December Floating In To Carry Us Out...IWSG

 

IWSG

This month I'd like to share a movie preview with you. This film has touched my heart and makes me feel love for the best in humans. We are not a "black & white" race upon this earth. We are such a mix that I don't like to use "gray" to describe us; I prefer mixed. We are a mixed race. Full of wonder and impossible dreams, and, hate and intolerance. I like to think that over the last one hundred years we've made more gains than losses in the proverbial "two steps forward, one step back." So, I will share this clip and you can decide for yourself if you'd like to see the entire movie, which of course, I recommend. It's a super one to see during this season, whatever you practice. This story is from a book, "Wild Pork and Watercress by Barry Crump. Also, this was filmed in New Zealand and has beautiful photography. Neill is an actor that I tend to try and see anything he's in, particularly if I've never heard of it. Like this film. I'll share another "unknown" film of his in another post...

(For some reason I couldn't get the video to work on my post, so have to put the link instead. Sorry!) 

https://youtu.be/dPaU4Gymt3E?si=Hx0lGtWAAH9UhDMO The Hunt For The Wilderpeople

Please go and visit our super IWSG co-hosts this month!

C. Lee McKenzie, JQ Rose  Jennifer Lane  Jacqui Murray!

The (optional) question for December is: 

Book reviews are for the readers. When you review a book, do you review for the reader or the author? Is it about what you liked and enjoyed about your reading experience, or do you critique the author?

For me, I leave a review about my reading experience. I try NOT to critique the author, no matter I like it or don't. There, to me, is no reason to "attack" someone who has put themselves out there to be read, to comment on someone who was brave enough to write a whole piece-start to finish. To comment on how I enjoyed or didn't, the read is all I need to put out there. I am not a Troll. I myself prefer to have someone's honest opinion on the read, not their opinion of me as a person.

I wish you all a wonderful December and beginning to the new year. I hope you all have wonderful days and evenings filled with love and being with the ones you hold dear. Blessings to us all...

A to Z Raymond Queneau, Author

A to Z Challenge Here

One thing I love about doing the A to Z Blogging Challenge, is that it challenges me to come up with new things. I like to have a theme and always find that I learn so much because though I might have lots of ideas in mind, when I start writing the posts I have to research each one to find information that might be interesting to others. Invariably it teaches me things I didn’t know about the subject. It also makes me look for new things to write about because, let’s face it, Q, X, Y and Z are not easy to find subjects about!

An example is this post about French author Raymond Queneau. When looking for a “Z” to write about I found Zazie, and in reading about her I found she’d been nicknamed Zazie because she reminded her parents of the character in Raymond Queneau’s novel, “Zazie in the Metro” (Zazie dans Le Metro 1959). I watched the trailer for the movie (1960) and got an idea of why the singer Zazie was given that nickname, especially when you see how sassy she can be. 

Raymond Queneau, author, looking serious

I then wanted to know more about Raymond Queneau as a writer. He seems to have been a man like any other, ups and downs with a good work ethic. 

RQ looking not quite so serious

I went on to find some of his quotes on Goodreads.

Here are a few. They speak more to the writer he was than I ever can…

“Being or nothing, that is the question. Ascending, descending, coming, going, a man does so much that in the end he disappears.”
― Raymond Queneau, Zazie in the Metro

Zazie book cover

“I don't know how long I stayed in that particular place my poor memory is not a chronometer nor a movie camera nor a phonograph nor any other sort of finely tuned machine. It's more like nature with holes empty spaces hidden nooks and crannies with rivers that trickle away so that you can never dip your foot in the same water twice and with patches of light and darkness.”
― Raymond Queneau (Author)

“He wanted to be content with an identity nicely chopped into pieces of varying lengths, but whose character was always similar, without dyeing it in autumnal colors, drenching it in April showers or mottling it with the instability of clouds.”
― Raymond Queneau

“The only advantage he could see in the change was that he had a small desk in his room; his capacity for isolation was thereby increased. But none of this changed his life very much. He continued his games of billiards and his reading. And was periodically overwhelmed by abominable fits of despair from which he was abruptly extricated by a ridiculous but stubborn optimism, an absurd love of life.”
― Raymond Queneau, The Last Days

 

And lastly, from Zazie:

“–Alors tu t’es bien amusée ? (So, did you have fun?)
–Comme ça. (So so.)
–T’as vu le métro ? (Did you see the metro?)
–Non. (No.)
–Alors, qu’est-ce que t’as fait ? (So what did you do?)
–J’ai vieilli”  (I got older.)
― Raymond Queneau, Zazie in the Metro

A trailer for Zazie Dans le Metro the film 

  

Missed some of my A to Z 2019 posts? Well look no further...

Azat-le-Ris

Biarritz

Canal du Midi

Domaine de Baboulet

Cite de L'Ecrit

Fleurs de France

Le Bistrot Gourmand Chez Martine

Haute-Garonne

L'Isle-Adam Island of Adam

Jeanne D'Arc

Patricia Kass Chanteuse Actrice

Lyon

Merens-Les-Vals

Nourriture

Oppidum D'Enserune

Dans Les Pyrenees Avec des Amis

Images from:

https://www.azquotes.com/author/11970-Raymond_Queneau

http://www.frenchpeterpan.com/article-30692395.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zazie_dans_le_M%C3%A9tro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpt0xB7qSj4

https://www.amazon.com/Zazie-dans-m%C3%A9tro-M%C3%A9lanie-Pircar/dp/2072723256