To save the appearances when it’s still possible, Lilia’s family in law has
convinced her to go on a trip to Italy. Indeed, since the death of her husband she has become even more unpredictable and her family in law fear that she shames them by doing some
ridiculous action that would ruin the reputation of the family. However, the trip to Italy doesn’t go as well as it was first predicted and the family has to deal with an even worse catastrophe
than it was expected.
What did I think of it?
This is the firs book of Forster’s that I’ve finished to read and it is also the
first book he published when he was only 26. In the past, I indented to read Howard’s Ends but I never managed to finish it. The reason was not that I didn’t enjoy the book, but this is
the kind of reading that you have to read in detail and pay attention to a lot of subtleties in the narration. Indeed, his style has a lot of humour and critics about his time, but it’s not
something that you can read approximately by vaguely understanding the story. The interest is more in the untold and the impression that his words leave on the reader. Regarding Howard’s End, I
had to give it up because it was taking me too much time to
read though I really like
it, but at one point I needed something else and more refreshing. I didn’t have this problem with Where Angels Fear to Tread, as it is much shorter. But it is still a very interesting book as you
can already find there the author’s themes of predilection, which is the difficulty for people of his time, o understand each other. In particular, the cleavage between the difference social
classes and cultures. The misunderstanding that drives the characters to their mutual ruins is not only due to their languages and their cultural back ground. It is more an incapability to really
see the other as a human being that also has natural needs and feelings. All the characters seem to be blinded by their pride and prejudices. Though in the end the characters of Philip and Miss
Abbott tend to realise that there is something else and more important than the English social conventions, they are still unable to understand each others and Gino. Though I don’t think it is
the best of Forster’s books, I think it is still very interesting to read as a first approach of the author and it gives you a taste of what his following works will be. The humour and the
essence of his style are already there and enable the reader to laugh or smile at the characters’ stupidity or ignorance, in connivance with the author.
Number of pages: 148
Rating:****
The 3 first sentences:
They were all at Charing Cross to see Lilia off – Philip,
Harriet, Irma, Mrs Herrinton herself. Even Mrs Theobald, squired by Mr Kingcroft, had braved the journey from Yorkshire to bid her only daughter goodbye. Miss Abbott was likewise attended by
numerous relatives, and the sight of so many people talking at once and saying such different things cause Lilia t break into ungovernable peals of laughter.
“Quite an ovation,” she cried, sprawling out of her first class
carriage.
In 2003, this book has been published for the fiftieth anniversary of the film
Roman Holiday. Its aim is to celebrate the poster art of Audrey Hepburn’s Paramount films. Thus the author has selected a series of pictures from her first famous appearance in the
William Wyler film Roman Holiday in 1953 until Paris when it sizzles directed by Richard Quine in 1964, including Sabrina (Billy Wilder, 1954) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s ( Blake
Edwards, 1961). It also includes photos shot on the set of the films and pictures published in different fashion magazines. As Hubert de Givenchy said: “There is not a woman alive who does
not dream of looking like Audrey Hepburn”… And he was right :-)
What do I think about it?
I bought this book because I like Audrey Hepburn very much and I like the image that
she gives in her films and pictures. This book contains a lot of beautiful images of her young years. It shows a happy and insouciant image of this time and of the life she had. It is obviously
very artificial but I’m always happy to look at this book where every page seems to be a pretty little piece of art. The only bad side of this book is that there isn’t a lot of text. But, after
all, the main goal of this book was more to have a collection of nice pictures than a cinematographic anthology.
Norbit (Eddie Murphy) has been abandoned when he was just a baby. Mr. Wong an old Chinese man (Eddie Murphy) took
care of him in his orphanage. Norbit grows up among the other orphans and becomes friend with a lovely little girl Kate (Thandie Newton). But one day this little girl gets adopted and leaves the
town. Norbit, who is looking for new friends to protect him, finds Rasputia (Eddie Murphy) an enormous girl that took his defence when he was bullied by other children. Time goes by and
eventually Norbit marries Rasputia. But life became more and more horrible until the day Kate comes back to their town.
What did I think about it?
It is the worst film ever. I have no idea why I kept watching it until the end. My friend fell aslseep. It was
pure suffering. My brain and my eyes are still hurting. Eddie Murphy should just stop. The jokes are old and not funny and such are the characters he is interpreting. You laugh at it during the
first 5 seconds and then it just becomes really unbearable. Even on stage it would be too much. Most of the time, you just stare at your screen in a painful expectation, wondering when you are
supposed to laugh. Sometimes the dialogs are just completely random and you have no idea why the characters are say such things. We even get almost a cartoon scene when at the end of the film
Rasputia is supposed to run very fast but it just looks ridiculous and not funny at all. And who would have thought it but the film has a happy end. Very happy as well is the spectator who can at
last switch off the TV.
The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?
Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so i can see your responses!
So I have added some information when I have started to read the book but didn't finish to read it or when I have seen the film that doesn't count and so on.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (X) I’m currently re-reading it
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien ()
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (X)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling () I started the first book but was bored after the first 50 pages
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee() I have started to read it and I plan to finish it soon
6 The Bible (X) I’d say yes as I had to listen a lot of it at church when I was little.
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte () I studied it in high school but never really read it.
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell(x) a really great book!
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman ()
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens ()
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott ()
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy () I’ve seen film, really good.
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller ()
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ()
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier() The Hitchcock film is very good.
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien ()
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ()
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger()
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger ()
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot ()
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell () Seen the film
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald() I have seen the film and started to read the book. I’m planning to finish it one day ;-)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens ()
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy ()
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams ()
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky ()
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck()
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll ()I have almost finished it.
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame()
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy ()
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ()
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis()
34 Emma-Jane Austen () in my TBR
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen () in my TBR
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis ()
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein () in my TBR
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres ()
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden () the film is really amazing
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne(X)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (X) A must-read.
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (X) I didn’t like it.
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez () in my TBR
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving ()
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ()in my TBR
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery () I have watch the series when I was little
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy ()
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ()
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding ()
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan () I’ve seen the film
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel ()
52 Dune - Frank Herbert()
53 Cold Comfort Farm ()
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (X) read the book and seen the film.
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ()
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon ()
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens()
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley ()
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon ()
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ()
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (X)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov () in my TBR, I’ve seen the two films.
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ()
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold ()
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas () I’ve seen the TV series.
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac () I started it but got bored, I didn’t really like the style. But it was few years ago so maybe I should give it another try.
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ()
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (X)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie ()
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville()in my TBR
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens()
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker ()
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett ()
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ()
75 Ulysses - James Joyce () This books really scares me: it’s so big!
76 The Inferno – Dante ()
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola (X)
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray ()in my TBR
80 Possession - AS Byatt ()
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens ()
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell ()
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker () The film is really good.
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro () I’ve seen the film.
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert () I started it but lost the book that I was reading in the metro, so never continued after that. I should finish it one day :-)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ()
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White ()
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom ()
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle()
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ()
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad ()
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery(X) One of my favourite books.
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ()
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams ()
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole () I started it but got bored.
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute ()
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas () I have started it. I should finish it one day. I enjoyed the cartoon when I was little :-)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (X)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl () in my TBR
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo()
So in total I have finsihed only 13 of these which not that much but still twice the amount
predicted by BBC.
Author : E. M. Forster
read though I really like
it, but at one point I needed something else and more refreshing. I didn’t have this problem with Where Angels Fear to Tread, as it is much shorter. But it is still a very interesting book as you
can already find there the author’s themes of predilection, which is the difficulty for people of his time, o understand each other. In particular, the cleavage between the difference social
classes and cultures. The misunderstanding that drives the characters to their mutual ruins is not only due to their languages and their cultural back ground. It is more an incapability to really
see the other as a human being that also has natural needs and feelings. All the characters seem to be blinded by their pride and prejudices. Though in the end the characters of Philip and Miss
Abbott tend to realise that there is something else and more important than the English social conventions, they are still unable to understand each others and Gino. Though I don’t think it is
the best of Forster’s books, I think it is still very interesting to read as a first approach of the author and it gives you a taste of what his following works will be. The humour and the
essence of his style are already there and enable the reader to laugh or smile at the characters’ stupidity or ignorance, in connivance with the author.
