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Sopron, Hungary

It was a bank holiday weekend here in Austria and we spent the day yesterday in Sopron, just over the western border of Hungary. It’s a beautiful town at the foot of the Alps, 60 km from Vienna and 220 km from Budapest, and is one of the oldest in the country. The first settlers were the Celts, then the Romans (as a trading spot along the Amber Route from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic and Byzantium), then a succession of Germans and Slavs. In recent years, Sopron helped to bring down the Iron Curtain, creating an escape route. It is one of the most beautiful towns in western Hungary. The medieval Inner Town (Belváros) is intact and its cobbled streets add to the charm. We whiled away the hours walking, drinking coffee and exploring small arches and hidden alleyways. It had so much character and a great sense of history.

#bookadayUK Book to Film Adaptation: The Great Gatsby

This one was a choice between To Kill a Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby. Film adaptations from books can often be a huge anticlimax, and it can be an even greater disappointment in reverse. If I have not managed to read the book before a film is released, then I come to the book with preconceived images in my mind. I find that it completely ruins the story. Part of the joy of reading is the creating of a world in your mind as you delve into the pages.

The Great Gatsby, for me, was anything but a let down. I don’t really need to say anything about the book, but the film was an extravaganza to fill the senses. Some may say that the cinematography detracted from the story, but I disagree. It is one of the most striking films I’ve seen for a while. In typical Luhrmann style, the film is a modernised version of the original story. I liked the addition of music which would not have existed in the 20s. His originality of style is partly what makes the adaptation work.

As of 2014, it is Baz Luhrmann‘s highest grossing film to date, earning over $350 million. At the 86th Academy Awards, it won both Best Production Design and Best Costume Design.

I’m very much looking forward to the film adaptation of Before I Go to Sleep, due to be released in 2014!

#bookaday Have more than one copy: The Lighthouse

I have two paperback copies and a kindle download. This gives you an idea of how much I enjoyed it. The doubling up of the paperbacks is down to a joyful discounted purchase of the Booker shortlisted books in 2012. I have yet to read Wolf Hall.

The lighthouse caught, and held, my attention partly because of its sadness and for the emptiness of the main character. His life has fallen apart around him and he sets out on a journey, a walking trip to Germany. It is a journey that appears to mirror his own sense of a loss of direction. The abandonment of his mother, and the disappointment of his ex-wife and father, garner sympathy from the reader through Moore’s cleverly crafted narrative. A chilling and suspenseful read. So much emotion is conveyed through very scant explanation.

I have subsequently read her more recent short story collection, The Pre-War House and Other Stories. I reviewed the collection in previous post.

#bookaday Forgot I owned it: The God of Small Things

This one has been on my shelf for a while but I found it the other day, having forgotten all about it. Has anyone read it? In the absence of any views on the book, here is the blurb:

The God of Small Things (1997) is the debut novel of Indian writer Arundhati Roy. It is a story about the childhood experiences of fraternal twins whose lives are destroyed by the “Love Laws” that lay down “who should be loved, and how. And how much.” The book is a description of how the small things in life affect people’s behaviour and their lives. The book won the Booker Prize in 1997. Compared favorably to the works of Faulkner and Dickens, this is a modern classic that has been read and loved worldwide. Equal parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama, it is the story of an affluent Indian family forever changed by one fateful day in 1969. The seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel see their world shaken irrevocably by the arrival of their beautiful young cousin, Sophie.

#bookaday The one I always give as a gift: Quiet: The Power of Introverts

A book that I have recently been lending out and buying for friends is Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t stop talking. I first discovered the author from a TED talk. If you haven’t discovered TED, I can highly recommend the site. TED is a nonprofit organisation devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less). TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers almost every topic, from Science and Technology to Philosophy and Psychology and beyond.

I have learned so much from these and, in particular, Susan Cain’s talk on Introverts. If you are an extrovert please don’t switch off. There is every chance that you are living with, related to or working with one. The book is an eye-opener, let me tell you.

I was captivated by Susan’s talk and a lot of her research was a revelation to me. She graduated from Princeton and Harvard, and worked first as a Wall Street Lawyer, and then as a negotiations consultant. The book was born out of her difficulty with public speaking.

She highlights the power if ‘thinkers’ and has written a manifesto for introverts in which she quotes Ghandi:

‘In a quiet way you can shake the world.’

She believes that the power of quiet is greatly underestimated and underrated. It is to introverts, she says – Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak – that we owe many of the great contributions to society. She discusses the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture.

I’ve been building up to a post on writers as introverts and extroverts, so maybe you’ll find it here some time in the future. I can’t recommend the book highly enough.