Girl Detective

So here’s what’s been rattling around in my head:

For now:

15 books, 15 days, 15 blogs: In honor of the woman profiled in the New York Times last year, who read a book a day for a year and blogged each one, I propose reading a book a day from your shelf starting April 16 (the day after US taxes are due, so you should have a little more time plus be in a frugal mindset) till April 30, 2010 and blogging a review, however brief, the next day.

I would post my entries the night before, so you could link each day starting the 17th in the comments, through May 1, 2010.

Does this sound good to anyone?

I’m afraid coming up with a logo, spreading the word far and wide, and setting up a group on a site like Good Reads is just too much for me, now, though I’m happy to take advice or help on these from more seasoned book challenge folks. I know this is last minute, but that’s me–always running on the ragged edge of disaster. OK, perhaps that’s an exaggeration.

For later:

Call me crazy, but I had a blast last summer reading Infinite Jest, and was thinking of doing something similar: reading Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, or at least the first two, Quicksilver and The Confusion. They’re each about 900 pages, but so was Cryptonomicon and I loved that and read it at a brisk pace.

Anyone else interested in a Baroque Summer? I’ll probably do it in any case, but it would be way more fun (as Infinite Summer was) with a gang.

I was initially put off from reading Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall by its lengthy character list (98 people plus 2 family trees) and guarded reviews from Entertainment Weekly and Publishers Weekly. Friend Kate F recommended it, then it was chosen as a contender in The Morning News 2010 Tournament of Books after it had already won the Man Booker prize; I decided to go for it, even buying it as the queue for it at the library was so long. It went on to win the National Book Critics Circle award, as well as the rooster prize in the ToB.

And so, I wish I could say I loved it more. At 500+ pages, it’s big, but not prohibitively so. Set during the reign of Henry VIII, its main character is Thomas Cromwell, son of a drunk, abusive blacksmith father. He rises to power and becomes a confidant and councillor to Henry during the latter’s “Great Matter”–his desire to divorce Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. Along the way, Cromwell also stealthily aids England’s break with Rome and the protestant reformation.

As Mantel writes him, Cromwell is a fascinating, complex character. Yet I found him too perfect. He “can draft a contract, train a falcon, draw a map, stop a street fight, furnish a house and fix a jury.” He knows every language, can psychologize everyone, can remember everything (including the entire New Testament), and makes money as if he were breathing. The book ends when he’s still in his ascendancy, without a hint of his fall, five years hence.

I found the book too much, too. There were so many characters, so many ups and downs, that as I neared the end I stopped trying to remember or go back for which lord this was, or what event that referred to.

I struggled with the writing, as well. Mantel chose 3rd person present tense. I often became disoriented with her third person, till I realized that when in doubt, “he” usually meant Cromwell.

So: Stephen Gardiner. Going out, as he’s coming in. It’s wet, and for a night in April, unseasonably warm, but Gardiner wears furs, which look like oily and dense black feathers; he stands now, ruffling them, gathering his clothes about his tall straight person like black angel’s wings.

“Late,” Master Stephen says unpleasantly.

He is bland. “Me, or your good self?”

“You.” He waits.

“Drunks on the river. The boatmen say it’s the eve of one of their patron saints.”

“Did you offer a prayer to her?”

“I’ll pray to anyone, Stephen, till I’m on dry land.”

Third person, though, allows her access to other characters besides Cromwell, and present tense makes for an immersive feeling of the time. This did convey the slow, agonizing process of Henry’s divorce and remarriage to Anne, yet didn’t endear the book to me.

The book has been almost universally lauded, along with its awards. Mantel writes evocatively and concisely. Cromwell and the characters are fascinating and engaging. Additionally, her choices, such as the ambiguous third person and the abrupt ending, can be seen as brave authorial choices, as noted in Stephen Greenblatt’s review from The NYRB:

The point is not to create an insoluble puzzle but to make you, the reader, do a little work in order to orient yourself. And orienting yourself in this novel always means returning to Cromwell

and Olivia Laing’s in The Guardian:

By ending without a dramatic resolution, she allows the “what happened next” of the historical record to underscore her central, sobering message: that human kindness and idealism are no match for the fickleness of fortune.

In the end, I I found Wolf Hall chilly, distant, and over populated, but still admired it and learned from it.

Watching the Olympics with the kids this year was both fun and tiresome, as they insisted we watch every single commercial that featured How to Train Your Dragon. Since the interest was clearly there, and early reviews were good, we took the kids to see it opening weekend. The theater near my hometown doesn’t have 3D, so we saw it in 2D, but enjoyed it immensely just the same.

There aren’t a lot of surprises: skinny Hiccup is a disappointment to his he-man father, and no good at fighting dragons, a sign of Viking prowess. Does he befriend a dragon? Make nice with his dad? Get the girl?

Well, what do you think?

The dragons are what make this movie, and the charm of imagining a dragon of one’s own is infectious. The flying scenes are spectacular, (perhaps more so than the ones in Avatar, I dare say) and the main dragon, Toothless, is so great I may make a trip to Wal Mart to buy a toy. For the boys, of course. Ahem.

For our recent family car trip, my husband G. Grod and I rationalized the purchase of some new DVDs, since we were borrowing a DVD player from friends, and wanted some new things to distract 6yo Drake and 4yo Guppy. We also got a few from the library. For a few, I was surprised to see what worked and what didn’t for the kids and grownups.

Both kids and grownups:

Fantastic Mr. Fox
Kung-Fu Panda
Toy Story 2
Pinocchio
Wall E
Schoolhouse Rock

Grownups, not so much the kids:

Up

Kids, not so much the grownups:

Cars
Tom & Jerry
Scooby Doo
Yo Gabba Gabba

DVDs the kids refused to watch:

Free to Be You and Me
Mary Poppins (6yo Drake is afraid of the cannon)
Ralph’s World
Fraggle Rock

DVDs the kids watched that G. Grod and I want to, but haven’t watched yet:

Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death (even if it’s only full screen)
Shaun the Sheep: A Wooly Good Time

I know, entries have been sparse, lately. I was diligently reading for The Morning News Tournament of Books, which ended with a bang, not a whimper, today, and preparing for our first-ever long family car trip last week. Fifteen hours there, five day visit, and sixteen hours back in a four-door sedan with 2 parents and 2 boys, 4 and 6yo. It went surprisingly well.

These helped:

Age-appropriate books on CD; we listened to Nate the Great and Dr. Seuss
New activity books for the kids
Games, like Rubik’s Cube, Fifteen Puzzle, Rush Hour, and Amaze
Lap desks
2-screen DVD player (borrowed from friends) BUT wait as long as humanly possible to break this one out
Age appropriate DVDs
Healthy food: grapes, berries, cut-up apples, carrot sticks, sandwiches (PBJ and turkey/cheese), juice boxes, bagels with cream cheese and jam, pretzels, granola bars.
Print outs for things like spot the car maker and color the license-plate state.

As I said, it went well. But I’m glad to be home, where I don’t have to drive very much, very far.

For a loved one’s 40th, I took Baked’s Sweet and Salty Cake recipe that I made for my husband G. Grod’s bday, reduced it by 2/3 to make a double layer cake, and didn’t whip the ganache. This eliminated one extra batch of salted caramel and a POUND of butter. So while its calories are reduced from the original, G. Grod noted it only meant he could finish a whole piece, not that it wasn’t still decadent.

Glossy Sweet and Salty Cake

Makes one 8-inch 2-layer cake.

1/2 cup cocoa powder
3/4 cup hot water
1/2 cup sour cream
1 3/4 cups cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pans
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened, plus more for pans
1/3 cup vegetable shortening
1 cups granulated sugar
2/3 cup dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoon pure vanilla
Salted Caramel Sauce, divided (see below)
Dark Chocolate Caramel Ganache Icing (see below)
Fleur de sel, for garnish

For the cake:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter two 8-by-2-inch round cake pans. Line each pan with a parchment paper round, butter parchment paper and flour; set aside.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together cocoa, 3/4 cups hot water, and sour cream; set aside to cool, about 10 minutes.

3. In another large bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside.

4. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and shortening together until smooth and it appears to create strings inside the bowl, about 7 minutes. Add both sugars and continue beating until light and fluffy, about 7 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat until well incorporated. Add vanilla, scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula, and mix again for 30 seconds. Add flour mixture alternating with cocoa mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture.

5. Divide batter evenly between prepared pans. Bake until cake is just firm to the touch and a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, 18 to 24 minutes. Let cool completely.

Caramel (for Salted Caramel Sauce and Dark Chocolate Caramel Ganache Icing)

1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1 cup heavy cream, divided

For Salted Caramel Sauce:

1/2 teaspoon fleur de sel
1/8 cup sour cream

For Dark Chocolate Ganache Icing

10 ounces dark chocolate (60% to 70%), chopped

Directions

1. Combine 1/4 cup water, sugar, and corn syrup in a medium saucepan; stir to combine. Bring to a boil over high heat. Cook until the mixture reaches 350 degrees on a candy thermometer, about 10 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, in another small saucepan bring cream to a boil, 3 to 5 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.

3. When the caramel mixture has reached 350 degrees, remove from heat and allow to cool for 1 minute. Carefully add 1/2 cup warm cream; stir to combine. Divide caramel into 2 batches.

4. For the Salted Caramel Sauce, whisk in fleur de sel and sour cream. Set aside.

5. For the Dark Chocolate Caramel Ganache Icing, place chocolate in bowl, whisk other 1/2 cup warm cream into 2nd batch of caramel, let cool 5 minutes. Pour caramel sauce over chocolate. Wait one minute. Stir to combine until chocolate is melted.

(Yes, dividing a batch of caramel is kind of a pain. But not as much as making an entire second batch, as in the original recipe.)

To assemble the cake:

Using a serrated knife, trim tops of cakes to make level. Place four strips of parchment paper around perimeter of a serving plate or lazy Susan. Place the first layer on the cake plate. Spread Salted Caramel Sauce on the cake, allowing some to soak into the cake. Follow the caramel layer with a layer of about 1 cup of the ganache icing. Place the second layer on top, bottom side up. Pour remaining ganache icing over entire cake. Sprinkle with fleur de sel.

This Root Beer Bundt Cake was the first recipe I made in the new bundt pan my sister Ruthie got me for my birthday. Alas, it tasted almost nothing like root beer, but was a very good, fudgey cake. Like so much I’ve been baking lately, it was from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito.

Root Beer Bundt Cake- yields 1 (10-inch) Bundt cake

Cake
2 cups root beer (do not use diet root beer)
1 cup dark unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs

Frosting
2 ounces dark chocolate (60% cacao), melted and cooled slightly
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup root beer
2/3 cup dark unsweetened cocoa powder
2 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar

Topping
Vanilla ice cream

For the cake:

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Generously spray the inside of a 10-inch bundt pan with nonstick cooking spray; alternatively, butter it, dust with flour, and knock out the excess flour.

2. In a small saucepan, heat the root beer, cocoa powder, and butter over medium heat until the butter is melted. Add the sugars and whisk until dissolved. Remove from the heat and let cool.

3. In a large bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt together.

4. In a small bowl, whisk the eggs until just beaten, then whisk them into the cooled cocoa mixture until combined. Gently fold the flour mixture into the cocoa mixture. The batter will be slightly lumpy–do not overbeat, as it could cause the cake to be tough.

5. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through the baking time, until a small sharp knife inserted into the cake comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a wire rack to cool completely. Gently loosen the sides of the cake from the pan and turn it out onto the rack.

For the frosting:

1. Put all the ingredients in a food processor. Pulse in short bursts until the frosting is shiny and smooth. (My frosting never got shiny and smooth; it looked like mud.)

2. Use a spatula to spread the fudge frosting over the crown of the Bundt in a thick layer. Let the frosting set before serving, with the ice cream on the side.

I was warned off A Gate at the Stairs by more than one reader friend. Eh, they said, it’s not her best. Read her stories instead. So I was a little disappointed to see it on the short list for this year’s Morning News Tournament of Books, but decided to read it anyway. I agree it’s not a great book, but am not sorry I read it.

In the fall of 2001, Tassie Keltjin is a midwestern college student who grew up on her father’s boutique farm in Wisconsin. Searching for a job, she stumbles into a nanny position for an older couple who are adopting. An older, more experienced Tassie narrates, so there’s often a mismatch between the voice telling the story and the naive, inexperienced girl whose story it’s telling. The couple, Sarah and Edward, are socially awkward and uncomfortable, and there is little comfort to be found in the pages of this novel. But it’s even unsettling in its unsettlingness, as the book itself seems cold, distant and disjointed. A paragraph toward the end of the book captured the feeling I had when I read it:

The people in this house, I felt, and I included myself, were like characters each from a different grim and gruesome fairy tale. None of us was in the same story. We were all grotesques, and self-riveted, but in separate narratives, and so our interactions seemed weird and richly meaningless, like the characters in a Tennessee Williams play, with their bursting, unimportant but spell-bindingly mad speeches (249)

This book has many threads. There’s Tassie’s coming-of-age story, the mystery of why Sarah and Edward’s marriage seems so strange, a subplot about terrorism and another about the military, a critique of well-intentioned liberals, and, throughout, questions about race and racism. They never quite came together for me, and perhaps that wasn’t Moore’s intention, as she hints at in the above paragraph. And while she can write beautiful, attention-getting sentences and passages, I found myself wanting a deeper, more coherent narrative. I can see why her style might be better suited to short stories.

After refusing to helm Spider Man 4 (a good choice, given Spidey 3’s current status as most recent really bad 3 movie, replacing Godfather III), Sam Raimi returned to his horror roots, but with a bigger budget, and the result was Drag Me To Hell, a solidly entertaining B movie. It’s a little bit funny, scary, campy and silly by turns, and full of gross-out effects. It does what it sets out to do, which isn’t high art. If you liked the Evil Dead movies, you’ll likely enjoy this, and appreciate seeing the Big Yellow Car again.

I’m not a Tarantino fan. I liked Pulp Fiction. Didn’t like Reservoir Dogs. Didn’t bother with the Kill Bills or Grindhouse because I didn’t want to deal with the OTT violence. So when Inglourious Basterds came out, I skipped it.

But the good reviews kept coming in. And the superlatives rained down on Christoph Waltz for his supporting role. And then Linda at NPR said that even though SHE didn’t like Tarantino either, she’d really liked Inglourious Basterds. So we bought it on DVD, and watched it.

I loved it. Thought it was great, and a far better Best Picture contender than Avatar was. More ambitious than Hurt Locker, yet still perfectly executed. Like Hurt Locker, too, it maintains tremendous suspense for long periods of time. The opening scene is astonishingly good and lasts about 20 minutes. And when the tension is resolved, it’s never in the way I thought it would be. The movie constantly surprised me.

Except for its scenes of over the top violence, like bloody gunfights and scalping scenes. By the end, I wasn’t even closing my eyes, looking at the ceiling, or watching through diamond fingers. I don’t consider that desensitizing a good thing, though. The rest? Fabulously entertaining. This shoulda been a stronger contender for best pic.

I saw Nicholson Baker read from The Anthologist at last fall’s Rain Taxi Festival of Books. He was funny and clever, but I wasn’t moved to read the book till it was a contender at this year’s Tournament of Books. I’m glad I didn’t skip it.

Paul Chowder, the narrator, is a poet trying to write the introduction to an anthology of rhyming poems he’s put together. Paul’s writers block is the stuff that 12-step programs are made for. His girlfriend has moved out, he keeps injuring himself and he’s obsessed with cleaning his office instead of writing.

In between his dryly hilarious musings on his sad sack life, Paul holds forth on poetry, explaining in a clear, entertaining manner why rhyme is often reviled, and why pentameter is just plain wrong. He quotes many poets, including Mary Oliver, who I read and enjoyed last year. Chowder made me like poetry, which I generally don’t, and made me want to read more, which is unusual for me. There’s not much by way of plot here, but there’s plenty of Paul, who’s a great character. And the ending is not only charming, but a clever way of reframing the book. This was a smart, quick, funny read that I thoroughly enjoyed.

This month’s selection for one of my book groups, The Yamas and Niyamas,: Exploring Yoga’s Ethical Practice by Deborah Adele, is a good book for those who have taken yoga class and want to learn more about the philosophy. Yoga classes, in which asanas, or poses, are practiced, is the third of eight paths of yoga. The Yamas and Niyamas are the first two. Yamas is Sanskrit for “restraints,” which include nonviolence, truthfulness, nonstealing, nonexcess, and nonpossessiveness. Niyamas mean “observances” and include, purity, contentment, self-discipline, self-study and surrender.

Adele, an experienced yoga teacher and life coach, gives each of the Yamas and Niyamas their own chapter, which includes both real-life stories and yogic quotes and adages. The chapters are accessible and engaging. At the end of each chapter, Adele suggests a focus of practice, and encourages journaling for four weeks on four different aspects of each. In this way, she far exceeds the purview of most self-help books, which are easy to forget once the cover is closed. Here, patient, persistent practice is advised, just as in a yoga class.

Those who practice other religions will find the content consistent with other philosophies. I found the the Yamas and Niyamas, their meanings and practices, corresponded closely to those of the Ten Commandments, e.g., nonviolence = do not murder, truthfulness = do not bear false witness, nonstealing = do not steal, and more. The Commandments also, like the Yamas and Niyamas, are split in half, but in the opposite order of the Yamas and Niyamas. The first five commandments focus on religious practice (though there’s some dispute over #5, honor they father and mother), while the final five focus on life conduct, and are phrased similarly to the Yamas “non” with the negative “do not.”

I followed the journaling advice, and found it helpful and not difficult. This is a good book for clearing the mind and focusing, and for those wanting to take their yoga practice to the next level.

again. My husband G. Grod didn’t get to see The Hurt Locker, so when Barnes and Noble sent us an email saying that Oscar winners were 40% off, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. We ordered Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds and Up. Watching Hurt Locker a second time is interesting, as I could observe HOW the director sustained tension without feeling it so acutely as I did watching the first time. I think this is a superbly crafted movie that takes a tight focus on one character, yet has far-reaching implications. There’s no way I can walk away from watching it and think, well, that’s over. It lingers, and makes me feel uncomfortable, in the way that really good fiction does.

This is me, now, under deadline:

I finished one article yesterday, and have one to go. Reading, laundry, email, blogging are all on back burners.

I’m off to read and write about eggs. As M, who blogs at Mental Multivitamin writes, see you on the other side. (Animation also courtesy of M.)

I borrowed Hidden from the library when it was mentioned by A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips on At the Movies. They agreed it was a superior film to The White Ribbon, director Michael Haneke’s most recent film, an Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Film. Roger Ebert recently added Hidden to his list of Great Movies, so it moved to the top of my Must See list.

Daniel Auteuil is Georges, the host of a literary talk show. He’s married to Anne (Juliet Binoche) and has a twelve year old son, Pierrot. He receives anonymous videotapes showing surveillance of his home, and soon a series of violent childlike drawings. Who is sending them, why, and do they mean harm to Georges and his family? As the tension builds, it creates a widening gulf between the couple. Several times the director seems to be giving the viewers some part of answers, only to retract or call them into question later. In the end, the film is less about who sent the tapes than about how Georges falls apart while trying to hold things together. It’s also about the expectations viewers have from a film like this, and what our expectations say about what we want.

This is a film that deliberately frustrates and confuses the audience, hailed by many critics as great, but by others as a nasty mind game perpetrated on the audience by the director. There is a scene of brief, graphic violence that happens so quickly it’s probably not possible to cover your eyes from. The scene is meant to shock, and it does. Haneke is proud of his ambiguous film. He has said that he wanted a film that viewers would walk about and remember, not dismiss once their questions were answered.

With me, at least, he succeeded. I spent a good deal of time reading material on the movie after I saw it to better understand it. I do, or at least I think I do. Roger Ebert’s Great Movies entry and the BFI’s Sight and Sound article on it were the most comprehensive and helpful to me. And while I can’t say I enjoyed the film, I do admire it and appreciate its complexity. It’s not many films that prompt me to further study and investigation as this one did.

Kathryn Stockett’s The Help is one of those word-of-mouth bestsellers, that women friends recommend to their friends, then all the book groups are reading it, when it’s still in hardcover, no less. Doing so well, in fact, that the publisher is delaying the paperback. Other books that have had similar trajectories are Sarah Gruen’s Water for Elephants, and The Guernsey Literary and Potato-Peel Pie Society (which I quite enjoyed).

Don’t consult the cover if you want to know what it’s about; for that, see the UK version, deemed too controversial for American audiences. Set in Jackson, Mississippi during the early 60’s, chapters alternate first-person point of view between two domestic servants of white families, Aibileen and Minnie, and Skeeter, a white-woman friend of their employers. Reading this book made me profoundly uncomfortable. Not only does Stockett, a white woman raised by a domestic in the South, write from the first person, but she chooses to write in dialect for the black characters, but not for the white ones.

Mae Mobley was born on a early Sunday morning in August, 1960. A church baby we like to call it. Taking care a white babies, that’s what I do, along with all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toilet bowl before they mamas even get out a bed in the morning.

Stockett faces the same dilemma as her fictional counterpart, Skeeter, who interviews the maids in her town to detail the many injustices and cruelties of institutional racism in a southern US city. Stockett’s intention is good; she’s trying to conscientiously give voice to those who didn’t have it, and at the same time educate readers on the countless horrifying particulars of life during the time of Jim Crow laws. Her book is good. It’s a readable tale of a group of women who love and support one another, and who fight for justice in a violent and vicious environment.

In the end, though, there were few, if any, surprises for me. The plots unfolded predictably. Several of the mysteries, like Minnie’s “Terrible Awful,” the fate of Skeeter’s caregiver Constantine, and the secret of Minnie’s new boss, Miss Celia, were easy to guess, and were strung out so long they lost their power to shock, as they were meant to. Most of the characters were caricatures of ones I’ve seen too many times. Aibileen is the loving mammy. Minnie is the sassy maid. Her husband is the drunk wife beater. Miss Celia is the white-trash hottie who married up and whom all the other women envy. Skeeter is the conscience of the town. Her childhood friend, Hilly, is the villain.

Stockett does a decent job of making her white characters, like Hilly and Aibileen’s boss, Elizabeth, complex. Hilly is racist, yet she loves her children. Elizabeth neglects her daughter, yet lives in fear of Hilly and is in turn neglected by her husband. But the black characters for the most part are two-dimensional–all good, all hard working, all persecuted by their white employers.

I wish Stockett would have constructed her book and conveyed the truths within in a way that didn’t trespass so blatantly on the lesser social status of her subjects by trying to speak in their voices. In the book, Skeeter edits the maids’ stories, she doesn’t write them. Perhaps if the entire book had been in third person, or if the maids’ sections had been, that might have troubled me less. Especially since Stockett chose to put one central chapter in the third person, without dialect, and it worked well.

This is a complicated book to talk about. It’s a good story, capably written, with many sympathetic characters. But it’s also manipulative, simplistic, and perhaps enacts vestiges of the racism the author purports to expose. I know many people loved it, but I definitely didn’t. I doubt I’d even recommend it.

See this discussion at Amazon for more from people who have problems with this book.

4yo Guppy is showing ever-increasing independence. At 3, when he began using the bathroom, he demanded company. Now, he asks for privacy. In his late 3s, he maintained he needed help getting dressed. Instead, I’d ask him if he wanted help, and began offering incentives (like watching this fabulously entertaining OK Go Rube Goldberg contraption video this morning) for him to get dressed on his own. He dressed himself, very quickly.

This morning, I was working on my computer, and heard him banging about in the kitchen. Bags rustled, chairs were moved, and I decided to just let him be. Several minutes later, smelling strongly of jam, he came out to tell me he’d made himself a snack.

What was it, I asked.

Toast! he crowed.

You actually toasted it, or did you have bread? I said, wanting to be precise. (Guppy has had trouble with the difference between bread and toast. Often, when 3, he would ask for toast, then throw a fit when I gave it to him. “But I didn’t want it toasted!” he’d wail.)

Yep, he said, with his characteristic decisive nod.

Later in the morning he crawled into my lap and I read to him. Right now, he’s (mostly) at a lovely age and stage, where he’s still small, snuggly and cute, yet able to do things for himself and not quite so insanely autocratic as he was not too long ago. I’m writing this down to remember it, now and later.

Was District 9 ever an Oscar best-picture contender? Probably not. But it’s a solid little sci-fi film, which evokes tension and fear in spite of its low-budget effects. They aren’t bad, but they’d certainly not in the same league as Star Trek’s or Avatar’s. Speaking of that latter blockbuster, NPR writer Linda Holmes wrote that District 9 did a better job telling a nuanced, provocative story about alien invasion and fear of the other than did Avatar.

District 9 advances the thesis — graphically and imaginatively, if with comparatively cheap-looking visuals — that violent mistreatment of entire populations is per se immoral. And it advances this idea without suggesting that the targeted population should prove itself first — prove that it is a superior society, better in tune with nature, less violent, prettier.

And I agree. Avatar looked great, but had a tired story about noble savages and greedy human invaders. Evocatively set in South Africa, District 9 turns that premise on its head. Aliens come to Earth, but they’re sick and starving, not invading.

In his first role ever, Sharlto Copley is tremendous as the bureaucrat in charge of relocating the aliens. He’s like Michael Scott from The Office, until things go horribly wrong. This film reminded me (pleasantly) of a grand story from Torchwood or Doctor Who, and of the low-budget high-thrill 28 Days.

Last year’s National Book Award for fiction winner, and one of the first “players” in this year’s Morning News Tournament of Books, Collum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin pivots around Phillip Petit’s tightrope walk between the Twin Towers in August 1974.

Those who saw him hushed. On Church Street. Liberty. Cortlandt. West Street. Fulton. Vesey. It was a silence that heard itself, awful and beautiful. Some thought at first that it must have been a trick of the light, something to do with the weather, an accident of shadowfall. Others figured it might be the perfect city joke–stand around and point upward, until people gathered, tilted their heads, nodded, affirmed , until all were staring upward at nothing at all, like waiting for the end of a Lenny Bruce gag. But the longer they watched, the surer they were. He stood at the very edge of the building, shaped dark against the gray of the morning. A window washer maybe. Or a construction worker. Or a jumper.

Up there, at the height of a hundred and ten stories, utterly still, a dark toy against the cloudy sky.

The novel is constructed of chapters from different characters’ points of view, all related somehow to Petit’s walk and ultimately all related to one another. There’s a struggling priest advocating for the prostitutes in his neighborhood, his brother who recently emigrated from Ireland, mothers of boys killed in Vietnam, computer hackers, failed artists, and more. It builds tension as the stories begin and connect to the event, and becomes taut in the middle as they all come together. The last few chapters lost momentum for me, as they played out stories I thought would happen anyway. But the overall novel, fictionalized from an historic event, crowded with memorable, relate-able characters described in prose so skilled I hardly noticed how good it was, is a good read, and a very good book.

For more on Petit’s walk, see the Oscar-nominated Man on Wire, or read the Caldecott-winning children’s book The Man Who Walked Between the Towers.

Anvil the Canadian metal band was an inspiration for young metalheads who went on to bands like Guns N Roses, Antrax, and Metallica. Yet Anvil never made the big time. This documentary, Anvil: The Story of Anvil, follows the band, led by lead singer Lips and drummer Robb Reiner, both now in their 50s, as they continue to pursue their dream of heavy metal stardom.

Directed by a former fan, this is a surprisingly sweet homage to this little-known band, and the movie pays tribute to its fictional fore-runner, director Rob (no extra b) Reiner’s classic, This is Spinal Tap. It also reminded me more than a little of last year’s The Wrestler, though it’s much more affectionate and hopeful. Quite charming, actually.