I read the following books:

• A Far Off Place by Laurens van der Post: There was so much rah-rah colonialism that I readily accepted for the prequel, A Story Like The Wind, I don’t know why I couldn’t get past it this time. Anytime that Francis is by himself, the book runs dull and slow. The first third, before they get to the Kalahari, is so minutely detailed in things I couldn’t care less about. Kalahari-time is much better, but still, I didn’t attach to the story in the same way I did the grossly changed Disney movie I watched a thousand times as a kid.
• Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
• The Fear by Peter Godwin: Unlike Godwin’s earlier two books on Zimbabwe (ici et ici), this didn’t draw me in, probably because this book is more reportage and less memoir. Facts and I are disagreeing lately.
• Beautiful Ruins by Jesse Walter: It starts out shlock. Actually, come to think of it, it ends shlock too, but by then you’ve kind of grown attached with a warm fuzzy feeling inside so you’re willing to forgive the shlockiness.

Best book: Life After Life: I wasn’t keen at first – a Kate Atkinson, non-mystery novel that isn’t Behind The Scenes At The Museum, with a bizarro meandering time setup. The first few iterations, I kept an eyebrow raised and my mouth shut. Then, like a champagne cork popping, everything worked. I lent the book out and now I want it back to re-read again, to get Geoff to read it so we can discuss, all of that.

This month was a slow reading month. I’m still ponderously going through Swann’s Way, and I started Far From The Tree, another huge book, even though Andrew Solomon’s blurb on When A Crocodile Eats The Sun made me rageful a few months ago. I haven’t felt like reading. When I should read, instead I watch Mad Men in a reduced browser and play Solitaire alongside.

I watched:

• Game of Thrones: Am I the only one who hates Daenerys? I hate her so much. All that white-saviour-privilege-I want I want I want tantruming. My blood pressure rises whenever she comes on screen and ruins the rest. Actually, maybe the constant unnecessary nudity ruins everything. Or Aiden Gillen‘s unstable accent (go back to running Baltimore Carcetti!). Or maybe I’m just missing something. Game of Thrones is good, but it isn’t The Wire good. It isn’t even Mad Men good. I watch to see if the characters I dislike will die soon. That will make me happy.
• Mad Men: So I hate Daenerys, but I don’t hate Betty Draper. Maybe only in Season Three I haven’t got to her being awful, but I don’t understand the hatred of Betty in contrast to the acceptance of Don. Don is a shit. He’s trapped, but he’s a shit. Betty’s trapped too, but people hate her for it? I don’t know. I’m still not fully enthralled with Mad Men either. There’s all this privilege for white men, so I can see why a white male might think about what a great time he missed out on, but me, there’s nothing there.
• The Wire: It’s over. I watched it all. I might start watching from the beginning again. I miss The Wire already.
• The Office (UK): I’d forgotten, or maybe I never noticed the first time I watched it ten years ago, how mean-spirited a show this is. I suppose that makes sense as every time I see Ricky Gervais now, like when he hosted the Golden Globes, he acted like a dick. The show is mean.
• Waltz With Bashir
• The Boat That Rocked: Perfectly fine British movie ruined by putting in a Hollywood ending. My month’s first foray with Chris O’Dowd.
• The IT Crowd: My month’s second foray with Chris O’Dowd.
• Parks and Recreation
• The Infidel: Another British movie with a nonsense Hollywood ending.
• Cropsey
• Community: Joel McHale is on twitter everyone! I now follow Joel McHale on twitter!
• Friends With Kids: My month’s third foray with Chris O’Dowd.

I wrote: Come From Away proof-reading extravanganza. Shoot me now.

And Abesha was accepted for publication!

I read the following books:

• The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald
• The Greenway by Jane Adams: I read this book a long time ago, the last year of high school or first year of university. Then, three or four years later, I suddenly started thinking about it, although I couldn’t remember what it was called or who wrote it, which was annoying. The weekend after I was thinking about it, all alone because of a fight with Geoff, I went to the CFUW-KW booksale, and rifling through the boxes, there was The Greenway. If you’ve been to the booksale, you’ll know that going there is a rather Dirk Gently fundamentals of interconnectedness sort of organisation. One wanders, one sees books that are interesting, one does not go in search of specifics, especially a mystery novel that, at that time, was eight or nine years old and not very popular outside the UK. So I bought it and brought it home and it’s followed us around the last four provinces to here. I read it now and then, like I read it this month, March 2013.
• Cast The First Stone by Jane Adams: This is the sequel to the previous book.
• Where’d You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple
• Seriously Mum, What’s An Alpaca by Alan Parks
• HHhH by Laurent Binet
• Above All Things by Tanis Rideout
• The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly
• When A Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin
• In One Person by John Irving: Can one classify a book as lesser Irving, because this book can best be described as exactly that. It has Irving’s fingerprints all over it, but I read it and think I wish I was reading A Prayer For Owen Meany or A Widow for a Year or Garp, and yes, Garp and I are on a first name basis. Also, where is my copy of Garp? Did I lend it out? Did the movers steal it? But back to In One Person, this book is a prime example of the lack of editing in modern fiction. Complete sentences are repeated, explanations happen more than once, etc. I guess no one edits anymore or maybe no one remembers all the repetitions the way I do.
• Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan: Well, you can tell that she’s a reporter in that every chapter is around eight hundred words long and presents one salient idea. The book is procedural in its ability just to stick to its form. Perhaps a more senior reporter would have been able to vary the form a little to make the book more interesting than it ended up being. Oh, and the privilege, please do not get me started on the privilege. For example, Susannah’s father puts a sign up saying that his daughter deserved the attention given to her by the nurses with the clear implication that there are other patients who do not deserve the same attention. The book starts to sour around there.

Best book: HHhH. I’d thought, since I’d read it, that The Kindly Ones was the modern fictional treatise of Nazism. Then, in one almost ignored sentence, Binet completely destroys The Kindly Ones as Houellebecq does Nazism, which is 100% the truth and how did I not see that myself? So now, folly destroyed, I put HHhH as the modern fictional treatise on Nazism. We’ll see what comes along to destroy this statement next.

I watched:

• (500) Days of Summer: If there was ever a movie about why nice guys are the worst, this is it. So Tom thinks Summer’s pretty and therefore that means that he gets what he wants, spends their time together making fun of things she likes, like her taste in music, and then gets confused when she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life with him? And, to start the movie off, the writer calls his ex-girlfriend a bitch in the opening title sequence. Wow. What a great movie written by such a great guy (end sarcasm). And, what’s super great, that link I have about why nice guys are the worst, just the first link that came up when I googled it, has a quote from Joseph Gordon-Levitt on why Tom isn’t even close to being the nice guy he thinks he is in his head.
• The Queen of Versailles
• TiMER
• The Imposter
• Alice in Wonderland: So frenetic. I think we’ll stick with Miyazaki movies for Tesfa for as long as we can.
• My Neighbour Totoro: Yes, again. We watch Totoro a lot around here.
• Dinosaur Train: It’s on American Netflix now and Tesfa is very happy about this development.
• The Wire: I was ready to give up after Season 4, not because it got bad, but because I can’t imagine anything good coming to those kids, except maybe Namond, in the fifth season and I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle stuff going bad for them.
• Parks and Recreation
• The IT Crowd: So why is it that I can accept stupidity in British shows but not American ones. It is hardly like the The IT Crowd is cerebral, although it has its moments, so what gives? Is it the accents? I do appreciate a good Irish accent. Do I somehow believe they are more self-aware than American shows, say the walking rape-culture embodiment that is Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother which is played straight, like rape-culture is supposed to be funny, versus some of the more cringe-inducing comments of Roy? I don’t know. But I watched all four series and laughed so that counts for something.
• Mad Men: It’s burning slow. I don’t know whether it’ll pay off though in the end.

I wrote: Finished typing Come From Away. Now that it is April, here comes the long, slogging haul of re-reading and re-writing. Also finished and entered Sarah Selecky‘s Little Bird contest.

And, one of my pieces was accepted at The Rusty Toque. I’ll post a link when the story is up and available on their website.

I read the following books:

1. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
2. Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee
3. Mukiwa: A White Boy In Africa by Peter Godwin
4. Breed by Chase Novak
5. Lucky by Alice Sebold
6. Fresh Girls and Other Stories by Evelyn Lau
7. Two Caravans by Martina Lewycka
8. This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz
9. The Lightning Field by Heather Jessup

Best books: This Is How You Lose Her and The Lightning Field. Diaz has a schtick, but what a schtick. Jessup has no schtick at all. Polar opposites and interesting for my fiction brain since I read one right after the other.

I watched the following things:

• Totoro
• Ponyo
• The Secret of Kells
• Parks and Recreation – I am far too emotionally invested in the lives of Leslie and Ben. Creepily so. I spend my lunch hour each day watching the repeats on Netflix again and again and rooting for characters I know are going to get together. February is my obsession month for things like this. As an example, February 2003 I read Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason again and again. Get to the end, turn back to the beginning, start over. It’s something to do with the dull light and the fewer days.
• The Wire, season four – I may also be loving this season a bit too much because of memories of Square One with Reg E. Cathey.
• Community returned!

My writing:

Overall, the month was: difficult. Lots of sickness. I felt really low for most of the month, but I have been feeling a bit better the last few days as the sun spends demonstrably more time above the horizon than it did last week.