You'll Never Walk Alone

You'll Never Walk Alone performed by Gerry and The Pacemakers. RIP, Gerry Marsden. 

Mr. Queen

tags: comedy, Kdrama, mystery, sageuk, time-slip

This new Korean drama sageuk (historical fiction) has 16 episodes that started December 12 and 13. The first 2 episodes are mostly comedy with a present day male chef who drowns and finds himself in the body of the designated queen during Joseon period. The male chef in a female's body creates hilarious scenes. Shin Hye Sun's performance of the male chef played by Choi Jin Hyuk is nothing but perfection IMHO. 

Shin Hye Sun as queen on her wedding day

Highly recommended for Korean sageuk drama and comedy fans.

Alice In Borderland

Coming to Netflix streaming on December 10, 2020 - Alice In Borderland, starring the busiest young actor in Japan, Yamazaki Kento. The TV series is based on Manga. An aimless gamer and his two friends find themselves in a parallel Tokyo, where they're forced to compete in a series of sadistic games to survive. 

Derry Girls On The Great British Bake Off

Must watch: Derry Girls (and Boy) on The Great British Baking Show Holidays, Episode 2, now streaming on Netflix. It was so much fun watching actors with zero or limited baking experience do their very best to bake cakes. They are as funny and genuine as their characters on the show, Derry Girls.  

Watch seasons 1 and 2 on Netflix streaming (warning: salty language). I can't wait for the new season to stream.

Adam Bede

tags: classics, George Eliot, historical fiction
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from Wikipedia

According to The Oxford Companion to English Literature (1967), "the plot is founded on a story told to George Eliot by her aunt Elizabeth Evans, a Methodist preacher, and the original of Dinah Morris of the novel, of a confession of child-murder, made to her by a girl in prison."

The novel follows four characters' rural lives in the fictional community of Hayslope, a rural, pastoral, and close-knit community in 1799. The novel revolves around the beautiful but self-absorbed Hetty Sorrel, Captain Arthur Donnithorne - the young squire who seduces her, Adam Bede - her unacknowledged suitor, and Dinah Morris - Hetty's cousin, a fervent, virtuous, and beautiful Methodist lay preacher.

Adam Bede is the first novel written by George Eliot, published in 1859, the story set in 1799 spanning 8 years. The novel is a little over 600 pages and I initially found it a bit difficult to read because of the language at the beginning and scattered throughout the book. Once I got used to the language, it became easier to follow the story and I couldn't put it down. The book has it all - normal village life, death, romance, religion, tragedy, comedy, satire, and a tiny bit of politics. There are pages and pages of religious teachings by Dinah Morris, the young travelling Methodist lay preacher, which readers may not appreciate. They can be skipped and won't affect the story. I actually read them and didn't get bored.

Dinah Morris as a Methodist wears the drabbest clothing and discourages suitors, telling them she will never marry. At 22 years old, she does nothing but preach and minister to the sick and poor. Her aunt, Mrs. Poyser, once stated that she will only marry a Methodist and cripple. Mrs. Poyser is proven wrong. Dinah eventually marries the man she loves who is neither a Methodist nor a cripple.

The book has numerous characters to keep track of, summary from Wikipedia:

• The Bede family:
  • Adam Bede is described as a tall, stalwart, moral, and unusually competent carpenter. He is 26 years old at the beginning of the novel, and bears an "expression of large-hearted intelligence."
  • Seth Bede is Adam's younger brother, and is also a carpenter, but he is not particularly competent, and "...his glance, instead of being keen, is confiding and benign."
  • Lisbeth Bede is Adam's and Seth's mother. She is "an anxious, spare, yet vigorous old woman, clean as a snowdrop."
  • Thias (Matthias) Bede is Adam's and Seth's father. He has become an alcoholic, and drowns in Chapter IV while returning from a tavern.
  • Gyp is Adam's dog, who follows his every move, and looks "..up in his master's face with patient expectation."
• The Poyser family:
  • Martin Poyser and his wife Rachel rent Hall Farm from Squire Donnithorne and have turned it into a very successful enterprise.
  • Marty and Tommy Poyser are their sons.
  • Totty Poyser is their somewhat spoiled and frequently petulant toddler.
  • "Old Martin" Poyser is Mr. Poyser's elderly father, who lives in retirement with his son's family.
  • Hetty Sorrel is Mr. Poyser's orphaned niece, who lives and works at the Poyser farm. Her beauty, as described by George Eliot, is the sort "which seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women."
  • Dinah Morris is another orphaned niece of the Poysers. She is also beautiful – "It was one of those faces that make one think of white flowers with light touches of colour on their pure petals" – but has chosen to become an itinerant Methodist preacher, and dresses very plainly.
• The Irwine family:
  • Adolphus Irwine is the Rector of Broxton. He is patient and tolerant, and his expression is a "mixture of bonhomie and distinction". He lives with his mother and sisters.
  • Mrs. Irwine, his mother, is "...clearly one of those children of royalty who have never doubted their right divine and never met with any one so absurd as to question it."
  • Pastor Irwine's youngest sister, Miss Anne, is an invalid. His gentleness is illustrated by a passage in which he takes the time to remove his boots before going upstairs to visit her, lest she be disturbed by noise. She and the pastor's other sister Kate are unmarried.
• The Donnithorne family:
  • Squire Donnithorne owns an estate.
  • Arthur Donnithorne, his grandson, stands to inherit the estate; he is twenty years old at the opening of the novel. He is a handsome and charming sportsman.
  • Miss Lydia Donnithorne, the old squire's daughter, is Arthur's unmarried aunt.
• Other characters
• Bartle Massey is the local schoolteacher, a misogynist bachelor who has taught Adam Bede.
• Mr. Craig is the gardener at the Donnithorne estate.
• Jonathan Burge is Adam's employer at a carpentry workshop. Some expect his daughter Mary to make a match with Adam Bede.
• Villagers in the area include Ben Cranage, Chad Cranage, his daughter Chad's Bess, and Joshua Rann.

George Eliot was a great writer, IMHO. I love her satirical, lyrical, and often times comedic scenes. I laughed out loud at the following conversation among the men of the village having a drink, almost at the end of the book. I wonder if Alexandre Dumas who called Adam Bede the masterpiece of the century was also amused. 

Meanwhile the conversation at the head of the table had taken a political turn. Mr. Craig was not above talking politics occasionally, though he piqued himself rather on a wise insight than on specific information. 

 "I'm not again' it - mark my words - I'm not again' it. But it's my opinion as there's them at the head o' this country as are worse enemies to us nor Bony and all the mounseers he's got at his back; for as for the mounseers, you may skewer half-a-dozen of 'em at once as if they war frogs."

"Aye, aye," said Martin Poyser, listening with an air of much intelligence and edification, "they ne'er ate a bit o' beef i' their lives. Mostly sallet, I reckon." 

I also laughed at the village misogynist's descriptions and reasons why he doesn't like women which are always funny and most of his complaints are true anyway. He has a dog which he named Vixen after discovering it is a female but kept it. He refers to Vixen as woman and her puppies babbes as if they are humans. Feminists and the easily offended won't like Mr. Bartle Massey. 

Highly recommended.

Hetty and Arthur story

The Call

tags, fantasy, horror, Korean movie, Netflix streaming, thriller

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form AsianWiki

Two women live in different times. Seo-yeon (Park Shin-hye) lives in the present day and Young-sook (Jun Jong-seo) lives in the past. They connect with one phone call.

I've been waiting for this movie since the start of the year and was surprised to see it on Netflix this morning available for streaming. It's another satisfying thriller from South Korea and starring one of my favorite actresses, Park Shin-hye. 

2 women from different time lines connect via a land line phone call. The woman from 1999, Young-sook pleaded to Seo-yeon, the woman from 2020, to save her from her stepmother who tries to exorcise her by flogging. The 2 women became friends over the phone and Young-sook changed the past by saving Seo-yeon's father from dying by a fire accident in their house. Changing the past is never a good idea because it unleashed a serial killer, and the evil past of one of the women.

The almost 2 hour movie never lets you relax for even more than 2 minutes as you don't know who's going to die a bloody death next. Park Shin-hye and Jun Jong-seo (Burning) are both very good in the movie.

Highly recommended for Korean movie fans 

Elsewhere

tags: parallel multiverse, mystery, sci-fi, thriller

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

from GoodReads

The fate of the world is in the hands of a father and daughter in an epic novel of wonder and terror by Dean Koontz, the #1 New York Times bestselling master of suspense.

Since his wife, Michelle, left seven years ago, Jeffy Coltrane has worked to maintain a normal life for himself and his eleven-year-old daughter, Amity, in Suavidad Beach. It’s a quiet life, until a local eccentric known as Spooky Ed shows up on their doorstep.

Ed entrusts Jeffy with hiding a strange and dangerous object—something he calls “the key to everything”—and tells Jeffy that he must never use the device. But after a visit from a group of ominous men, Jeffy and Amity find themselves accidentally activating the key and discovering an extraordinary truth. The device allows them to jump between parallel planes at once familiar and bizarre, wondrous and terrifying. And Jeffy and Amity can’t help but wonder, could Michelle be just a click away?

Jeffy and Amity aren’t the only ones interested in the device. A man with a dark purpose is in pursuit, determined to use its grand potential for profound evil. Unless Amity and Jeffy can outwit him, the place they call home may never be safe again.

Dean Koontz does it again. The highly entertaining yet scary novel is a short sci-fi thriller with some horrific people and machines alike. Father, daughter, and a new friend face danger while travelling in parallel universes. Dean Koontz is clever by subtly reminding free people what antifa fascists are up to and to be vigilant. Amity's pet domesticated mouse accidentally activates the "key to everything" and travels with Jeffy and Amity to a parallel city. It's cute and a welcome change to Dean Koontz favorite golden retriever.

Highly recommended for Dean Koontz fans.

Christmas With A Prince

tags: Christmas movie, Netflix streaming, romance

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from imdb

Pediatric specialist Tasha Mason is focused on keeping the kids in her ward as healthy as possible. But when the handsome Prince Alexander Cavalieri breaks his leg on a nearby ski-slope, Tasha is forced to allow him to secretly get well on her floor, and she's furious that a spoiled Royal is interrupting the precious healing time her kids need. Soon, however, Tasha learns that some tough love and a lot of Christmas spirit could turn this royal pain into a knight in shining armor.

Netflix and Amazon have started streaming Christmas themed romance movies in November which I think is waaay too early. 

I watched maybe less than half an hour of this movie that should carry a warning: CONTRIVED SCENARIOS AHEAD. The acting and dialog are awful, too clichéd, and cringe-inducing. Both leads are far from the usual beautiful people inhabiting fantasy romances involving princes and princesses. The actor playing the prince has no charisma; he's tall, dark, and retarded. Prince Humperdinck is more charming and princely IMHO. 😉

Do not watch. You'll thank me.

Antifa: Rise of the Black Flags

Can You Forgive Her?

tags: historical fiction, politics, romance, Victorian era, 1000 pages

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

from GoodReads

Alice Vavasor cannot decide whether to marry her ambitious but violent cousin George or the upright and gentlemanly John Grey - and finds herself accepting and rejecting each of them in turn.

Increasingly confused about her own feelings and unable to forgive herself for such vacillation, her situation is contrasted with that of her friend Lady Glencora - forced to marry the rising politician Plantagenet Palliser in order to prevent the worthless Burgo Fitzgerald from wasting her vast fortune.

In asking his readers to pardon Alice for her transgression of the Victorian moral code, Trollope created a telling and wide-ranging account of the social world of his day.

Wow. I finished reading this thousand-page book and I loved it! I've been on a Regency and Victorian era reading period because there are no new books worth my time. I reread some of Jane Austen's books then suddenly remembered I wanted to read Anthony Trollope's books written during the Victorian period. Goodreads readers recommend to start with more-than-a-thousand-page Can You Forgive Her? But what's up with the title? 

“Poor Alice! I hope that she may be forgiven. It was her special fault, that when at Rome she longed for Tibur, and when at Tibur she regretted Rome.”

My answer is of course, I forgive her, Alice Vavasor that is, regardless of her being hard-headed and wishy-washy. She is a very independent young woman, growing up without a mother who died when she was a baby, and her father who hardly pays attention to her. Alice resents her elderly aunts telling her whom to marry and makes a mistake in taking back her promise to marry the handsome and moderately rich gentleman, John Grey. During this time, it's disgraceful for both parties to cancel the engagement and Alice feels she has sinned by doing so and doesn't deserve to be forgiven. 

The other young woman, the wealthy heiress Lady Glencora Palliser, is married to a duke's heir, Plantagenet Palliser. Lady Glencora was in love with a beautiful idler, wastrel, and gambler, Burdo Fitzgerald but was "jumped on" by her titled aunts to marry the better man, Palliser. Both aunts are indeed correct for jumping on Lady Glencora and Alice Vavasor.

The third woman, the rich young widow Mrs. Greenow, the sister of Alice's father spends her time on  matchmaking. She and the characters in her universe provide lots of funny moments although there are plenty of LOL scenes all throughout the book.

One of the love-to-hate characters is the heir to Vavasor Hall, George Vavasor, Alice's first cousin whom she was engaged to briefly when she was only 19 and then again after her disengagement from John Grey, but rejected him both times eventually. He is described as short in stature, with very dark hair and eyebrows, has small hands and feet, and has a scar running from under his left eye down to his jaw. He got the scar when he was just a boy for confronting a burglar in their home. In other words, he is as ugly as sin, even his grandfather says so often. He is also a penniless ne'er do well wastrel and even though a pauper wants a seat at the Parliament, carelessly using Alice's money. He is a brute and a violent man, a total villain. Alice who thinks she is still in love with him but realizes she isn't, is lucky to escape his clutches. 

Anthony Trollope had managed to make George's character evil, murderous, and pathetic but funny in a way. When George was desperate and mad at everyone and everything whom he deems has wronged him including his grandfather, his sister Kate, Alice, John Grey, his uncle, the city, the country, the sun, the universe, he curses at them mightily and thinks of a thousand ways to murder them. Trollope had a way with words that I really like. I wasn't bored at all reading about the countless number of characters and the political parts of the novel. I'll try to read the rest of the series, 5 more books, that are more about the Pallisers and politics.

 Highly recommended for British Victorian historical fiction readers.