Railway Mysteries

Oh the treasures one can find at the National Railway Museum in York! When it comes to books in general and crime fiction specifically, their souvenir shop is just as good as many bookshops. So yeah, I found there The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White, which was adapted into the movie The Lady Vanishes by Alfred Hitchcock. The source material might be a tad too cosy and soft for me, but it's set on a train and I enjoyed the Hitchcock film, so I should like it enough in a few months, after I am done with my spooky reading list, which I have started. Anyway, I could have spent hours in the souvenirs shop and really misbehave, there were so many crime books that caught my attention. Railway and crime just make the best cocktail.

What is a MacGuffin?

For people into movies and genre fiction in general, you may have heard of the term MacGuffin, which was coined by Alfred Hitchcock. It is one of these concepts which I have been obsessing about, both in my own writing venture and in the crime and spy fiction I read. I finally found online the anecdote where Hitchcock explains what it is on The Dick Cavett Show. I had read the story, but never heard it straight from Hitchcock's mouth. I find it fascinating.

How far is Winnipeg from Montreal?

The answer is 1424 miles. At least according to Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps. Something we learn on the very first scene, set in a music-hall. In the movie adaptation, Richard Hannay is no longer a Scottish returning to the UK from South Africa, but a Canadian, probably because John Buchan who of course wrote the original novel was then General Governor of Canada. It felt strange and actually quite pleasant hearing my city being mentioned (I mean Montreal of course, not Winnipeg) at the start of the film, and in a Hitchcock movie on top of that.

Seagulls are a portent of doom

Recently, and even though we are far from the sea, I often heard the cries of flocks of seagulls. Even though I cannot see them, I can hear them. They cry is rather harsh and somewhat menacing, especially when you cannot see the birds when hearing it. I became increasingly distrustful and wary of seagulls, as I witnessed their daring behaviour when on holidays. I discovered that my distrust for seagulls might actually be justified: today I read this article from The Guardian, about seagulls )seemingly) becoming more aggressive, nasty, if not downright violent. Read this and tell me what you think. Of course, what comes to my mind automatically is a certain movie. It also reminds me that I have the book the film is based on and that I should find time to read it.

What movie is this from?

I blogged before about the Flying Bean Café at the Beaconsfield train station. I loved right away this small quirky place, and one aspect of it I really love is the way they offer to give tip: by putting it in a cup that is an answer to a trivial question of culture. So as you can see on the picture, they asked what movie was the following quote: "A boy's best friend is his mother." The two choices were Forrest Gump (which I always loathed) and Psycho (classic thriller which I love so much that I actually read the novel, see this post here for details). The problem is that I had not watched either movie in a while and while I thought this sounded like Norman Bates and very, very familiar... it could be in a different context given to Gump and I could thus just be wrong and my memory was playing tricks on me. I placed my bet in the Psycho cup, only because it's my favourite movie of the two. Which one do you think it is from? And don't look down, that would be cheating.

Well, it turned out I was right! My memory and my gut feeling had not betrayed me. So it was Psycho all along. And now I am really looking forward to go back to the Flying Bean Café in Beaconsfield (or elsewhere?) to test my knowledge again. Until then, tell me if you got it right (or not) in the comments.

Psycho read

I thought I hadn't done a reading suggestion for a while and today was a good time ti do it. So today's reading suggestion is: Psycho by Robert Bloch, which I read last year. Because there was an original novel to the classic Alfred Hitchcock movie. As much crime fiction as it is horror thriller, it's a gripping read even if you know the story already. Because if this genre duality, for Halloween lovers like myself, it is a great story to read while the holiday is still far away, but already in the back of your mind. And it's fun to notice the little differences between the source material and its far more famous adaptation (Norman Bates for instance is middle aged, overweight and ugly in the book). Some books read like novels, this one you read like you'd watch a movie.

The grandfather of modern thrillers

Today's reading suggestion: The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan. Which I blogged about before, but that was before I had actually read it. Having finished it recently, I can now plug it. It is an early XXth century adventure novel and spy thriller, most famous now for being the source material of not one but two Alfred Hitchcock movies: The 39 Steps and North by Northwest, which is basically a modernized and Americanized version of the same plot. It is also the grandfather of many modern thrillers, good or bad. In it, expat Scot Richard Hannay comes back from South Africa on the eve of World War 1 to stumble upon a conspiracy lead by a German spy ring called the Black Stone. He is also framed for murder and must escape both justice and the spy ring while traveling across Britain. It's an old fashioned yarn, often awfully contrived, but it is nevertheless entertaining and it has a few great moments. Buchan is not a great writer, but he knows how to set up an atmosphere, whether it's in the Scottish countryside or in the middle of London. He write just as well as one would expect from a Tory MP or a future Governor General of Canada.

The 39 Steps

You were wondering maybe what I bought with my five pounds voucher from the local bookshop. Or maybe you couldn't care less, but I will tell you anyway: three books, among them The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan. I read Buchan before and, while I was not overly impressed and found him a bit dated, I enjoyed it enough so decided to give his work another go. Also, I was always curious about this novel of his in particular. It had numerous adaptations, direct or indirect, including this one, which I saw, one by Alfred Hitchcock which I did not see, and I know it was an indirect inspiration for North By Northwest, which I love. In any case, I enjoy adventure novels and spy thrillers so should at least get some fun from this book.

Blackbirds in the tree

I took this picture a few days ago, when I was walking home. It is of the beech tree (anyway I think it's a beech tree, I might be wrong) I blogged about before. This time, there was no crow in it but a huge flock of blackbirds, cawing like crazy, flying around it... You don't see them much, of at all, because the branches of tree are now full of leafs. But it was a very eerie spectacle. It felt and especially sounded like in this famous movie. I know I made this comparison fairly often in the last few months. Maybe I am more conscious of it these days, the eerie nature of some of some birds singing, the rather ominous nature of their presence. I don't have much to say about it, apart from this. It was simply a striking scene.

Planning the holiday reads

As I am planning my holidays to York, which are not for soon but still these needs to be prepared, I am also preparing my reading list for then. I do the same for every holiday: I make myself a list of a few holiday books that I try to make as much as possible relevant to the place. You might remember what I did last year for my time in Devon, which I think was a pure stroke of genius. York proved to be slightly trickier. Then I decided that I will read Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith. I will rediscover a crime writer I know fairly little about, discover the source material of a classic movie I have yet to watch and more importantly... I have a book that fits thematically with the long train journey ahead. I think I am absolutely brilliant (I say it with all humility). It will be the topic of another post, but I have good reasons to believe that our time in Yorkshire will be another railway-themed holiday.

And also, as I did last year in Devon, I will also bring a book of scary stories (I don't know which one yet, I have a rather good collection, if I may say so myself). There are two reasons for it. The first one is that Yorkshire, like many great English places, seems to be full of atmosphere and character, the kind you would need to fully appreciate a scary story. The second one is, as fellow blogger Jaz from October Farm reminded me yesterday in a post, there are less than a hundred days until Halloween.That might sound silly, but that means Halloween is slowly but surely getting there. And I start reading horror stories to get myself in the mood as early as August now. First mixed with other reads, then gradually full on. But first, I will enjoy a good old crime thriller. And you, what do you read on holidays?

Creepy Geese

I recently blogged about a menacing seagull. Tonight, it is going to be about creepy geese. As you know from my previous post in English, we went yesterday to meet my whole family in law. It was the occasion to see our niece again, the daughter of my brother in law, who I hadn't seen for two years or so. She is now a teenager, but apart from growing up, her personality hasn't changed all that much: she is as outspoken and full of life (and attitude) as she ever was. She was really happy to see us and we spoke about lots of things...

...Including her pet peeves and fears. She, among other things, developed a disgust for geese and ducks, and pretty much all water birds. And yes, she saw The Birds, but it was after she decided that geese were evil. According to her they are like seagulls (which she does not like either) aggressive, greedy, have a nasty cry and are overall creepy. We walked by a lake near the pub and she exemplified it when she saw the geese on the lake and the shore: "Look at these dark, soulless eyes, as if they'd have empty sockets, these dead stares!" Her dad thinks she uses "like" too much, like all teenagers, but I thought she was nevertheless very eloquent then. Her depiction of the geese certainly deserves to be a new great unknown line. Not her first great unknown line, but it has been a while since I wrote one from her mind on this blog. And because of it, for now on, I will find geese creepy.

A menacing seagull

I was having my lunch break walk this afternoon, a bit late as I usually do. At some point, I saw and especially heard a seagull, flying low above me. It was cawing at me menacingly I think. It flew fairly low, at some point I thought it was about to dive on me like in The Birds, but it went up and then kept remained there, still crying in an ominous way to no one. It really felt like I was in the movie. Which reminds me that I need to read the original novel/novelette by Daphne Du Maurier. Apparently, this is not merely pure horror fiction. In fact, a quick Google search told me that seagulls have been increasingly aggressive in recent years. So watch of the skies and beware of the seagull.

Que Sera, Sera

This blog needs more music, so before I shut down for the night, I thought to upload a song here. As March has just started and so will a new week, I thought it was appropriate to have Que Sera, Sera The Man Who Knew Too Much. It is rare that a suspense has an upbeat musical number in it. The great Hitchcock was not the only one or the first to pull it off, but he did it masterfully.

A bird in the house

This is my countdown to Halloween post, which is completely anecdotal. A small event happened this morning and I did not even witness it. Basically, a bird, a starling to be precise, what we call étourneau in Québec, got lost in the chimney of my parents' fireplace in Chicoutimi. It happened before, but usually it was the basement's fireplace, this time it was the upstairs one. My dad managed to get a hold of him and release him in nature. So he saved a bird's life.

This isHalloween related for two reasons: 1)in folklore, a bird showing up in a house is considered a bad omen. 2)It reminds me of a scene in The Birds. I have seen the movie fairly often, it is not on my usual Halloween list of horror movies, but I do watch it form time to time. I even bought the original novel by Daphne Du Maurier. I haven't read it yet. Just for kicks, I have uploaded the famous scene form the movie.