Media Roundup

I finished reading Two Caravans - A Novel, the sophomore novel from Marina Lewycka. I read her first one - A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian - and I'm not going to read any more by her. The stories both focus on Ukrainian immigrants in the UK, and how they fall through the cracks or generally get themselves into trouble. I didn't find any of the characters in Caravan particularly appealing, although the storytelling style was interesting. It jumped from character to character in the first person, including 'Dog' (the dog, my favorite character by far). Not a recommended read, unless you really loved the first one.

I also blasted through a Jodi Picoult paperback, "The Tenth Circle." It broke away from her usual 'courtroom drama,' which I really liked. I thought it was going to fall into the same pattern, about halfway through, and then suddenly veered off in a completely different direction.

I'm on to Water For Elephants, recommended by Kristen. So far so good.

The DVD for My Neighbor Totoro finally came in at the library - they'd lost the original copy and had to get a new one in. We watched it with James - he loved Spirited Away and thought Totoro was pretty good too. The last time I watched it was in Japanese with English subtitles - they were translated by someone with a tenuous grip on English, and were extremely funny. This time, it was dubbed in English (it's a cartoon so it wasn't a big deal), and while it was less funny, it's still a great film.