Book 32 of 2022

Last night I finished Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones, the first in her Chrestomanci series.

This was charming, very much a children’s book, but with the feel of almost Alice in Wonderland crossed with a magical school book like Harry Potter. The tale is of two orphaned siblings in a world of magic who go to a strange new castle to live. Edwardian type setting. I don’t want to say much more, to risk spoiling the plot. But it was just lovely, with well developed characters, a rattling plot, and a wonderful atmosphere. The only downside for me was that it left the tale unfinished. But as the first book in a series I plan to read more of that’s hardly something I can complain about! The world building was not too heavy in this first book, i.e. there was plenty of plot. And I will definitely read more.

A solid 5/5 rating.

Tonight’s movie watching

Our watch tonight, for the first time for both of us, was the 1932 version of The Mummy, starring Boris Karloff.

I liked a lot about it, especially Boris Karloff who was mesmerising. But it was very much a film of three parts. The first third was superb, and gripped me from the opening seconds. The middle third was poor, especially the Ancient Egypt segment, that I found laughable. And the final third was just ok.

Kudos though to the lead female actress, Zita Johann, who did have some dodgy bits, but was generally very naturalistic and assured in her performance.

And thank goodness for a short film, not much over an hour in length. Which we both appreciated hugely tonight.

We have lots of the early Universal Studios films recorded to watch soon. I see they shared a lot of cast between them.

Oh and it’s easy to see how influential the 1932 Mummy film was on the 1999 one.