Reading The Riot Act: out and about

Showing posts with label out and about. Show all posts

Tuesday, 26 August 2014

Meeting Sarah J Maas!

Warning: Spoilers! (duh.)

So a week ago at the very last minute I was jet set to Leeds with the delightful Fee for a Sarah J Maas signing (shocking that I wanted to go right!? SHOCKER!) I had previously been set to go to the Newcastle one but after irresponsibly quitting my job with no back up I could no longer go. So you can guess my joy when my mother surprised me with money to go! HOLLA AT CHA MAMA!

The signing started at 12:30 and as an incredibly worrisome person I made sure we arrived at Leeds for 10am, this probably seemed ridiculous and I had planned to get food and attend to natures call before lining up but as we found the Waterstones the line was already gigantic. So I had to sit for 2 and a half hours with my bladder about to burst, stomach making whale sounds and my tired, hungry mind annoying the other people lining up, but it was so worth it.

3 games of scrabble, two awkward conversations with strangers and 1 entertaining "wee wee" dance. The line started to move, we were still in the line for a good half our before we made it to Miss Maas and well...

...her face says it all!

My first thought was MY GOD SHE'S SO PRETTY! I saw her not only talking to Fee to be polite as she signed her books but genuinely having a chat with her and writing personalised messages. I haven't been to many signings but it was clear this isn't the norm.

Then it was my turn and to say I was at creeper level 100 would be an understatement. First of all I just stared at her, like I'd been searching my whole life for the Messiah and there she was. Luckily for me, Fee chimed in with the little 'she loves you' so it made my creeper level lower, or possibly higher. I'm never sure what to say in those situations but Miss Maas was polite and sweet and honestly tried to illicit conversation from me. I'm just a blank minded robot at the point where she does this.

I won't pretend I have learnt dome lesson about signings or how to handle it for next time, I did the exact same thing at Maggie Stiefvater so maybe we all have a signing type, mine just happens to be the creeper and Fee is the charmer. If your lucky you should find one, they make you seem a hell of a lot less weird.

That one piece of hair is gonna drive me insane.

Tuesday, 17 June 2014

rowling

The Birthplace of Harry Potter.

Louise Wilkes 08:25:00 0

Throughout my many, many years as a Potterhead, I have been to many, many places associated with the Harry Potter World.

Wizarding World of Harry Potter? CHECK!

Leavsden Studio Tour? CHECK!

Real Life Set Locations? CHECK!

But somewhere I'd been meaning to go for many years is The Elephant House Cafe in Edinburgh, where Rowling (atleast once) sat and wrote Harry Potter. Dubbed "The Birthplace of Harry Potter" I don't know why I'd never been before and this week I did. It wasn't all that exciting but I really want to talk about the bathroom!

Yes, I said bathroom.

The bathroom was a work of art.

Potterheads from across the world had come and left their mark. They put up quotes, and recited entire chapters. They made Potterhead puns or maybe just signed there names but they were all there. Real people who had come through those doors, people I would never meet from Canada or Mexico but all people pulled together by a common thread.

They came knowing they would see nothing about Harry Potter or the secrets behind where it came from hidden within the walls, but they came anyway and they left something in what I would call a very fancy cafe' for more and more Potterheads to see and add to. Breathing life into old walls and making the ordinary, extraordinary. And isn't that what the books did in the first place.

Naturally I was immediately compelled to leave my own dedication, but mine was neither pun nor quote, but it stood with the Thank You Graffiti. Calling to a woman who was not there and probably wouldn't be again. But just wanting to put into words, in that moment that I felt so much love for so many strangers I would never meet. I wanted to Thank, the world, the universe anyone who would listen for the gift of these books and all books after that. It's a wonderful life.

"For all the years I was lost and alone, these books saved me. Thank you."

2017 UPDATE!

I returned to The Elephant House!

They also make great Jacket Potatoes!

Friday, 13 June 2014

the fault in our stars

Fuck Fate! The Fault in Our Stars Movie.

Louise Wilkes 01:35:00 0

Yesterday I was able to go to an Advance Fan Screening of The Fault in Our Stars Movie with my sister. Afterwards I sat down and took time for me to put together what I really thought about the movie.

First off, the movie was incredible, Shailene Woodley is so talented and so truthful, I had no qualms about her as Hazel, I really cannot fault her at all. The reviewers are right when they say this adaptation is authentic and respectful to the book. That doesn't mean it is exactly the same it matched up to everythig perfectly in my head. But it felt the same. It felt like how I felt when I read the book. The biggest difference I would say, was Augustus...

Ansel Elgort did not play Book Augustus. I don't care how controversial that is because the girls in my cinema were getting very worked up. Gus in TFIOS is sexy and smouldering and mysterious and very out together. He hides his goofiness even though that's the part Hazel loves most about him. Ansel was all goof, but it worked. I think we can all agree Gus is pretentious, but when a serious, good looking boy s pretentious he can come across as a douchebag. But with Gus being kind of goofy, it allowed us to still like him in a visual medium. We know in the book he's awesome because it's written down, but the direction can't just put some writing at the beginning going

HEY BTW GUS AIN'T A DOUCHE!

That's not how films work, as you may have noticed. But the film was faithful and there were these incredible and beautiful sequences. The journey up the Anne Frank House was lovely and with the voice over you can see the moment Hazel isn't scared anymore. And the moment Gus tells her he's sick and the moment he's dying and the pre-funeral and egging the car. All the bits I wanted were there, all the quotes I'd spent so long wrapping myself in for comfort were there. This is not a movie for Hollywood, this is a movie for readers.

This then got me thinking about how TFIOS is currently the number 1 movie in America, and how for my 18th Birthday, I asked my Grandma to take me to New York so I could buy a Signed, American, First Edition of the book. I didn't know then, that this would turn out to be my favourite book. I didn't know that for the year I begged everyone I knew to read it that within a year after that I would be in a cinema surrounded by crowds of people who loved the story just as much as I did. I didn't realise that loving a book, a solitary act could expand and become something social and wider, something that brings people together not sets them apart. Nobody ever reads the same book, you take something different away with each individual and yet we were all there, together, celebrating what we all took from it.

When we all stood and clapped at the end. I started thinking about Norway. Don't worry this is relevant. Norway translated the poetic, Shakespeare reference title to literally "FUCK FATE". And as I stood in a place with so many people, shouting and whooping at a film I thought about how no one could see this coming. Who could have predicted this? Hollywood doesn't make films about sick people and let that not be the defining aspect of their characters, things like this don't happen. But TFIOS gives a great big, middle finger to fate and demands it will do what it wants.

They say that all films are destined to let the book down, but FUCK FATE! The book is still better, but I have not seen a more faithful and touching adaption than I did yesterday.