The Week

If this were The Week, it would be a particularly thin publication.

My cultural activities have been limited this week, although I did have book club. Book club is four girlfriends getting together for a yummy supper and discussing (slightly briefly on this occasion), Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome. We all agreed it's a lovely book - the descriptions of the New England countryside and even the bitter, snowy winters have a certain romance - but thoroughly depressing and women don't come out of it particularly well. Having said that, nor do men, or at least, not all men. Ethan is definitely a 'good' man, but has been dealt blow after blow by life until he's tactiturn, physically broken and hobbling and resigned to his uninspiring fate.

Anyway, my book choice for the next book club is An Education by Lynn Barber. In part, this is because I'm keen to take book club on tour to the cinema! The film, for which Nicky Hornby wrote the screenplay, is one of those that I've kept hearing about and has sufficiently intrigued me that I want to read the book on which it's based and watch it. The film was released in the UK yesterday. This may seem heretical for some book club participants, but I'm a big believer that films can enhance your reading of a book. I've watched a number of films before reading the book, such as Captain Corelli's Mandolin and it only enhanced my reading of the book. It made me more observant as I compared it to the film and appreciative of just how much better it was than the film. Not a hard job in this instance. We'll see with An Education. Expect a posting soon.

I'm also hoping to post on Anish Kapoor's Royal Academy of Arts exhibition, as I plan to go along in the not too distant future. Stay tuned!