Movie: Jane Eyre

Before the brooding Edward from Twilight, there was the original, Mr. Rochester. I read Jane Eyre eons ago, but there's a new movie adaptation out this weekend, and I love a good period piece. The lovely Mia Wasikowska (from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland) plays Jane and Michael Fassbender plays the mysterious Rochester. 

And here's the trailer: 

The Distant Hours

By Kate Morton

 

I couldn't finish it. I just couldn't. Such a disappointment. I've loved Morton's other two novels and was so excited when I found out she had a new one coming out. It was just overdone and over-written. 

Hopefully she'll get it together for the next one. 

Check out her first two novels, The House at Riverton and The Forgotten Garden if you're looking for a good read. 

Good News/Bad News

The Bad

A certain national chain of bookstores is near bankruptcy, and many of their retail stores are shutting down.

The Good

I got some pretty great deals the other day on my lunch break. Most of the fiction was picked over, but most people seemed to forget about the biography section. Here's a list of the books I managed to score:

• Queen Isabella by Alison Weir
• The Snowball: Warren Buffet and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder
• Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser
• Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi

I'm most excited about the graphic novel Persepolis. I've never read a graphic novel, much less one about a young girl's memories regarding the Iranian Islamic Revolution. 

                         

A Perfect Spy

By John Le Carré

"Sometimes, Tom, we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers. "


This is my second John Le Carré novel (the first was reviewed here) and according to reviews it ranks among his all-time best. I've attempted to read A Perfect Spy twice before, both times enjoying the dense prose, but getting sidetracked after the first few chapters. This time I pushed through, and was thoroughly rewarded - I couldn't put the book down until the very end (which is impressive for a five hundred page novel). 


Set during the Cold War, this epic book centers around Magnus Pym, a British spy and traitor, who has spent decades as a high ranking operative with British Intelligence, while simultaneously trading information with Czechoslovakia . The details of how Magnus manages to fool everyone around him are explored, but it is the slow building of his psychological profile around which the book turns. The reader delves into Pym's psyche: his ticks, ever-present ghosts, and his moral guideposts. 


Like my recent read, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, the book is partly an epistle. Shocked by a personal loss, Pym disappears from his family and work, holes up in a quiet boarding house, and writes a letter to his son Tom, attempting to explain his life and why he choose to spy on his own country. His letter gradually exposes his childhood and early years as a spy, as well as his conflicted relationship with his con artist father Rick. (In the Introduction Le Carré admits that Rick is based largely on his own father). Interspersed between Pym's admissions, Le Carré depicts the desperate attempts to track him down by his wife Mary, his long-time mentor Jack Brotherhood, the U.S. intelligence community and his Czech contact.  


Like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Le Carré is the master of describing the twisted art of spycraft, bringing it to life with his masculine yet lyrical writing style.