Impatience

My current obsession with Matthew Goode drove me four blocks to my nearest neighborhood video store to rent Leap Year today.  I have temporarily suspended my Netflix account while I’m short on funds, and frankly, I’m tired of waiting in a long queue for new releases.  I’ve come to rely on the redbox around the corner for new DVDs, a bargain at a dollar a night.  Except the redbox doesn’t have Leap Year yet.  I couldn’t wait.

I should have waited.  No, seriously, a dollar would have been about right.  I didn’t see the film in the theatre because the reviews were so bad, and I hadn’t yet fallen for Matthew Goode.  Unfortunately, no matter how much you like a particular actor, a bad film is still a bad film.   The main problem is the script. It suffers from minimal character development, a complete lack of subtlety, and no logical reason why the two main characters should be drawn to each other.  The Irish scenery is lovely, and so is Goode in his scruffy way.  It just isn’t enough.

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This morning I picked up my borrowed copy of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest to begin reading.  (Thank you, Kathryn!)  This is the third book in the Millennium Trilogy, an international bestselling series by a Swedish author who died before the books were published.  That was back in 2004.  It’s taken six years for this final book to be published in the United States, which will be released on May 25th.  My copy was purchased from the UK, where it was released on October 1, 2009.   I’m sure there’s a reason for the long delay, but it seems like bad business to me.  I know lots of people have given their money to UK booksellers instead of US ones because they couldn’t wait that long.

There’s an odd little difference between the UK and the upcoming US versions of this book, and it’s right there on the cover.  It’s the punctuation in the title.  The UK version is Hornets’ Nest while the US version is Hornet’s Nest.  I don’t know enough about the differences between American and English punctuation to explain it.  I hope somebody else will.  My best guess is that Hornets’ is more correct since presumably more than one hornet occupies a typical nest.  Then again, I know less about hornets than I do about punctuation.