Abcde BLOG

Book Crazy has offered a mini-challenge for the Once-Upon-a-Read-a-Thon, so I'm going to start out with this one.  The instructions are:

Sounds totally do-able, yes?

Well, except that asking me to choose a favorite book, let alone a favorite character is a hellishly difficult task!  And then to have to associate it with only one image, and only one song....*headdesk*.  But I think I've done something approximating a valid choice.

My favorite book (at the moment...ask me in a month and it will be different):

Kazuo Ishiguro's Remains of the Day

My review of the book is here.

The image this book stirs in my heart is not exactly, but close to this:

The ivy creeping up the walls, the covered bow windows, the vague loneliness of the whole scene simply captures for me Stevens' essence.

And Stevens's song, though he does not know it, is the haunting lullaby "Gradh Geal Mo Chridhe" for opportunities missed.  This rendition is performed by Smithfield Fair; the footage of Alan Rickman used is taken from "From Sleep and Shadow", and the video was mixed by kliz9

My favorite character from a novel is most likely Miss Jean Brodie from Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Maggie Smith is my Jean Brodie.  I read the book knowing she'd played the eccentric school teacher, though I hadn't yet seen the film.  Dame Maggie does, indeed, play her to perfection.  Her song would need to be something terribly sad and lonely, though I'm not sure the character would even realize it as such.  So, it would have to have some sort of "cover" for its desolation.  "The Unforgettable Fire" by U2 is as close as I have come to finding "her" song.