed to pick up a copy of The Book Group's first season in the WH Smith nearby for three quid, and a new coffee maker from Currys for a fiver. I'm drinking my way through a cup at the moment and I think I'm going to have to experiment with amount of coffee I need for a mug. It generates a dreadful noise which makes the vocal girations from the old Gold Blend commercials sound realistic.

My mum's retiring on Thursday after returning to work over a decade ago and looking for an apt present I've bought her a Scottish phrase book for next time she's in the highlands (it's a joke) and something called an Eggling, a small ceramic egg with a flower growing from the inside. I'm not sure which evolutionary quirk led to the development of this, but it will give her something new to nurture and I wanted to go for a present which will last longer than some daffodils or the usual bottle of wine.

Assuming I'm not boring you, elsewhere, in Borders, I picked up a copy of this purely on the basis of the cover...



... and the plot synopsis ...

"Kit Audrey Butler is the manager of the Orange, a dilapidated independent cinema. Estranged from her father, undermined by her boyfriend, and with her third screenplay recently rejected Kit finds herself badly adrift. Her favourite therapy, renting the appropriate video and scrutinizing the footage for clues on how to behave, no longer provides her with all the answers. But when new ownership threatens the Orange, Kit is forced to confront reality and discovers that help and heroes come in the unlikeliest forms..."

... although I'm sure it's chicklit (and how I hate that term) flicking through I found a reference to Vladimir Propp's structuralist theory at the start of chapter thirteen which is about as film theory inside as you can get so I'll dive in and report back. This isn't the first time I've bought a book based completely on the cover, so inspired by Keris here are a pile of others.







[my opinion of which you can read here in a four paragraph review which forgets to mention the fact that it took me three months to read the thing. Along with her confessionals I spent most of 2003 with Elizabeth and although it was a rocky relationship I don't regret it.]





I also reviewed that last book soberly here. Looking back at those, I think my interest was engaged more by the titles and the blurbs of those than the cover graphics. Funny. There's also a whole wopping great pile of these things still to get through but I'm taking a sabatical whilst I do things which have made me a busy person, like finishing my degree.