Observative
Posted: Tue 4 January, 2005 Filed under: General, Travel 2 Comments »Today on the TV news, they talked about charity shops, and did a report on one in particular that specialised in selling second-hand books and music. Since the Tsunami disaster in Asia, they’ve been snowed under with donations and so on. Which is all well and good, obviously – every little helps.
However, when they were doing the report, they showed a man taking a book off the shelves. In a fit of epic bad taste (although I’m pretty sure they didn’t even realise what it was) the book was The Beach by Alex Garland. If you know the book or the film should be cringing right about now.
I’ve not read the book, but the film was – well, mixed. When it was good, it was great, and when it wasn’t, it was, well, embarassing. The video-game-running-through-the-forest-bit was pisspoor, but the rest of DiCapuccino’s descent into madness was well done. I kind of felt like it was a missed opportunity.
I’m not sure that is bad taste; it seems an appropriate choice to me.
I was just reading a blog by someone who was in Thailand on holiday, and guess what his holidya reading was? I would have been doing the same thing if I hadn’t already read it and been terrified by it. After all, the book itself is blamed by some for dramatically increasing tourism to that area.
And incidentally, while typing in this comments box, my words are going behind the right-hand menu, where I can’t see them. I do hope you can fix this, because it’s horrid!