.Brett,, here is an animation I did today. It doesn't have sound yet though.
Sound is coming soon however. We have the softwear on our old steam powered laptop.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Animation
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Forbidden Lies Review
Brett>> Forbidden Lies is a movie by Anna Broinowski about Norma Khouri, and the two women are the commanding presences in it. Norma Khouri was revealed as a faker in 2004 for the writing of her book Forbidden Love (The book is no longer in print, pulled by the publishers when she was uncovered, but it is still possible to get it second hand, see link below).
The book put the issue of honour killings in Jordan on the map. This practice is where a man, or some men, from a family kill a female member of the family for having a relationship with a man that the family doesn't approve of. Norma Khouri’s book was about a young female friend of hers who had been stabbed to death by her father for a relationship with a Christian man. The movie is suspenseful and fascinating, the question of, `is there a real victim?´, `is it all lies?´ keeps you guessing till the end. Broinowski has left the film a little ambiguous about this point, even though in the DVD special features it becomes clear that she had made her mind up herself before even completing the filming. I think this was done for editorial purposes and to make the film more enjoyable, but it gave me the feeling that the film itself was faction and undeserving of the title `documentary´ (although I wouldn’t know what else to call it).
Babsi>> It was a very interesting film, because it also showed you a bit about the world of greedy publishers who keenly jumped on the book, because they could smell the big bucks, which the book then delivered. It was fascinating to also observe what kind of idea the west still has about Arabic countries. At the beginning the film showed the story of the woman in really glossy, almost cheesy colours with pretty people as a sort of dramatic soap opera. It already looks pretty strange and fake. Maybe this is how a lot of readers would imagine the book.
One funny example is e.g. that when Brett and I went to Tunisia we firmly believed that an oasis would consist of two palm trees and a pond. But then we saw one and it couldn't have been further away from the truth: it was huge with a lot of trees and water. It's just these weird ideas from maybe fairy tales or books that we have about these countries. It's also tricky, because books can intentionally or not incite hatred. I saw it happen when the book “Not without my daughter” came out in Germany. Hatred grows slowly and books can be totally used as propaganda to support it and explain political actions against countries.
One interesting fact of the film was also that these killings do happen in Jordan and that the Jordanian government tries to cover them up. They are trying to present a civilized Western front so they can get support from the United Nations. But on the other hand who is the West really to point fingers? This is what gets me: the Western countries are always quick to point fingers, in South Italy and Sicily women are pretty oppressed by their families as well, I have never actually heard of honour killings, but they do have a hard time. And Australia isn't exactly harmless when it comes to their own indigenous people. The situation of the indigenous people is dreadful and it is rarely talked about.
Brett>> The movie is thought provoking and not least because of the background of Khouri, she seems to have come from the wrong side of the tracks. I would give the movie three spirals. It isn't a classic of the genre like Fahrenheit 9/11 but it is interesting.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Smart People Review
Brett>> I really loved SMART PEOPLE. It was a smart movie and I laughed my ass off at the same time. The family in the movie were a disfunctional bunch, sent off the rails by the death of the mother, and we join them in this movie just as they begin to get their act together after what is hinted at as a very long time.
Babsi>> It was very good, the casting was fantastic and very clever. The characters were all very different, smart but cranky professor, smart but kinda unhappy daughter, weird adopted brother funny and dry and the awsome Sarah Jessica Parker as certainly smart and very interesting doctor turned girlfriend. She really has this remarkable ability to create different characters in different films, I mean some people are always the boring same, but she is different. The script was great. What I thought was cool was that it didn’t try desperatly to be a cool or arty film. It just existed, kinda like life. Not like oh this is an arty film I better put weird effects and strange camera angles and maybe half of it black and white. No, it didn’t need that at all, the story just kinda spoke for itself. A bunch of interesting and weird people working out stuff…
Brett>> I loved Sarah Jessica Parker in this as well. She and Dennis Quaid had the grown up deep relationship in this movie and they really sold it. I also liked the other relationship between Quaid’s adopted brother (a middle aged loser) and his daughter (a high-school overachiever). The meeting of his slacker devil may care attitude and her prim control freakery was delicious. At one point she comes into the room and tells him that he should have made the bed because it sets the tone for the day, and he replies that she doesn’t know what tone he is trying to set. Right there we have the character that I most identify with, the slacker brother. I also liked how we see people reading and talking with passion about books at one moment and then drinking and making bad choices the next. We are all that mixture of wise and stupid, just like the people in the movie.
Babsi>> Yeah that was cool. The non smart brother was really interesting, it seemed that he was most happy and comfortable with his choices even though they might seem not soo cool and suitable in the real world. It was the smart people who had issues. Ellen Page as the daughter was a very interesting character, very set in her opinions kinda scary but fascinating. I guess we can assume once she gets herself to California to uni she will be happy and content. Her dad was very self absorbed though and she was really kinda lost in the world. Smart but lost, not an ideal combination. I have recently thought about the smart and bad weather combination. Maybe when its nice and sunny you don’t really need your brain that much?
Brett>> Yeah, this was set in Pitsburgh in the cold. The people had to stay home and read and talk. Maybe the movie wouldn’t have been so smart if it was set on Bondi Beach. So I’d give it five spirals. It was one of the best movies I’ve seen this year so far.
Babsi>> Definitely four spirals from me.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Spirited Away
We are sitting in a hotel room in Sydney and it's really raining outside. Usually we have a great view of the Sydney Tower but it's impossible to see today through the rain clouds. Last night as we were up till all hours we watched spirited away on Australian TV (unfortunately the dubbed rather than the subtitled version). This is an animated movie from Japan about the adventures of a young girl who gets trapped in a strange Japanese traditional spirit world full of bath houses and priests and witches and other odd stuff. Babsi just said it always makes her cry, and it is a very emotional story. The quality of the animation is just fantastic. Every painted background is a work of art. The motivations of the characters are really strange and otherworldly, you just let yourself go and be taken along by the very strange dreamlike hypnotic story and when the ending eventually comes you'll be just a little sad to leave the spirit world, just like the character.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
The Spiralcat Top 10 Books
The Spiralcat Top 10 Books
Brett: How about I chose five and you chose five?
Babsi: Yeah we can do that.
Brett: OK, what's your favourite book ever, ever?
Babsi: And that would go in 1 wouldn't it?
Brett: Yeah, I'll put yours 1 – 5 and mine 6 – 10.
Babsi: I've got a few. A Hero's Walk is one of them. And Maurice is another one.
- Much discussion later the list is formed -
Brett: So our first choice is Norwegian Wood?
Babsi: Norwegian Wood is a book by Haruki Murakami who is a very famous author.
Brett: Oh yes huge.
Babsi: And his stuff is mad but I like it. His book Kafka on the Beech is good but too mad. Norwegian Wood on the other hand is lovely. It is also a bit crazy, he always has these crazy elements, but still, it's a very, very good book. It's about this guy falling in love with a woman who plays the piano and ends up in a mental institution. It's very, very sad but good. Murakami's special flavour is in the detail. The devil is in the detail and he's got plenty of it. Murakami writes the same way Wong Kar Wai shoots a film. They have a lot of really fascinating similarities. They paint the same pictures in my head, and the pictures are so seductive that I always want to go and do whatever they are doing. They are often sitting around eating a lot of Japanese food and the way he describes it is so sweet that I want to go and eat Japanese food with a friend as well.
Brett: So it's a sad story, but the details are described very sweetly?
Babsi: That's the thing, with Murakami it's probably the wrong thing to try and see the whole picture. As a book, you would think that you have to see the whole picture. But his details are so very sweet and touching.
Brett: The next book on our list is Lucki Live. What's that?
Babsi: Lucki Live is really cool it's by the very good Austrian author, Christine Nöstlinger. A really good author for both kids and adults, who really understands them both. It's a very special book. I think she wrote it in the 70s or something. She's a sort of 60s, 70s writer but she's still around and she still writes heaps and she's pretty much with it. It's a coll story about this girl and her best friend/neighbour/class-mate, and they're very close. They sit together and walk to school together, but then he goes to England for a year as an exchange student. When he gets back he keeps saying, “You should have seen this live!” And he looks like John Lennon, hugely influenced by whatever England was like in the 70s. His friend is a bit bewildered by all this. It's also lovely because they all live in a big building and everybody knows each other. All the neighbours know each other and Lucki Live's mother has a big kitchen where she makes food for all the kids who just hang out there and she doesn't know what to do about Lucki. It's a story about dealing with a massive change in a person.
Brett: Why is he called Lucki Live?
Babsi: Because he keeps saying, “You should have seen it Live!”
Brett: (Laughs) That's cool.
Babsi: It's cool, it's a cool book.
Brett: Now we come to Hero's Walk.
Babsi: Hero's Walk is set in India and it's very, very sad. A tragic family story about a family who have to get to grips with the fact that the daughter moved to Canada and married some dude. They are both in a car accident. They die at the beginning of the book, and it's terrible you thing, “Oh my goodness, oh dear!” They had a kid and the kid has to go over to India. The kid is completely from a different culture to her grandparents.
Brett: So she's a bit like Lucki Live.
Babsi: Yeah, but it's very different. You can't really compare it. It's quite interesting and special, it's about a group of people and how they deal with the kid. The grandmother is really nice to the kid but the grandfather was not on good terms with the daughter and is unhappy, grieving and hurt. The grandmother finds out about all this through a phone call and is very upset, she thinks they should have sorted things out and reconciled with their daughter while she was still alive. But there was such a big divide between the daughter and the grandfather that his reaction is different. The great thing about the book is that it doesn't point fingers and say that he is a really bad person. It doesn't discount what he has to say. It's very sad. It paints beautiful pictures.
Brett: Now let's talk about the next book, Maurice.
Babsi: Maurice is a book I read a long time ago. It's by the fantastic E M Foster who also wrote A Room With a View, which is also very good. Maurice is about a young English guy who has to do all the usual stuff, such as find himself a good job. What he certainly shouldn't do is fall in love with one of his best friends. And it's well written, it really is well written.
Brett: What makes it well written, what do you mean?
Babsi: It's the words he chooses, and the pictures they paint. With me the visuals of a book are very important. I went through a stage where this was my favourite book and I gave it to my favourite people, so quite a few people have a copy of Maurice in their library.
Brett: Jazz is next on our list.
Babsi: Jazz is a fantastic book, again because of the pictures Toni Morrison paints.
Brett: What pictures does she paint?
Babsi: I would describe them as bright, sunny things, dancing and the things the city knows.
Brett: So it's about the city?
Babsi: It's about the city, and the black people living there – their relationships. Toni Morrison has a really good way of using words and making you see a different picture, or why the picture is like that. Prejudice is an important question and she's very good at opening your eyes to it, which is magical.
Brett: Next on the list is America the Beautiful, which I love. You didn't rate it so highly though did you?
Babsi: It was a bit grim.
Brett: In what way?
Babsi: Well there is a grim sex scene.
Brett: Oh yeah, with the boyfriend character who's painted very unsympathetically, he even ditches her by fax.
Babsi: Yeah, yeah I remember that, it's well written, but why did you pick it?
Brett: I thought it was just very honest and autobiographical. It really gave you an insight into that life. And I think the main character is a very witty, interesting and talented person. I just love what she has to say. The character has this father, which is obviously a reflection of Frank Zappa. Next we have State of the Union, which I haven't finished reading yet, but we still put it on our list.
Babsi: This book is fantastic and it's by Douglas Kennedy who's a whole different thing to any of the other authors we chose. It's very difficult even to compare books, it's basically ridiculous and impossible. There can be such differences in the writing style. His writing style isn't flowery like Murakami or quite in your face like Toni Morrison or extremely witty and funny like Christine Nöstlinger, the main thing for him is to get his message across. And he smacks you with his message over your stupid head over and over, and if after that you haven't gotten the message that he's not a huge fan of George W Bush then you really have issues.
Brett: (Laughs) but all the different opinions at the heart of the story are almost all represented within one family. Except perhaps the most extreme ones belonging to this Tobias character and he's sort of outside the family group.
Babsi: His views aren't that extreme, that's the funny thing. He's put characters, such as the main character Hanna for example in the 70s, which weren't that radical in the end. People were just concerned about other peoples welfare, which isn't as fashionable now. Lot's of people were concerned and rebelled in the 70s but Hanna was to conservative, and then later in the part that's set in the present people get it into their heads that she's a radical.
Brett: Yeah, that's interesting that she's the square ion the 60s and the radical in the present.
Babsi: It's quite unbelievable, what the author has put that poor character through.
Brett: Next we have The Redundancy of Courage which I just found on a bookshelf in a holiday apartment. I would never have read it apart from that. It was written by Timothy Mo and it's about a Chinese restaurant owner getting caught up in a civil war. And it's a civil war on a small island, like a Tamil Tigers sort of thing. It's just fascinating because he ends up being an accidental freedom fighter. He totally doesn't want to be involved at all. The leaders of the people he ends up with in the rebellion went to really posh schools with the people in the government and it points out the little interesting things like that. It talks about how important the media is and the fiercest fighting in the book is over a transmitter capable of letting the outside world know about the civil war. It's written really quite humorously. Although many tragic things happen, it's written quite humorously. It's a very good book.
Next we have a book called Amrita.
Babsi: Ah, I love this book. I love the author, Banana Yoshimoto. If I had to chose between Murakami and Yoshimoto, I'd chose Yoshimoto.
Brett: Yes. Yoshimoto wins. This book is written about spiritual subjects, but in a really arty way. It's about a woman who bangs her head and starts to have spiritual experiences, and her young brother who battles a little bit with mental illness, and I think wins but while he is having that battle he has some spiritual experiences. And they go to a place, what island is that, that they go to...?
Babsi: Saipan.
Brett: Apparently in Saipan everyone speaks English, and the way the island is described is just beautiful. But it also talks about how the island saw some of the fiercest fighting of the Second World War and how this has left a very strange and spiritual atmosphere. After reading this book I desperately wanted to go there. The main character meets a woman who sings to ghosts, but she meets that character in a deja vu before she even makes it to the island, excellent book.
Babsi: She also has a sister who is a very interesting character, but dies.
Brett: Yes that's right, the way that character is written is heartbreaking.
Babsi: Lastly we have Trading Up which falls in a strange category. It seems to be a women's cliché which can't be taken seriously but it's actually very well written. It's very poetic, there's poetry in unexpected places.
Brett: I remember this scene where a character is invited away for a weekend, the host is very rich and there's a swimming pool. She goes for a swim in the pool and the host tells her off for not showering first. She is really upset and wonders why, if he thought she was dirty, he invited her to come. I liked those well observed moments, that show something really deep and interesting about both characters involved.
Babsi: Yeah, Trading Up is an incredibly intelligent novel. It's about a journey, a character who wants to be an actress. She has to come to LA from the middle of nowhere and takes a really long bus journey, and you take the journey with her.
Brett: Actually I remember that character, she stays at a Motel and she fits right in there. It's a situation that I think I would find really scary but she fits in because of her background.
Babsi: She writes about shallow stuff in a very deep way. Now that is really quite an art form.
Brett: Because that's all life is, shallow stuff.
Babsi: If you just read the blurb on the back cover you could easily misunderstand what the book is. You could think it's just about movie stars and lots of drinking, but it's so much more. It's so much more intelligent. What is your top 10, please leave a comment.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Lost. To time travel, or not?
Brett: Yeah, I liked this episode. I liked it very much, but it was still a little dissatisfying.
Babsi: Well what kind of answer do you expect. What do you expect to actually happen. You never get any answers anyway, I mean you know that don't you.
Brett: I suppose so. I suppose he's come as near as he's ever going to, to saying it's some kind of time difference between the island and the outside world, and it's something to do with electromagnetism.
Babsi: I've done a bit of research and had a look round and they were talking about another hatch. Which is the Orchid Hatch and is something about bunnies. And Ben knows something that these people want to know about. I'm starting to think that, I'm starting to piece it together a bit. I think the problem is that it's weekly so you've kind of forgotten everything you've seen. Well not everything you've seen, obviously, you're not an amnesiac. You just sort of get confused, and you think, “Huh? Who was this person?” Because there are so many people, and different groups of people now.
Brett: And they behave so oddly. Like these rescuer, scientist, Ben-hunter people who in the trailer for next week, look like they're going to be doing some weird experiment on the island.
Babsi: Yeah, I don't know what the story is going to be about that. It's interesting that one of them is an anthropologist. I thought that was quite cool. I presume they all have their own private goals and you sort of see glimpses of their lives and sort of try to piece it all together. I'm starting to think it may be about cloning. I would maybe even go as far as to say that the characters are clones.
Brett: Got cloned? It happened, it's over? Nah never! I think, they'll think they were cloned, for seven episodes, and then find out that they weren't.
Babsi: (Laughs). That would keep things exciting wouldn't it.
Brett: And that the clones were put on the airplane and killed, to make it look like they died.
Babsi: What? Say that again.
Brett: Ha ha! So there's an airplane underwater and it's full of clones.
Babsi: Right! Right. What? No! Well we've seen it season one yes. Yes that's right people we've had four seasons. So what? Which people are cloned? The dead people are cloned? Why would dead people be cloned ? That's mad.
Brett: There were reports of the airplane being found underwater, and the pilot was there. And didn't...oh, I can't remember what any of them are called now. The one that fell out of the sky and Locke knifed her.
Babsi: Erm, ... Naomi.
Brett: Yeah.
Babsi: Yeah right:
Brett: Yeah.
Babsi: So what's with her?
Brett: Didn't she say, “You are all dead,” and weren't they all watching on TV as the plane was found.
Babsi: Yeah, I sort of read somewhere that that was just a hoax.
Brett: It is but with, clones. You can't make a hoax like that, just with dummies.
Babsi: But who's behind the whole thing.
Brett: The dude from Neighbours.
Babsi: The dude from Neighbours?
Brett: And the OC, and every other show in the world. He must have a great agent. He always plays the powerful bad guy who has a heart attack. He'll have a heart attack in this.
Babsi: I don't know...The rat thing was interesting I thought. He made the rat disappear.
Brett: Yeah, the rat went into a trance and learned how to do the maze, and then did the maze.
Babsi: Oh, the rat didn't disappear?
Brett No I don't think so...The whole thing's mad isn't it?
Babsi: But it is fascinating because there are lots of people out there who wonder about space and time travel. I mean it's strange and magic that we are here in summer. You know, when I'm on the phone to my friends they say stuff like, “I'm just going to put my gloves on.” And I want to say, “Gloves? It's 20 degrees you freak!” Because, you know, you live in your head and so all your friends live with you in your head. And you don't really realise that they're just in a different place. I mean I'm getting my text messages three weeks later. And so you know, it's a down under thing probably. It's really quite weird.
Brett: Yeah, you could wake up screaming in the rain in Glasgow, like Desmond.
Babsi: Oh. No thanks! That wouldn't be good. Why would you chose Glasgow? Why would anybody chose Glasgow?
Brett: Well, you don't chose it. That's the point. Oh my god I need an umbrella brother. An umbrella brother. I need an umbrella brother.
Babsi: It was quite clever to say that the only way to do it was to find his constant.
Brett: Yeah, but it wasn't exactly science though was it. The science was sort of like, “a = x, and some people have really big heads, and so it often rains on a Tuesday, and so you need a constant. You need to phone Emily and then everything will be OK.
Babsi: Penny.
Brett: Penny, sorry. The actor sold it very well.
Babsi: You know, it's a bit like a Mickey Mouse comic. I've read plenty of these Mickey Mouse stories where Mickey has to go backwards and forwards in time, and he needs a bike, and things go wrong because he doesn't have his back. I've always hated these stories, because they're always so crazy.
Brett: Wasn't it all supposed to be realistic. During the first series. It was like, “OK, we know there's a monster, but it'll all be explained in a realistic way.” And now we find out that there are time-travelling people who use constants to get to the island, and whose clothes fall off. I'm obsessed with Desmond and how his clothes fell off. How can electromagnetism make you're clothes shoot off.
Babsi: Well, really strong pressure perhaps would. But the problem is I didn't pay enough attention in physics class to really understand what's going on. But physics is a very strong and strange subject.
Brett: True.
Babsi: And we had this crazy teacher back in school. And we did these weird experiments which were odd and strange. Strange and fascinating, but I was usually bored. So for people having physics class, you know, they're probably all watching the show, and they can bother their physics teacher.
Brett: I wonder what the teachers will say.
Babsi: But these things have a fascination, and dreams and flash backs and flash forwards. You know, you're always saying, “I'm getting a deja vu.” For me, the place around here seems super familiar, and I've never even been here. It feels just as familiar as if I'd lived here all my life. And I f´think a lot of people feel these things and I think that's a big part of it's success. I think each show creates a lot of theories, and bit, by bit it reveals stuff. I mean when you go back and recap, or watch it again, or whatever, you'll notice different stuff. I think that book was very interesting that the erm her dad was buying in an auction. And the auction was about the Black Rock. The pirate ship. Penny's dad is after the book. He wants to find the secret to time travel.
Brett: Ah, that makes sense. So it's all about time travel now. It is pretty much true. This was the episode where it all fell into place. But what's Ben up to? Are they all time travellers or something. (Shrieks in pain). I just put the phone charger on my lip and electrocuted myself. Ow, that hurts.
Babsi: He's experimenting on himself.
Brett: I just travelled in time. I was just in Glasgow in the rain. I wanted to go to the tropical island but I went the other way.
Babsi: People are going to read this. Stop it now.
Brett: Ow. But it hurt.
Babsi: Anyway apart from the grumbling.
Brett: There are quite a few volts going through that thing, ow.
Babsi: But who would have left the boat there?
Brett: Some pirate. The pirate is probably one of the others.
Babsi: What? What are you talking about?
Brett: The hostiles, where did those people come from on the island? They are people from time or something.
Babsi: There was some good photography in this episode. I must say that. When Desmond was in the phone box being shot from above. That was a nicely planned very clever shot-
Brett: Did you like it. You haven't said if you liked the episodes.
Babsi: I did like it. I liked the actor who played Desmond. He's good. He can hold an episode really strongly.
Brett: I like how strange that character is.
Babsi: He reminds me of someone from Brighton. Think about the people from Brighton who were into crop circles. Oh they had fun in Brighton. They're really quite nuts. I did like it. It was really quite interesting. I mean if you found everything out tomorrow, you would probably be disappointed. There are lots of things that didn't happen. It's not the purgatory thing that a lot of people thought it might be in the beginning. It wasn't that at all, but a lot of people said time travel early on, when I was looking through all those forums. My favourite was always the flashbacks, they were always a cool layer that told you a lot about the people. And the island itself is an important presence. It's a specific place with specific circumstances, people seem to age more slowly.
Brett: I guess that's why Penny's dad wants to find the place.
Babsi: Something to do with the magnetic stuff. Her dad must have his own reasons.
Brett: Perhaps he wants to live forever.
Babsi: He certainly didn't care about Desmond. How many spirals should we give it?
Brett: How many?
Babsi: Three, I guess. One for the plot, one for Desmond's acting and surely one for the photography. But it seems to come together a bit more, I think the clue will be in the journal, which pennys dad bought. Pennys dad might be the spy and the captain of the ship.
We have added an additional related Lost item which is the book which is rumoured to have been the inspiration for the story.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Let's Read State of the Union
Brett: Right now, we're both reading State of the Union by Douglas Kennedy.
Babsi: Yep. But we haven't finished it yet.
Brett: We haven't finished yet.
Babsi: I'm about half way.
Brett: I'm on page 32.
Babsi: Why did you start reading it?
Brett: Because we decided to read the same book, so we could talk about it on the blog.
Babsi: So what's your impression so far?
Brett: I like it. So far it's just been one character talking about their life, what's she called?
Babsi: Hanna.
Brett: Yeah, that's right, Hanna. And it's really interesting. It's set in a period I really like, that revolutionary Vietnam war period.
Babsi: Me too. I like that period too, and there are not that many books around. It's hard to get cool books about it.
Brett: It was you who chose this book, why did you chose it?
Babsi: I liked the cover. It's a seaside sort of cover and she looks interesting and sort of thoughtful. It's a really good cover. And I did read the back and it did talk about the 70s but it's not just set in the 70s. Half the book is set in the 70s and describes her situation then, which is really quite modern because she marries this doctor dude.
Brett: Ah, Doctor Dan, I've already met Doctor Dan. She falls in love with him almost straight away.
Babsi: All these Doctor Dans should be avoided.
Brett: What, like the Doctor Dan in Return to Eden, your favourite show?
Babsi: It's not my favourite show, and it's not going into the top ten.
Brett: We just watched twenty episodes on DVD and that was just one of the disks.
Babsi: I didn't want to go to Sydney after seeing it on that. I thought I wouldn't be able to take it.
Brett: I liked the Doctor Dan on that show. He kept turning up at just the wrong moment and thinking his wife was having an affair.
Babsi: Which she was, but anyway that's not important.
Brett: And he would turn his back just as she threw the cad off. So what about the Doctor Dan in this book?
Babsi: Oh he's just an ordinary character. He's all right. He's just a doctor kind of character.
Brett: She seems to want to build an ordinary life, not a student radical kind of life.
Babsi: I think she wants to rebel against her parents. Her parents are really into the hippy thing. Her mum is an artist. A really interesting New York artist. Her dad is this really famous revolutionary dude that everyone is really keen on.
Brett: And apparently these figures really existed back then. You could become really famous by leading the take over of a University Campus and giving talks, like anti Vietnam War talks.
Babsi: Yeah, there's a lot about that in the first half of the book, and then something happens that's quite cool. It's written almost like a movie. There is this stuff going on and you're like OK.
Brett: Don't spoil it for me. I'm only on page 32.
Babsi: Well she meets someone and something happens. Something interesting, and after that we come to a time after she's had her kid. And I think she lives in a different place, in a nowhere corner of Main. She's forced to break the law, even though she's a totally law abiding person. She's forced to break the law in an interesting way. And then...
Brett: Yes, she's totally square.
Babsi: Yeah, but she's nice, it's really unfair to say she's square.
Brett: Even in these few pages I've read about her life, she made it really interesting. And you think I could live like that.
Babsi: Well I wouldn't.
Brett: Yeah, it would be too much work. I mean she buys a house, does the floorboards and strips the furniture.
Babsi: Oh yeah that's tricky, you'd never do that. OK that bit is all very interesting. The part that I've been reading, so far is astonishing. And the characters are really interesting. Like she has a friend Margy, and she's really cool. She wants her to go to Paris, but Hanna doesn't go while she's still a student. She wants to go to Paris but she's afraid she'll lose the Doctor Dan dude, and so she doesn't go to Paris.
Brett: So she would have been a student, it's not just a holiday we're talking about.
Babsi: She was worried about her relationship.
Brett: Well she would have ended up in a different relationship, that's what happens.
Babsi: I was really worried. I thought, “Oh dear, she hasn't gone to Paris, this is going to be a bit boring now.”
Brett: So you were rooting for the Paris option.
Babsi: Yeah totally, I thought that would be good. I thought, “Oh dear, that's so lame.” But it isn't, because of what happens. It's really interesting, and it's a real page turner. Stuff happens that you really don't expect. And I love that in a book, they become my Bible and I carry them around everywhere, and read them wherever I am.
Brett: I'm really enjoying it already, I think I'm going to be finished it pretty soon. You better be careful that I don't overtake you and finish it before you. Because then I'll start spoiling it ....
Babsi: Nobody overtakes me honey.
Brett: Oh my. You're so competitive. Is it going to be a race to the end of the book, see who can finish it first.
Babsi: Maybe, it makes life more interesting.
Brett: OK so that's why we've chosen State of the Union, and we'll come back when we're both finished and talk about it again.
Babsi: Well yes, we'll have to.
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