An Infuriating Book

Third lazy morning in a row. A long long lay in, mainly sleep, a little sex and a lot of coffee. A bit too lazy really, we could have been orienteering. Around 12.30 we get up and do a run with Doggo before heading home to watch Seabiscuit.

Now I have a rule. Don't see the film of a book you loved. Equally don't read a book of a film you liked. Follow that and you'll never be disappointed with either.
Seabiscuit is based on a true story from the 1930's about a half-blind ex-prizefighter and a car dealer who team up with a millionaire and his little horse. The horse is called Seabiscuit.

Seabiscuit is probably a good film but the book by Laura Hillenbrand is simply superb and therefore I didn't much like the film. I really didn't expect to like a book about horse racing but I did. I liked it a lot. Unfortunately the film simply can't live with the book. In fairness, with only two hours to play with, it would be difficult to do so but I'm disappointed a better attempt wasn't made.

For a start the book has a very slow meandering start and I hoped the film would dispense with most of that and just get on with the good stuff that comes later. Unfortunately it didn't and that left them struggling to cram too much into the rest of the film. There were many many things the jockey, owner, and trainer went through that made the story so compelling, and they weren't in the film. For a start the movie compressed the two major accidents that Red Pollard suffered into one, presumably for time's sake and the love story between Pollard and his nurse is never even mentioned. You can't appreciate what was really accomplished just by watching the film. It only scratches the surface. So read the book.

While watching the film I keep away from the football scores, expecting a bad fantasy day and defeat for Derby. The fantasy didn't disappoint and my team returns to (poor) form and the last of the four sides I run crashed out of the cup.

Derby however supply a surprise and seriously impress by winning 2-1 at second placed Preston. On paper it is one hell of a result but did they play any good? We move above Preston and into second place in the league and only three points off the top. FA Cup next, where we traditionally rest all our best players and lose to a lower division club. This year it's Wrexham at home, so the omens are not good. Please please please let's take it seriously this year, win, and maybe even play some football as well?

I cooked at Thai meal for all of us. A New Years resolution to try and do some new recipes. It's not bad.

Daughter has booked the lounge for a Vicar Of Dibley/Torchwood double bill, so we nick her TV again and retire to the bedroom and watch Memoirs Of A Geisha. Hmmm it's not my sort of film, too complex for my simple mind and too many foreign accents. It's about two sisters who are sold by their father to a Geisha house. One of them is not accepted and is instead sent to a brothel. She escapes from the brothel and hence from the film! But the other is left alone to become the slave of a geisha. Promising so far.

However I expect the story to revolve around finding the sister, with the girl perhaps ending up thrown in a brothel too but no, instead she learns how to become a geisha with the help of another geisha, a good geisha who is fighting against the evil geisha. This is where I got lost.

The whole point of the film, that I missed, seemed to be that the girl while still a child falls in love with a chap called The Chairman and the rest of the film is about her eventually ending up with him. L enjoyed it a lot more than I did.

In the evening L gave me a book to read about a chap who takes up Triathlon it's called 'Not Normal Behaviour'. The title says it all. It's an infuriating story. The chap is far fitter than I am even before he starts training. He hates swimming but from day one admits that he can easily swim a mile in the pool, he's already done a sprint tri and to top it all he even ran the London Marathon a few years ago. So it's hardly a novice to expert story.

He starts to do well in events without really training and even after getting plastered the night before. His target is to do an Ironman, which (if I have this correct) is a 2.4 mile swim, 96 mile bike and a full marathon run. It is an exasperating book but none the less gripping and I read half of it in one night.