Leisure time

It's well into the new year — Happy New Year, everyone! — and I'm finally getting around to blogging. I meant to wax euphoric about the holidays: the time spent with family and friends, and the rest and relaxation. I suppose it's never too late; however, fully immersed once again in the workaday world, I hesitate to conjure up memories of the holidays. The next vacation is a long way off. Oh woe betide.

The next best thing, however (particularly when the weather outside is in the minus twenties), is to escape with a good book or movie. So, with Daddy away skiing the slopes of the Austrian alps, this weekend Kassie and I decided to embark on an adventure or two of our own: a return to the imaginative realms of two of our favourite works of fiction. We started by renting The Spiderwick Chronicles, the tale of three children who stumble on the fantastical world of faeries, goblins, ogres and assorted wondrous creatures in their own backyard (and of course must vanquish evil and save the world). Next, we hurried to the cinema to take in the newly released Inkheart, a fairly faithful adaptation of Cornelia Funke's wonderful book about the dangers of imaginative creatures escaping from the landscape of fiction to inhabit our world. Evil is once again vanquished and a family torn apart reunited. Just what the spirit craves.

Next on the list is City of Ember, apparently out on DVD this week. (Was it ever released in the Canadian movie theatres? We think not.) And, once Kassie takes courage in hand and reads Neil Gaiman's Coraline — it's imperative that we read the books first — we'll be back at the cinema, popcorn in hand. YA fiction rocks!

(I'll have to wait for Twilight, however. Kassie still won't budge. A "romantic adventure" is not on her radar — not yet!)