My husband and I are going to Scotland in a few months! It will be our first real vacation by ourselves since we had kids, and our first trip overseas. To say we are excited is a bit of an understatement.
To prepare for our trip, in addition to doing mountains (or maybe that should be “munros”) of research into rental cars, ferry schedules, castles, shortbread, emergency childcare forms, etc., etc., etc., we’re also getting ourselves in a Scottish frame of mind. And how do we do that? Through our favorite things: books, music, and movies.
We’re reading The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Spark, right now. Next up is Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped. That will be followed by Sherlock Holmes stories (even though they’re set in England, Doyle was Scottish, and why pass up a chance to read some Holmes favorites?) and plenty of Scottish poetry (I just received the huge anthology I ordered). (Addendum: Ivanhoe is also in the TBR pile.)
Randy’s the movie man, so he’s in charge of those choices. So far, we’ve watched Local Hero and Restless Natives. Both were fine, but neither blew me away. I’m not a big fan of anti-heroes. My favorite part of Restless Natives was the score by Big Country. I know that we have epics like Braveheart and Rob Roy on the list, and he’s dug up a bunch more, too. I probably won’t be watching Trainspotting, since movies (and books) about the mob and/or about drug addicts tend to bore me senseless. I know it’s terrible to wipe out entire cinematic genres like that, but life is short. I’ve wasted enough time watching movies that didn’t interest me because people knew I would love them.
Tomorrow, I’ll post about the music we’re listening to and the concert we’re going to go to in Scotland, but, meanwhile, any book or movie recommendations for us?