Movie of the Week: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

I can probably sum up this movie in one word: delightful!

With a cast of venerable English actors of a certain age including: Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Penelope Wilton, Ronald Pickup and Celia Imrie it has everything going for it right from the start, but add Dev Patel as the wildly overoptimistic manager of the crumbling, but also venerable, Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (catering for elderly and beautiful) and you have a winning mixture.

Gentle, funny and serious all in one package this really is a feelgood movie where the new residents of the hotel seem to get what they need, if not what they expected. Some tie up the loose ends of their lives while others undergo a sea-change or make new beginnings.

And it's sure to leave us with a new catchphrase: 'Everything will be all right in the end, and if it's not all right, it isn't the end.'

Highly recommended.

Movie of the Week: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

I can probably sum up this movie in one word: delightful!

With a cast of venerable English actors of a certain age including: Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Penelope Wilton, Ronald Pickup and Celia Imrie it has everything going for it right from the start, but add Dev Patel as the wildly overoptimistic manager of the crumbling, but also venerable, Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (catering for elderly and beautiful) and you have a winning mixture.

Gentle, funny and serious all in one package this really is a feelgood movie where the new residents of the hotel seem to get what they need, if not what they expected. Some tie up the loose ends of their lives while others undergo a sea-change or make new beginnings.

And it's sure to leave us with a new catchphrase: 'Everything will be all right in the end, and if it's not all right, it isn't the end.'

Highly recommended.

World Book Day

The books I'm reading:
Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine (on Kindle) (Nebula nominated)
The Fallen Blade by John Courtney Grimwood
Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews

Books I'm writing:
The Winterwood Choice (Adult historical fantasy, in submission)
Your Horse Sees Dead People (MG fantasy in revision)

The book I love the most:
Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
But lots of books run it a close second and I really couldn't choose between them.

The last book I received as a gift:
My family don't buy me books, they know I prefer to buy my own (and they don't know what I have already), but Christmas 2010 (pre-Kindle) I received Lois McMaster Bujold's Cryoburn in hardback because I dropped very heavy hints

The last book I bought for myself:
Lucifer Falling (a short story collection) by Julian Flood

The last book I gave as a gift:
Christmas 2011;  Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism by Rudolf Wittkower
and This is Not My Snowman
(not to the same recipient)

The Nearest Book
My kindle is on my desk with over 100 books tucked inside it, otherwise:
River, an anthology edited by Alma Alexander (containing my story, Floodlust)
The First Cadfael Omnibus by Ellis Peters (bought but not yet read)
New York Public Library Science Desk Reference
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
and Plain Country Friends, the Quakers of High Flatts (a local history book) by Bower and Knight

World Book Day

The books I'm reading:
Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine (on Kindle) (Nebula nominated)
The Fallen Blade by John Courtney Grimwood
Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews

Books I'm writing:
The Winterwood Choice (Adult historical fantasy, in submission)
Your Horse Sees Dead People (MG fantasy in revision)

The book I love the most:
Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
But lots of books run it a close second and I really couldn't choose between them.

The last book I received as a gift:
My family don't buy me books, they know I prefer to buy my own (and they don't know what I have already), but Christmas 2010 (pre-Kindle) I received Lois McMaster Bujold's Cryoburn in hardback because I dropped very heavy hints

The last book I bought for myself:
Lucifer Falling (a short story collection) by Julian Flood

The last book I gave as a gift:
Christmas 2011;  Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism by Rudolf Wittkower
and This is Not My Snowman
(not to the same recipient)

The Nearest Book
My kindle is on my desk with over 100 books tucked inside it, otherwise:
River, an anthology edited by Alma Alexander (containing my story, Floodlust)
The First Cadfael Omnibus by Ellis Peters (bought but not yet read)
New York Public Library Science Desk Reference
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
and Plain Country Friends, the Quakers of High Flatts (a local history book) by Bower and Knight