Book Review: “The Art of Racing in the Rain” by Garth Stein (2008)

I’m not a dog person. And I’m not a fan of race car driving. Despite all that I spent several hours today reading about a race car driver and his dog and his family. And I LOVED it. So much, that I have to recommend this novel. This recommendation comes with a tissue warning though, because this story will make you cry. At least it made me cry so hard.

A couple of weeks ago I read or maybe even saw in a clip that Patrick Dempsey (a race car driver at heart himself) has bough the movie rights to this book. Or planning to buy the rights? Anyway, Paddy had read the book and loved it, which was reason enough for me to at least check what kind of story it was. And I liked the plot and the reviews and bought it a while ago. I haven’t found the time or wasn’t in the mood to read any novel during the last few weeks, but this morning I decided to take a book with me for the trainride to work. I choose this book, because it seemed a less complex story than most of the book on my Unread Books Shelf. With so many things on my mind, I can’t concentrate on complex drama or thrillers.

Whiling Away Time with the Killers Top 10

I’m a master in whiling away my time. I planned to do a couple of things yesterday afternoon, but of course I just did a very few of them. Re-Reading “Lightning Strikes Twice” is just so time-consuming. And addictive and I guess it will be in the next couple of days as well.
I decided to not go to work today, because there is no way that the really loud re-construction in the building with my temp office will be finished already And it’s just impossible to work when there is loud screeching and or hammering from the drills and jackhammers all around the office. I can’t talk on the phone, I can’t concentrate and the apruptly stop and start of the noise is nervwrecking. At least my nerves were wrecked after only 20 minutes and a cellphone call I had to answer out on the yard, where there still was noise from some re-construction stuff on the other parts of the building. So I just set up call forwarding to my cellphone and left.
I definitely have to go in tomorrow though to check the mail before I leave for my short London trip. As there isn’t anything urgent to work on at the moment it’s not a big problem to stay at home and I could use the time at home to be productive and… well, if I didn’t have to restrain myself from compiling another “to-do-today” list and instead just start doing it!

Anyway at least finally is here my Killers Top10. And it took me about an hour to figure out the flash player / addblock conflict on my firefox. Talking about whiling away time….

Miscellaneous, 2008/07/20

It’s mid-July and I’m sitting at home wearing extra warm socks, T-shirt and a fleece jacket. Yes, and pants of course, the point is: It’s the middle of this freaking summer season and I’m freezing. I refuse to turn on the heating though. Thank god the forecast for the end of next week is slightly better, about 25 °C and no rain. I hope this doesn’t change until then, because I don’t want to spend 4 days in a rainy London. Although that would probably would be a typical London experience :)

The London trip wasn’t foremost on my mind for the last few weeks, but then I got my credit card bill for June with all the advance expenses for the London Pass etc and I was in travel mood again. I spent two hours last night to work on my detailed plan and I’m afraid it’s still too ambitious. I might just get too stressed after the first two days and spend the rest of the trip relaxing in one of the many parks and or café. Anyway I’ll probably need another week off work to recover from that trip…

°°°°

Besides planning the London trip I was busy with some other stuff as well this weekend. I finally completed the Energy 2 term paper and already mailed it off for grading. I wanted to finish this and the one for the Climate Change class before I leave for London and I’m happy I managed to achieve at least 50% of that goal. There is no way the other paper will be complete within the next four days as I haven’t even started writing it. I looked into some stuff and made some notes but besides that… nothing. Nichts. Niente. Ingenting…

I also was busy cleaning up some of my disk space on my computer, which always takes much more time as expected, doesn’t it? I have to admit that the time consuming task was to complete the Grey’s music collection (or at least find out which songs are still missing), when I found some of the songs in my music download folder. And to complete that collection I had to skim through some Grey’s episodes to find and listen to the songs on the show…

Talking about music: Last.fm has got a new layout. And I really really like it. Very neat and stylish.

Teach With Your Heart (Erin Gruwell, 2007)

I don’t know when this change happened. Maybe the touch-and-go with my mom at the end of last year triggered it. Maybe I was already getting so emotional even before that. I didn’t tear up that easily in my early or mid-twenties. At least I like to think I didn’t.
But lately I catch myself being touched and close to crying instantly over rather insignificant things. Like hearing a nation anthem. ANY national anthem. Ok, maybe not any anthem, but a lot. Or like reading this autobiography of Erin Gruwell, who is known for teaching and basically founding the “Freedom Writers”.
I saw the movie last year (of course, because Paddy was in it *g*) and I liked it and read the Freedom Writers diary earlier this year. I was already moved by the kids’ stories of their gruesome life. But reading Erin Gruwell’s version of everything that happened with and because of the Freedom Writers really, really, touched me. And I was close to tears a lot of times, about so many little things. Who they’ve met. What the’ve achieved. How many people volunteered to help them in so many different ways. How they managed to change their life and the lifes of so many others. And I guess I just have to accept that the change taht I’m sort of a cry-baby….

Penelope

Probably in the last week before the movie disappears from the movie theatres in Germany I managed to see “Penlope” and I really enjoyed it. Sometimes it was a little too overboard and I still haven’t figured out why her father’s love and acceptance wasn’t enough to counteract the curse. But other than that I found the story rather entertaining. Funny and sweet, typical chick-flick.

Unfortunately we shared the theatre with a dozen members from the James McAvoy fanclub. Or for whatever reason these ladies’ were there to watch this movie. But they were sort of obnoxious. I just can’t stand people who start laughing loud and hysterically during the stupidest and least funny commercials or trailers. And of course they had to swoon over the romantic scene near the end just as audibly. Can’t they enjoy and sigh internally, like I did :)?
So, the audience sucked a little bit, but the movie didn’t. And I really liked James McAvoy in the first movie I’ve ever seen him in except for his unexpected part in the Lynley serie. But could anyone please tell him to never again try this feeble attempt of a designer stubble?

Books & Movies – June 2008

I used to just post a list of the books I’ve read and the books I’ve bought. Recently I’m reading not that much and watched quite a lot movies or TV shows on DVD. So I thought I’d just merge these lists in one post. Although there never has been a list of movie / TV before, but that’s so not the point right now :-)

Books

• Canadian Slang (Reise Know-How, 2007)
• Careless in Red (Elizabeth George, 2008)
• 2 London travelguides
• Abgespeist – Wie wir beim Essen betrogen werden und was wir dagegen tun können (Thilo Bode, 2007)
• Der Mann hinter dem Regenbogen – Kanadische Eigenheiten (Helge Sobik, 2001)
• [and lots and lots of Grey's fanfictions...]

Movies, DVD & TV

• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (at the Movies)
• Inspector Lynley Mysteries 1.02 – Payment in Blood (DVD)
• In Bruges (at the Movies)
• Inspector Lynley Mysteries 1.03 – For the Sake of Elena (DVD)
• Inspector Lynley Mysteries 1.04 – Missing Joseph (DVD)
• Inspector Lynley Mysteries 2.01 – Playing for the Ashes (DVD)
• Inspector Lynley Mysteries 2.02 – In the Presence of the Enemy (DVD)
• Inspector Lynley Mysteries 2.03 – A Suitable Vengance (DVD)
• Inspector Lynley Mysteries 2.04 – Deception on his Mind (DVD)
• Enchanted (DVD)
• Chicago Hope 2.11 – 2.13, 2.15 – 2.16 (DVD)
• Doctor Who 1.09 – 1.10 (DVD)
• [and lots of EURO 2008 football]

trial & error

• Schiller (DVD)
  (Sorry, tinaskywalker, but I didn’t get beyond than the first 15 minutes)

Next months I really should share pix of my cramped racks of unread books and unwatched DVDs… :)