December 2013
5M – Erin
Brokovich – Good Soderberg
10. Miss Lonely Hearts is a cool, short book. It's an interesting mixture of Dostoevsky, Fitzgerald and and Billy Wilder. Like Whatever, there is a de-humanized quality to the main characters life in the face of mass production, advertisements and the daily grind.
11. The daunting (in size and subject) In the Shadow of No Towers is the second Spiegleman comic I've checked out. I still actually have to finish Maus which will hopefully be a later post, but he seems to be like a great
band: always sounding great without straying to far from a signature sound. This
has an equal share of themes he explores in Maus like the
holocaust and Art’s own self being injected into the narrative, but introduces the
image of the burning skeletal structure of the towers and brings in the classic
anti-Bush lines against the media ideas. I also like how the comic is set up much like the events of 9/11: larger than what has come before, a confusing smattering of ideas, symbols, reactions and anecdotes, and, so far, seemingly century-defining.
12. DT Max’s biography of DFW is obviously well-researched. Every Love Story is a Ghost Story at its
best, for me, was the Dot-com boom and techie people looking back on Infinite Jest
as an illumination of life in their day and age and when Max was attempts to
discuss what Wallace was trying to put forth with his fiction as he was writing it. A little
depressing for fans of Wallace maybe...in a "too soon?" sort of way. But reading a book about someone who was so incredibly devoted to literature not only as a writer, but as a reader, I wonder what he himself would
say about the book.
13. Where the Wild Things Are. Read for Movie Book
Club out loud to a bunch of Middle Schoolers. Just as good, if not better than I remember (and different from the movie adaptation) All about anger,
obviously. Max, of course, has no idea what he’s in for when he is older, but
that is why the book holds up for all generations I think. People should
fucking play more.
7M As aforementioned, Where the Wild Things Are. To modernized; I liked seeing this movie the first better. James Gandolfini is great in his voice role, however, and it does leave me feeling happy and playful at the end.
14. The City of Ember is a great YA book and a playful read.
Another MBC selection. My favorite part was trying to contemplate the true
nature of the darkness in which the City of Ember is living—something I feel the reader
needs to actually stop and consider as part of the book’s overall structure.
Having such a simple, but large aspect of the setting makes for great imagery.
8M . – City of Ember . A bad adaptation, and a mediocre movie. Bill Murray, who can play seemingly
anything, shines as the Mayor, but he doesn't fit the book's character as good as say, Sutherland as President Snow in the Hunger Games. Other than that I feel it left little to be
desired.
15. I lost it several times in Last Chance to See, in
regards here to laughter. Adams’ brand of deadpan is wrapped up in
matter-of-factness and hints of editorials which he realizes the apparent
futility of, sometimes: bureaucratic Zaire ,
the sour, gloomy stay in China .
But he also extends those observations to the whole of the trip overall and to
the entire message of the book. This is some of the best travel writing I’ve
ever read and certainly something on par with the best of Bill Bryson, another
favorite of mine.
16. This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can
Save Us All jumps around a lot and demands attention to the details that
Marilyn Johnson puts forth, but (disclaimer:) as a librarian myself I was happy
(:)) to see such a lovingly painted portrait of the profession. My enthusiasm
for the subtitle “Can Save Us All” is a little less than hers, but for me the
book gives the reader a collage of personalities librarians have, observations
on the range of work librarians are doing and a reason to go to the public
library. I need to go return my copy now.
17. Desert
Solitaire is down-to-earth. Ed Abbey’s p.o.v. as a self-reliant philosopher
is bore out of his well-articulated love
for the Civilization of America and hatred
for most modern Culture. It’s a distinction he makes and makes and makes: he
bares his love of books and music, but gives mentalities and economies and
politics a rightful blasting. I like the views here on:
-
…the realist beauty of travel, experience and the
outdoors: especially his hike up “Tukuhnikivats, the Island
in the Desert.”
-
…a detailed treatise on hopelessness in the face of
rapidly advancing technology, the nature of work, and human’s lifestyles and
their impact which is sprinkled everywhere in the book; those spiritual like
his trip “Down the River” and humorous like a simple listing of exchanges with
tourists coming to Arches.
-
…a love for all living things. It seems his attacks are
reserved for crowds that come to visit and, more so, the masses with their
heads down.
Abbey’s only way of railing against a lot of this is not
only writing, he is living his life as the ‘capital O’ Outsider. Even as an
instrument of the National Parks—one of the machines he cannot help but write
negatively about, he fantasizes about dynamiting its dams. So being a man
suspended in an act of idle non-participation, little production value in a
society so obsessed with it, he sits and observes and thinks, saying “shine,
perishing republic.” (p 118.) But of course his voice is heard and open for
interpretation, and this has been mine.
18. Bill Bryson's At Home is my return to the author's ouvure since reading A Walk in the Woods a while ago. This is a great read with a lot of interesting facts about the history of daily life, but it needs to focus on that life of the upper-middle classes because, frankly, a lot of them were the only ones who could afford homes.
19. At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches by Sontag makes you wish you could write essays like her.
20. Both Flesh and Not: Essays does the same thing only with DFW. After reading DT Max's biography, I learned DFW took some fictional liberties in a lot of his magazine articles, but here, these essays are less about his experiences and trips and more about his thoughts and observations of society. All the tennis stuff is great. Overlooked: five direly underappreciated U.S. novels >1960 is nice and concise. The best, for me, is in talking about F/X Porn, where he not only defines it through post-New Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters, but discusses the Terminator movies in a new, serious light. Sadly, with the arrival of Cameron's Titanic, we see this change as special effects turn filmmaking from well-done think pieces to mass marketed dreck.
21. Holes – This book is tightly packed with a lot you can
say about it in terms of the themes. I never read it when I was younger, but I say the movie first. Although I
found myself less affected by MFIMEC (the Movie First, Infecting Mind’s Eye Complex), Sachar has crafted a timeless story that will last generations, hopefully.
7M. Side Effects sees Soderbergh tackling Hitchcockian/ DePalma style dramatics. He's one of my all time favorites although I might be getting a little tired of him here.
8M. Casualties of
War – Dad wanted to Watch a movie about War. So we watched one about Rape with
Michael J. Fox.
9M I think Malmud's book would be better than Levinson's The Natural. I'll have to see. This movie is great in its contrast of a dream-like lucidity with the gritty world of minor league baseball. Existential sports film. Bull Durham is better.
10M Seriously, I got my hands on the Romero film Knightriders after reading one of my new favorite sites, The Dissolve. A very good Arthurian legend transplanted into a traveling fair all within a B-movie veneer. It takes itself
extremely seriously as an idea; the rough edges and uniqueness of this film make it seem typical Romero, but also allow it to stick with you. I would call this a must-see for fans of cinema, two fold for fans of New-Hollywood and motorcycle movies.
11M The last, and
probably favorite movie I saw all year was Chungking Express. As I say a lot with not much explanation: beautifully
understated. Any film that 'clicks' without needing too much in the way of film or story elements is a winner. Excellent atmosphere. Loneliness in a city of millions, Hong Kong , I think. Every little quality is teased out,
especially in the second café-section: the food orders, the California Dreamin,
Fay’s childlike pixie dancing. The police officer’s apartment is all at once a
voyeuristic stage and object of their un-anchored love.
