I read the following books:
Thoughts:
- The Closed Circle: This is, of course, the sequel to one of my favourite books and a book I’ve read before, although the first time I tried reading it, I tried reading it before I read The Rotters’ Club and the little message in the front, probably tongue and cheek, probably wry British humour, instead feels arrogant – talking about how like there’d be any reason you’d forgotten what happened in the previous book, the implication being that the previous book is so great that one couldn’t forget what happened. Issue is, the previous book is great. Still, I hate the little forward telling me so.
- Savage Love: Recommended as “fucking brilliant” by someone who passed on my work and I can see why if he thought this was fucking brilliant why he passed one me because we’re totally opposite styles. I guess I’m just not a post-modern, non sequitur style person, although I did write a post-modern type story immediately after finishing this collection to submit for the Bronwen Wallace award (no chance of winning, but good to have goals). I can see how technically good the stories are, how well-crafted and theoretically brilliant they are, but in actual fact, I just didn’t like them much at all. And whenever I do start to like a story – the last one in the collection for example – it does a sharp turn and I end up annoyed again by the end.
- Accusation: Catherine Bush wrote one of my all-time favourite books and she’s hardly prolific and this book has Ethiopia in it, so everything was coming up Milhouse! This isn’t as great a book as The Rules of Engagement, but it’s still pretty good and full of little details of things that I’d forgotten I knew (such as second-hand stores being called Opportunity Shops in Australia) and another one of the nails in the coffin of Come From Away because I’ll never get all the tiny details as right as this book does.
- Sexing the Cherry: I always like Jeanette Winterson (and since I keep talking about favourites, my favourite Jeannette Winterson is Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal) but man, you have to read every single word. Her books require focus. This book is only 140 pages long and it still took me four or five days to get through.
- Tampa: Why is the font so large? To trick me in thinking this book is far longer than it should be? This is a novella-length idea stttreeeecccchhhheddddddd uncomfortably into a novel. Why does it take until after the half-way point of this novel for something other than predatory and pornographically detailed statuatory rape to happen? I know all happy stories are the same, but I’m done with reading about rapists and Nazis and pedophiles and looking-for-humanity-in-everyone. I think somewhere along the line we’ve started to confuse complex with repugnant. Being a horrible person doesn’t make anyone particularly more interesting. This book underlines that quite well, probably not on purpose.
- Juanita Wildrose: My True Life: A friend lent this to me, saying It’s weird, so you’ll probably like it. I’m going to choose to take that as a compliment. I never know how to rate experimental novels. They’re like the far-end of the bell curve, not enough to compare them with. I did appreciate the poetry here was not italicized. After reading one of the Tolkien books (the second one? I don’t know) in one day at a very long sporting event I was dragged to as a child, I tend to ignore any poetry in italics, assuming it is (a) not very good, and (b) not relevant to the actual plot.
Best book:
Tesfa and I read this last month too, and likely will read it in March, possibly April, possibly all future months. I change the few lines about Cowboys and Indians to being about Spies (the book is from the 1960s so I can’t expect too much) and then we’re good to go.
Edit: Now, on further consideration, I wonder if my favourite book of the month wasn’t:
This is a tough call.
Most promising book I put on my wishlist:
Sleeping is not my strength. I read books about other people’s trials with sleep and feel a little better about life.
I watched:
Thoughts:
- 30 Rock: Sometimes it says “xciting jazz music” in the intro, which I’d like to think is some sort of secret message I just haven’t figured out yet.
- Room 237: Some people have a lot more time on their hands then I do. It reminded me of all the people who bend-over backwards to figure out secrets in House of Leaves where I am like Eh, it’s just a thing I watched and then move on.
- The Magic Schoolbus: I’d forgotten, from my babysitting days, how annoying the theme song was.
- The Croods: I feel rather bait-and-switchy on this one. The movie starts off with narration from Eep, the female teenager, then drops that and the story morphs into more about her father and Guy while Eep becomes a secondary character just mooning after some boy she doesn’t even really know.
- Breaking Bad: Another one where I’m starting to feel that the line between complex and repugnant has been smudged out. When I first started watching this show, it stressed me out so badly because the tension was so well played and now, in the dying end of the final season, I’m just annoyed with everyone involved. Some of it, I know, is personal distaste, having dealt with many “brilliant” men who use their intelligence as a shield to be assholes (I think most women in STEM fields and/or academia have run into their fair share of men like that), but at this point, Walt is the least interesting person on the show, yet it’s still about him and I don’t care about him. He’s an asshole and I read a spoiler so I know what happens, yet I keep watching because I’m a sucker for completing things and it’s nice to have something to do with Geoff in the evenings before Tesfa goes to bed.
- Arthur: This is one of those shows where most of the kids act really bratty and I hate shows like that. We only watched one episode and Tesfa didn’t seem to care for it either, thankfully.
- Community, Parks and Recreation: Watched these with my parents. My dad usually watches TVO and The Food Network. My mom watches Duck Dynasty and Storage Wars. I do not think they will be letting me pick what we are watching on television together again.
I wrote: Much faerie story, both longhand and typing. I wrote a short story about a psychic in a building I used to pass by on the bus in Calgary. Come From Away falters more. I thought I’d be sad about that, but I’m not. It’s just gone.
Nothing new published. One rejection letter, actually maybe two because I can’t remember whether it came at the end of January or beginning of February. I don’t have too many stories out there for consideration right now. Need to start rewriting and/or starting some new ones.