I read the following books:
- We Are Water: I think I give Wally Lamb a pass on a lot of things because of reading I Know This Much Is True in hotel room in Harar which, instead of walls in the hallways, just had curtains tied down that billowed out like balloons in the wind and kept none of the dust out, so were completely useless except for imagery purposes. I was disappointed in Harar and I Know This Much Is True is a novel about disappointment and what good can come of disappointment. But this book, We Are Water, it just annoyed me. Plus, much like Tampa last month, what is with the gratuitous depictions of rape and sexual violence? Is that a thing now? To prove how brilliant a writer one is, one has to write as base and degrading as possible? Perhaps it’s just me, but I don’t really need page after page after page of child rape. I’m fine with a brief sketch to get the picture.
- The Ocean At The End of the Lane: I’ve never really understood the thing with Neil Gaiman. I think he’s an okay writer but I don’t get why so many people adore him. I always find when I’m reading his stuff, even Sandman, that nothing captures my attention and my mind wanders so much. Like if you ask me in a month what happened in this story, I doubt I’d be able to tell you. Maybe other fantasy writers (I don’t read much adult fantasy) are so much worse that Neil Gaiman seems masterful in comparison? I don’t know. I also wish his female characters weren’t just tools for the male characters to emotionally advance. They’re always just mysterious faerie-like creatures with minimal depth.
- Everything Is Perfect When You’re A Liar: Why is there so much CAPS LOCKING GOING ON with multiple explanation marks to emphasize how funny things are?!?!? The writer needs some more confidence to just let things be funny rather than to tell me where the funny occurs, but I’m one to talk. I have no confidence either and I almost never write anything meant to be intentionally funny.
- The Lifeboat: This book had too many characters. To remedy this, I wrote my own lifeboat story with only four characters.
- Little Women: We already discussed how this book might have made me a worse person.
- Pippi Longstocking: For some reason, I thought this book was more racist than it was. Maybe the later ones are the really racist ones? I only had to make minimal changes when reading it to Tesfa to modernize it.
- They Were Counted: Discussed here.
Best book:
I wasn’t initially going to read this book, because I remember not liking The Antagonist (although I rated it quite highly so I don’t know precisely what’s going on with my memory). But then, for reasons I don’t understand, I put Hellgoing on hold at the library and it was really good. My non-lifeboat, post-modern story I started this month is inspired by Hellgoing. It isn’t as good as any of Lynn Coady’s stories, but it’s a start.
Most promising book put on wishlist:
New Dinaw Mengestu. Yay!
I watched the following:
- Breaking Bad: By now everyone knows that Breaking Bad is not my cuppa anything. Initially, the show stressed me out so badly I could barely watch it. By the end, it just made me so angry, not that I think the creators were going for this, but I couldn’t help watching it and seeing like a racist, MRA’s dream, “nice” guy dream: geeky white guy gets hot chick then outsmarts a whole variety of POC and women to get what he wants, only to go out in a, literal, firefight of glory. I would have much preferred Walt to end up one of many in an orange jumpsuit, interchangeable and forgotten because he’s far from being the hugely important kingpin he imagines himself to be. He’s a jerk. I don’t get the veneration.
- Community: I watched the pilot episode again while sick, then one of the newer episodes. And yeah, I’m pretty sure that Community has britta’d Britta. She was so much more compelling in the pilot and then she just ends up a lame parody of the humourless feminist by the later seasons. I wish they’d kept her strong throughout, rather than playing her convictions off for cheap laughs. The latest two Community episodes are up on hulu and I haven’t gotten around to watching either of them. Maybe I’m sorting of cooling off towards Community.
- 30 Rock: Once upon a time I knew someone who knew a lot about feminism and called herself a feminist and urged women to stick together but who, at the same time, flirted with my boyfriends and gossiped behind my back and told other people things I told her in confidence, and I never really could reconcile what she said with how she acted and whenever I tried to say something to her about how her behaviour hurt me, she’d brush it off and say more feminist-sounding things and I’d get confused. It still leaves me feeling punched in the gut, even fifteen years later. That’s what 30 Rock is: it spouts some progressive sounding theory, but then used gay as an insult and puts people in blackface and seems just really like a sleazy sort of show that really, isn’t that good. But, on the plus side, watching it reminds me of Beetlejuice because of Alec Baldwin (who is another problematic issue right there).
- Trailer Park Boys: I miss Halifax. Sure, I live two hours away, but even the trees here are different in New Brunswick. I watch Trailer Park Boys and it just looks like home. Rewatching the episodes in anticipation of the new season coming to Netflix.
- Despicable Me: More tedious the second time around. What does it say that the most interesting characters in your movie are little yellow pilltubes that don’t even speak English?
- Howl’s Moving Castle: I know I’ve seen this movie before, but I forgot most of it. Or maybe I didn’t see it. I still can’t tell if I like it or not.
I wrote: Lifeboat story, post-modern story, some faerie story work. Considering that between March Break and snow days, Tesfa had ten days off school, and I started the month with food poisoning and ended it with a sore throat/cold/general misery at being sick, I feel that this month I accomplished more than I would have thought possible. I’ve now also written, although only typed up two, three stories of my anticipated twelve short stories total.