The Silver Screen Oasis

I tried both French and German at school, I found German by far the easier but I didn't keep up with it. I'm naturally academic but not as much when it comes to languages, I do find them quite a struggle, so anyone who has mastered another language other than their own has my greatest respect.

I wonder if how Anna sees her son in Anna Karenina Is endemic of how the upper classes brought up their children? Then I think of the examples of both Dolly and Kitty and see it isn't so. It does leave food for thought.

I read a lot of classics when I was younger, I'm glad I have got the grounding but I wouldn't do so now but I will revisit favourites and try to discover new ones. After Anna I'm listening to a Sebastian Faulks novel, a little easier to get into I'm finding.

I have started reading a book about anti-gravity. I can not put it down.

Very good, Masha!

Masha wrote:It was also imperative that I learn to understand English at a certain age because dubbed movies were adequate but I +had+ to hear Steve McQueen's own words.

I know what you mean -- I had a similar motivation in studying french. I was drawn to the music of Jacques Brel and just had to understand him. Translations sung by other voices were completely uninteresting.

Ah Masha, I still respect you a great deal for your skill with languages. I think it must be easier to learn when exposed to a language and it is one area which the British education system lets us down on. I watch lots of foreign movies, especially French ones but I'm not very much wiser for it.

I just finished a contemporary thriller by William Landay. This one is not as good as the other two by this relative newcomer. It concerns The Boston Strangler, crooked cops, an Irish family. More than readable, but I don't recommend it. Other books by this talented author are more exciting. MISSION FLATS, his first novel, and the currently hot DEFENDING JACOB.

What a fascinating conversation! I am always interested in linguistics and language, though I had little aptitude for it when I took French. I think it may be because we never used the language outside of my class. The U.S. is very poor as far as teaching languages is concerned. We are too ethnocentric, unfortunately. I was lazy, and it didn't stick, except for a few words and pronunciation techniques. I wish I'd applied myself more. it seems all we did was conjugate verbs. Then finally after 5 years we suddenly were thrust into idioms. I remember a tape we used to listen to in the first year with little stories and conversations we were to repeat. A boy had to watch his baby sister and he didn't want to. She cried and he said to her "Tais-toi, bebe" and struck her. It's probably the only really concrete thing I remember from french class.

I'm a Jacques Brel fan myself, PT. You are so right, no one can sing those songs as well, and certainly not in any other language.

I've listened to Sebastian Faulks The Girl and the Lion D'or and Robert Harris's Fatherland and now I'm listening to The Colour Purple, the 6 week school break approaches and I'm going to have to forgo the classic literature books that I love in place of books that can be easily dipped into, listening so often being punctuated with the sound of 'Mum' repeated over and over.

Seeing Masha's reference to the B.C. comic strips reminded me that I recently read Sex, Drugs and Violence in the Comics, a compilation of fourteen comic books. Twelve of them pre-dated the institution of the Comics Code in 1954, and the other two were give-away "warning" comic books for high schoolers.

The titles -- I Was a Come-On Girl for Broken Bones, Inc., Murder, Morphine, and Me, Gang Sweetheart -- provide clues as to the content. The fascinating part is that although each comic has about 13 pages of, yes, sex, drugs and violence, the intro panel and the last page always establish that those three things are not good things. So bookending the assorted lurid mayhem is a moral (though I doubt that the moral sold the comics and it certainly didn't stop the institution of the Code).

The truly bizarre comic of the bunch is Opium Slaves of Venus -- science, space travel and drugs all in a neat little package.

I blame Dewey and his screening of comic book panels from those years during intermissions at "I Wake Up Dreaming 2013".

You are on the road to ruin my boy. Pretty soon you'll be smoking and covering your breath with sen-sen.

Nah...sloe gin. No smell and it covers smells. Right?

I am considering a purchase of the Calvin and Hobbes collection

Good grief (obligatory Peanuts reference)! Calvin and Hobbes is my favorite comic strip of all-time. Back when it was syndicated, I saw a t-shirt with pictures of John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes. My only regret in Life (okay...please don't question this) is that I didn't buy it,