Old Age Day by Day April 25, 2013

Another dreary day, but today I'm prepared for it and will dress accordingly.  We saw a great entertainment movie yesterday - "Oblivion".  Our family loves sci fi and this one is a keeper.  Tom Cruise is great and the visuals and story are fascinating.  It was a good dreary day venture.  Today I'm pretty busy with some plans and tomorrow we're taking a hike with the dogs, I think.  I'm reading a book I avoided for a long time:  Murder at Pemberly by PD James.  I'm sick of Jane Austen, with all the exploitive novels and movies, but this is well done.  What it lacks is the wit of Austen, and it ultimately shows a world grown serious and maybe too responsible.  It's a harsh judgment on the Bennetts, I think, and perhaps Austen had this heavy morality backing up her books, since her father was a pastor, but the balance is all wrong in this book.  But it makes me think of the miracle of Austen's prose, that it can walk that tightrope, showing us the frivolity and corruption while reveling in it.  So James' book is actually a kind of meditation on the genius of Austen and her silence  on the  inevitable outcomes from complex lives and relations in a constricted world.