Tuesday, June 18, 2013

I Got Plenty O' Nuttin Much To Write About

Of course, when did that ever stop me?

Life is peaceful and quiet and surpremely uneventful, which makes for a pleasant enough time, but doesn't give me much blogable material.

You know (well, most of you don't) I have a very good friend who calls me on average once a week, and she always asks me what's new, and 9 times out of 10, I mumble and stumble and change the subject by asking what's new with her. There is always something new with her, and by the time we're through, either we've spoken long enough that we need to get off the phone, or I've remembered something that's new with me. This has been our ritual for decades, so I guess it works, but probably not here.

What I've been doing a lot of lately is reading, which is about as peaceful and quiet and supremely uneventful thing to do as I can imagine. It got to the point where having read 3 library books in 4 days, I decided I was reading too much, so I pulled back by reading Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham. I own the movie edition, which Scooter was more than willing to rest under
 
but not at all eager to pose with.
I never would have guessed that the author of Nightmare Alley was in any way connected with C. S. Lewis. Wikipedia is a wondrous thing.

After I read Nightmare Alley (which, for a short book, took a long time to read), I watched the movie. Here are three things that are different between the book and the movie:

The movie has a softer ending (well, that's not a surprise).

In the book, he's guilty of manslaughter. In the movie, it's really just an accident.

In the book, he had a mother and a father and a dog named Gyp. In the movie, he's an orphan and he grew up in an orphanage, but he still had a dog named Gyp. I find that wildly funny.

I'm currently reading Shadow of the Titanic by Andrew Wilson. I never knew that Elinor Glyn had a sister who was a Titanic survivor. I'm about halfway through, so who knows what other things I'll learn by book's end.

So now you know everything that's new with me, and you truly understand why when my friend asks me, I have nothing much to tell her!

4 comments:

Marci said...

I finished the midwife book and am mid a foodie bio and then will read a vintage YA about a girl who wants to be an actress (what a novel idea!) And then a book on how to choose ripe fruit and who knows what after that.

Susan Beth Pfeffer said...

Hi Marci-

An entire book devoted to how to choose ripe fruit?

How many chapters can there be on the squeeze 'n smell system?

Anonymous said...

I always hate when they make a book into a movie sometimes. Its ok to change a few things but like The Sister Keeper they changed a big thing and it sucked. .

Susan Beth Pfeffer said...

Good morning jessiemc82-

Actually Nightmare Alley the movie is surprisingly similar to Nightmare Alley the novel. They cut out a lot of sex (much of which was way too kinky for Hollywood in the 1940s), and they made the main character a little bit less of a heel, but not much.

It's a very good, and very distinctive, noir, and Tyrone Power took a real chance playing such an unsympathetic character (even if he did still have a dog when he was growing up!).