#St Swithins

[lilmackiereads]

One Day (2009) by David Nicholls - Spoiler Filled Review

In addition to this review, a spoiler-free review of the book will also be posted if you haven’t read the book or watched the movie. While I recommend reading the book, I didn’t like the movie. See that version of the review for why.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

There are many parts of this story that are a bit cliche. Boy meets girl, they have crushes on each other, spend the next grand amount of time avoiding their true feelings for each other, they get together. YET, the end of the novel was very unexpected and the emotion and the humor these characters had toward each other was so moving. Nicholls said loud and clear: This. Is. A. Drama. Tragedy. NOT. A. Romantic. Comedy. The dialogue was top notch and I honestly had to look up quite a few phrases and words because I am not familiar with all of the British jargon. 

Plot and Structure: 3.5 out of 5 stars

I also liked that he split the book into smaller sections based on the ages of the characters as each section was a new turning point or challenge in their lives. The bits of literature preceding each section were well-chosen and foreshadowed major events and themes. Docking points only for the cliché plot aspects that all romance novels do to make the tension last longer. I like that we see into each year of their lives, but some years not a lot happened, and I would have been okay with skipping a few extra years into the future.

Part 1 - Early to Mid 20s

I really related to Emma in Part 1 of wanting to do all these amazing things for the world like protesting and volunteering and traveling and then realizing that you have bills and have to work a demeaning customer service job. Life sucks ass sometimes and I’m sad for her that she was stuck in that emotional and financial space for so long, but happy that she was brave enough to quit the restaurant and do more for herself. I was irritated with Dexter because I had to work to put myself through school and I know wealthier students who had a free pass and gap year like him that just grind my gears. On top of that, Dex getting quasi-famous for basically being hot and annoying just made it worse.

Nevertheless, I really wanted them to bang out the tension they’d had those couple of years during their trip to Greece, but alas, dreams didn’t come true for any of us. I thought the skinny-dipping scene was super fun and steammmyyy!

Part 2 - Late 20s

I think that the hardest part of this book for me to get through was Part 2 because a lot of it revolved around Dex’s grief. His downward spiral with mood-influencers like sex, drugs, and alcohol while his mom was sick was all too real for me as I am someone who has a parent with cancer (luckily, I never went down this path like Dexter, but there are a lot of people who do who can’t get out). It is hard to see him hurt himself that way because it’s already written and can’t be changed. As a reader all I could do was watch him tumble even further down the rabbit hole and it sucked.

I was excited at first when Emma branched away from Dex and started dating Ian because he’s a bit of a goober, but he’s really nice and fun (just not funny). When Dex started parading sexy Suki in front of Emma and bullying Ian I was SEETHING.

I definitely think Emma did the right thing cutting Dex out of her life because he was being an ass and so full of himself, which is sad because he was masking his grief. IF HE HAD JUST BEEN HONEST WITH HIMSELF AND HER---- ugh, I’m wasting my breath.

I was broken (again) when Emma dumped Ian. I get it, she didn’t love him, but she treated him like shit and all he ever wanted was someone who loved him just the way he was. I’m glad that Nicholls showed us that Ian got a happy ending in Part 5. 

Part 3 - Early to Mid 30s

Looking back at Part 3 there was SO MUCH to unpack here. It feels like three separate parts within it because it has adultery and marriage and parenthood being added into the mix. 

When I found out that Emma was working as a theater teacher (cool) and trying to become a writer (even cooler) and sleeping with the principal (not so cool) I wanted to scream: GIRL, YOU NEED SOME GIRLFRIENDS TO HYPE YOU UP AND GET AWAY FROM THIS YUCKY GUY. I could have been her Hype Girl. Oh well.

When Dex met Sylvie’s parents and played that stupid game, I had second-hand embarrassment for him. Yikes. I felt bad that he was so out of place and bullied when he was starting out with Sylvie, but at the same time he was doing that to Emma for years with her and Ian so I was somewhat satisfied that he got knocked off his high horse. 

I feel like literally the worst thing that Dex could have done was getting married to Sylvie and telling Emma about it in such a public place (coward) instead of dealing with his grief and being single for a while. Adding a baby to the mix was like going from the frying pan to the fire. Oi. Boy loves himself some drama. I think he ultimately became a good husband and dad in Part 5, but Sylvie. Is. Not. His. Match. As seen with their on-again and off-again relationship with each other and Dex’s other on-again off-again relationship with alcoholism.

Ok, so I low-key was so tired of Dex’s shit that I just wanted Emma to stay in Paris with the sexy Jean-Pierre and leave Dex in the dust but nOOooOOoOoo. It’s fine. Where’s my A.U. where Emma was right about Dex and he’s fat and bald with a zillion ex-wives and she’s married to JP?

Part 4 - Late 30s to Early 40s

Something I appreciated in Part 4 was that even though Dex and Em FINALLY get together, it’s not all smooth sailing. It’s not a “happily ever after” and I think this is super important because it is so honest. Getting divorced and married is hard, and even harder with a kid (Dex), especially to someone who has never been married or had children (Em). They have known each other for almost two decades, but they had such different interests and addictions throughout their lives that they had to come to terms with (they didn’t) and never fully showed each other that dark side of themselves. I think it’s a great lesson because Nicholls is showing that even the perfect person for you is not going to be perfect all the time because we are all imperfect people with our own problems. 

I wish I hadn’t seen the movie before I read the book because Emma’s death would have hit so much harder if I didn’t know it was coming. It definitely would have been a moment where I would have had to reread the passage because she is just going about her normal routine and is killed out of nowhere. The shock factor would have been devastating since they had just officially gotten together and most romance novels have the “happy” ending.

Part 5 - Mid 40s

My favorite part of the entire story was in Part 5 which seamlessly went between the night they met in 1988 and the mid 2000s when Dexter reflected on the photo of him and Emma from their hike in 1988 to Arthur’s Seat. Dexter choosing to bring his daughter, Jasmine, there was a sweet and humorous moment that Emma would have loved. An honorable mention is when Sylvie and Dex’s dad help clean him up after his drunken night trying to ease the pain of being a widower. It pulled at my heartstrings to see the kindness of Sylvie despite her jealousy of Emma and later when Dex and his dad bond over being widowers. I also liked that Sylvie got a taste of her own medicine when she found out that while cheating on Dex with Callum that Callum has been cheating on her with someone else. Ha. Ha.

Characters: 4 out of 5 stars

The way he wrote the characters made it seem like they were real people who actually did know each other for a long time. It is hard to write three-dimensional characters, so kudos to Nicholls.

Even though I prefer first person, I think his choice of third person limited made quite a wonderful story to go back and forth between not only Em and Dex, but also Ian, Sylvie and a few one-scene characters. At times I LOATHED Emma and Dexter when they were whining or making terrible choices, like dating the wrong person to avoid loneliness, drinking to drown out the sadness, staying in the wrong job because they’re unconfident, and lying to each other. At other times I wanted to give them a hug and a kiss and tell them I was proud of them, especially at the end of the story when Dex FINALLY got his shit together. 

I think my favorite character was actually Ian Whitehead, who is Emma’s partner for a time. I admired his desire to go for his dreams even if they were a long shot, his loyalty to Emma, and his choice to take the high road in the end. There was one point that I didn’t like his character when he and Emma were fighting about the breakup, but to be honest, if I was in his position, I probably would have felt the same way if my significant other was in love with their best friend and not me.

Themes, Motifs, & Symbols: 3.5 out of 5 stars

St. Swithin’s Day:

I wasn’t familiar with St. Swithin’s day on July 15th other than the fact that it’s also my mother’s birthday, so I will now use it as more of a marker for the year ahead. While the mythos is more in regard to summer weather, I considered it more of a symbolic reasoning of whether or not Dexter and Emma were going to have a good or bad year. For instance, many of the rainy days it seems that the whole next year that they had terrible experiences while on the sunny days their lives seemed to be getting better. For instance, it was raining on the day Emma died and then Dex had a rough year ahead while other years that it was sunny were years where on the sunny days where when Emma and Dex had lots of love in their lives, whether it be with each other or others. One of the best examples of this is when they go on holiday together in Greece and get very flirtatious with each other but are too coy to do anything but skinny-dip. 

Yin and Yang:

Toward the beginning of the book, Dexter gets a yin and yang tattoo while on holiday. In my opinion, it greatly resembles their differences and similarities to each other. Not only does it represent their personalities and how they complement each other, but it also seems to foreshadow that when one of their lives was great, the other’s was terrible. Together they are strong. Apart, not so much. They were two halves of a whole and they needed each other to balance.

Making a difference:

The first lines of the novel are these quips between Em and Dex:

E: “I suppose the important thing is to make some sort of difference… you know, actually change something.”

D: “What, like ‘change the world,’ you mean?”

E: “Not the whole entire world. Just the little bit around you.”

This theme is super important throughout the whole story as they both take on the world in their own ways and I had to go back and re-read the first page again after finishing the book to really understand and enjoy the impact of the theme.

I think both Emma and Dex made an impact on the “little bit around” them, but just not in the ways they expected. Dex wanted to be a famous media professional and life-long womanizing bachelor, yet he ends up becoming a divorcee (and widower), has-been tv-presenter, and a single dad. Emma, on the other hand, became a children’s author instead of an activist or journalist and never got to have her own biological child despite becoming interested in motherhood toward the end of her life. She didn’t publish anything Nobel Prize winning or Earth-shattering like she wanted to, but she did shatter Dexter’s life for better and for worse. 

Re-readability:

Would I read this book again? Probably not because it is a very emotional book and rather long as it is single spaced and over four hundred pages. On the plus side, this is the best romance novel that I have ever read. I appreciate that is not super lovey-dovey gooey and gets into the real issues of cheating, drinking, family, self-esteem, depression, loneliness, and loss. It’s raw and real and isn’t unrealistic like those Fabio-model romance novels your naughty housewives read and war romance novels (ie: Nicholas Sparks).

[clandestina76]

15th of July

St Swithin's day, if thou dost rain, For forty days it will remain; St Swithin's day, if thou be fair, For forty days 'twill rain na mair.

[weirdlookindog]

"The moan of the wind sunk silent and low, and the roaring torrent had ceased to flow; The calm was more dreadful than raging storm, when the cold gray mist brought the ghastly form!" - Sir W. Scott

Lancelot Speed - St. Swithin's Chair

(The Blue Poetry Book, 1912)

[lulu-spooks]

That’s it guys. Uk summer over. It rained on st swithin’s day.

[becky5203]

Happy St. Swithins Day/‘One Day’ Day everyone! If it’s raining make sure to get a raincoat and umbrella cause you’ll be stuck with it for the rest of the summer, and if you’re secretly in love with your best friend make sure you tell them and never take a day with them for granted because they might get hit by a bus in the rain while trying to ride their bike home and then you would’ve wasted years of your life not being with them.

[froginthestars]

it is raining on the 15th of July and because one day has not left my mind I don’t like it one bit

[direslothmegalonyx]

St Swithin folklore referenced--

Happy St. Swithin's Day!

"St Swithin's day if thou dost rain,

For forty days it will remain

St Swithin's day if thou be fair,

For forty days 'twill rain nae mare."

This is a new one for us. It's clear now, but there is rain forecast for this evening in Bowling Green. 😟

From MS 642 BGSU Faculty & Student Folklore Collection

[maypoleman1]

15th July

St Swithun’s Day

Source: Daily Express

Today is St Swithun’s Day. Also known as St Swithin, he was a ninth century bishop of Winchester and champion of the poor. He allegedly once came to the assistance of an unfortunate woman who dropped her basket of eggs, smashing the lot, by magically causing them to reform back into their unbroken shells. Swithun died in 862 AD and asked that he be buried outside, so humbling rain could fall upon his tomb. This began the saint’s association with rainfall. This connection was exacerbated when the monks of Winchester, post Swithun’s canonisation, felt that he should be interred within the building of the cathedral. Swithun’s displeasure at this was shown by a soaking downpour on the monks as they attempted the reburial. Thus began a legend that if rain falls on the saint’s feast day, it will fall for forty days thereafter.

In actual fact there is no record of this ever happening, and the popular rhyme about the legend mentions fine weather as much as rain: ‘St Swithin’s Day, if ye do rain, / For forty days it will remain; / St Swithin’s Day an ye be fair, / For forty days ‘twill rain nae mair.’ In the event, St Swithin was eventually brought into the cathedral in on his feast day in 972. It did not rain.

[murderousink23]

07/15/2023 is National I Love Horses Day 🐎🇺🇲, National Pet Fire Safety Day 🇺🇲, National Tapioca Pudding Day 🇺🇲, National Strawberry Rhubarb Wine Day 🇺🇲, National Woodie Wagon Day 🇺🇲, Toss Away The Could Haves and The Should Haves Day 🇺🇲, Gummi Worm Day 🇬🇧, St. Swithins Day 🇬🇧, World Youth Skills Day 🇺🇳

[stevenrogered]

You know it’s St. Swithin’s Day? 15th of July. If it rains today, it’s gonna rain all summer. Something like that. 

ONE DAY (2024)

[lilmackiereads]

One Day (2009) by David Nicholls - Spoiler Free Review

This morning I finished a lovely, bittersweet romance novel by David Nicholls called One Day. Despite the fact that it was published nearly 15 years ago, this is a spoiler free review in case you haven’t read the book or seen the film. I have only seen the film once and it was before I read the book. I didn’t actually enjoy the film very much because it felt like it was lacking. What was it lacking? I’m not sure. It just felt like it was missing something. While I swoon over Jim Sturgess as Dex (because I’ve had a crush on him since Across the Universe in 2007), I didn’t really like Anne Hathaway in the role of Emma because I hated her British accent. However, I decided to give the book a try as I tend to believe that books are better than films since they hold so much more content. I’m very happy that I did because I really enjoyed the original text. In addition to this review, a spoiler-filled review of the book will also be posted if you want to compare your opinions to mine after you complete the story.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

There are many parts of this story that are a bit cliche. Boy meets girl, they have crushes on each other, spend the next grand amount of time avoiding their true feelings for each other, they (may or may not) get together. YET, the emotion and the humor these characters had toward each other was so moving. The dialogue was top notch and I honestly had to look up quite a few phrases and words because I am not familiar with all of the British jargon.

Plot and Structure: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Nicholls’ choice to revolve a story around one day a year was a bit refreshing because it allows so much more growth for the characters. Instead of the story being crammed into a few short years, it spans over twenty years and the characters have many ups and downs from their twenties to their forties. I also enjoyed that the story was mostly chronological except for Part Five which seamlessly went between 1988 and the mid 2000s.

I also liked that he split the book into smaller sections based on the ages of the characters as each section was a new turning point or challenge in their lives. The bits of literature preceding each section were well-chosen and foreshadowed major events and themes.

Docking points only for the cliche plot aspects that all romance novels do to make the tension last longer.

Characters: 4 out of 5 stars

Even though I prefer first person, I think his choice of third person limited made quite a wonderful story to go back and forth between not only Em and Dex, but also Ian, Slyvie and a few one scene characters. At times I LOATHED Emma and Dexter when they were whining or making terrible choices, like dating the wrong person to avoid loneliness, drinking to drown out the sadness, staying in the wrong job because they’re unconfident, and lying to each other. At other times I wanted to give them a hug and a kiss and tell them I was proud of them, especially at the end of the story.

I think my favorite character was actually Ian Whitehead, who is Emma’s partner for a time. I admired his desire to go for his dreams even if they were a long shot, his loyalty to Emma, and his choice to take the high road in the end. There was one point that I didn’t like his character when he and Emma were fighting, but to be honest, if I was in his position, I probably would have felt the same way!

Themes, Motifs, & Symbols: 3.5 out of 5 stars

St. Swithin’s Day:

I wasn’t familiar with St. Swithin’s day on July 15th other than the fact that it’s also my mother’s birthday, so I will now use it as more of a marker for the year ahead. While the mythos is more in regard to summer weather, I considered it more of a symbolic reasoning of whether or not Dexter and Emma were going to have a good or bad year. For instance, many of the rainy days it seems that the whole next year that they had terrible experiences while on the sunny days their lives seemed to be getting better.

Yin and Yang:

Toward the beginning of the book, Dexter gets a yin and yang tattoo while on holiday. In my opinion, it greatly resembles their differences and similarities to each other. Not only does it represent their personalities and how they complement each other, but it also seems to foreshadow that when one of their lives was great, the other’s was terrible. Together they are strong. Apart, not so much. They were two halves of a whole and they needed each other to balance.

Making a difference:

The first lines of the novel are these quips between Em and Dex:

E: “I suppose the important thing is to make some sort of difference... you know, actually change something.” 

D: “What, like ‘change the world,’ you mean?”

E: “Not the whole entire world. Just the little bit around you.”

This theme is super important throughout the whole story as they both take on the world in their own ways. It is very heart-wrenching when it comes full circle at the end. I think they did both make an impact on the “little bit around” them, but just not in the ways they expected. 

Re-readability:

Would I read this book again? Probably not because it is a very emotional book and rather long as it is single spaced and over four hundred pages. On the plus side, this is the best romance novel that I have ever read. I appreciate that is not super lovey-dovey gooey and gets into the real issues of cheating, drinking, family, self-esteem, depression, loneliness, and loss. It’s raw and real and isn’t unrealistic like those Fabio-model romance novels your naughty housewives read and war romance novels (ie: Nicholas Sparks). 

[a-little-bit-pre-raphaelite]

Pre-Raphaelite Dove Advent Calendar 15

The Festival of St. Swithin (The Dovecot), 1866, William Holman Hunt

[broadwayinabox]

A little trip to St. Swithins wouldn’t be too painful

[empire-of-the-words]

Ok, because my brain cannot put away the Nolanverse rn, here's why

John Blake (Fake Robin) should have been Dick Grayson

I think the only reason they didn't was because they wanted that twist at the end, but that's stupid, as I'll explain in a moment. So let’s go!

Backstory

Let's start with what Blake says about his backstory:

See, my mom died when I was small. Car accident, I don’t really remember it. But a couple of years later my dad was shot over a gambling debt. I remember that just fine. Not a lot of people who what it feels like, do they? To be angry. In your bones. People understand, foster parents understand. For a while. Then they expect the angry kid to do what he knows he can never do. To move on. To forget. So they stopped understanding and sent the angry kid to a boys’ home- St. Swithin’s. Used to be funded by the Wayne Foundation. See, I figured it out too late. You have to hide the anger. Practice smiling in the mirror. Like putting on a mask. You showed up one day in a cool car, pretty girl on your arm. We were so excited - Bruce Wayne, billionaire orphan. We made up stories about you. Legends. The other boys’ stories were just that. But when I saw you I knew who you really were... I’d seen that look on your face. Same one I taught myself.

Dead parents. Obviously Dick also remembers his mom dying, but frankly the details do not matter

Angry after parents' death. I feel like Dick's anger is either ignored or overexaggerated in fandom, but it's definitely there

Sent to a boys' home. And the only reason Dick got out of there was Bruce taking him in, which didn’t happen in the Nolanverse since Bruce didn't see him after his parent's death and/or he was isolating himself

Smiling as a mask. Dick does this so well fandom often gets confused

Parallels with Bruce. It's the foundation for their relationships with Bruce.

Also, both became cops as a way to help people, and eventually quit because they weren't able to do what they needed to do as a cop.

Blake is obviously based on Dick, down to them having the same middle name

Audience Investment

Let's be honest, how many of you were truly invested in John Blake your first watch of DKR? Initially, there doesn't seem to be a point to his character. He helps pull the plot along, but it's unclear where his character is going

This would be fixed if he were Dick Grayson. Being a pre-established character adds an automatic piece of investment. It also means the audience has some idea of where his character is going. Except they don’t, leading us to:

The Twist

Everyone knows Dick Grayson is Robin. If they were introduced to him in DKR, they would assume his arc would be becoming Robin

This makes him becoming Batman a much better twist. The audience knew something was coming, but the specifics suprise them. It's also a much more solid twist than "guy's first name is Robin"

The Next Batman

Another thing that would make the twist amazing for comic fans, is that Dick Grayson just was Batman

DKR came out in 2012. I don’t know when Dick stopped being Batman exactly (though definitely 2011 with the New52), but he started in 2009, which is practically yesterday in comic time

Dick Grayson becoming Batman in the Nolanverse isn't just a twist, it's "oh, of course", something you get a little of with John Blake, but amplified because the audience is paying closer attention to Dick

How It Should Have Gone

We're introduced to our rookie cop the same way, except now when Gordon asks for him name, it's met by excitement from the audience because that's Robin!

He does literally everything the same as John Blake (just change the lines in his backstory about his parents)

He becomes Batman. Audience freaks out again

Literally nothing changes but increased audience reaction

[becky5203]

Please check on your hopeless romantic friends today they are not doing well🫶

[fredersen]

the esteemed court jester “Sir Beaſt” has challenged threescore and ten serfs to survive the depths of a most foul and dank oubliette until St. Swithin’s Day, competing for a grand prize of one hundred gold coins and a sumptuous banquet