The Black Cauldron

 

I think that Disney did a good job with this but theirs was more whimsical. The book is more of an adventure piece. I like them both, but the approach was different. I never read The Chronicles of Prydain series when I was a kid. I just kept putting it off. I missed off. I may be 39 now but it is never too late. The characters are more drawn out in the book. Taran, the assistant pig keeper and a couple of men are on a quest to destroy The Black Cauldron from Arawn. The scene with the witches though was pretty fun in the Disney movie. 

The Night in Question

 

I watched A Boy's Life when I was nineteen and immediately read the book which was an autobiography written by Wolff. I'm surprised it took me twenty years to read another book by the author. He's a good writer. I just kept putting it off. This is a pretty good short story collection. My favorite story here has to be The Chain. It's about a man who lets his best friend get revenge on the people who've done him wrong. The story shows that this man is far from a good man. His sense of justice is twisted and does more harm than what took in his own life. I also liked The Life of the Body which was about a man's obsession with a woman he meets at a bar. Wolff has got his stories published in places like The New Yorker which generally means he's a good writer. He's worth a read.

The Long Christmas Ride Home

 

I liked "How I learned to drive" even though it wasn't a comfortable read. This play about a dysfunctional family during the holidays is ok, but definitely I felt like this was more of a play to be seen than one to read. This is because the play used Asian puppetry. It would have been cool to see on stage. I admire the writer for trying something different, but it gets lost in print.

The Pillowman

 

This was an ok play by Martin McDonagh. It's my introduction to the playwright. It's about a writer whose stories of child murders bares a strong similarity to recent murders. At first, he thinks the police is making up stuff but finds out the murders were actually carried out by his handicapped brother. This was not an easy play to read. The stories that the writer has written aren't half bad. I'll read another play by McDonagh soon.

Anne Sexton Complete Poems

 

It took me more than a year to get through this. I read it here and there. Anne Sexton was definitely one talented poet. The poetry in the beginning mostly focused on mental illness. There it was the most powerful. She dabbled in other topics like fairy tales which was just an ok attempt. Her confessional topics were the ones that struck me the most. This uneducated housewife rocked the poetry world in the twentieth century. It's proof that you don't have to be stuffy to be a successful poet. She was one of a kind.

Dangerous Liaisons

 I found out about this book through the fun but crappy movie Cruel Intentions. I probably should not admit that. I was surprised to find it was a book written through the correspondence of letters. That's not everyone's taste.For example I recommended Theodore Sturgeon's Some of your blood to my older sister only to have her tell me she refused to read a book of letters. But with Dangerous Liaisons it works. Marquise de Merteuil schemes to have a young teenager Cecile de Volanges deflowered by the dishonorable Vicotme de Valmont who used to be her lover. The girl is however in love with her tutor Danceny. Vicotme also wants to seduce the innocent married Madame de Tourvel. Eventually he gets both women but unexpectedly falls in love with de Tourvel. I hate to say it but the movie kind of runs out of steam by the end. Nevertheless it deserves to get the status of a classic. It's the only famous book by the author Pierre Choderlos de Laclos but then how many writers get a book that's remembered hundreds of years later.

The Harness Room

 

I really like the British novelist L.P. Hartley. This was his homosexual novel. It wasn't the first one to have a theme. My Sisters' Keeper had a gay character. It's a coming-of-age story about a chauffeur and his employer's son. The employer wants his sensitive son to man up, so he hires the chauffeur to teach him how to box. Eventually the two fall in love but the book ends in tragedy. This was a novella, so I finished it pretty quickly. It's not his best. I think The Go-Between is, but it was captivating.