Well, I think it’s definite. I don’t like jazz. I’ve tried to listen to a lot of it, but the more I hear, the more of a headache I get. Oh well.

I am enjoying this book, I didn’t know much about the series before I started, which I think has helped. The writing style is similar to Terry Pratchett’s, giving folklore characters serious human-like characteristics, and jobs. Also the mixing fantasy and tense moments with humour, is alike.

There’s a big reason it’s called ‘an unexpected mother’s journey’ – the author was going to China to support her friend who was adopting a baby. But it quickly seems that this friend is so not the right person to take on the child. She complains about the child being younger than she had been told, and that things are just not what she had expected, and instead of changing her assumptions, and dealing with what is, she says ‘no no no, I don’t want it’, pretty much.

I read this in a day, not really because it’s a page turner, simply because I had the time, and I’ve got a stack of other books to read. It’s not an easy going read, either, since the author mixes in with her journal style account of events, lucid dreams she’s having, of a young Chinese girl forced to be Empress as the Emperor takes a fancy to her. Her dreams are serialised, and the characters in her dreams even have names. She links this to a past life she may have had, and that’s where I get rather sceptical. To me, the dream bits are all an effort to make the book more dramatic, for her to be able to say, in the end, that she was reborn to look after this baby. It’s all too perfect for me. However, I thought it was worth consuming, as it is an interesting insight into the way adoption works in China. I will now start reading From China with Love, written by a BBC journalist of her story of adoption, so I’ll see how that one fares :)

Damn it, I can’t even remember the last time, it feels so long ago. They don’t sell it here in Sweden (well maybe they do, but not in my area), so I have to wait until April, when I go home to Bristol, and I can stock up! :)

This is all five series of Wind in the Willows, including two feature length specials. It is the stop motion version, produced by Cosgrove Hall in the mid eighties.

The only thing this set is missing really, is the first and original film (Toad steals a car, goes to jail, and details his eventual escape), which the Cosgrove Hall production company made, and you can buy on DVD too. The first episode of the first series is Toad retelling the story a little, but if you haven’t seen the film, this is rather patchy.

It seems strange they wouldn’t include this film, as it was from the strength of this film, that they made the series. To me, this is a huge piece of nostalgia, I loved this series as a child, and I am enjoying now seeing episodes I remember, and some that I had forgotten :)

I liked it. Up until the point they all started singing ‘God Bless America’, that ruined it for me, it just wasn’t necessary, or a believable event for the characters to take part in at that point.

...and the first of these four films was great, connecting the dots up very nicely, so perhaps I was expecting something that had the same flow. However, I found this film to be disjointed and just plain, weird. I hope the next two will be better.

Well, I think, given that I knew Momento was frustratingly hard to follow, and it tells you on the back that it’s a film you see twice to understand, I was braced for confusion. So imagine my surprise when I knew EXACTLY what was going on! Did others find it hard to follow? I’d not read the book, and had no prior knowledge of the film. Still a good film, though, I thought.

The trouble I have with these mangas is that I read them too quickly. It’s easy to just keep on reading :)

This is the only version I’ve seen, so I don’t know whether that changes anything. Anyway, it was good, but a little, hmm, odd. It just didn’t seem to flow very well, to me.