With warm(er) weather this week, I’m risking spring shoes and a bag. Pushing the season? Maybe. At least I’m not wearing shorts.
But my winter-weathered feet didn’t look so cute in the cute shoes, so I did the fastest pedi ever; I slathered thick moisturizer on my feet. Then I did the same for my hands. Voila. Instant improvement.
As the weeks of 2009 went by, I didn’t see new reviews in Entertainment Weekly by Jennifer Reese, my favorite book reviewer. I emailed her to find out if she was still at EW and learned she was laid off at the end of last year. That explains why I’ve been so disappointed in the book reviews this year.
The good news is you can find Reese a couple places on the web. She’s a contributor at the National Book Critics Circle site and blog, and at NPR’s “Books We Like.” She also has a cooking/baking blog, Tipsy Baker.
I had to ask my 5yo son Drake this morning how to review pictures on our digital camera.
He showed me two ways to do it.
A companion to her Pulitzer-winning novel Gilead, Home is similar but different. Like Gilead, it is a thoughtful novel with lovely prose and complex characters actively seeking spiritual growth. If you’re interested in questions of faith and redemption, and if you liked Gilead, as I did in 2005 and 2007, you’ll probably like Home too. But vice versa. It is a slow, perhaps sometimes ponderous, read, often painful in its brutally honest characterizations of fallible, sad and aging people.
Home is about the return of Jack, prodigal* son of the Reverend Boughton, and namesake of John Ames, the narrator of Gilead. Similar events and characters are showed through different perspectives. I found Gilead framed around the eras of people’s experiences of God: thunderous revelation of the early Bible, quiet respect of the later Bible, and then theology in the absence of an immanent God. Home takes the progression to the next step in its examination of the flawed nature of humanity, and its characters wonder if grace is earned and whether predestination plays a role, or exists at all.
Jack and his sister Glory are deeply sympathetic characters, and reading Home made me want to reread Gilead to see the same events through Ames’s eyes. I was hurt, and moved, and buoyed as I read. Low on plot and action, this is not a book for everyone. But its still waters run deep, and it will linger long for those inclined to listen.
Home is up against Hari Kunzru’s My Revolutions, which I read and appreciated last year, this Wednesday, 3/18 in the 2009 Morning News Tournament of Books.
*NB: Prodigal means wasteful, not “someone who ran away and came back.”
Me, to husband G. Grod, about the Morning News 2009 Tournament of Books:
Three upsets in four days! It’s so exciting!
G: I don’t think you know what that word means.
Last night when I went into 5yo Drake and 3yo Guppy’s room to turn out the light before 11, Drake was still awake, though punchy. (Damn you, Daylight Savings Time!) He was on the bottom bunk, Guppy’s bed, using the pillow at the top to prop up books while poor sleeping Guppy was curled up sideways at the end of his bed.
“Time for bed,” I said in my best Voice of Authority.
“But, Mom,” he said, pointing to a page in Richard Scarry’s Best Storybook Ever.
“What is it?” I asked.
“How many is this?” he said, gesturing to the illustration of a group of wives, cats and kits in sacks coming from St. Ives.
“It doesn’t matter. Bed.” I said, trying to maintain the VoA in spite of rising frustration and desire to get into my own bed.
“But, Mom. How many?” He was plaintive.
I tried to wiggle out by spoiling the punchline. “One. Only one is going to St. Ive’s. All those cats are coming FROM St. Ives.”
Drake kept woozily pointing at the page. “But seven cats, and sacks, and kits…”
“A lot,” I snapped. “There are a lot, and I’d need a calculator, and I don’t have one. Get off Guppy’s bed. Get in your own.”
“I want to figure it out,” he begged.
“We’ll discuss this tomorrow. Get in bed.”
Finally, he listened and did what I said. I moved Guppy back to his pillow, then left the room.
The next morning, in typical fashion, Drake shoved a calculator and the book at me. I shoved the calculator back.
“OK, One man. Plus 7 wives. Plus seven wives times seven sacks times seven cats. Plus seven wives, times seven sacks, times seven cats times seven kits. Hit equals. What do you get?”
(I didn’t think we should count the sacks, only the man, his wives, the cats and the kits.)
He showed me the display with a grin. Two thousand seven hundred fifty two, he crowed. Finally satisfied, he went on to play with Legos.
So there you are, folks. If your kid ever holds you hostage at 11pm and won’t get off his sibling’s bed, you’ll know the answer to how many are coming from St. Ives. 2,752.
You’re welcome.
(If you’re going to verify my math, be sure you have a calculator that does order of operations. You remember: MDAS, My Dear Aunt Sally Multiplication and Division first, then Addition and Subtraction. Don’t know how to tell? Key in 2 + 3 X 2. A good calculator will give you 8. A cheap one will give you 10.)
Miller’s Crossing is one of my husband G. Grod’s favorite films. We watched it early in our courtship as part of our getting-to-know-each-other-via-media-we-loved.
What’s the rumpus?
I think it’s one of, if not THE, best Coen Brothers film. G. and I saw The Glass Key (1942) earlier this week, based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett. Miller’s Crossing is based both on The Glass Key and Red Harvest.
Gabriel Byrne is Tom, the cynical right hand man of Albert Finney’s crime boss Leo. Irish Leo is dating Verna (a wonderful Marcia Gay Harden), who asks him to protect her brother Bernie. The Eye-talians in town don’t like Jewish Bernie–”It’s a matter of ethics”–and a gang war ensues. Lots of people end up dead. Unlike The Glass Key, there’s not an artificially upbeat ending.
The film is beautifully shot, and uses the cinematography to show a lot of the story, rather than having someone tell it. There are memorable shots, both gorgeous and gruesome. Carter Burwell’s Irish-influenced score also does a lot to create mood in the film. There are any number of great lines,
Black is white. Up is down.
Careful viewing is rewarded. Finney is dressed as a maid for a scene in a women’s bathroom. Parents of young children will probably recognize as a bookie’s agent the late Michael Jeter, who also played Mr. Noodle’s brother Mr. Noodle from Elmo’s World on Sesame Street. Sam Raimi shows he’s better behind the camera than in front of it in a gleeful attack scene. Frances McDormand (married to Joel Coen) has a cameo as a secretary.
Next up in related viewing will probably be Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, based on Red Harvest, the other source book for MC, and Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone’s Fistful of Dollars, a remake of Yojimbo. And maybe some cheerful movies in between.
I just finished calling around my used bookstores asking if they had copies of 2666 by Roberto Bolano, Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri or Netherland by Joseph O’Neill. While on hold with one guy, another picked up the call and said, “You were looking for Stephanie Meyer?” I laughed, said no and told him what I was looking for to explain why I thought it was funny. He didn’t laugh, and put me back on hold. The guy who’d been looking for me picked up again, told me they didn’t have any of the three (natch) and when I told him about the Stephanie Meyer question, he didn’t laugh either.
This is the kind of exchange I would’ve loved when I worked in a bookstore. Am I overly amused at my book geekery, or is it too esoteric?
A few things that bug me:
Flap pockets on boys pants; they never lay flat
Milk chocolate
People who wear pajama pants in public
High fructose corn syrup
Kate Hudson
Garrison Keillor’s voice
Eliza Dushku’s non-moving forehead, and the non-awesomeness of Dollhouse
I am, perhaps, being unreasonable.
Edited to Add:
CROCS. I love Tim Gunn’s assessment: “they’re like colored plastic hooves.” I don’t care if they’re comfortable. Only for kids or home, IMO.
Twilight, Stephanie Meyer books, EW covers that feature Twilight stars Robert Pattinson and Kristin Stewart’s empty stares, or worse, Pattinson’s nipple–EW, indeed. See The TV Addict for a funny takedown of the last EW Twilight cover.
According to The Guardian, two more novels have been found among the late Roberto Bolano’s effects, as well as what appears to be the sixth and final section of 2666. (Link from Blog of a Bookslut)
I’m going to take this to mean I’m off the hook for having to read 2666 for the Morning News 2009 Tournament of Books, even if it did win its first round.
Last night we had the good fortune to find a sitter who could stay late, so my husband G. Grod and I were able to take in Take-Up Productions noir double feature at The Heights of The Blue Dahlia and The Glass Key. Both star Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, with William Bendix in a scene-stealing supporting role.
The Blue Dahlia, from a screenplay by Raymond Chandler, has an excellent tagline: “Tamed by a brunette–framed by a blond–wanted by the police!” Ladd is a navy veteran who returns to an unfaithful wife. When she turns up dead, the police have many suspects, Ladd, Bendix and Lake among them. See the film’s trivia at imdb for the entertaining legend of Chandler’s writing process, and the connection between this film and the “Black Dahlia” scandal, later made into a book by James Ellroy and a film by Brian De Palma.
The Glass Key is based on a Dashiell Hammett novel of the same name. Ladd is the childhood friend of a powerful character with political aspirations. It wavers interestingly between their “bromance” and the triangle they have with Lake. Bendix plays an eager goon and an extended fight scene that’s simultaneously disturbing and entertaining. The film pulls its punch at the end with an incongruous happy ending, though one with some funny lines.
The Coen Brothers used Hammett’s Glass Key and Red Harvest as the basis for their excellent 1990 film Miller’s Crossing. Earlier, Red Harvest was the basis for Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, which was later remade as For a Fistful of Dollars, the first famous spaghetti western.
There’s one more film in this noir series, The Phantom Lady, on Monday 16 March 2009 at 7:30 p.m. at the Heights Theater. A Hitchcock series starts in April, and will be shown both at the Heights and The Riverview.
Me, that’s who. I’m a comics geek. I read Watchmen in 1990 and have been an avid comic reader ever since. That’s why I won’t be seeing Watchmen (2009).
Watchmen the book is brilliant. It exploded the boundary, then and perhaps forever, on superhero entertainment and the comics medium. So a faithful adaptation, as director Zack Snyder said he tried to do, misses the point, IMO. It offers superheroes and violence up as entertainment, without the irony.
Instead of investing almost 3 hours and $10 in the movie, read this interview at Salon with creator Alan Moore. (Can’t find the source of the link; sorry. It was probably Morning News or Bookslut) Read the graphic novel. Or go here for a hilarious imagining of what Watchmen might have been like as an 80’s kids cartoon, or to Slate for a parody of what other directors might have done. (Last two links from ALoTT5MA)
My husband G. Grod went to see it last night.
“How was it?” I asked.
“Exactly what I expected,” he replied. “That bad. Now I know.”
Rober Ebert liked it, but it’s clear from his review that he hasn’t read the source material. Part of what worked about recent comic-book movies like Spiderman 2, Iron Man, Hellboy II and The Dark Knight is that they were based on the larger legend, but eschewed existing stories in favor of ones crafted specifically for the movie.
TV critic Alan Sepinwall’s review confirmed my suspicions about the movie. I’ve not yet gone to see any adaptation of an Alan Moore project, though all the graphic novels–League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Swamp Thing, From Hell, V for Vendetta–are among my favorites. Movies and comics are different mediums. Sometimes one can bring something to the other than deepens the story. But with such rich source material as Watchmen, I don’t much see the point.
I found OMG, Shoes at Big Brain Comics, and had to have it. It’s an illustrated ‘zine-style shoe memoir by Sarah Morean, in the manner of Ilene Beckerman’s Love, Loss and What I Wore. Morean uses pencils and watercolor to detail 44 pairs of shoes, with a sentence or two about their history.
It’s a charming little book, made even more so by its deliberately cute black faux-lizard soft cover and assortment of decorative bindings. I chose a simple pink bow, but there were faux pearls and other pretty, shiny options. At $5, it’s a bargain; I feel like I went shoe shopping in someone else’s closet.
Mark Sarvas’ Harry, Revised, one of the contenders for this year’s Morning News Tournament of Books, is a great example of why I don’t recommend a book or not until I’m finished. When I began it, I didn’t much enjoy it. The main character, Harry of the title is such a sorry specimen it’s easy to wonder, as he does to his wife:
“Oh, honey. Why did you marry me?”
As I was wondered whether to continue, the final line of the first chapter took me by surprise; I’d read little about this book and hadn’t bothered with the jacket copy. The end-of-chapter twist was so deftly done I thought, “I’m in.”
As I continued to read, though, Harry and his bumbling were often more painful than funny. I was reminded of the cringing feeling I get watching some of the “Michael Scott” episodes of the US The Office. The best episodes get the tricky balance between painful and funny, and manage to portray Michael as clueless but well meaning and likeable. I worried that Harry might end up like Michael in the off-balance episodes: clownish and pathetic.
I found this book got better and better toward the end, bringing each of its subplots to closure. Harry’s coming of middle age is believable and sympathetic. I found the novel all the more impressive because its structure is non-linear, and details are regularly withheld then revealed. Yet the story unfolds easily, even with the back and forward shifts in time. Sarvas is the author of the well-known litblog The Elegant Variation. Harry, Revised is his first novel, but it doesn’t read like a first novel, if you know what I mean.
This is a sweet, sad well-written book with a redemptive, earned ending. It wasn’t always easy to read, but the whole made me feel well-rewarded for engaging with it.
From Harry, Revised by Mark Sarvas:
Abridged or unabridged? That is the question.
Harry stands in the deserted, brightly lit Fiction & Literature section of his favorite chain bookstore, weighing a book in each hand. In his right, The Count of Monte Cristo (Penguin, unabridged) weighing in at a formidable 1,276 pages. In this left, The Count of Monte Cristo (Puffin Classics, abridged) tipping the scales at a svelte 396 pages. Harry weights the pros and cons of each, literally as well as figuratively.
He can’t deny that an irresistible bit of cachet comes with being an unabridged sort of guy. If depth follows effort, as Harry is reasonably convinced that it must, surely his best hope for a Dantes-esque rebirth must be found in these pages.
But Harry also knows himself, knows the limits of his attention span, and fears that The Count of Monte Cristo (Penguin, unabridged) is fated to end up as little more than an impressive desk ornament. And, he reasons, if the story can effectively be whittled down to a mere 396 pages (Puffin Classics, abridged), then how necessary can the rest really be? (92-3)
Harry Revised is one of the contenders in The Morning News Tournament of Books. It has some impressive contortions in chronology, and can be quite funny, as I found the above passage, but it walks the thin line between humor and cringe-worthy pathos that can sometimes make for an uncomfortable read. I’ll keep reading to see if Harry can come of middle-age and pull off a Dantes-esque rebirth.
From Bre Pettis, via Boing Boing.
The Cult of Done Manifesto
1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you’re done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more
I think this might be the way to approach the kind of everyday stuff that has overwhelmed me, in general all my life, but specifically since the birth of 3yo Guppy. I have mail, email and magazines from February 2006, when he was born. Not helpful.
From Wikipedia on “Life Hack”
Today, anything that solves an everyday problem in a clever or non-obvious way might be called a life hack.
From The New York Times, “Low-Tech Fixes for High-Tech Problems.” I’ve tested using my head as an amplifier for my car remote; it works.
From Wired, “10 Geeky Tricks for Getting Out of Bed in the Morning.” I’ve adopted the glass of water upon waking up. It’s a great idea. (This and above link from The Morning News)
At Smarterware, a snapshot of good advice for getting through one’s day, “Simple Guidelines for Workday Quality Over Quantity” (My husband sent the link to me; I didn’t get it from a site.)
From In Style magazine via CNN, “Drop 5 Years in 5 Minutes” offers simple make-up techniques that have maximum impact. The day I tried a few, I got an unsolicited compliment from a makeup-artist friend.
Also from In Style’s January issue, some down-to-earth advice on losing weight:
“Restrictive diets don’t work,” proclaims nutritionist Oz Garcia, Ph.D. Instead, he suggests:
Sleep 8 to 9 hours
Massages to reduce stress
Dark chocolate in moderation to control cravings
Sunshine (the real thing or a light box)
Exercise
Eat different things each day. Garcia recommends the Mediterranean plan from the Mayo Clinic.
Is there a better film to watch on one’s birthday than Casablanca*? As Roger Ebert notes in his commentary on the film, it’s a film that people who don’t like black and white films like, that people who don’t like old movies like, that people who don’t like romance films like, and that no critic has criticized.
What can I possibly say beyond that? It’s a lovely film. It made Bogart a star. And it rivals Hamlet and the Bible for number of lines that have become part of the warp and woof of popular culture. The famous last line, in fact, is often misquoted and was added as an afterthought.
Are there better films? Yes. More enjoyable ones? Not many.
*Other candidates: The Long Goodbye and The Third Man.
Today’s my birthday. Forty-one, and even though that sounds “old” to me, I don’t feel it. Emotionally, at least–I have some early morning and post-yoga aches that make me humble and remind me to slow down. I also wish my other February birthday friends (so many of them!) health and happiness as this month comes to a close.
I’ve had a lovely day thus far, despite an oncoming cold. We began the day with a family snuggle, then I had my favorite breakfast–two cappuccinos, with a cherry pomegranate toaster pastry AND Stella d’Oro breakfast treats. G and the boys went out so I have time to myself this morning to read, write, journal, use my light box, do yoga and my hand labyrinth, and be amazed by the well wishes pouring in.
I feel very grateful today, for life in general and the specifics–my husband G, our kids 5yo Drake and 3yo Guppy, our community in Minnesota, family and friends both far and wide, real and virtual, present and absent, and for all who helped in ways big and small during my post-partum depression three years ago, part of my ongoing journey toward balance.
I feel more than a bit stunned by it all, and deer-in-the headlights when I think how impossible it would be to express all the gratitude to all those I feel it for. This quote, by Elizabeth Gilbert from Eat, Pray, Love, helps me feel a little less overwhelmed:
In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.
I am saying thank you, right now, today, and I’ll try to keep on saying it however I can. Namaste.
Tom Piazza’s City of Refuge, a novel about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina, is a contender in this year’s Morning New Tournament of Books. Piazza opens with two quotes, one from Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, which this book is an homage to. Like that American classic, City of Refuge tells of a forced US migration, both through the eyes of those experiencing it, and with journalistic interludes that further fill in the details. I thought I knew what happened there. City of Refuge showed me I hardly knew a thing, and more compellingly, helped explain why.
On Monday, though nobody knew it yet, the water had only just begun to rise; it would keep rising until that Thursday, from more than a dozen breaks in the levee system, which let water gush and roll in from Lake Pontchartrain to fill up the bowl of New Orleans.
The novel switches between two families, one black, one white, and their experiences during and after the hurricane. I sometimes thought Piazza gave too much detail, and veered into the didactic, problems I also had with Grapes of Wrath. Like that book, though, this is a chronicle of a national tragedy, and the government ineptitude that made things worse. Like that book, City of Refuge is a novel about social justice. It educates, inspires empathy, and fosters outrage. The writing style wasn’t always to my taste, but the scope and power of the story, and the character of SJ in particular, are such that I’d recommend City of Refuge to almost anyone.
