Date: 18 May 2008 08:49:44
I've just finished reading Alexander McCall Smith's Tears of the Giraffe and enjoyed it immensely. I've already asked my local library to transfer the next two in the series, Morality for Beautiful Girls and The Kalahari Typing School for Men, to my nearest branch so I can pick them up easily. The tales are so simple, yet so wonderful: I feel as if I am transported to Botswana and am there, right there, experiencing the life of Precious Ramotswe and her No 1. Ladies' Detective Agency.
My next book is Judith Hermann's Nothing but Ghosts -- the book my favourite film of the Festival of German films was based on: looking forward to reading it.
Die Fälscher [The Counterfeiters] won Best Foreign Language Film at the 2007 Academy Awards -- and I can see why. I did feel something was lacking, perhaps I would've liked to get to know some of the characters a bit better, but all-in-all a truly fascinating look in itself of a piece of history I was unaware of [the counterfeiting of the UK pound and US dollar and then flooding the markets with them], made all the more poignant and touching by the moral dilemma of just what people will do to save their own lives and the lives of their friends. If you get a chance to see it, I can recommend it: at times it is a hard movie to watch, exceptionally confronting, but it is a truly fascinating look at not only a certain historical event, but the issues those involved in it confronted.