Meg Rosoff's Blog, page 5
July 9, 2012
What I’ll miss
When screenwriter and all-round New York top citizen Nora Ephron died last month, everyone reprinted the “What I’ll Miss” and “What I Won’t Misss” lists from her 2010 book “I Remember Nothing.” Here are some of my thoughts on the subject. What I won’t miss: E-mails To-Do lists Cooking dinner “I’ve attached my 250,000 word [...]
July 7, 2012
Directions to the film set of How I Live Now
First, sell the film rights and wait eight years. Next, catch a train to Wales. Debark when you get to Cardiff. Mind the gap. If you’re lucky, you’ll be met by a car. Set off down the motorway in a strong east west easterly direction past Llangadocmadog and Llarrythellamb and keep going straight. After a [...]
June 26, 2012
How read? Why read?
It was Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf that got me thinking about the peculiar mechanics of reading, how artificial it is to translate little black squiggles into sentences and stories. If you’re having trouble picturing how much acquired skill it takes to read, see what your brain can do with Farsi or Diwani. I bring [...]
Proust and the Squid and Weymouth Sands
I have to thank Maryanne Wolf for writing the book that led to the thoughts that follow. It was Proust and the Squid that got me thinking about the peculiar mechanics of reading, how artificial it is to translate little black squiggles into sentences and stories. If you’re having trouble picturing how much acquired skill it [...]
June 25, 2012
Press Release for How I Live Now Film
PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY TO BEGIN ON HOW I LIVE NOW 25th June, London. Principal photography for Kevin Macdonald’s big screen adaptation of Meg Rosoff’s multi award winning novel How I Live Now starts today for 8 weeks in England and Wales. Starring Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan (Atonement, The Lovely Bones, Hanna), the youngest ever BAFTA [...]
June 24, 2012
WARNING: READ THIS POST AT YOUR OWN RISK
CAUTION: STEPS, said six (6) signs at the British Library. Yes, thought I, they’re steps alright. They’re definitely steps. I stood, transfixed, wondering if perhaps they were man-eating steps, or trick steps that opened into an abyss and sent you plummeting into the core of the earth. But no, I stepped, and they stayed put. [...]
June 15, 2012
Finishing the book
One of my favourite Stephen Sondheim songs comes from Sunday in the Park With George, and is called Finishing the Hat. It’s about what happens when you’re finishing a painting and the end goes like this: However you live, There’s a part of you always standing by, Mapping out the sky, Finishing a hat… Starting [...]
June 13, 2012
I know a few more things about the How I Live Now Film
1. The boy playing Edmond, (who is also known as Eddie, and kind of incorporates Isaac from the novel, in other words, is a bit different from the book), is an ex-Billy Elliott actor called George MacKay. He’s not quite what I imagined, but I’ve had it on excellent authority that he and Saoirse are [...]
June 3, 2012
Violinist gives capsule masterclass on writing.
I went to a wonderful concert last night — Haydn and Mozart chamber music on original instruments. I don’t see (hear) nearly enough classical music live, it seems to slip below films and theatre and hanging around doing not very much, but the amazing violinist of this group, Catherine Manson, also happens to be a friend so [...]
May 29, 2012
How long does it take to become truly British?
I’ve lived in London for 23 years. Twenty-five, if you count my art student days back in the late 70s. I often imagine a parallel foreigner (say, a Swede, Korean or Kenyan) living in New York City for twenty-five years. That newcomer would be shlepping down to Zabars for bagels, kvelling over bargains, sending iced tea [...]
