Girl Detective

I get the title of Tana French’s debut mystery novel, In the Woods, confused with that of the Sondheim musical, Into the Woods. So forgive me if I type the wrong preposition when writing about French’s novel, which I recently read for the second time. I tore through it the first time, and I tore through it this time, with an added appreciation for the clues and red herrings sprinkled throughout the book as it weaves together two mysteries, a child murder in the present with a case where two kids went missing in the past.

I’m not giving anything away that isn’t on the back cover or in the first pages. The narrator is Rob Ryan, a detective on the (fictitious) Dublin murder squad in Ireland. I was happy to suspend my disbelief when Rob and his partner Cassie Maddox happened to get the call for a murdered girl in the suburb of Knocknaree, the town where two other kids went missing twenty years before. Those two kids went into the woods with a friend. He was found later; they never were. The friend who was found? Adam (Robert) Ryan, the narrator.

What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Our relationship with truth is fundamental but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass. It is the core of our careers, the endgame of every move we make, and we pursue it with strategies painstakingly constructed of lies and concealment and every variation on deception…

This is my job, and you don’t go into it–or, if you do, you don’t last–without some natural affinity for its priorities and demands. What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this–two things: I crave truth. And I lie.

Rob is smart, charming, and completely messed in the head (understandably) from what happened when he was a child. Whether he’s exactly the right or wrong detective to investigate the new mystery makes for fabulous, devour-able fiction. Well plotted and paced with excellent, complex, psychological characterizations, this was a thumping good read, even when I knew whodunnit. (I am amused that, without referring to my old entry, I chose the exact same quote as I did over two years ago when I read the book for the first time. Perhaps because it just cries out to be quoted.)

Edited to add: In interviews, French says she’s a fan of complex mysteries, like Donna Tartt’s Secret History and Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River. Not all plot points are tied up neatly and satisfactorily. I was reminded of some of the books of Margaret Atwood, in which the author challenges the reader to decide and imagine for herself what might have happened. A lot of people were outraged that all the mysteries weren’t explained. I found this provocative in a good way.

Red monk, chipping ice, with axe.

At the Chronicle of Higher Education, “The New Atheists’ Narrow Worldview” by Stephen T. Asma:

most friends and even en­e­mies of the new athe­ism have not yet no­ticed the pro­vin­cial­ism of the cur­rent de­bate. If the horse­men left their world of books, con­fer­ences, classrooms, and com­put­ers to trav­el more in the de­vel­op­ing world for a year, they would find some un­fa­mil­iar religious arenas.

Asma has thought-provoking insight into the rise of the atheist debate. He maintains that writers such as Hitchens and Dawkins argue against religion versus science, but don’t take into account much more than mainstream monotheistic religions, which aren’t even the majority. Rather than religion as a source for explaining nature and guiding moral behavior, which most agree can be done better by science, Asma writes about animism throughout the world, and ponders whether the strength of religion is consoling, rather than explaining or guiding. Interesting stuff.

Oh, first-time parents. I don’t know whether to ruefully smile at your naivete, or smack you upside the head. This morning I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation of a first-time mom and a friend of hers. They were sitting next to me at the coffee shop, conversing at normal, overhearable volume. It took a considerable amount of self control for me not to interrupt them. Their topics were the kind of ignorant platitiudes that drive me up the wall. (Hence this rant.)

1. Kids are going to get sick sometime, so even if they’re babies, they’re just building up immunity.

Why this is ignorant: while technically true, it fails to take into account that babies are smaller and more vulnerable physically than bigger kids. Their lungs are smaller, and ear tubes shorter. The older a kids are when they get sick, the better their bodies will handle it, barring extenuating circumstances. I.e., if a baby and an older kid who get sick at the same time, all other things being equal, the baby will get sicker, and for longer. For example, if a baby gets a cold, it often leads to an ear infection that won’t clear up on its own. A bigger kid might just get the cold, no complications. Also, if your baby gets a cold now, its immune system is depressed, and less able to fight off additional exposure to viruses in the short term. This situation is exacerbated in winter by more exposure to people and less exposure to sunshine (vitamin D) and fresh, copious amounts of air.

My interpretation: no need to be paranoid, but take reasonable precautions to prevent your baby from getting sick. Don’t let a sick person hold them, or at least without washing hands. Don’t take your baby around other kids who are drippy and sneezy. And for all kids, respect guidelines like keeping kids home 24 hours after fevers or vomiting.

2. “You know where your baby is in the bed.” I’ve found this vague defense of bed sharing is ALWAYS voiced in the second person, and followed by a variation on “the only cases where kids are rolled on is when someone is obese, drunk, or both.

Why this is ignorant: _I_ had an experience where I did not know where my baby was in the bed. My elder son was a challenging baby. He cried a lot and slept very little, in spite of swaddling, frequent holding, co-sleeping, and other platitudinal solutions. I was sleep deprived and not recovering properly from the birth. In desperation one night, I took him out of the co-sleeper bassinet, nursed him till he fell asleep on my chest (I was on my back) and fell asleep myself. My husband came in a short while later and woke me. I’d rolled over. My son was no longer on my chest or in the vast expanse of bed in the middle. He was between me and the edge of the bed, face down over the small crevice where the edge of the bed met the co-sleeper. Had the co-sleeper not been there he would have been on the floor. Asleep, _I_ had no idea where my kid was in the bed. I was not obese, or drunk. So taking a baby into bed was not for me, and I didn’t do it again. WARNING. SUPER SAD STORY AHEAD. STOP READING IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW. A former co-worker of mine took a nap with her new baby. Not obese and not drunk. Woke and the baby was dead, either through SIDS or suffocation. The mother killed herself soon after. (Maybe after hearing someone say “oh, you know where your baby is in the bed.”)

My interpretation: Throughout history, lots of people have bed shared with infants with no ill results. But some babies have died from it–parents drunk, obese or not–and not every single person “knows” where a baby is in the bed, especially when sleep deprived with a newborn. Your experience is not someone else’s, and it’s not a thoroughly researched double-blind study with zero casualties. Sharing the bed with my baby wasn’t for me. Maybe it is for you, but use the first person and don’t generalize.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure I’ve said these things. I’m not immune to small talking; I probably still say things like them. BUT. I have learned that just because I can’t imagine something doesn’t mean it isn’t true for others. Rather, it’s a failure of imagination and lack of experience on my part.

I don’t care that you haven’t seen it before and neither does Linda at NPR, who does a great job of explaining why you should be watching this show:

while bittersweet comedy is a wonderful thing, not all great comedy has to have much bitter in it. Some of it is mostly sweet and still great.

Good comedies are rare, and Parks and Rec is really good. Try it if you haven’t yet.

This is an uncharacteristic girl-y post, inspired by recent (mostly unsuccessful, or at least incomplete) attempts at organization.

I switch bags a lot, depending on where I’m going and what I’m doing, so I try to have a modular case like this to transfer among bags along with my wallet and cell phone. Over the years, the size of the bag has flexed up and down, and the number of items in it, too. This is the result of a recent paring down so it could fit in this smallish clear zip bag, so everything in it is easy to spot. I chose things that were likely to be wanted a lot if suddenly absent. Here’s what made the cut:

chocolate-covered Altoids (mint + chocolate fix = double duty!)
gum
tiny tube of Prada lip balm
lipstick in neutral pink-y brown
packet of tissues
tiny bottle of hand sanitizer
mini pencil
mini pen
nail file
hand lotion
clear pony-tail holders (2)
magnifying mirror
comb
adhesive bandages
antibacterial wet wipes
floss
foam ear plugs
Shout wipe
a pink eyeglass polishing cloth
tiny tin with ibuprofen and a day’s worth of my medication in case I forgot to take it that morning

I saw the film, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, mentioned in the back pages of one of my favorite comic books, Criminal (in “The Sinners” #2), by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Some time later, I saw the book it’s based on recommended The Morning News. I saw the film recommended again, along with the recently released on DVD The Town, as a good Boston crime movie. Then when I finally borrowed it last week from the library, I saw the director was Peter Yates, who had just died, though he’s perhaps better remembered for Bullitt with Steve McQueen and the bicycle movie Breaking Away.

The film is a strange but effective balancing of big and little. Robert Mitchum is Eddie “Fingers” Coyle, a career criminal who’s facing prison time. Mitchum, who was Hollywood royalty at the time, is surrounded by a cast of little-known but terrific character actors. As they move in and out of conversations and meetings with one another, the big picture begins to grown out of the small incidents. It might have been a character study, but it does have a few big scenes, like a choreographed bank robbery and car chase. The moments of action are islands in this mostly quiet film, though. There are few guns fired, and when they go off, they count. This is a grey Boston crime tale of the 70’s, and I’m still mulling over why it’s sad, but not (quite) bleak. The Criterion Collection does not have many extras on the DVD, but comes with a thick booklet with an essay about the film as well as the Rolling Stone piece on Mitchum written while he was filming it.

Director Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet, France’s submission for the 2010 Academy Awards and one of the Best Foreign Film nominees, got all sorts of good reviews when it came out, and won all sorts of awards. I’ve seen his previous films, Read My Lips and The Beat that My Heart Skipped, and was impressed by both. A Prophet is much more ambitious, though. At more than 2 and a half hours, it’s the story of a 19-year-old Arab kid in France who goes to prison, and gets an education, in many senses of the word, along the way. He falls in with a gang of Corsicans, who give him protection, yet continually deride him racially. He learns the basics of business, both in and out of prison, as he serves his term. It’s a fascinating character study, with some magical realism thrown in. Several times during the film, I felt momentarily lost and had the urge to stop the DVD and ask questions of my husband. Instead, I gave myself the advice I repeat to 4yo Guppy: keep watching and maybe you’ll figure it out. And I did. For all its length, the film often proceeds at a fast clip, yet when I went with the flow, I got reoriented quickly enough. Long, challenging, violent, but beautiful, thought provoking, and very, very good.

Having recently watched the John Wayne original (which I totally forgot to review last year), I made it out to see the Coen Brothers’ remake of True Grit. It did not disappoint. In fact, it entertained mightily. The clever, stylized dialogue is perfectly suited to the Coen’s directing. Jeff Bridges and the girl are especially great. I love that character as a role model for girls; she is so smart and tough! Josh Brolin and Barry Pepper have little screen time, but steal every scene they’re in.

Question: Why did Carter Burwell base the score about the hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” when that song is tied so distinctly (in my mind, at least) to Night of the Hunter? Did he want to reclaim it to less creepy effect?

I have something to admit. At the risk of losing my geek-girl cred, I had not read anything by William Gibson. Not even Neuromancer. Like many other books and movies, I’d always wanted to read it, but hadn’t yet managed to. Gibson’s Pattern Recognition started waving at me last year, when John Warner at the Morning News did a Biblioracle session; he asked readers for the last 5 books they’d read and recommended one to read next. He picked Pattern Recognition for me. Between one thing and another, I didn’t get around to it. A little later I noticed Pattern Recognition again on a friend’s Facebook page; she listed it as one of her favorite books. Third (and finally) my husband started the new William Gibson, Zero History, and felt he needed to return to Pattern Recognition, the first of the trilogy. As he re-read Pattern Recognition, then Spook Country, then Zero History, he kept telling me he thought I’d like them and if I read them we could discuss them. So, here I am, finally having read Gibson and Pattern Recognition. And I’m very glad I did.

Cayce (pronounced Case) Pollard is an advertising savant, hired for big bucks by global companies to evaluate logos and other marketing stuff. She’s also a “footage-head,” a devotee of found video clips from the internet by an anonymous creator. She’s doing work for the improbably named Belgian, Hubertus Bigend, when her worlds start to collide in intriguing and dangerous ways.

“The heart is a muscle,” Bigend corrects. “You ‘know’ in your limbic brain. The seat of instinct. The mammalian brain. Deeper, wider, beyond logic. That is where advertising works, not in the upstart cortex. What we think of as ‘mind’ is only a sort of jumped-up gland, piggybacking on the reptilian brainstem and the older, mammalian mind, but our culture tricks us into recognizing it as all of consciousness. The mammalian spreads continent-wide beneath it, mute and muscular, attending to its ancient agenda. And makes us buy things.” (69)

Gibson is shelved in sci-fi/fantasy, and while this book has elements of both, it’s much more complex than that. It’s also a mystery, with some philosophy, post-modernism and who knows what else thrown in. As I read, I was reminded of, among others, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49, Jasper Fforde’s Eyre Affair, and Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. I felt my brain twisting and turning as I read, firing synapses usually dormant. I very much look forward to Spook Country.

If you, like me, are a magazine junkie, then watching the documentary The September Issue, is a mesmerizing romp. If you don’t care about fashion or don’t like reality TV, this isn’t likely to be your cuppa.

The film documents the production of the September 2007 issue of Vogue, the biggest in its history, and the one before the recession hit and paper prices went up. The putative heroine is Grace Coddington, the creative director, who clashes with Anna Wintour, the chilly, powerful editrix. The power dynamics are fascinating, as is the messy process of putting together the magazine that looks so pretty and shiny on the shelf in the fall. Coddington is funny and charming. Wintour is a piece of work. It’s interesting to see the real-life woman who inspired the character from The Devil Wears Prada.

I don’t know how the weather is where you are, but here in Minnesota, it’s pretty cold. Inexpensive, kid-friendly indoor activities are critical to surviving winter, so this weekend I took 4yo Guppy and 7yo Drake to see a bargain matinee of Megamind. Total for tickets and 2 popcorns: $11.50. Bonus, we went to the Riverview, so a great theater and real butter on what may be the best popcorn in town.

I enjoyed the movie a lot. Will Ferrell voices a blue guy super villain who has some troubles when things start going his way. Tina Fey is his love interest, Brad Pitt is his nemesis, and Jonah Hill plays the overweight schlubby guy. David Cross as Megamind’s Minion, a fish in a robotic gorilla suit, is really funny, as is the movie, which had me wondering what would happen once the set up was finished. I particularly enjoyed the use of ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky” and the wink that Fey’s character, Roxanne, has a doorman named Carlton. Alas, Drake and Guppy were not as entertained as I was, and insisted on going to the lobby to the drinking fountain in the final scenes, then later declaring they hated the movie. Drake wouldn’t elaborate, but this usually means something scared him or creeped him out, then Guppy echoes Drake’s review and voila, we’ve got hate.

Movies are like food; I never know when the kids are going to like, love or loathe something. But I try to enjoy it when things go well, and not to go ballistic when they don’t. But I enjoyed the movie. And the popcorn.

I recently read Kate Moses’ memoir Cakewalk, which I borrowed from the library based on the statement at the blog Tipsy Baker that the recipe in them for chocolate chip cookies was perhaps unbeatable. My previous go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe was Pam Anderson’s, which I included with my previous Cakewalk entry, since I no longer had a copy of Cakewalk at hand and couldn’t share that recipe. Then I went out and bought my own copy.

As with everything in Cakewalk, memories of growing up are intertwined with memories of baked goods and recipes. The chocolate chip cookies were a survival mechanism:

In the solitary refuge of our kitchen, I gradually gained the confidence in my basic skill as a baker to start improvising, playing with proportions and ingredients until what I made tasted the way I imagined it could.

The chocolate chip cookies I bake these days only remotely resemble the cookies I baked when I was in junior high and high school. Still, when I make them, I sometimes think about those weirdo kids from junior high, friends for as long as we needed each other, learning to appreciate what good came to us–or not (189)

I’ve halved Kate’s recipe, since hers produces 4 to 5 dozen cookies, and put a strain on the engine of my Kitchenaid mixer. (I have the smaller, non-lifty-bowl kind). Two or so dozen of these will be plenty. Also, I use the method from Pam Anderson’s recipe, which produces a puffier cookie than the time I made Kate’s recipe right out of the bowl, though she says its best to refrigerate them overnight or up to two days.

Absolutely Best Chocolate Chip Cookies, adapted from Kate Moses’ Cakewalk
(makes 2 dozen cookie, more or less depending on size)

4/3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
2/3 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons instant espresso powder
3/4 cup salted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 large egg, room temperature
3/4 pound high-quality chocolate, coarsely chopped (this is an a$$load of chocolate, and if you buy the good stuff, 3/4 pound will cost a lot. I used the Guittard semi-sweet chips my grocery carries in bulk. They were delicious, if not as rustic as chopped chocolate.)
Optional: 1 cup walnuts, toasted, cooled then chopped coarsely

In medium bowl, stir together flours, soda, powder, salt and espresso powder. Set aside.

In large bowl of electric mixer, beat the butter on medium speed for a couple of minutes, then add the sugars, beating until very light, about 5 minutes. Add the vanilla and the egg and beat again until very light and fluffy. With only minimal strokes of the mixer blade or by hand, stir in the flour mixture in three or four parts, mixing just until it disappears. Stir in the chopped chocolate and nuts, if using. The cookie dough can be used immediately, but it is better if chilled, covered, at least overnight or up to 2 days.

(If you refrigerate, I recommend scooping the dough into balls before doing so; scooping refrigerated dough is hard work and likely to bend a spoon or break an ice-cream scoop.)

Moses’ baking instructions: Preheat the oven to 350. On an ungreased cookie sheet, place balls of dough the size of golf balls at least 2 inches apart. Bake for 10 to 13 minutes, checking after 10 minutes, until the edges are light brown and the surface is crackly and set but the centers are still soft. Let cool for about 5 minutes on the cookie sheet, then transfer to a wife rack to finish cooling completely.

My baking instructions: After mixing the dough, place a sheet of parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Scoop dough either by rounded tablespoonfuls, or with an ice cream scoop, onto sheet. They can touch. Place cookie sheet with dough balls in freezer. Preheat your oven to 400. Cover a second cookie sheet with parchment paper. After 30 minutes, remove the dough balls, put 6 to 8 on each sheet, leaving at least 2 inches between them. Return the rest of the dough balls to the freezer. (You can make them after the first batch is finished baking, or cover them and bake them later.) Place dough in 400 oven and bake about 8 minutes, or until dough ball loses shape and collapses. Reduce oven temperature to 350. Open oven, switch cookie sheets top to bottom and front to back. Bake for 6 to 8 minutes more until cookies are light brown at edges. Remove from oven. Cool 5 minutes on sheets, then completely on wire racks. If you are baking more batches, return oven to 400.

Scott Gavin has a great excerpt from an interview with Roald Dahl in which he talks about his writing process:

But if you stop when you are going good, as Hemingway said…then you know what you are going to say next. You make yourself stop, put your pencil down and everything, and you walk away. And you can’t wait to get back because you know what you want to say next and that’s lovely and you have to try and do that. Every time, every day all the way through the year. If you stop when you are stuck, the you are in trouble!

I found it synchronous with my own thoughts on both writing and being online, and my attempt to limit bouts to 20 minutes. If I stop at 20 minutes, rather than trying to finish up, I don’t end up going to a next thing, and a next thing, and looking up and hours have passed without doing much at all.

Having the confidence to “stop when you are going good”, coupled with the ability to crank it up again the next day, feels like a more mature place to be in terms of one’s personal creative process.

Yep.

My friend M, who blogs at Mental Multivitamin, has been a resource and inspiration in my own quest to make (and take) time for things like reading, writing and balance. In her latest post on making time, she gave new emphasis to something she’s suggested before:

Ruthlessly trim your virtual itinerary.

In other words, enough with the boards, the endless email checking, the social networking tools, the blogs, and the like. Visit sites that provide you with information, insight, and/or inspiration. And then? Get off the computer and…

Read. Think. Learn.

I’ve long struggled with an overlong virtual itinerary. For a long time I read too many blogs, and had too many on my list of Google feeds. (Yes, those TED videos are awesome, but having them pile up in my feed list was discouraging and unhelpful.) Even when I weeded those, I’d keep checking email, because apparently every new email sends a little jolt of pleasure to my brain. Then Facebook came along, and I could read what other friends were doing and comment back and forth. Also, I could play Scrabble with my sister, which was a nice way to keep in touch as we live far apart. I signed up for Good Reads. I’m spending lots of time in front of my screen, but little of that doing the writing I must do on the computer.

It’s past time to trim my virtual itinerary, but I know myself well enough not to make vague, sweeping declarations of intent. I know my attempt will be one of trial and error, progression and regression, as was this mother’s in “I took my kids offline.” in The Guardian.

Here’s my current experiment. I have a timer on my watch set for 20 minutes. I try to remember to start it when I get online. Failing that (which is not infrequent) I start it when I remember. When it goes off, I save my work, hibernate my machine, and go do something else: switch out the laundry. Make lunch. Do a few yoga poses. Read a chapter in my book. I tried this yesterday and today, and have been much more productive, while still finding time to blog, read feeds, and email. I think this could be a way toward balance and away from wanking about if I can make it a habit.

I’ve cut back considerably on my comic reading in recent years, being diligent about only reading things that I like, and stopping on books and series that are less than great. I’m happy to say I tore through Fables volume 14: Witches. Powerful villains terrorize two factions of Fables, who fight back with surprising results. I was gnashing my teeth at the cliffhanger that ended #91, and the following two issues, while good, became an annoying distraction as I’m more interested in the main tale, specifically with Frau Totenkinder, who has always been one of my favorite characters, and who plays a central role in this volume.

Fables the series posits a world in which characters from myth and fable live secretly in our world. It’s dark, magical, sometimes funny, and almost always engaging. For fans of dark fantasy, and other Vertigo titles like Sandman.

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