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.

Where Does The Time Go?

I've had a busy few days! I wish I could say that it had wholly been in the service of achieving more of my 101 goals, but alas, life steps in. Not that that's a bad thing in itself, as some of these things have been good too (and things in life can be good even though they are not part of 101/1001 of course).

Anyway...

I've read another book, Wuthering Heights, which was... different. It wasn't the great romance that I had understood it to be, although it was a romance; I enjoyed it, but not as much as Jane Eyre.

I started my replay of Resident Evil 4; it's a game I really love, and I'm glad that 101/1001 gives me a reason to replay it through to completion. The style of storytelling in the game reminds me of 24 - with constant twists and turns - though the story itself probably could not be further from 24... Mind, with the ever escalating "world in peril" storylines of 24, is it too much to think that Jack Bauer will end up protecting LA from parasite-infected crazies or zombies? Resident Evil 4's heady mix of gunplay, puzzle solving, monsters and eerie atmosphere makes it a winner in my book!

I've still not finished a piece of flash fiction to my satisfaction, but I've been working on them; I have three pieces that are at various stages of completion, and a few more that I'm just thinking about at the moment. I'd read the definition of flash fiction before I settled on writing 101 pieces as one of my challenges, but it had completely slipped my mind just how few words one must tell a story in. I think that this is going to be quite a difficult challenge in some respects, but it's one that I'm looking forward to achieving and I think I'll have a lot of fun whilst I do it.

Last week while I was invigilating I was able to start work on some of the maths challenges; I won't go in to that right now, as it's a bit fiddly. It's not difficult (yes, I have in mind that I'm going to teach you all some maths before the 1001 days are out) but would require a bit of explanation that I won't go into at this point.

I was hoping that I might book myself a little holiday in Stratford-upon-Avon to see a production of Hamlet by the Royal Shakespeare Company at some point this summer, but it seems that every performance of the whole run is sold out! There's still plenty of time to go and see a Shakespeare play, but I really did want to see David Tennant as Hamlet...

In other news, I've finished invigilating exams now, which is good as it leaves me more time to prepare for my viva (yay...) and apply for jobs (yaaaay...). Am working on two applications to hand in for university teaching jobs, and these have to be in by Friday. Hoping to get them sorted out tomorrow, as then I can take the afternoon off on Thursday to go and see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull!

And some time this coming weekend, which is a long bank holiday weekend, I need to sit down and write a letter to a friend. I might do some postcards at the same time...

...and then let me tell you about the Spider...