'A Discovery of Witches' Is Coming to TV (and Other Reasons I'm Happy Today)

One of my favorite books in the history of time, A Discovery of Witches, is becoming a TV series, as reported by Entertainment Weekly. 

Matthew Goode, who appeared in The Imitation Game* with Benedict Cumberbatch, will play my fictional boyfriend, vampire-scientist Matthew Clairmont. 

Badass witch heroine and mother of dragon (technically, firedrake) Diana Bishop is to be played by Teresa Palmer, the Australian actress I thought was very good in Warm Bodies. 

Quite nice. Another favorite getting a TV adaptation is Robert Galbraith's (a.k.a. J.K. Rowling's) The Cuckoo's Calling. 

It looks like Cormoran Strike - another of my fictional boyfriends, although I truly want him and Robin to get together - got a bit of an adaptational attractiveness upgrade, but no matter. Holliday Grainger looks like she'll be an absolutely perfect Robin Ellacot. 

Elarica Johnson, who made a brief but notable appearance in the film version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, is playing Lula Landry. I still like to imagine that Lula is dating Fred Weasley in the afterlife. 

Grainger is also set to play the lover of Anna Paquin's character in Tell It to the Bees, a novel written by Fiona Shaw. Shaw did a stint on True Blood with Paquin, playing the lead witch of a coven, but is perhaps more famous for playing Harry Potter's witchcraft-phobic Aunt Petunia. 

"Telling the bees" is an ancient folkloric custom. 

Also adapted for TV was Charlaine Harris's Midnight, Texas series. I'm missing it because I don't have cable, but my parents are watching it. Maybe some day they'll put it on Netflix. 

*Which I never finished watching because sad LGBT+ history makes me sad. 

Recently Watched: Much Ado About Nothing at Notre Dame on Sunday, then my second viewing of Twelfth Night, with my niece this time, also at Notre Dame but on Monday. 

Currently Listening To: Wil Wheaton reading the audio book of Ready Player One.

 

Currently Reading: 

'The Silkworm' by J.K. Rowling, Writing as Robert Galbraith

Brava, Ms. Rowling! Much of what I said for The Cuckoo's Calling can also be applied here: "Robert Galbraith" once again shows herself witty, hilarious, brilliant, and in command of both English literature and European mythology.

I had to look up at least two cultural references in this one: Rose West and Rowntree. The victim in this murder mystery is Owen Quine, and his wife Leonora is one of the suspects. The press compares her in physical appearance to Rose West – apparently, a real-life serial killer currently serving a life sentence in the U.K.

If I heard the audiobook correctly, Rowntree is the name of Robin Ellacott’s parents’ chocolate Labrador retriever. The name fits a chocolate-colored dog because it’s the name of the U.K. chocolate maker, the one that makes Aero bars. (Rainbow Rowell has teased an appearance by Aero bars in Carry On, which she promises is filled with nommy food references.)

Robin Venetia Ellacott is even more of a superheroine in this one than she was in the last. Guy Ritchie could direct the movie version.

Book Boyfriend #444: Cormoran Strike. If Edward Fairfax Rochester fell through half a dozen Raymond Chandler novels and From Here to Eternity on his way to the 21st century, the result would be Cormoran Strike.

And I am shipper trash because I desperately want Robin to leave Matthew for Cormoran. That kiss on the hand in the very last sentence of the novel - that's all the encouragement I need. The line has been crossed. Let the good ship CormoRobin set forth.

Robert Glenister is an amazing voice actor. I didn’t love his voice for Cormoran’s brother Al; Al was supposed to have a slight French accent, but to me he sounded too American. But otherwise, Glenister makes it too easy to forget I’m listening to a single person reading instead of to the characters themselves.

Do I really have to wait until October 20 for the third book, Career of Evil, though?

I checked this audiobook out of my local library and was not, in any way, obligated to review it.

P.S. I don’t think I’ll ever buy anything made from silk again unless it’s ahimsa or cruelty-free silk. I can’t stand the thought of the little silkworms being boiled alive inside their cocoons. 

'The Cuckoo's Calling' by #JKRowling Writing as Robert Galbraith

I loved this audiobook, so I'm as surprised as you are that I simply don't have very much more to say about it, other than what I covered in my March 1st post. Just a few talking points, then:

- The title, of course, comes from a poem by Christina Rossetti called "The Dirge." I haven't read much of Rossetti. I'm slightly more familiar with her notorious uncle, John William Polidori.

- I said Rowling has a casual familiarity with 400 years of British literature, but she also makes at least passing reference to American literature in this volume. A poem by Walt Whitman is mentioned. During the episode in which he learns of his ex-fiance's engagement and has too much to drink, Cormoran Strike reveals himself to have something in common with Robert E. Lee Prewitt in From Here to Eternity. Namely, both were boxers in their respective armies. Also, Strike is very, very drunk, as Prew so often gets in the War Trilogy.

Physically, Strike is described as a large, lumbering man with curly hair - less Montgomery Clift as Prew in From Here to Eternity, more John C. Reilly as John Storm in The Thin Red Line.

- Apart from Cormoran, Robin, and Lula herself, I think my favorite character is Guy Somé. First of all, it's hilarious that he gave himself a professional name that's a faux-Frenchified version of "some guy." Second of all, being gay, he had no sexual interest in Lula, yet he still loved her very, very much in a platonic way. I love their friendship. I hope he shows up again in The Silkworm.

But I really hope that in a future short story or drabble based on her Harry Potter characters, J.K. Rowling has one of them wear a Guy Somé design. I'd love to see Draco Malfoy in a studded hoodie. Astoria Greengrass can wear it when he's not home.

- Vashti is a great name for a high-end clothes shop. You may remember Queen Vashti of Persia from the Biblical book of Esther. When her drunken husband orders her to appear before him and his rowdy, drunken friends, Vashti refuses. She has sometimes been thought of as haughty and self-important in Jewish tradition, but to feminists it simply seems as if she valued her own worth over her husband's senseless "command." Vashti's reward is to be replaced by the more submissive Esther, much in the same way Lilith is replaced by the more submissive Eve.

- Nothing ever explained how Lula got that scar on her arm, so I'm just going to have to assume "from Voldemort" is the correct answer.

- Headcanon: Lula Landry and Fred Weasley are dating in heaven.

Currently Reading: 'The Cuckoo's Calling' by Robert Galbraith

The audiobook I'm currently listening to (borrowed from my local library) while I commute is The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith, a pseudonym of J.K. Rowling. Thus far, I've listened to 5 of 13 discs.

Oh, Jo, how I've missed your expansive vocabulary, your encyclopedic knowledge of Classical mythology and folklore, your insights into human nature, your particular sense of humor, your casual familiarity with 400 years of British literature, and your use of the Latin language.

Two references to Virgil's Aeneid have occurred in the part of the book I've listened to thus far - is Rowling drawing a comparison between Lula Landry (the deceased fashion model around whom the mystery occurs) and Queen Dido of Carthage? I seem to remember that Dido commits suicide by throwing herself off a cliff; Landry is thought to have committed suicide by jumping from her flat's third-floor window. Carthage is in North Africa; Landry is of multiracial English and African descent.

Sidebar: I had to read the Aeneid in college and I distinctly remember barely being able to understand a word of it. I remember calling my dad and asking him if he could take me to Barnes and Noble to get the Cliff Notes. This was the late '90s, mind you, and I don't think Shmoop and SparkNotes were things yet.  If they were, I hadn't yet discovered them.

The statue of Eros - well, technically his twin brother Anteros, but commonly referred to as Eros - at Piccadilly Circus is where Robin Ellacot and her beloved Matthew got engaged to be married. Creative Commons image by Eriko Nakagawa.

Will Cormoran Strike turn out to be another literary example of Marry the Man with One Leg? He walks with the aid of a prosthesis after losing part of a leg in Afghanistan. You know who else in British literature was wounded in Afghanistan? John Watson in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. Although Cormoran is the Sherlock Holmes and his Watson is Robin Ellacot, I tend to think it's an intentional homage.

And Now Some Harry Potter References I Have to Get Out of My System.

Will that pink "bekittened" death threat turn out to be from Dolores Umbridge?

(Actually, I already heard about the man with the not-cheating wife who sent the death threats. Umbridge was my first thought, though.)

How did Lula get that scar on her arm? Was it - Voldemort?

Cormoran's sister Lucy has three sons. In their portrait, the boys are wearing bottle-green school uniforms. Slytherins, then?

Tanacetum vulgare, or tansy, in a Creative Commons image by fir0002

I like the name Tansy, even if the character isn't a very lovable one. Neville Longbottom, Hogwarts professor of herbology, could tell you that tansy, a member of the daisy family, has also been used as a medicinal herb, although it should not be due to toxic side effects. WebMD can tell you that the word "tansy" derives from the Greek word athanasia, or immortality. The ancient Greeks used it for embalming.

Because the plant effects include stimulating blood flow, it has been used to treat fluid retention and to stimulate menstrual flow. It has been used for abortion. BUT it should not be used medicinally because of the serious risk of side effects that include kidney and liver failure and death.

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