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alobearFriday night saw me introduced to The Salute of the Jugger, an 80s post-apocalyptic film, starring Rutger Hauer. It involved a classic storytelling structure, which followed the trials and tribulations of a team of Juggers, travelling the desert to earn food and lodging by winning games against the villagers. It was predictable and gritty, but it kept me gripped right to the end, with great characters, archetypal plot points and exciting action. Good entertainment, all round.
This week, I listened to the audiobook of Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko, the film version of which I remember enjoying quite a few years ago. The world of the Others in modern day Russia was very well-drawn and quite intriguing, and the treaty between the Light and Dark Others made for some interesting concepts in terms of ethics and serving the greater good. I liked the protagonist and most of the peripheral characters, and the stories were multi-layered and more complex than I had expected. The only drawback was the narrator - he was perfectly decent at reading the text, but I found the contrasting accents quite off-putting. He read the narrative with an American accent, but gave all the characters Russian accents. This wouldn't have been a problem, but the book is written in the first person, so there was a weird disconnect between the protagonist Anton when he was narrating and Anton when he had dialogue, which proved quite jarring.
The second book I have revisited after re-reading my earlier Live Journal entries is I Never Promised You A Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg. It tells the story of a teenage girl recovering from severe mental illness over the course of several years in a psychiatric hospital, in the late 1940s. It's very well written and absorbing, and I think I got even more out of it this time around than last time, since I've had a lot more experience with mental illness (my own and other people's) in recent years, which has given me a different perspective. The book is impressive because it portrays multiple different viewpoints and perceptions - the patients of themselves and of the hospital staff, the staff of themselves and of the patients, the protagonist of herself, her doctor and her family, the doctor and the family of the protagonist and themselves, the patients of the wider world, and society of mental illness in general. It's very detailed and quite immersive, and the well-rounded nature of the narrative provides great depth and demonstrates a universal understanding of the challenges of mental illness both for those suffering from it, and the other people around them. It has a lot to say about fear and expectation - not least in terms of the fear of stripping away one's ingrained ideas and reactions (no matter how painful or harmful they may be) and discovering that life is not automatically a rose garden once they are gone.
This week, I listened to the audiobook of Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko, the film version of which I remember enjoying quite a few years ago. The world of the Others in modern day Russia was very well-drawn and quite intriguing, and the treaty between the Light and Dark Others made for some interesting concepts in terms of ethics and serving the greater good. I liked the protagonist and most of the peripheral characters, and the stories were multi-layered and more complex than I had expected. The only drawback was the narrator - he was perfectly decent at reading the text, but I found the contrasting accents quite off-putting. He read the narrative with an American accent, but gave all the characters Russian accents. This wouldn't have been a problem, but the book is written in the first person, so there was a weird disconnect between the protagonist Anton when he was narrating and Anton when he had dialogue, which proved quite jarring.
The second book I have revisited after re-reading my earlier Live Journal entries is I Never Promised You A Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg. It tells the story of a teenage girl recovering from severe mental illness over the course of several years in a psychiatric hospital, in the late 1940s. It's very well written and absorbing, and I think I got even more out of it this time around than last time, since I've had a lot more experience with mental illness (my own and other people's) in recent years, which has given me a different perspective. The book is impressive because it portrays multiple different viewpoints and perceptions - the patients of themselves and of the hospital staff, the staff of themselves and of the patients, the protagonist of herself, her doctor and her family, the doctor and the family of the protagonist and themselves, the patients of the wider world, and society of mental illness in general. It's very detailed and quite immersive, and the well-rounded nature of the narrative provides great depth and demonstrates a universal understanding of the challenges of mental illness both for those suffering from it, and the other people around them. It has a lot to say about fear and expectation - not least in terms of the fear of stripping away one's ingrained ideas and reactions (no matter how painful or harmful they may be) and discovering that life is not automatically a rose garden once they are gone.
