One of the great things about majoring in languages is the ability to spend the entire afternoon in the sun, reading a book, and still be studying. This past semester, one of these books was Ali Smith’s The Accidental. It is possibly the most experimental novel I’ve read so far, and I loved it so much more than I thought I would.

The novel starts with a woman showing up at the front door of the Smart’s holiday house. “Am I late?”, she asks. Inviting herself, Amber starts to live with the Smarts. She is very rude to them, but yet all the members of the Smart family seem to look up to her and allow themselves to be influenced by her. This is not hard for the two children, who are both going through rough ages, but most surprising is Amber’s influence on Eve, the mother. Even if Eve is the one with the strength and resolve to kick Amber out at the end, she seems to be the one most affected and changed by the visit.

Now, The Accidental is a hard novel to review since you’re never completely sure what actually happened and what is a lie. It’s hard to form opinions, and especially to talk about them to people who have never read the book themselves. One of the things I liked most about the book are the pop culture references. The Accidental is filled with them. There’s an entire chapter where every line refers to a different movie. Details like this make it a fun book to read. If you’re not completely opposed to a modern style and confusing writing, try it. Personally, I loved it. It’s a humorous novel that, yes, raises more questions than it answers, but it’s well-written and deeply engrossing.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the television series that is Lewis: it is a British detective series (yes, another one!) and a spin-off of the well-known Morse. As aficionados of that show might recall, the ever-loved Endeavour Morse died during the last episode. Lewis, also known as his more working class and lesser educated sidekick, was devastated. Shortly after Morse his wife also died in a hit-and-run accident and Lewis left England for the Virgin Islands.

Two years later he returns, and this marks the beginning of Lewis. He is now the police inspector, and is supported by a new sidekick: the young James Hathaway. Hathaway was a religion student (at Cambridge) meant for the clergy but who turned to the police force in the end.

In the true tradition of Morse, Lewis offers murder mysteries in episodes that last almost two hours. More often than not quite gruesome, and also very complicated at times. In contrast to a lot of American detective shows, you can not guess who did it just by checking at which point they appear in the episode (this irks me greatly in a lot of series). There is also the beautiful Oxford scenery, which is a pleasure to look at. It is such a gorgeous student town that I am dying to visit myself.

Overall Lewis is one of the most enjoyable British detectives I’ve seen these past few years. I adore the combination of Lewis and Hathaway (have to admit to harboring a small crush on Hathaway). Their banter is very enjoyable and often funny. I was very young during the Morse era so I do not remember too much of it, but I certainly hope they make more episodes of Lewis.

If you have, once in your life, lived in a house similar to mine, where we obsessively collect but are positively awful at organizing, you might know the experience of quickly losing the things you just found. This happened to Tank Girl. We taped it 2001, six long years ago, but it disappeared in our gigantic mass of VHS tapes before we ever had a chance to watch it. When my brother was kind enough to dump all his old tapes onto our sacred television grounds two weeks ago, we were suprised to see just the number of old favourite films that had made their way into the darkest corners of his closet. There were all our action movies we used to watch when we were kids: Mad Max I – III (there is also a mysterious tape labeled Mad Max IV, which does not exist!), all old Star Wars movies and the first two Terminators. But between all these testosteron-filled science-fiction action movies that we always loved so much, there was Tank Girl.

Tank Girl is, as some of you might know, originally a comic book (that I have never read but intend to check out). The story in the comic book is supposed to be quite different, so let’s not focus on that too much. The world of Rebecca Buck, Tank Girl’s real name, is post-apocalyptic, (Mad Max-esque science-fiction, yes please!) filled with desert and lacking drinking water. Except the shortage wouldn’t be so big if most of the water wasn’t held hostage by the Water Power organization. Rebecca lives with her friends and family, enjoying life thoroughly, stealing water from WP… Until the bad guys find out, murder most of the people in the house, and capture Rebecca.

I won’t go into the rest of the story, as, to be honest, it’s hardly important. The reason Tank Girl is completely awesome is because of it’s visual style. It’s absolute punky, in dialogue as well as Rebecca’s fourteen-something different outfits she wears throughout. Apparently there is no shortage of make-up and insane accesories, even after just escaping jail. Full of one-liners and crazy action sequences, that are often animated from the original comic. My guess is because of limited budget, but I really don’t mind, because it fits the already surreal and psychedelic feel of the rest of the movie. Plus, if it is possible for Tank Girl to look even cooler, she does so in the comic.

Also featured in this wild, but very amusing movie are some suprising actors. The bad guy is played by Malcolm McDowell, one of the Rippers, supposedly an army of fearsome human-eating creatures, is acted by Ice-T and Iggy Pop does a cameo, as a perverted old man of course. Naomi Watts is barely recognizable as Jet, Rebecca’s shy and technical-minded sidekick. When watching this film, special attention should also be brought to the soundtrack, featuring Nirvana, Devo, Joan Jett and Björk. One of my favourite punk songs, Blank Generation by Richard Hell & The Voidoids is even played (Richard Hell was also a member of another great band, Television, but I’ll shut up about my unhealthy obsession with early punk music now).

In general, Tank Girl is an incredibly fun movie, full of references to pop culture, some great one-liners and the best looking science-fiction film ever. Just wait ’till you see her tank!

I must that if there is any recently come out book I was in absolute awe of, this is it. Poppy Shakespeare really amazed me with just how much I loved it. I don’t often read books that are less than ten years old (there’s just so many classics to be read!) but when Poppy Shakespeare appeared in newspapers reviews it immediately caught my eye, and I just had to get it. A satire of mental health institutes! I’ve always had a thing for the insane and a good satire is quick to appear in my favourite books ever list. So I went out and bought it.

The heroine in Poppy Shakespeare is N, a woman who’s been in mental healt institutes all her life, and knows everything about being mad. Her goal in life is never to get kicked out of the Dorothy Fish, a day centre. Surrounded by other mentally ill like Astrid Arsewhipe and Brian the Butcher, they spend their time sitting around and smoking. When Poppy Shakespeare, a new girl, walks in, N is appointed to guide her. Poppy however, doesn’t want any guiding. She’s completely convinced she never was insane to begin with, and just wants to get out. This, of course, turns out to be harder than first figured, as she needs to be declared mentally ill (exactly what’s she’s trying to avoid) to have the right to get a lawyer. N, while not understanding why Poppy would want to leave the Dorothy Fish and being completely baffled by it all, agrees to help her.

Clare Allan, who’s spent about a third of her life in mental health institutes herself, certainly appears to know what she’s talking about. One reviewer on the internet, someone who works in places like the Dorothy Fish, was horridly insulted by the one-dimensional way in which Allan describes the patients and how terrible and nonsensical she makes the institutes and their systems look, but what you should not forget is that Poppy Shakespeare is first of all a satire. It’s over the top, often absurd, but from what I know the basis is pretty right (which is very worrying). Also, it’s written from the point-of-view of a patient, and of course N doesn’t look at her co-patients the way their doctors and helpers do. It’s only logical. This reviewer stated that Allan has no idea what she was talking about, which I sincerely doubt. It’s just a matter of not taking an absurd parody too literally.

N talks in a working-class dialect of sorts, and though this bothered me in the beginning, after five pages I didn’t even notice it any more and was completely gripped by the story and it’s amazing characters. Earlier mentioned reviewer called them one-dimensional, but I didn’t find this true at all. N does describe them the way she sees them, as completely and utterly mad, but I really ended up caring for them and liking them a lot.

It’s often compared to Catch-22, and though the two of them are very different books, the similarities are certainly there. Poppy Shakespeare has the same way of making you fall in love with characters and storylines that are completely nonsensical. And the ending! Oh, how I loved the ending. I cried, and didn’t want it to end, just like when I read Catch-22. I found Poppy Shakespeare just wonderful, and delightfully entertaining!

Just last night I had the pleasure to see Explorers for the first time, an underappreciated eighties kids movie, along the lines of E.T. and The Goonies. The movie explores the joys of childhood and portrays them in a genuine, fun way.

The main characters are three boys that are about ten year old and don’t really fit in with the crowd. Ben (suprisingly played by Ethan Hawke, who knew he was a child actor?) dreams of going into space. Wolfgang (long dead teen idol River Phoenix) is a scientist, he wears a lab coat, thick glasses and has a basement labratory in his house. Darren is the ‘tougher one’, who’s got some trouble at home, with his good-for-nothing father.

The three of them, especially Ben, are bothered by strange dreams of flying over circuit boards. The day after the first dream, the little scientist develops a sort of transporting device that would allow them to travel in a spaceship. They then head out to build this spaceship out of old junk parts, hoping to discover the secret of the universe.

I feel sad that I’ve never seen Explorers in my childhood, because I can just imagine playacting the movie with my brother, it would’ve been so much fun. Even now, Explorers is the kind of movie that makes me want to be a child again, build my own spaceship and imagine heading out into space. If you ever have kids, you absolutely have to watch it with them, but it’s worth watching even if this is not the case, it will certainly make you feel all nostalgic.

The movie has one big flaw, being the sort of disappointing ending. It’s not awful or anything, but could’ve been so much better. I read they were having deadline problems though, so that might explain it. Except for that, it’s an intelligent movie, good dialogue and acting, but also just plain fun!

Being a great fan of Jane Austen, I had read every novel of hers already in the past, except for this one. Discovering it only after having seen the movie some Sundays ago, I felt very excited and had to check it out immediately. Of course, it turned out to have been in our family library all along, apparently never having caught my eye before.

Northanger Abbey was the first novel ever to be finished by Austen. It’s a light-hearted read, entertaining and amusing, but not so engaging as her more famous classics, such as Pride and Prejudice. The book was written when Austen, being awfully annoyed at the popularity of the silly, unrealistic Gothic novels in her time, set out to write a parody.

Heroine is Catherine Morland, a young and naïve middle-class girl, unlikely to turn heads or get involved in such a dangerous adventure as her fellow heroines from novels like The Mysteries of Udolpho (by Ann Radcliffe). She falls in love with a young clergyman named Henry Tilney, a smart, slightly sarcastic and witty man. In a quest to get and stay as close to Tilney as possible she meets bad and good friends, her ignorance being to great to recognize who means well and who doesn’t.

Often being misled and deceived by friends such as Isabelle and John Thorpe, her quest might end up harder than figured, but in the end all seems to turn out well because Tilney’s sister and father invite her to stay over at their estate, Northanger Abbey. This is were Catherine’s imagination starts running wild, as the huge abbey seems to be full of secret passageways and dark secrets.

I shall not reveal more of the story, as some of you might end up reading it someday (or even seeing the movie!), but Northanger Abbey was indeed everything I expected it to be. Austen’s lightest read, not to be taken too seriously, a fun parody on Gothic novels with plenty of humour and subtle witticisms.

If you are looking to discover the classic Austen, this is not the right novel to read. Go for Emma or Pride and Prejudice. But might you be already familiar with Jane Austen and her way of writing romance novels that sometimes appear to be more like satires on the society of her time, then Northanger Abbey would be a great chance to expand your knowledge of the Austen universe, while also being an amusing read in general.

Growing up sure is hard. Especially if you’re a young gay boy in a dysfunctional family, convinced your sexual orientation is a disease. I found A Boy’s Own Story quite an interesting read, but not as compelling as I’d hoped.

Maybe it’s the fact that I am, indeed, not a young gay boy. Nor do I live in the 1950’s, when sodomy was still illegal. However, I have seen/read plenty of movies and books regarding the subject, that more often than not broke my heart. The problem is not in the writing style either, since it’s precisely the egocentric psychological point of view that I like so much in novels that depress me. But I know what it is.

The boy isn’t interesting. It’s the whole point of the story, that the boy is really… an ordinary boy. He’s not especially interesting, cool or even fun. But I guess that’s not the kind of literature I like to read. Or the gay boy I want as my best friend. I prefer all my gay men to be Stephen Frys and Oscar Wildes.

A Boy’s Own Story is known to be semi-autobiographical, but that doesn’t make me care more. The boy’s no Adrian Healey (The Liar by Stephen Fry), who is both so delightfully hilarious and heartbreaking I really wish he wasn’t gay (though he isn’t really all that gay, but you have to read the novel to understand). But I’ll shut up about The Liar now, as it’s a really hard book to live up to.

In short, A Boy’s Own Story really isn’t a bad book, I just don’t happen to find it extremely interesting either. Whether you’ll enjoy reading it will probably depend on what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a touching novel about the growing up-process of a gay boy, you’re sure to love it. But if you want something a bit more… fun, pick up The Liar.