At the Salt Lake County Library they have a program called Reader's Choice that they do twice a year where they pick out 28 books, across many genres, for people to read. They produce a little flyer with brief descriptions of the books. I usually pick several books that I am interested in and try to read them. This time I picked out 12; I've read 9, including the book I'm currently reading. Anyway, one of the selections this time is a book called "Austenland", written by Shannon Hale, who happens to live in Salt Lake. The premise of the story is a modern-day woman, Jane, is given a gift to go to Austenland, a vacation place in England where the visitors dress as Regency era people and live like Jane Austen and her characters did.At the same time I was reading this book, I got some movies from Blockbuster online. They were in my queue, but I didn't know when they'd be arriving. What were they? "Becoming Jane", about Jane Austen's life, and "The Jane Austen Book Club."OY!
I do like Jane Austen, but I never thought of myself as crazy Jane Austen fan. Maybe I am. I did find myself wanting to watch or read "Pride and Prejudice", but that could just be the influence of all things Austen that have fallen my way lately!
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Like many people, I enjoy watching "American Idol." I haven't been religious about it this season, but I catch it when I can, or at least parts of it. A couple of weeks ago the Idol wannabe's had to sing 80s songs. The kid with the dreadlocks sang the song "Hallelujah". T mentioned that the song was from the movie "Shrek." I had heard it in the movie, but I didn't know anything else about the song. I thought Dreadlock Boy sounded fine. The song is haunting and beautiful. Judge Simon said that the Jeff Buckley version of the song is one of his favorite songs of all time. Jeff Buckely! He's that singer/songwriter who drowned in the Mississippi River several years ago, right? I don't know anything else about him except that I think I remember my sister made some reference to him in naming her house concert series (and blog) Meeting Grace.
A week later I go to the iTunes store to look at something and I see Jeff Buckley's album "Grace" is in the top 10, as is the song "Hallelujah." I decided to buy the album and downloaded it to my iPod. I've listened to it a few times since then. It's gorgeous. I have teared up when I hear "Hallelujah." He was amazing. I googled Jeff Buckley to see what he looked like. He was adorable. What a sad story. I just read online that "Hallelujah" was the number one song this past week. I think it's kinda cool that American Idol, of all things, would get people interested in Jeff Buckley. It did for me. Maybe I should have already known, but I didn't. But now I do and I'm glad.
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