Me, Oh My

I might be a bit quiet over the next week as I prepare for my viva, but if I find the time I'll update about books and films and things.

I finished another thing on Sunday! After playing for a bit on Saturday afternoon too (ah, what a mis-spent youth) I settled down on Sunday afternoon to complete my replay of Resident Evil 4. This was one of those "because it's fun" things, and boy was it fun. Having played the game a few times before it was quite strange just how surprising the twists and turns of the plot and gameplay still were. There were so many times where I stopped and thought, "Did that happen last time?" and "But I thought that happened later!"

Resident Evil 4 is the only Resident Evil game that I've actually completed; I used to own "Resident Evil: Code Veronica X" but got about halfway through and decided that it wasn't for me (OK, so it belongs to the genre of "survival horror" but does it have to be quite so difficult right from the start???). The story of RE4 doesn't end on a cliffhanger as such, but it does leave things well open for future games (the forthcoming/delayed Resident Evil 5 for example). Thinking about what happens to the protagonists after the game has made me wonder about whether or not I might pick RE4 as the launch point for one of the pieces of fan fiction I'll write as part of 101/1001.

(aside #1: I have written a few short pieces of fan fiction before... They were very short though, barely a beginning, middle and an end)

(aside #2: I often wonder about what happens to characters after the end of a book or a film or a game... Part of me is convinced that a secondary character from my first novel is off doing other things now, while the protagonists live happily ever after...)

Yesterday I finished "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" and all I can really say about it is that you should definitely go and read it. Even if you would never normally read a detective story, you should read it. It is brilliant from start to finish, and has some absolutely blinding pieces of dialogue.

While I wait for Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" to arrive from Amazon, I am re-reading "Virtual Light" by William Gibson (and I may end up re-reading the whole trilogy that it belongs to before I take up "The Road"). I was thinking of going to see "Iron Man" with my mum yesterday, as she has free cinema tickets and hasn't been to the cinema in ages, but in the end because the weather was pretty bad we decided to stay in and ended up watching "The Last King of Scotland".

As a family we watched Tim Burton's "Sweeney Todd" on Saturday night: opinion was split right down the middle; me and one of my sister's really enjoyed it (I love a good musical), while my mum and youngest sister didn't like it at all.

I've got no other news for now! I'm collecting flash fiction ideas from all over, but not writing... Oh dear. Maybe when the viva is out of the way I'll be able to focus more...

More soon.