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Although I think I've forgotten some movies because I've been posting so infrequently, I've probably finished another 20 books since August. Although now that I'm starting a new job next week I'll be going back to a more normal reading pace. I certainly expect to finish before Thanksgiving though. I really liked Safety Not Guaranteed and Beasts of the Southern Wild, and really hated Snow White and the Huntsman. Big surprise.

I figured it might go this way...

Done reading! Haha, not really.

So I'm done with my 50 books. This is what happens when it is summer; I figured I usually read about 50 books per year, but had never counted before, and here it is, August 26, and I'm about 25 pages from the end of book #50. Which is really really long (800-ish pages) and the most different and difficult book that I have read in a really long time. And because I haven't been keeping perfect track of movies (thank Kindle and my bedside table for the book reference space) I'm sure I've actually seen a few more than I've listed, but can't remember them.

Oh well. Going to see the new Spiderman today and looking forward to Beasts of the Southern Wild when it comes to town. Woot!

Summer, Time

Managing to bust out some serious reading over the summer while planning my wedding, having my wedding, looking for jobs, taking students to Malawi, etc. has been much easier than I'd expected. I love summer. Some highlights include the Dresden Files, thanks to Sarah Marhevsky for the recommendation. I really In Time, which was recommended by a student, and is an interesting twist on a dystopian future. Onward to 50 we go.

Keeping Pace

So it is June 11. I have read 26 books so far, and watched 26 movies. I have been working (until this week), while doing so. I'm getting married in 3 weeks, then going to Malawi with a bunch of high school students for another 2 weeks instead of a honeymoon (for now), so I'm glad that I've been keeping pace even if I am probably about to fall behind. But since I've also been fired, I will have plenty of time in the late summer and all next fall to catch up. Bright side... go for 75 of each?

Anyways, I want to give a shout-out to my fellow readers who have been good about writing reviews. Several of the books on my list have come from them (especially jonyangorg) and when I get a little more disciplined this summer I hope that I can major in recommendations. Or minor, or whatever. This has certainly been a more haphazard process than I'd expected it to be, but that's been fun.


Keep reading peeps.

Reading but not Writing

So despite the fact that I consider myself both a good writer and a good communicator, I have come to the conclusion that I am not a good blogger. I don't care enough about what I'm doing to anonymously share it with the wider world in this format. That said, I've talked to tons of people about the movies and books I've consumed in this process, and that has bee fun, and this is at least going to remain the place where I keep track of what I've accomplished for 2012. Recent books have been ok... recently I haven't watched many movies. It's been a difficult and busy spring.

Michael Chabon is Awesome.

I just breezed through The Final Solution, by Michael Chabon. He is a wonderful writer... sometimes succinct and humorous, sometimes wordy but beautifully descriptive, always evocative. It was about an elderly detective (retired) and his investigation of a theft of a parrot and a murder, which were connected. The parrot was the friend and companion of a young mute Jewish German boy and had a connection to the British WWII intelligence effort... the "final solution" refers to the deportation and murder of jews throughout Europe, and although it inspired the title of the book it was tangential to the plot of the story. That is something I love about Chabon though -- his ability to connect tangents in a wonderful web. I have another of his novels on my bedside table and I'm going to hit that next; he doesn't disappoint.

Hawaii is beautiful

Tonight I went out to see The Descendents, with George Clooney. It started out by showing a montage of scenes from around the islands in Hawaii, with the voice over explaining that it wasn't paradise for the people who lived there -- it was just a place where life happened. Off to a good start, I thought.

I'd heard good things but was afraid it would be sappy. It was certainly sad, and I had to borrow a kleenex (well, not really borrow because you'd never try to give it back later) from a friend of a friend because I was actually crying at one point, as opposed to the tearing-up I'd been doing earlier. It saved itself from being sappy by being realistic; the teenagers were kind of jerks and the 10 year old was kind of weird and the adults were all complex, so that you liked them in some ways and despised or pitied them in others (except the Brian Greer character -- he was a douchebag through and through). I would definitely recommend this film; it was very well done.

Why not? Monday.

So I finished our dinner episode of Downton Abbey and thought -- I'd rather not grade labs, so what else can I do? So I scrolled down the Boxee and thought, why not?

GREAT EXPECTATIONS has apparently been seen by M several times, but I had never watched this recent adaptation. He watched the intro scenes with me, and warned me not to get sucked into any multitasking; they were surprising and well done... I liked the imagery and the casting right off the bat. I like Gwyneth and Ethan Hawke a lot and I had thought I read the Dickens novel at one point, although now that I've seen the film I'm not sure that I actually have. Anyways, the Robert DeNiro character and angle was awesome; I really liked the film. Good choice.

Then it was 8pm and I scrolled down the list on the Boxee and... why not?

MARGOT AT THE WEDDING has been in my queue for probably years. I think Netflix recommended it at one point, so I added it to the list when we were still getting DVDs by mail, but we didn't watch it, and it sat around, and then M saved a copy to disk and it's been on one computer or another since then, and I kept on not watching it. Although I like Jack Black, and Nicole Kidman, I didn't like this movie. It was sordid and I just kept thinking that everyone was either being inconsiderate or an ass, or both, constantly. Oh well, at least it is off the list.

Not too much to say about movies with my mom

So my mom came to visit for a week and we watched a few things together... one that M had already seen and one that he wouldn't have had much interest in.

Definitely Maybe
This was actually pretty cute. I liked Isla Fisher as April, and was pleasantly surprised to find Kevin Kline in the movie; he's one of my favorites. It was clever at times; I loved the little girl played by Abigail Breslin. I give this 1.5 thumbs up.

Limitless
This was more interesting, but my mom found the exciting violence towards the end a little too shocking. I really liked the ending though; very nice for the good guy to escape the clutches of the bad guy. I would definitely recommend this. Two thumbs up.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
I immediately started reading this again as soon as I finished it, that's how much I liked it, how rushed I felt to get through it the first time, and how much I wanted to savor it the second.

A Bit of a Slow Down

WHEN RAIN CLOUDS GATHER by Bessie Head
This book was loaned to me by a friend, along with several other books with a slight or major African theme. It is a story about a refugee from South Africa who ends up in a small village in Botswana. The writer, Bessie Head, is one of Botswana's most famous writers, and she too was born and educated in South Africa before leaving for Botswana like her protagonist. I loved this book. The politics, the setting, the skepticism towards outsiders and the welcome of guests of village life in southern Africa were all lovingly portrayed; it made me very nostalgic for Malawi. The story was about a man who didn't want to get involved, but couldn't help being involved; in development, in politics, in issues of race and class, and in love with the other characters, but without any heavy-handedness. It was simply and eloquently told; I really enjoyed this book.

LONGITUDE by Dava Sobel
This is about the history of navigation and the discovery of a practical method for determination of longitude at sea, which was a feat that the British government rewarded (many years late) with a fortune in money and recognition through their Longitude Prize. The leading intellectuals of the 1600 and 1700s are mentioned in the book; Newton, Huygens, Hooke... but the man who solved the problem was a clock maker named Harrison who had no formal training or apprenticeship; just a clever imagination and some serious engineering skills. He built 4 clocks over his lifetime that solved the problem in almost unique ways, and his son finally did claim the prize after his death. As a science nerd, this book has been on my list for a long time and I'm glad to finally check it off. It is non-fiction, but the drama around this particular topic was real and sustained across the intellectual world for more than a century... good reading.

OUT OF THE DUST by Karen Hesse
This book was in the pile that I thought I had made from my friend Misha (including When Rain Clouds Gather) but when I thanked him for lending it to me, he disclaimed any knowledge. I need to perhaps get some sticky notes going about which books belong to which people. This book's cover has 2 interesting things on it to draw a reader in; a black and white photograph of a serious freckled girl in a straw hat looking older than her years, and a John Newberry Medal imprint. If you don't know, the Newberry is an award given out once a year to the best contribution to American children's literature. When I was in 5th grade and we had a read-a-thon at school (I raised the most money and read the most books doing so) I think I must have read 20-30 Newberry books as part of the challenge. They range in style and content like any good chunk of award-winning literature does; there are some simple picture books and some young adult novels... you get the idea. I was very drawn to the book becaue of the Newberry medal, and because it looked like a pretty serious book for a children's book, in part because of the photograph. So... Out of the Dust is the story of a young girl in (I think) Oklahoma during the mid 1930s dust bowl era. She plays the piano and lives on a farm with her parents, who are struggling to keep plants in the ground. Tragedy strikes them from all directions -- the weather, bad luck, death, wind, dust, loss of hope. She runs away at one point, but comes back home, because it is home. The wonderful thing about this book though is not the story (although I really liked the story and stayed up past my bedtime finishing this admittedly quick read) but the fact that it is told in poems. The poems of our pre-teen narrator as she witnesses or causes these tragedies, responds to and grows from them, are in a lovely and genuine voice. It made my night, reading this book. It isn't strictly very poetic - no rhyming, no formal structure - but it is the crystallized and condensed vision and voice of a girl in a rough place in tough times, and the poems' short lines and simple language are more powerful than prose might have been. I really liked this book!

SOPHIE'S CHOICE
So I finally watched the movie version of the book. I love Kevin Kline. I love Meryl Streep. Peter Nichols is good too; I like him fine. Meryl was amazingly beautiful in this film, but beyond that what I liked about the movie was how close it stayed to the book; there were some characters left out, and a few details that I found important or significant in the book were missing, but I didn't miss them. It was true to the story, and heartbreaking. In some ways, Sophie and Nathan felt a little too sympathetic in the movie because of these oversimplifications; in the book you really got to see their flaws much more clearly, and it made your sympathy for them and for Stingo the narrator more acute in a way, but it was powerfully acted, and I'm glad I can cross that one off my list too.

Depressing

MELANCHOLIA
Well, it was, as one critic said "a group of unlikeable people doing implausible things in close quarters" -- I didn't really like it. Kirsten Dunst was depressing and awful, Keifer Sutherland was a jerk... the only remotely pleasant character was the little kid. And planets collide. I guess the premise arose from a dream that the writer had about depressives being calm in disaster situations. I, like Claire, would have preferred to go out on the terrace with some Beethoven and a glass of wine. Oh well, at least it is a talking point.

Relationships Theme

SOPHIE'S CHOICE by William Styron
This book was my book club selection in November (I think) and when I finally managed to get my hands on it over Thanksgiving weekend, when I expected to get quite a chunk of reading done at the farm in NC and on the drive home, I had too much fun to sit down with it. When I finally started it I found it to be rich and dense, like an amazing chocolate cake that you can NOT eat without milk. Milk turned out to be 2 extra months of reading time, which is really unusual for me. Anyways, I finished the book on my Kindle, which was a Christmas gift from my high school roommate Becky Wang, yesterday. It was a moving and well written novel, with fabulous characters and a plot, which, although I knew its outline, still unfolded with enough complexity that I was engaged the whole time I was reading. The relationship between the narrator and the other characters was both intimate and in a certain sense, because of the retrospective tone, objective enough. The relationship between Sophie and her past was tormented, and between Sophie and Nathan was the most lovely destructive mad affair that I may have ever read. There really were vocabulary words that I had to look up throughout the novel-- which my kindle did for me, which was great! It was fun to read a book that I found both very readable and very challenging, in its language and in its content. I'm looking forward to watching the movie sometime later this week -- I love me some Meryl and Kevin!

THE PARIS WIFE by Paula McLain
This is my current book club selection. It was chosen as a counterpoint or follow up to LOVING FRANK, and instead of the first wife of Frank Lloyd Wright, it was about the first wife of Ernest Hemingway. It was good, but not great. It was a quick read, and sad in the end, because although the characters did love each other, it wasn't enough. But we've all read that story before.

LIKE CRAZY
This movie won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for a drama, and its leading actress Felicity Jones won the Special Jury Prize as well. She was good. They fell in love, it fell apart, they held on to it. The cinematography was quite lovely -- the intimate closeups and soft lighting of the third-ish date when the connection really solidifies, the comfortable shots at the bar or at home where the naturalness of the in-between-romance is captured. The whole thing felt believeable and real, and they were both kind of jerks and they both loved each other, and I was relieved when they broke up and hopeful when they got back together. Well done -- I would definitely recommend this.

Divergent topics

HUGO
M and I called ahead to reserve a couch at the Campus Theater (I can't stress enough how much I enjoy having a small local independent and well-run, not to mention beautiful, theater in our town, and how much I like being a member there). It was, as our friend Brett had warned us, a little drawn out. It was a smidge over 2 hours and could have easily been done in 90 minutes. And the guy from Borat as the guard was distracting to me because I kept imagining him in his horrible yellow onesie-swimsuit-thing, and I never even saw Borat! But the movie was fun for 2 reasons; the old film clips, and the automaton. It made me realize how little I know about old cinema, and how strange some of those earliest movies must have been, or at least must have seemed, to their first audiences. And the intricacies and delicacies of the programmed man, the design effort and mechanical precision it must have taken to build a machine that could draw (and I realize that the movie version was fantastical but they did exist in real life) sort of smote me with wonder. Once again it made me wish I could have been an engineer, if not for the math.

A PRACTICAL WEDDING by Meg Keene
I felt a little guilty counting this as one of my books, but maybe I'll get to 51. We'll see. This book is a recently published guide to wedding planning by a blogger that I really like (apracticalwedding.com) and since I'm planning a wedding and I am and want to be practical about it, I've really liked her stuff (as well as her Team Practical). I'm further along in the planning than her typical reader probably is intended to be, but her tips and ideas for ceremonies and mental health are timed just right. I would certainly recommend this book to anyone planning a wedding. Good stuff.


SECRETARIAT
When I have a cold (as I do this weekend) I like feel-good movies. So as I was curled up on the couch with Mabelle last night, her farm fuzzy puppiness going a long way to make me feel better, I figured I would watch this. I knew nothing about the real horse, and know nothing about horse racing. I think it came up in one of my Netflix lists, maybe because I like Wallace and Gromit or something. Anyways, it was just the thing when I wanted a low-brain-power-happy-ending film. It did get pretty exciting at the Belmont when the other owner conspired against our hero horse. He was a beautiful animal, and the feminism subplot was kind of a nice surprise. It wasn't an amazing film or anything but I liked it.

Head of Steam...

Movies: 3/50
I saw THE IRON LADY this weekend. Meryl Streep is amazing as always. I've heard that some people are upset that so much of the film is spent on her old age, watching and experiencing her as she is phasing in and out of the present time and her memories of her life, and that some Brits have seen this as disrespectful. I was so entranced by the performance that I hardly noticed that the oldest version of Margaret Thatcher makes up about 60% of the movie -- I would have guessed more like 35% -- the memories of her political career interspersed with the vivid relationship with her husband were, in my mind, well balanced and equally compelling. Two thumbs up.

Books: 1/50
I finished LOVING FRANK. I was surprised by the ending. I can't say that I loved it, but it made me want to a) return to Oak Park and tour the houses there again b) visit Taliesin in WI - I can't remember if I have been there or not but I think I went with my family as a child, c) visit Falling Water which is only about 2 hours from me in PA and d) read more about Frank Lloyd Wright. There were a few houses of his in the neighborhood where I grew up and I loved them as a kid, because they were so unique (each one!) and stood out so starkly against the bland and oversized mc-mansions everywhere else around them. It was a story about Frank's lover Mamah (May-ma) as much as about their relationship, and it was reconstructed from the sketchy historical documents of the time. She was greatly influenced by the women's movement and European feminism (which was a ways ahead of American if you believe this book) but I found her sort of confusing. The ending was a shocker. And then fell flat... I was really dissatisfied with the ending.

I also bought my first Kindle book... because Sophie's Choice is too big to want to prop the sides up while reading in bed. Thanks Becky -- I'm excited to see how the Kindle works out. I imagine I'll tag team electronic and paper reading. I love me some paper.

On a roll

Movies: 2/50
I stole a page from Lilly and watched Timer. A company makes computer programmed "timers" that can be implanted in people's wrists at puberty and which count down to the day they meet their soul mate. Assuming their soul mate has a timer they will count down to the same moment, when their eyes first meet... if one half of a star-crossed pair is timer-less, then the implanted half of the set remains blank.

Being the planner-oriented type that I am, I immediately assumed that I would get one... and would therefore know when I met the "one" (although M is of course my "one" so it is, as they say, moot). I liked the characters, and I liked the relationships. However, at the end, one of the characters removes their timer, and I felt that rang a little false. Of course the choice to get a timer or not is interesting and fraught, but the way I bought into the setup, once you have a timer, especially for several years, that due date has got to be burned in your brain. It's not like taking it out would make you forget the date that had been imprinted in your timer for years. So you'd eventually get to that date, sans timer, and be all hyped up or nervous, or whatever... I can't really see it playing out any other way.

So, thumbs up. Oh, and Quinn from Dexter plays the hottie "Dan the Man" which was a nice bonus too.

Jan 1, one movie down

MOVIES (1/50)
M and I saw The Muppets movie last night (Jan 1) at the Campus Theater. We got there early enough to snag a couch. I cried several times, including at the whistling. It's cheesy, but self-aware enough to be funny, and corny in all the right ways. I loved it. And I'm on a roll with movies already... yay! There's lots of good stuff coming to the Campus and it's such a great little theater and we're already members, so if I just make a point to commit to regular movie nights with M (maybe movie nights should fall on allergy shot nights as a compensation) I should be golden.

BOOKS (0/50)
That said, I am about half way through Sophie's Choice (can't wait to see the movie when I'm done with the book, b/c Kevin & Meryl are 2 of my favorites of all time) but I am struggling with the book. Trying to read it while stranded in Denver between one hellish travel day in Wyoming and another through Miami and Baltimore didn't help. The language is lush and I love it... like my friend Kerry attested with her list of words she had to look up, there's fabulous vocabulary coming out the wazoo... but I have to work hard enough to get through it that I fall asleep sooner to it than I'd like. Then again, maybe that's just the jet lag and bus ride weariness. I have also started Loving Frank, b/c it's my bookclub's choice due next week. Enjoyable... a much easier read.

Also, since my lovely Becky Wang got me a kindle for Christmas, so that will help while travelling or in the allergy doctor's office. I can keep a real book at my bedside and an electronic one in my purse or car -- LOVE IT!