I fin­ished Audrey Hep­burn by Barry Paris the other day. I very much enjoyed this book. It did take a long time to read it how­ever. The inform­a­tion in it was quite dense and detailed; There are nearly 400 pages of the main text of the book, along with ref­er­ence notes, a filmo­graphy, list­ings of stage and tele­vi­sion work, two sets of pho­to­graphs and an index.
Mr Paris has cer­tainly done his research. His source notes are split by chapter at the end of the book, and there are often more than 100 sources per chapter lis­ted! He clearly loves his sub­ject, and Audrey is treated with love and respect. Hav­ing said that, it seems she truly was a unique char­ac­ter, much loved and respec­ted by nearly every­one who met her. I knew very little about Audrey Hep­burn before I read this book. I now know her life story, and cer­tainly want to see more of her work. Jan and I watched Break­fast at Tiffany’s over the week­end. We also have My Fair Lady on video, and sev­eral more DVD’s. I will try to watch them over the next few weeks.

I fin­ished the book I was read­ing to day; The Andrew Lloyd Webber Story by Michael Cove­ney. This was a great book. I learnt a lot about ALW as he is appar­ently known. It cer­tainly made me want to see some more of his shows. I’ve seen Joseph, Cats, and Phantom the last two twice. I hadn’t real­ized just how much he has done. Michael Coveny’s writ­ing, whilst a little too fawn­ing at times, did make me want to under­stand the music a little more. I’m a geek, so I am very inter­ested in the tech­nical aspects of what he does with his music. Recommended.

The book I read before ALW story, was Dogs­body by Diana Wynne Jones. This was an (older) kids book, but one which I really enjoyed. I read sev­eral of her books before but this one was quite a depar­ture from my pre­vi­ous exper­i­ence of her style. Rather than kids and magic, this book is about Sirius, a Luminary who is/inhabits the star of the same name. He is accused and con­victed of a ter­rible crime by his con­tem­por­ies and sen­tenced to inhabit the body of an earth­bound dog (Sirius is known as the dog star) with a nor­mal dog’s lifespan to recover the weapon he is sup­posed to have used. It is a an unusual tale being writ­ten mostly from the dog’s view­point. Recommended.

I am now read­ing Audrey Hep­burn by Barry Paris. More when I’ve fin­ished it.

I’ve now fin­ished Harry Pot­ter and the Order of the Phoenix for the second time. I think it was bet­ter the second time around, espe­cially hav­ing just re-read the first four books. How­ever, I felt that the weaker parts of the book stood out even more!

I’ve just fin­ished Harry Pot­ter and the Gob­let of Fire for the fourth time. I’m back on to Harry Pot­ter and the Order of the Phoenix for the second time. It was inter­est­ing that Gob­let of Fire really didn’t seem to drag at all this time through. I was also delighted to find that lots of the events and plot points from Phoenix were star­ted or stated in Gob­let of Fire.

After fin­ish­ing Harry Pot­ter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowl­ing on Wed­nes­day, I real­ised I wanted to read the whole series again from the begin­ning. So I’ve just fin­ished Harry Pot­ter and the Philosopher’s Stone this lunch time and now I’m on Harry Pot­ter and the Cham­ber of Secrets.

Wow! Tonight I fin­ished Harry Pot­ter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowl­ing. Not bad going since Sunday night!
I must say I really enjoyed it. I found it much more enter­tain­ing and fast paced than Gob­let of Fire. The story line is good, without too many twists and turns in the plot. It is not per­fect by any meas­ure and some of the book is not up to the stand­ard of the earlier books. Read on for more detail, but only if you don’t mind learn­ing about the plot. You have been warned! Plot spoil­ers ahead. Edit: Oops! I acci­dent­ally mis-spelled phoenix as pheonix in the title this post. Con­tinue read­ing →

We have our cop­ies now! We spent the night in Bor­ders wait­ing for the release of the book. We bought two cop­ies though i was temp­ted to get three! I will be able to con­tain myself and wait, I hope!
There were at least a couple of hun­dred people in Bor­ders, a scene appar­ently repeated through­out the coun­try. THe BBC has this story

We are all quite excited in our house. We are eagerly await­ing the release of the new Harry Pot­ter book. Our local Bor­ders are open­ing over mid­night in order to sell cop­ies of the book at one minute past mid­night. They are supp­posed to be put­ting on some enter­tainemnt.
We will be going down as a spe­cial treat for Jamie. I think we will only buy two cop­ies, one each for Jamie and Jan. I have said I am will­ing to wait until one of them has fin­ished before I read it. I guess with luck that means I will be able to start it on Monday!
Whilst I’m on the sub­ject, we watched a very good inter­view of author JK Rowl­ing by Jeremy Pax­man tonight. It was the best inter­view I have seen her give. Very inform­at­ive. The full tran­script is available.