Wednesday, December 01, 2004

The Day After Tomorrow

No this isn't a blog about Friday!

I had Hazel and Ashley round this evening to watch the DVD of The Day After Tomorrow with me. I bought this so that the young people could watch it whilst I was in Canada (otherwise I would certianly have RENTED it rather than purchasing it!).

Now the basic premise of the film made me a little dubious to start with but watching it only increased my disbelief, rather than suspending it!

Ok this might be the influence of knowing some climatologists at university and having some especially sceptical friends with me when I first saw the trailer but come ON... was it even VAGUELY convincing?

Well putting all that lot aside...

There was an interesting division of the audience this evening.

At the end of the film, the survivors are being taken down to non-ice age Mexico where the American government is operating out of the consulate. In the helicopter there's one guy with his dog. My friend was REALLY pleased that the dog survived (thousands of people died but.... in Independence Day style the dog's ok!). However SHOCKINGLY I was pleased to see that the Gutenburg Bible survived - rather than being burnt to keep them warm (to be fair they did have a WHOLE library of other books to keep them toasty!).

Ok so which one of us is more sad? I leave it to my blog readers to judge! Ashley concluded we both were!!!

Interesting aside though... and ok it's not about the dog but about the book!

They were there in a library burning whatever they couldto keep warm in the scary sub zero temperatures and two of them started arguing over the merits a a cople of authors and endeavouring to justify saving them. Forestalling their literary angst, another guy points out:

"There's hundreds of Tax law journals down here we can burn for sure!"

However let's play the game....

Ignoring the rare books.... (and the Bible)

and considering that ALL the decent libraries in Europe have gone so the collections in the US might be the only place to have these books...

Which books in that library would you have saved from the life giving flames?

For me I think I'd have saved C. S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet series, some Agatha Christie - classics! The Dream of Scipio and An Instance of the Fingerpost, Portuguese Irregular Verbs, Winnie the Pooh, ... ok I'm getting in danger of freezing to death - what about you?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ok here goes:
Douglas Adams: Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy, a trilogy in four parts (not sure I recognise the 5th as Canonical).
Bill Watterson: Calvin n Hobbes (all works but it would have to be a pretty cool library to have them)
CS Lewis: Narnia Chronicles
GK Chesterton: Father Brown Stories and also "Club of Queer Trades"
Arthur Conan Doyle: Sherlock Holmes
I'd better quit there I guess! Youthblog