I read the following books:
Thoughts:
- Bone and Bread: Ignoring the fact that I keep calling this book Bread and Bone, I feel angry about this book. Cheated. It’s so cluttered and so long that it obscures the potential for something so meaningful. It’s a beautiful two hundred page story somehow stretched out to five hundred. Uncertain, I guess. This book is uncertain as to how to shine brightly.
- Kristin Lavrandatter: Discussed here.
- Choose Me: Discussed here.
- Night Film: Why did I read this? I didn’t particularly enjoy Special Topics in Calamity Physics and horror books/movies/etc. are almost always a letdown in the dénouement, and the italics, oh god the italics. But I read it because I couldn’t believe it wouldn’t be great and then when it wasn’t great, I felt dumb for wasting my Saturday afternoon in bed reading it.
- The Hundred Foot Journey: One of those books with no conflict or antagonism, just going forward in a twee-like fashion. I don’t like books like that. Maybe it’s jealousy because nothing I write is warm or happy and the warm and happy books I do end up reading are always bestsellers being turned into a movie, whereas nothing I write will likely ever be turned into anything else.
- How Should A Person Be: There is really only one thing worth taking away from this book, something I will remember to tell Tesfa when she is older (adjusted for sexual attraction if necessary), which is never be with a man who wants to teach you something. I did grow to care about the characters by the end, but basically, 90% of the time, I was just angry with this sort of shitty book.
Best book:
I still love this book. It’s a pretty odd children’s book and dated, but my love for it is endless.
Most promising book I put on my wishlist:
Is it cheating if I put on a book I’ve already read? I read this book over and over again when I was about ten or eleven years old, but forgot what it was called. I spent a morning last week thinking about it, long and hard, searching through librarything and goodreads and amazon, cross-referencing with other memories of who could have written it (for a long time I thought Judy Blume), then remembering I had a copy of A Royal Pain on my bookshelf and that I had read all the Ellen Conford I could check out of the library after that. And it is – it is an Ellen Conford novel, not Judy Blume. The book isn’t in the New Brunswick Library System, and I am anti-buying things right now, but if I find it somewhere, in the used bookstore on Bridge Street or the Frenchy’s next time we go, I’m going to buy it.
I watched:
Thoughts:
- The Station Agent: Why can I tolerate, even dare I say, enjoy heartwarming movies like this one, yet when faced with a heartwarming book, often chosen for my bookclub, I get disgusted at the thought and end up having to force myself to read it? A mystery meghan puzzle I suppose. Also, I think I’m a little bit in love with Bobby Cannavale now.
- Despicable Me: Watched from (Canadian) Netflix while Tesfa was sick. I don’t know what I was expecting, except to say, I was expecting more. The movie isn’t bad, but it isn’t anything other than inoffensive, and even then, can I say that? What’s with the huge NBC product placements? Like for MSNBC – kids aren’t going to watch this movie and suddenly think Maybe I should be getting my news from a left-leaning all-news station like MSNBC, adults aren’t going to be like Well, if they’re advertising in the movie I brought my kid to see, I better go home and make sure to watch MSNBC all the time now. So I don’t understand. Tesfa slept through most of it too, so I can’t get her opinion to share either.
- 30 Rock: There are many things I like about this show, the number one being the uptempo jazz music as Netflix subtitles call it of the opening and I like Liz Lemon has some of the laziness I recognize in myself. But I am weary of everyone constantly commenting on how unattractive and fat Liz Lemon is. There’s a scene in the last episode I watched where Tina Fey is facing the Jane Krakowski and Tina Fey actually seems far skinnier. I don’t like the constant product placement. And I don’t like how Frank is in the opening credits but not Twofer or Cerie. And I don’t like how the other female staff writer (the one with frizzy, dirty blonde hair) doesn’t even have a name. I don’t like how tokenistic the inclusions of race and feminism are, just enough that I’m supposed to feel, I guess, appeased. I don’t want to feel appeased. I want to feel intelligent and not just like Here’s the bare minimum so you don’t complain. But the upbeat jazzy music! How can I stop?
I wrote: Same as always – time split between Come From Away for my course and my faerie story for my sanity.
And I’ve been put up by a journal to win the Journey Prize. I don’t anticipate getting past the first round, since this is my first time, but I’m still tickled to be considered.