Movie and book thoughts - here and there

One resolution was to blog more often, but...well, I do a lot of thinking about it, but not much doing it. And, I can't believe that Christmas is over. I was going to write a Christmas blog, but that didn't happen.

One thing I wanted to do at Christmas time was to watch the movie "Christmas in Connecticut" and I did do that. I wanted to watch it, because my daughter lives in Connecticut and I also thought it was the movie where Bing Crosby sings "White Christmas". I remember watching that movie (the Bing one) one Christmas day when my daughter was young and we were playing with her Barbie dolls - just playing and watching. Anyway, I was wrong on that one - "Christmas in Connecticut" is a different movie starring Barbara Stanwyck. I guess I don't know my 1930's Christmas movies very well.

Speaking of movies I have seen two in the last week that I want to share with you. One is "The Station Agent" about a trio of unlikely friends and trains - sounds strange, but is a very good movie. I had seen it with my movie girl friends a couple years ago, but watched again with Larry , my husband. He liked it too - a funky movie, worth netflixing. The other movie is "The Wedding Banquet" co-written and directed by Ang Lee (or Lee Ang....). It is really good about a Chinese family with a gay son and his American partner. It took me a while to figure out I need to put on the English subtitles, since there is some English spoken, but most of it is in Chinese. Reminded me of the time I was in Holland watching an English speaking movie with Dutch subtitles.... "The Wedding Banquet" is well worth watching and another netflix suggestion.

One last thing. I recently read a good book by Barbara Pym (English author) "Quartet in Autumn". It is a book about four co-workers in their late fifties or early sixties - two men and two women (set in the 1970's). The writing style is spare, but gives insights and feelings of what it is like to be at the end of one's working life. These people are all pretty inhibited and it is not an upper to read this book, but I loved the quirkiness of it the little impressions of these people.

Just a quick story of getting this book. I love Barbara Pym and went online to find out how many books she had written (she is no longer living). I then went on Alibris and there were all her books for $1.99 apiece. I got all excited - only to discover the shipping was a lot more than $1.99, my big bargain wasn't so much of a bargain, but at least they were available and I could get them.