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.