Girl Detective

A friend recommended the graphic novels Jonathan Ames’ The Alcoholic and Julia Wertz’s Drinking at the Movies to me at the same time, and they make good companions for each other. I wrote about The Alcoholic already. It’s dark and moody, while Drinking at the Movies is more upbeat and consistently funny. Wertz chronicles her move from SF to NYC with an eye at least as honest about herself as she is about others (as all good memoirists should be, I think).

This isn’t the typical redemptive coming of age tale of a young woman and her glorious triumph over tragedy or any such nonsense. It’s simply a hilarious–occasionally poignant–book filled with interesting art, absurd humor and plenty of amusing self deprecation.

She makes 20-something slackerhood funny, and her Sunday-comics boxy layouts and iconic art make this easy to read, even when the subject matter is serious, like her drinking, depression, addict brother, and more. Way more fun than it should be, which says a lot about the talent of its creator.

The Alcoholic came out in 2009. Drinking at the Movies was published in 2010. I just read “Lush for Life” at Salon today (link from The Morning News). There’s a weird synchronicity going on with tales of booze and debauchery.

And with Die Hard, our holiday movie-watching season came to an end. In case you don’t remember, Die Hard is set at the holiday party of Bruce Willis’ character, John McClane’s estranged wife. Bad guys led by Alan Rickman in his feature film debut crash the party, and mayhem ensues. In between clever one-liners, Willis gets beat up as he tries to save the day. This was a lot of fun to watch again. The attention to detail is impressive, and the plot hums along nicely. Willis is an entertaining smartass, but Rickman is fabulous as the villain. Well worth revisiting.

Though published as fiction, the graphic “novel” The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames reads more like real life. Whatever its blend might be, it’s an engaging, brutal, funny, tragic story.

My name is Jonathan A. and I’m an alcoholic. I have a lot of problems. Not more than the average person, really, but I have a propensity for getting into trouble, especially when I’ve been drinking. This one night, I came out of a blackout and I was with this old, exceedingly tiny lady in a station wagon.

Illustrated in moody black and white by Dean Haspiel, the tale charms and horrifies by turns. But because of its honesty, it’s never less than enthralling, even when Jonathan is at his most pathetic. For fans of other messed-up memoir authors, like David Sedaris and Alison Bechdel.

In 2009, I consumed more movies (90) than I did books (66). I didn’t like that ratio. Yes, a movie can be consumed in 2 hours, while most books take longer, e.g. Infinite Jest, which I read that summer. Still, I love books more than movies; I hoped I could reallocate my time and turn the emphasis around. At the end of 2010, I’d seen 68 movies and read 91 books. I almost exactly inverted the ratio!

In addition to cutting back on movies, I also cut back on television. I gave up Project Runway and Top Chef, gave up on House, Glee, The Office and How I Met Your Mother. I didn’t watch one new show this fall. The shows I did watch were all 30 minute comedies, ones that consistently made me laugh: Modern Family, Community and 30 Rock. I look forward to the return of Parks and Recreation.

By whittling away the time I spent chasing movies with good reviews and tv shows I used to like, I enjoyed what I saw more, plus had more time, which I used to read and write. Here were the movies I feel earned their time last year.

Made me laugh: Philadelphia Story, Fantastic Mr. Fox, It’s Complicated, Hot Tub Time Machine, The Awful Truth, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Fletch

Made me cry (in a good way): Up, Toy Story 3

Entertaining: Jaws, Serenity, True Grit (1969), The Holiday

These entertained AND made me think: The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Moon, Inception, The King’s Speech

Family movies liked by both kids and adults: How to Train Your Dragon, Porco Rosso, Castle in the Sky, Mary Poppins

Favorite holiday movies: The Shop Around the Corner, Trading Places and Die Hard

I hope this doesn’t crash your browser. Or mine, for that matter.

Best book of 2010 that I read in 2010: A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. A tangled web of characters and events. I was engaged and enthralled.

Second best book of 2010 that I read in 2010: The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachmann. Similar to Goon Squad, but not as ambitious. Disclosure: other than comic books, these were the only two books from 2010 that I read in 2010. But both were excellent!

So nice I read them twice in the same year: History of Love by Nicole Krauss and Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

Thumping good trilogies with strong female heroines with significant things that bugged me: Stieg Larsson’s Millenium and Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogies.

Good stuff: The Road by Cormac McCarthy; Lowboy by John Wray (not perfect, but I liked the Hamlet/Raskolnikov parallels); Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card; City of Thieves by David Benioff; Big Machine by Victor LaValle; The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker; Anne Frank: the Book, the Life, the Afterlife by Francine Prose; Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam; Zeitoun by Dave Eggers; The Magicians by Lev Grossman; Cakewalk by Kate Moses

Made me laugh: The Catnappers by P. G. Wodehouse; This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper; Scott Pilgrim v. 1 to 6 by Bryan Lee O’Malley.

Others loved them; I did not: Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann; The Help by Kathryn Stockett; A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore; Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel; Little Bee by Chris Cleave

I got hooked on these classics: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, trans. Lydia Davis; Villette by Charlotte Bronte; Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

I discovered The Suck Fairy had got into: Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight.

Related reading: After the Hunger Games trilogy and Tamara Drewe by Posy Simmonds, I read Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, which the latter two pay homage to. After Madame Bovary, I read Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes and Gemma Bovery by the aforementioned Posy Simmonds. After Francine Prose’s book, I read Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl, Definitive Edition. After Zeitoun I read the graphic memoir A.D. New Orleans: After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld.

Comic books: I read a lot of unremarkable graphic novels in 2010. Fortunately, I read a lot of very good ones, too: Unwritten by Mike Carey; Incognito and Criminal by Ed Brubaker/Sean Phillips; Parker: the Hunter and the Outfit by Darwyn Cooke; Scott Pilgrim volumes 1 to 6 by Bryan Lee O’Malley; Far Arden by Kevin Cannon

And a few remarkable ones: Stitches by David Small; Asterios Polyp by David Mazzuchelli; Tamara Drewe and Gemma Bovery by Posy Simmonds

I read a bunch of books that had been sitting on my shelf for a long time: Little Boy Lost by Marganita Lasky; Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.; Eats Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss; The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier; Desperate Characters and Borrowed Finery by Paula Fox; The Catnappers by P.G. Wodehouse; Quicksilver, The Confusion and The System of the World by Neal Stephenson; Villette by Charlotte Bronte; and Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes.

I did two reading projects: 15 books in 15 days, and Baroque Summer. Only my husband was brave enough to join me for the latter, but I had a great time reading Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver, The Confusion, and System of the World with him.

Just couldn’t bring myself to link each book. Individual links can be found under 2010 books in categories on the right. Happy reading, readers!

Trying to wrap things up here with the last movies we watched in 2010:

Fletch. Because there was a long article about it in Entertainment Weekly a while ago, and I never saw it enough times to know it well. Hilarious, worth re-watching, but the painful 80’s music is even worse than the “fashion” and big hair.

The Holiday. A friend assured me I’d like it. Throughout the utterly formulaic beginning, I doubted her. But once Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz switch houses, things became charming. Winslet and Jude Law deserve most of the credit, I think. Light and enjoyable holiday movie.

The King’s Speech. My first movie in a theater since September! I went with friends Mr. and Mrs. Blogenheimer. Loved it. Firth is terrific, as is Bonham-Carter. It took me a while to recognize the woman playing Geoffrey Rush’ wife; it’s Jennifer Ehle, Lizzie Bennet to Firth’s Darcy. Weird to see them in the same film. Firth in a kilt? Woo!

Trading Places. Another great holiday movie. It’s been too long since I’d watched it. Dan Ackroyd’s uppitiness. Eddie Murphy’s laugh. Wait for the crop report, and watch out for those frozen concentrated orange juice futures. I STILL do not understand the ending, even after I watched a dvd extra that purported to explain it.

I’ll try to briefly wrap up last year’s reading.

Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon. How could a version of Anne’s story not move me? I was dry eyed at the end of this “graphic biography” with stiff, photo-based art and few new additions to the story, while condensing the rest to a bare personal and historical summary. This might be a good way to introduce a young reader to Anne’s story if they were daunted by her diary, but it is a poor substitute for that great book. I feel like a complete crank for not liking this book, but please seek out Anne’s diary or Francine Prose’s book on it instead.

Richard Stark’s Parker Book Two: The Outfit by Darwyn Cooke. The shades of black and blue suit the noir tale perfectly. Cooke’s second adapation of Stark’s Parker books is a well-told and illustrated tale. Parker is a definite anti-hero, and though his and the other characters’ attitudes to women are abominably of their time and genre, it’s hard not to root for him. Also, this book is printed on heavy paper, with thick end pages of a mod design. It’s a lovely object.

Ex Machina volumes 9 and 10: Ring out the Old and Term Limits, by Bryan K. Vaughan and Tony Harris. I’ve felt ambivalent about this series for a while, and hoped that the creators could bring it to a satisfying close. They brought it to a close, but one that left me in a bad mood. The series is about Mitchell Hundred, a reluctant superhero who saved many on 9/11, and was subsequently elected mayor. The last two volumes of the series find him deciding not to run again, and attempting to finish out his term while also battling the friends and enemies working against him since the start of the series.

Some questions I had were unanswered, they made a long-suffering character suffer too much, in my opinion, and the meaning of the ending seemed too simple, and not even fitting for the series. Bah. These bridged the end of the year and the new beginning, and I hope 2011 will bring more auspicious reading. If you want a good series that ends with integrity, I highly recommend Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.