Monday 4 May 2020

One thing leads to another

A favourite film in the Thorley household is Field of Dreams. Even if you've never watched it, you might have heard people quoting the line 'If you build it, he will come.' It's a lovely film and if you have time (!), I recommend you take a look. The film is great, but the book on which it is based is even better: Shoeless Joe by W P Kinsella. On the edition that I have there is a quote on the cover from Andrew Kaufman who says: 'The movie only captured half the magic of the book. This is a masterpiece.' Can't argue with that. It has moved on to the shortlist of titles from which I shall choose one to take with me on Desert Island Discs one day.

Anyway, author J D Salinger features in Shoeless Joe, so I was moved to read Catcher in the Rye. I've tried to do this before, but just found Holden Caulfield so irritating I couldn't get very far. This time, however, I made it to the end. Sorry, but I still don't like it.

After a quick Jack Reacher to cleanse the palate, I 've now moved on to Thomas Hardy's Return of the Native, which is mentioned in the Salinger book. I've not read this for many a long year and I'm really enjoying it. It's one of those book that needs reading word by word, if you know what I mean. It is from its pages that I've gleaned today's Word of the Day for the thread I'm running on my author Facebook page. Perhaps for the sake of continuing the connection, I should now watch the film of the book, but the only version I can find stars Catherine Zeta Jones and Clive Owen, which doesn't exactly blow my skirt up.

The question is, then, what is the next chain in this link? Any suggestions?

9 comments:

  1. Interesting post, Julia - glad to see you're keeping occupied! Think I saw Field of Dreams many moons ago but have never read it. I want to read Catcher in the Rye just because I think I should - one of these days.

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    1. There are lots of books I think I should read - Brave New World, for one. If you do read C in the R, let me know what you think of it.

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    2. We read BNW before Vienna Burning Ball, on this theme in 2018... we worth the read! Love from The Foxes xx

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  2. Field of dreams is an awesome movie!

    For your next link in the chain, you could read Welcome to Our Hillbrow by Mpe; it's a South African story with a bar named after one of Hardy's novels. Or there's Wheel of Time by Jordan with a city named after Far From the Madding Crowd (another of Hardy's books).

    Neither book is my typical reading genre, but each has gotten great reviews, so I guess they're pretty good.

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    1. My son has the Wheel of Time books. I shall investigate, thank you.

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  3. "blow my skirt up"!!!!!

    The mind positively boggles!

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