books! yeah! and! movies!

2009-02-04T08:29:00.002+03:00

Amanda ~ Okay, this is gonna be short. A bit of a 'Hey Debbyscotty! Let's get bloggin'!' As many people in my life know, I'm a serious Oregonaphile (my allegiance lies with Corvallis, specifically). Last night in class (huzzah to getting a degree that allows me to take so many film classes!!!) we watched Double Indemnity, one of the major classic Film Noirs. In it, a minor character is from Medford, OR, and he is always opening with "As a Medford man...". Of course, my Oregon trigger was triggered and I was quite pleased with the personal connection. Then, when he's trying to place a man he recognizes, he says something along the lines of "wait, I know you ~ you're from the Hall family of Corvallis. Yeah, the Halls, they run a fine car dealership out there in Corvallis. Yeah, Corvallis!". All I'm saying is ~ Double Indemnity ~ it's a perfect Film Noir (with the peroxided femme fatale, lots of smoking, and groovy shadows), and anyone who spends much time around me will know that, despite all the murder and mahem, my heart beat the fastest at the mention of my beloved wee town, Corvallis.

2008-10-31T10:35:00.003+03:00

Hey folks - check this out. It is the The Greatest Nature Essay Ever

by Brian Doyle, at the University of Portland.

And if you like it (I love it!), you may like Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveller... (I love it!)

2008-10-31T09:36:00.000+03:00

(Debby)

Things One Shouldn’t Do

I had a hard day at work, so when I came home I decided to do some things I usually don’t do:

- eat a great deal of sausage (I usually don’t have meat in the house)
- take a bath (which involves turning on the hot water heater & using lots of water)
- making some damn fine hot chocolate with cayenne paper (which involves milk, and I was fighting a cold and drinking milk just makes colds worse for me)
- speed-flipping through The Corrections. Generally I would agree that it is just rude to sit down with a perfectly fine book and read a bit, start to get upset or bored so skip 100 pages and read a bit, flip through another 150 pages and read, etc. But sometimes that’s just what I feel like doing.

Anyways, the whole thing did me a lot of good. I never thought I would like The Corrections, and if I had read the entire book I don’t think I would have, but I liked the parts that I read, and it felt good to skip over parts that I pretty much knew I wasn’t going to like. So, sorry Jonathan Franzen, but you shouldn’t have been so rude to Oprah. Not because she is Oprah (I, too, have a desire deep down to be rude to her), but you know it’s never good to look like you aren’t interested in the popularization of literature. Plus, it’s just something on shouldn’t do.

2008-10-21T13:16:00.001+03:00

(Debby)

If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino – This is the third time I’ve started this book, but I think this is the first time I’ve finished it. Well, I don’t know why I didn’t finish it before. It’s a lovely book. Really fun – a Reader who keeps starting books and then being thwarted from finishing them. Written by a genius Italian the year I was born, 1979.

The River Midnight – Lilian Nattel – Thanks Sasha and Amber for giving this one to me! A very sweet book about people living in a village in 1894 Poland. (I have to admit, I was a bit worried because Amber said she really loves historical fiction, but it’s okay folks – these are not ‘real-life’ characters, and thank goodness, because they really are great characters instead of being trapped by the confines of their life stories). And written by a Canadian! Well done, Canadian fiction. Well done, again.

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul – Douglas Adams – Also passed on by Sasha and Amber – yeah! This is an oldy but goody. Okay, it’s not The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe, but it’s still Douglas Adams and that’s a good thing.

Question: Is The English Patient historical fiction? I borrowed a copy from a friend’s library and was all excited to read it, having really enjoyed the one book by Michael Ondajti that I’d read (Anjil’s Ghost), but then it starts with a quote from some report or newspaper or something about the guy and what happened to him and his wife.

I ain’t reading no historical fiction, even if it is written by Michael Ondajti. But it would I guess be rather silly if it turned out that, in fact, the quote that is throwing me off is actually fiction

2008-09-22T08:20:00.001+03:00

(debby)
More DFW links

In the interests of transparency, I should point out that I have developed a post-humous and hence rather sad crush on David Foster Wallace. This has directly led to me not doing work at a time when I have rather more than the usual panic-inducing mound of urgent work, and to sitting in the office and reading obituaries and old short stories and essays, getting teary-eyed, and then pretending to my supervisor that this is because of the global food crisis. And that, in turn, is sending me to a very special ring of Hell.

I can also attribute to this my extensive foot-noting of one of my GRE essays (the boring, “Argument” one). Time (roughly three weeks) will tell whether my appointed GRE essay scorer will appreciate, or at least tolerate, this.

Also, I failed to mention before that he was from the Midwest, and that this makes his work even more very very special, as most modern American literature seems to be written by people who are not aware that the Midwest section of the United States of America exists.

a brilliant article about going on a 7 day cruise

a lecture about Kafka being funny

a very short story from Girl With Curious Hair

and more from the Harper's Archives

2008-09-22T08:05:00.000+03:00

(Debby)
I read some Julian Barnes before I got sick and then while I was sick, and then I wrote this while I was recovering

Arthur & George – This is a good book. If I was going to read a historical fiction novel, this is the book I would read. But, that said, I am not going to read historical fiction, so I just skimmed this one and sort of skipped the middle chunk.

Those poor characters trapped in the Historical Novel. They are doomed to a certain fate, forced to make decisions not just by the authors’ pen but by the confines of the Understood and Accepted narrow path of History. They and their entire backdrop are doomed to travel a known path and eventually arrive, grudgingly, at the Present, where we stand, smug and bemused, waiting for their inevitable arrival.

This is probably part of why I am so enamored of books by Dorothy L Sayers and Wilkie Collins and Dashiell Hammett – mystery authors who set their stories in the present tense, and were the more honest for it. They and their characters face an Unknown Future, rather than the Certain Fate of their Historical Novel counterparts. They stand, with us, at a series of unending crossroads, and sometimes they can have some control over which way history will go, but often they can only look on as a spectator, speculate which way the engine will go, and hope for the best.

A Short History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters – Now THIS is a book that I actually like. A lot. 10 ½ wide ranging and ridiculously fun chapters. Highly recommended.

2008-09-20T15:26:00.001+03:00

(Debby)
Good-bye, David Foster Wallace

The week before last I found a really discounted copy of The Broom of the System, David Foster Wallace's first novel, at a Nairobi bookstore. It is hilarious and wonderful and awesome.

This week he killed himself.

On the whole, I dislike reading short stories. I don’t know why. I guess I’m more of a fan of character development and plot structure and generally short stories have a hook or a gimmick and that’s it. I don’t like how they make me feel.

But I love Girl with Curious Hair, a collection of his short stories and one wildly bizarre novella.

No one should write any more short stories unless they are like Girl with Curious Hair, and no one can write like that but David Foster Wallace, and David Foster Wallace is dead. oh man.

I got the following links from Amanda:
- Infinitely Sad, a Slate obituary, including a clip of DFW on Charlie Rose.
- another Slate piece, with people who knew him talking about him.
- The best food writing on the Maine Lobster Festival. Ever.

2008-09-20T14:26:00.001+03:00

(Debby)
Well, the 1800s Boy Adventure! run of success had to end sometime, and it has resoundingly ground to a halt at 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I really thought it was going to be another Kidnapped! – sized success. I mean, Jules Verne! And vague memories of the Disney movie with Kirk Douglas and a harpoon! This was sure to be success.

But, I am deeply saddened to report, success there was none. Just long, long passages on the different kinds of fish the Professor sees, and how those fish taste compare to things that aren’t fish. This. gets. old.

There is some adventure, yes. But it is somewhat boring adventure. And we never find out what drove Captain Nemo to scorn land, or what nationality he is, or what fight against injustice he is waging with his battles and money, or how many crew are on the Nautilus or where those crew sleep or even who is cooking those blasted fish. No. Instead we get long explanations of how the Nautilus is run on “electricity”. Ooooh.

Two things of minor interest: 1) Ned (played by Kirk Douglas in the Disney movie) is from Quebec, which is how come he knows French and is so ‘hot-blooded’; 2) you can tell that Jules Verne really, really disliked giant squids.

2008-09-16T09:57:00.000+03:00

(Debby)
brief thoughts on some TV shows that have one word as their title

Heroes

I saw the first season near the end of last year. At first I was really into it, but I finished it more from inertia than any excitement. The only thing I have to say about it is that, for some reason, when I saw the first episode I got seriously freaked out by the Indian dude’s accent. I mean, it didn’t sound like anything I’ve ever thought of as an Indian accent. It’s a big country, yeah, but his accent was just so different . I got really upset that there was a whole range of Indian accents that I had never heard. Then Julia pointed out that it was probably just a made-up accent for the benefit of the American public. And I felt much better.

Lost

is AWESOME. I just got saw the 4^th season. Holy moley, people. If you started to feel like the show was dragging a little bit, hang in there, because the 4^th season just blows everything out of the water in a very, very good way.

Firefly

is still more awesomer than Lost.

2008-09-09T13:23:00.001+03:00

(Debby)
Fever + Moby Dick = Awesome

I feel like I’ve spent a significant chunk of my life avoiding reading Moby Dick. But then I got sick a few weeks ago. The first day I lay on my couch and watched television, and so of course my back went out. So the rest of the time I lay in bed, reading Moby Dick until I got too exhausted, and the rest of the time just lying there. (which led to some questionable results)

It was totally great! Most likely if I was whole and able to do something else, I would still want to read the philosophical rantings of a mentally-disturbed whaling captain, but I probably wouldn’t have been as patient with all those chapters on the intricacies of whaling, the differences between the heads of Right Whales and Sperm Whales, the critiques of many popular paintings and etchings of whaling expeditions and whales, let alone the whole argument about why whales will never be hunted to extinction.

But if you are patient, it’s a great pay off. It is a sprawling, insane and totally engrossing masterpiece.

Also, I really think that everyone involved in conservation work should read it. It doesn’t hurt to be reminded that ‘nature’ is not necessarily noble and serene and ‘good’. And whalers are not necessarily swarthy and greedy and ‘bad’. (No, I do not think that the international whaling ban should be lifted.) It’s also a great reminder that even before petroleum and electricity, the process of bringing light to our homes was still a brutal and bloody affair. You really get a feel for the whalers being driven by this insatiable demand for whale oil.

2008-07-13T22:08:00.001+03:00

One of These Things is Not Like the Other
(Debby)

Beowulf, Seamus Heaney translation
Great Queen Medthyth
Perpetrated terrible wrongs.
If any retainer ever made bold
to look her in the face, if an eye not her lord’s
stared at her directly during daylight,
the outcome was sealed: he was kept bound
in hand-tightened shackles, racked, tortured
until doom was pronounced – death by the sword,
slash of blade, blood-gush and death-qualms
in an evil display. Even a queen
outstanding in beauty must not overstep like that.

Strong Poison, Dorothy L. Sayers
As the taxi lurched along the rainy Embankment, he felt for the first time the dull and angry helplessness which is the first warning stroke of the triumph of mutability. Like the poisoned Athulf in the Fool’s Tragedy, he could have cried, “Oh I am changing, changing, fearfully changing.” Whether his present enterprise failed or succeeded, things would never be the same again. It was not that his heart would be broken by a disastrous love – he had outlived the luxurious agonies of youthful blood, and in this very freedom from illusion he recognized the loss of something. From now on, every hour of light-heartedness would be, not a prerogative, but an achievement – one more axe or case-bottle or fowling-piece, rescued, Crusoe-fashion, from a sinking ship.

The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
He felt himself suddenly reeling back to Harvard, standing in front of his “Symbolism in Art” class… blah blah blah
(Langdon walks to see the Mona Lisa) The Mona Lisa’s status as the most famous piece of art in the world, Langdon knew, had nothing to do with her enigmatic smile…blah blah
Langdon quickly gave Sophie the standard academic sketch of the accepted Knights Templar history, exmploaining how….blah blah blah Sophie looked over. “And you said they discovered something?” “They certainly did,” Langdon said, explaining how…blah blah blah.

So, the first two passages really do it for me, and the experts from the last one are examples of how that kind of storytelling really really do NOT do it for me.

The first two experts are taken out of context so I don’t know how they seem to you, but they are parts of books that for me are just transcendent. Beowulf has foes who are sympathetic and horrifying, a hero who is boastful with a history of being ridiculed, clear language that gives voice to a storyteller that you can really sense comes from long long ago. Strong Poison is a clever detective story while at the same time charting changes in the main character, Lord Peter Death Bredon Whimsey, that are (for me) really powerful and beautifully expressed.

The Da Vinci Code is about a controversial theory and includes some interesting historical facts (or not facts, depending on one’s perspective), but good lord, people, Dan Brown CRAMS these facts using particularly awkward literary conventions. The main character keeps getting lost in thought, thinking back to past Harvard lectures. Come on, man. Find a better way to explain history and your theories, please.

Also, there is no excuse for a chapter which starts as follows: “The Range Rover was Java Black Pearl, four-wheel drive, standard transmission, with high-strength polypropylene lamps, rear light cluster fittings, and the steering wheel on the right.”

2008-07-04T16:37:00.002+03:00

(Debby)
The public library has been out of order and under construction for the past 2 weeks, my computer died dead, my week-old mobile phone was stolen out of my bag on the streets of downtown Nairobi, and my Federal Government Economic Stimulus check was put through a shredder by a very charming 3 year old. And happily, none of those things are Tragedies. Just annoyances. Really annoying annoyances.

So, deprived of the library and feeling nostalgic, I re-read The Dark Tower series. Um, I think it has pretty good characters, and a good story arch. And Stephen King writes in a way that is easy and enjoyable to read, and now I'm going to take those books to the used bookstore at the fancy mall and get a big hunk of credit (hooray!) and I might even buy that massive tome on modern African history so I can finally figure some things out about this continent. So that's good!

And you know what makes me appreciate Stephen King? Reading "The Da Vinci Code". Which I'm about 2/3 of the way through. You know, people talk about that book - people saying it's thought-provoking, it's false, it's part of the Muslim agenda to throw Christians from the path of righteousness (seriously, i've heard a couple people make that claim)....people never say: Oh, the Da Vinci Code? Not a very well written book, eh?

At least, I'm finding the writing really stilted, and the literary devices used very awkward, and the characters totally unconvincing. Maybe that will all dramatically change in the last 1/3 of the book. But in the meantime, I'm kind of annoyed. And using a crappy desktop computer at work and having to use the webmail version of my work email.

I think I'll go home and read some Murakami and eat some chocolate.

2008-06-13T11:12:00.001+03:00

(Debby)
Aw shucks. I was a little bit disappointed with the ending of Ivanhoe.

2008-06-11T13:12:00.000+03:00

(Debby)
What I’m Super Enthusiastic About Right Now

- Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott - Knights traumatized from the Crusades and wandering around England, Robin Hood, Prince John, Richard the Lion Hearted, Friar Tuck, Templar knights (ooh, creepy!), a Jewish heroine (and a huge amount of uncomfortable passages about the Jewish ‘race’), Saxon – Norman tensions, great humor, someone in the early 1800s writing about the 1200s or 1300s or something like that….This book is a Great Time! (I feel like I’ve somehow become a fan of Boy’s Adventure Fiction, between this and Treasure Island. Ah well. So it goes) (not done yet – I’m totally on the edge of my seat! What will happen to Rebecca??)

- Anthills of the Savannah – Chinua Achebe – I love the characters, I love the politics, I love it. (not done yet)

- Beowulf – Seamus Heaney translation – Ooh, it’s great! I remember struggling through excerpts of Beowulf in high school English. Seamus Heaney has transformed it into a Highly Readable poem, so that the story comes out. And it’s a really good story! (not done yet)

- Green Land, Brown Land, Black Land: An Environmental History of Africa, 1800-1990- REALLY interesting book; how colonial and post-colonial environmental policy in Africa has been largely based on misunderstandings of the land, its “pristine” state being largely a myth developed by colonialists and often embraced by post-colonial governments. The narratives of place and the landscape ideals upon which we base our national and regional policies!!! Isn’t that an AWESOME concept? I am SO enthusiastic about this!!!

2008-06-10T09:24:00.000+03:00

(Debby)
One thing that tends to jump out at me when I go to the library is that I don’t know a blessed thing about those E.W. authors – Eudora Welty, Evelyn Waugh, and Edith Wharton. The one E Welty book they have is a massive compendium of stories or novels or something – far too big to reasonably take out; E. Wharton books seemed positively too torpid and miserable (Age of Innocence and all that. But maybe I’m wrong? Certainly never read any of them); so that left E. Waugh, and Brideshead Revisited – a book title that seemed familiar, but I certainly didn’t know anything about it.

Brideshead Revisited – turns out to be a very engaging book. Took me by surprise, though. Young love between two men, and then later slightly older and more physical love between a man and a woman. Set between World Wars I & II, which is always an interesting time, especially when the authors are actually writing during WWII.

Um, is it just me, or is there way more of a Respected Tradition of Writing About Homosexual Male Love So Long As One Is Not Too Graphic (Preferably It Is Just A Phase) in countries other than America? Oh, and Africa. Definitely not much of a tradition for it in Africa. Okay, maybe just England.

Well, I don’t know. I can’t think of any American classics involving super intense relationships between men, and right now I feel like there are scads of British classics on that theme. Oh, and all those Greek epics, too.

2008-05-22T03:41:00.001+03:00

(Amanda)

Planet B-Boy. An AMAZING documentary. See it. All of my dance crew movies ~ they have brilliant dancing that is often jaw-droppingly cool. This film is FILLED with dancers that put them fictional characters to shame. And extremely good human-interest elements, as well. Great characters + exciting dramatic structure + face melting b-boy moves = A hell of a good time at the movie-watching place of your choice. If you don't have an arty house in your neighborhood, put this on your queue immediately.

2008-05-22T03:29:00.003+03:00

(Amanda)
Speaking of drinking games... ~ Once I played Cups with a bunch of people ~ they were all drinking wine and beer, I was drinking water. I drank so much water that I got to a point where I was over-hydrated and started FAKING my water sippage.

There have been some great season finales recently. I've followed Desperate Housewives through their first season of greatness, their second and third season of not-very-goodness, and now, season 4, has turned out to be pretty baddass. The finale was quite wonderful all the way through. I got choked up, I got scared, I laughed, and I did whatever else one does when one watches a show that one really really likes. THEN they caught me completely by surprise (because I hadn't seen any spoiler promos) and had a 'Five Years Later' montage. It was AMAZING. Each main character was shown in the future and, oh lordly, pure amazingness all around. I can't wait to see if the show continues from the present and we get to find out how they get to their unpredictable futures ~ or will it take off from the completely re-shaped future? It was almost Lost-like in it's narrative table-turnage.

LOST ~ the last 2 hours air in a week. The first hour of the three hour finale was last week and it was mind blowing. I wept. I almost hyperventillated. I grabbed various legs and arms of those seated around me. I probably shrieked a lot. We all did. That show ~ I won't even begin to get into its genius or I'll start flipping out right here, right now.

The Office ~ everyone expected/demanded a Jim/Pam engagement but, nope. Their season story ended mildly. This was very brilliant ~ nice work, Office-making people. That fantastic couple is doing really well, have always talked as if it is permanent, so it's not like an official engagement will really change anything. I mean, more talk about invitations and colors, I suppose, but that's not all that excited. Anyway ~ a great finale with much unexpectedness.

30 Rock ~ probably the funniest show on TV. Ended as the funniest show on TV should ~ with extreme funniness.

Solid.

2008-05-17T09:03:00.002+03:00

(Amanda)
First off ~ genius drinking game, Debby. I have a friend (Andy ~ you met him, Tall Skinny of the Gingerich brothers) who is going to Louisville this summer for a Big Lebowski conference. He references that movie in almost every conversation. He will love you for this idea.

I just finished watching a movie I was REALLY into in fifth grade ~ Troop Beverly Hills. I remember exactly ONE moment from the movie (race starter gun shot in air, bird falls out of air). The movie is terrible. Badly written and badly delivered jokes all the way through. The sets ~ often fancy-pants homes ~ are shockingly bad. It looks like they found a crappy pre-fab house with kind-of big rooms, got some shit furniture at Thrift Town, and put one to two pieces of furniture and one to two 'decorations' in each room. Amazing! How did I fall for this pile of pooh? And, seriously, how could it not even seem slightly familiar???

2008-05-16T13:32:00.002+03:00

(Debby)
Well, Amanda, you know I’m not much for drinking games. So I’m feeling conflicted, because I have been inspired by what may be a Great drinking game. (Or maybe not - I don't really have enough experience to know. But I think it could be Great...)

The key ingredients:
1) people who know and love The Big Lebowski
2) a copy of Tron. Yep, the Disney movie from our distant youth.

Jeff Bridges, the Dude, is the main protagonist in Tron. Every time he seems to be channeling the Dude (says something the Dude would say, sounds like the Dude, is extremely Dude-like in his gestures), take a drink. It’s not non-stop – but every now and then the Dude totally jumps out.

Voila!

2008-05-15T18:01:00.002+03:00

(Debby)
(thanks for the post, amanda!)

not so awesome:

- Aliens (the movie) – Yeah, it’s okay, but I don’t feel like it added much to my life. I mean, Sigorney Weaver is awesome. But I actually got a bit bored, and I didn’t like seeing the aliens. Especially that Mother. ew.

- The Boys from Brazil (the book) – When I am knocked off-balance by life, I re-read books. Recently this happened, and I decided to try to break out of at least one mold. So here is a library book, new to me, although written by Ira Levin and I’d read The Stepford Wives so not a complete unknown, but still, a start. The book is about Nazis and genetics and it was a disappointment.

awesome:

- TREASURE ISLAND! (the book) - Man, I am so excited about Robert Louis Stevenson. People! It’s a cracking good adventure. I am thoroughly enjoying it. Great characters!
Side note: I guess all I ever read were watered down re-tellings of Treasure Island (and Kidnapped) they make into kid’s books. Someone needs to stop publishing those things.
Side side note: Do you think of Long John Silver as being swarthy or blonde? Dude, he is totally BLONDE. With an extremely honest and gregarious visage. A total charmer. He’s one-legged, but he doesn’t have a peg leg – he gets around with a crutch. So let’s wipe our idea of him right on out of our heads.

- Alien:Resurrection (the movie) – is AWESOME!! Way on back in the day I saw it and I just didn’t get it. But now I do! Directed by one of the French dudes of the pair who did City of Lost Children and Delicatessan and Amelie, and I just love their lighting and the actors they use and the way they film people and people in motion. Yeah! And guess who wrote it… Joss Wheddon! I did not know that. Total Joss Wheddon character archetypes, themes, even dialogue, and just the way he took on a tired series and built on the backstory to make a brilliant plot. Sigorney Weaver rocks it out, and Winona Ryder at least doesn’t totally drop the ball.

2008-05-13T23:44:00.004+03:00

(Amanda)
When the thousands of blog fans bombard me with complaints about my lack of posts, what can I do but placate them with another pithy yet oddly life-changing entry. Just kidding ~ but when one co-blogger bombards me with a 'post, dammit!' e-mail, well, I blog.

Um ... if you want to see one of the most adorable male-friendships ever caught on film, I'd highly recommend the immensely popular 'Superbad'. My favorite comedic kid, Michael Cera (one of many geniuses that made up Arrested Development) and another deadpan genius, Jonah Hill, play two high schoolers who really want to get laid but, truthfully, are just trying to distract themselves from the fact that soon they will graduate and be forced to split up. I have this fascination with the male-best-friends dynamic. Recently I heard that when my brother left after visiting Paul, a best friend since elementary school, Paul was SO choked up that Mark was gone he couldn't speak. I find that to be unbelievably beautiful. So, yeah, Superbad satiates my fascination with this hidden phenomenon of male best friends that truly love each other. Plus, the movie is FUNNY AS HELL. Every scene with either of the two leads is unbelievable.

2008-05-12T16:53:00.000+03:00

(Debby)

Three Day Road – Joseph Boyden

A really, really well done story. Right up there with Fugitive Pieces. I don’t know what it is about Canadian authors, but they write differently than anyone else. I suppose part of it is that they come from a different country. But UK writers are writing in English also, and yet somehow I don’t sense the same break between US American writing and theirs. Good Canadian writing – Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Anne Michaels, Rudy Wiebe and the other really good “culturally-Mennonite” writers…somehow it is different from other nationalities, and it is different in a similar way. It achieves a very specific resonance, or at least it does within me.

This is an excellent book of war – World War I, a Canadian Cree fighting for the Allies in Europe. I don’t tend to take well to war books – they tend to aim to show the ‘grittiness’ of war, but then veer off into sentiment and reassurances. This book is honest and respectful and a really well told story.

2008-05-05T13:00:00.001+03:00

(Debby)
Oh, hey, did you hear a THUMP a few weeks ago? Yeah, that was me. Falling out of my chair. When Amanda pointed out that the Edward James Olmos of Battlestar Galactica was the same Edward James Olmos from Bladerunner. MAN! I totally should have figured that out on my own! There are only so many AWESOME and spectacularly ugly and yet attractive men acting out there.

2008-04-25T15:11:00.003+03:00

(Debby)
Man, I totally blogged from Accra! And it came out as a blank posting. Shucks. A Summary:

In Search of Lost Time continues - I'm up to "Madame Swann at Home", and it was the perfect complement to a somewhat bizarre time in Ghana. Just perfect.

More Bladerunner theme nights:
- eat Chinese food and drink Coca-Cola
- play that game where everyone gives 2 truths and 1 lie (the test to see if someone is an android involves asking questions and measuring the physical empathetic response)
- watch Bladerunner, A Scanner Darkly, and Minority Report (all based on Philip K. Dick novels and short stories)

2008-04-23T08:44:00.002+03:00

(Amanda)
A paper shredder commented on my last entry. A Spanish-speaking paper shredder. How very Science Fiction.

2008-04-18T08:25:00.004+03:00

(Amanda)
Tonight in International Horror Film we watched Dario Argento's Opera. It's rockin', freaky, badly dubbed, and extremely imaginative. AND it confirmed that my irrational fear of peepholes is entirely rational.

I just finished Twin Peaks. I have exactly two things to say:
1. Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLaughlin) is the most endearing character in any show, EVER.
2. re: the final 15 seconds:
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Okay, two more things:
1. re: the final 15 minutes:
YEEEEAAAAAH! AWESOME!
2. That show was great. I think the major tool in my Sci-Fi class who said, on the first day, 'Kudos for teaching Lynch' would agree.

2008-04-10T18:04:00.005+03:00

(Amanda)
Finally, with only a 26 year delay, I saw Blade Runner in class last night. I have some theme night suggestions ~ guess the connection. They'll be pretty obvious. You can't go too obscure with your theme nights... Answers can be found one inch below:

Blade Runner and Battlestar Galactica
Blade Runner and The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Blade Runner and Kill Bill vol. 1 or 2
Blade Runner and Nine to Five
Blade Runner and Cliffhanger

Thematic Answerage:
Edward James Olmos vs. Robots posing as people
Overly tan, overly blonde dudes in underpants and underpants only
Daryl Hannah with curious black eye issues
Shoulder pads
Hanging off things

2008-04-07T12:07:00.000+03:00

(Debby)

Apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson – the sequel to Kidnapped(!) is Catriona, not Katriona. I was looking for Treasure Island (alas, with no success), and I noticed that 1) I had made this misspelling in my previous posting, and 2) the library has at least a half dozen copies of Catriona. Did some secondary school require Catriona, a story that primarily concerns itself with Scottish politics of the 1800s, as mandatory reading? Or did a series of libraries in the UK decide that, really, what the national public library of Kenya needed was more copies of Catriona?

Hey Hallie – I forgot about Flannery O’Connor. You are right! You are right! I LOVE her short stories. Amanda and I both took a course from Todd Davis on Flannery O’Connor and Kurt Vonnegut our first year at Goshen. The perfect pairing of authors!

Hey Amanda - I totally support the use of NetFlix. Did you finish the Gilmore Girls? Final thoughts on fast-talking gals dealing with life and love in small East Coast town?

2008-04-07T11:37:00.001+03:00

(Debby)
I do appreciate a Thing Well Done.

Dorothy L. Sayers wrote books that are exquisitely crafted and exceptionally carried out. I had only a few minutes at the library, so I grabbed Murder Must Advertise. It’s even better the second (and third) time around. I recommend reading it after you’ve read some of the other Lord Peter Whimsey books. It’s an amazing character, in part because of the changes he goes through over the years. Oh man, character development. Character development in the context of really excellent story-telling. Is anything better than that?
Holes. The library has a couple copies of the book! Again, written with great care, a book that is absolutely impeccable.
Juno – I watched it in the movie theatre! That doesn’t happen very often. I thought it was Just Great. A good movie watched with a good friend. Safe travels, Marlies! (Marlies is going on a 'Round the World trip! Well, more of a 'Round the Pacific and Southeast Asia area trip, but one of those exciting tickets we all always wanted to buy)
Serenity –is a really, really, Really Good movie. A movie made with love.

Song of the Day: Bizarre Love Triangle, New Order.
Book of the Day: Murder Must Advertise, Dorothy L. Parker
Movie of the Day: Serenity
Document of the Day: Interim Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, 22 August 2007 – great stuff on biofuel production and its implications for the right to food

2008-04-03T06:53:00.003+03:00

(Amanda)
Um ... I think a robot commented on my March 29 post. A robot whose first language isn't English.

2008-04-03T06:50:00.003+03:00

(Amanda)
Funny, I overheard my Sci-Fi teacher using the word 'soporific' tonight. This universe is a funny one.

2008-04-02T23:19:00.004+03:00

(Amanda)
I Netflixed Twin Peaks, though it would certainly be purchase-worthy. I'm underemployed at the moment so I'm just trying to get the most out of my netflix dollars rather than commit a much more dramatic sum to library expansion.

I did, however, subject my bank account to a recent flurry of amazon ordering. It was just a final splurge ~ there are a few things one must own. The recent acquisition list:

Labyrinth (I can't BELIEVE I didn't already have this...)
Labyrinth soundtrack
The Neverending Story (not a great movie, but it was a monster staple of my early years)
The Wire seasons 3 and 4. I haven't watched any yet, but when every respectable source on earth declares a show to be THE. BEST. SHOW. EVER. EVER. ~ I know I'll dig it.
Battlestar Galactica ~ all of the available seasons.

I'm in the middle of the Battlestar introductory mini series. I watched season one a while back but am re-watching it before I get to the new stuff. So good. I have shed many tears in the last three hours of BSGing.

I cannot BELIEVE I have gone so many years with a decent grasp of my mother tongue and never known what prodigal meant. Shocking.

Speaking of GRE studying ~ the word that I will always associate with GRE study guides is soporific. I think I've only ever heard it used once in real life but, by golly, I knew exactly what it meant.

Dance, magic, dance magic, dance!

2008-03-31T18:00:00.002+03:00

(Debby) (writing about reading, but i would actually rather be watching Twin Peaks. Well done, Amanda! Did you buy or library or Netflix? Please please have bought and be about to mail the DVD series to me)

Arthur C. Clark died a few weeks ago. When he died, he was in his late 80s or early 90s, and he had written dozens of science fiction books, some of which were made into movies such as 2001: Space Odyssey. To commemorate his life, I thought I’d check out one of his books from the library. Well, they only had 2 books by him – 2069 (or some year like that – the 3^rd book in that series) and then another book about a war on the Moon. And that was when I remembered that, really, I never liked Arthur C. Clark’s books all that much.

Well, I don’t think it’s disrespectful to his memory to say so. I mean, millions of people loved his books. They were good books, based around good ideas. For me, though, they are just too focused on the hard science of ‘science fiction’ and interested in things that I’m not so much interested in.

So in commemoration of Arthur C. Clark, I checked out a Ray Bradbury book, Golden Apple of the Sun. It’s a collection of short stories. In general, I don’t like to read short stories. The really good ones tend to really upset me. Maybe they pack too much of an emotional punch? And then, you don’t really get the character development that I love so much in novels. Mostly, a short story is about the revealing of some Big Point. But there are always exceptions to every rule, and my exceptions to this rule include fairy tales, folk tales, and the short stories of Ursula K. LeGuin and Ray Bradbury. Ray Bradbury’s best short stories are sentimental and beautiful, and they don’t depend on any gimmicks. They might take place in a spaceship, but they are just as likely to take place in a small town in America or Mexico. My favorite story from this collection follows a middle-aged Mexican man who stands up to fashion photographers determined to photograph a model in front of his house, with its aesthetically cracked foundation.

I’ve never read a Terry Pratchett book. I hear that he is donating a lot of money to Alzeheimer’s research, and that he has been diagnosed with an early version of the disease. From what I understand, he writes funny fantasy books ? Well, my library and the used bookstore don’t have any of his books, which is why I haven’t read him before. But I did recently get a book from the used bookstore (Bookstop Ltd – it’s a great place. Some of the used books are more than I want to / can pay for them, but the collection is wide ranging, the shelves well stocked, they play good music, and the owner is extremely generous in giving credit for returned books) – Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Although I’ve only read one Neil Gaiman book, I loved that book (American Gods) enough to consider myself a Neil Gaiman fan. (oh, and I saw Stardust twice on an airplane, and really thoroughly enjoyed it). Well, Good Omens is a really enjoyable book. A funny, light read, with great characters (including an angel, a demon, and the Anti-Christ who is an 11 year old boy

2008-03-31T17:59:00.000+03:00

(Debby)
Katriona – The sequel to Kidnapped (or, as I think of it, Kidnapped! – it has to be said with an exclamation point as far as I am concerned) follows in the same, highly successful vein, only pausing to get, if anything, more wrapped up in Scottish politics and clan concerns. And this time, unlike in Kidnapped!, there are some female characters, who are respectively arch, crude, and fiery. On top of this Extremely Good Time, there is the fact that most of it is written in Scottish brogue, and that they use words like PRODIGAL.

As in, the Prodigal Son. I am ashamed to say that I always assumed that Prodigal meant ‘once gone but now returned and rather contrite and ashamed to be wholly accepted by the generous and selfless love of his father.’ No no. It means “extravagant; wasteful; reckless with money”. I learned that the day before I came across it in Katriona, when I was going though my How To Prepare For The GRE book. Yep, trying to study for the GRE. I’m just really, really excited about Political Ecology and also Social Geography right now. Excited enough that I am willing to re-learn geometry. Will, I haven’t re-learned geometry yet. I’m kind of stuck on fractions (harder than you would think. Fractions! Very tricky). But anyways, I’m thinking that I’d like to go back to school, and even if I don’t do it right away, I would see it happening in the next 3 years (how long GRE scores last), and this seems like as good a time to take the dang thing as ever.

2008-03-30T09:32:00.002+03:00

(Amanda)
I should have noted that Visitor Q is not some wacky-pants horror movie with monsters and gore ~ it's just about a dysfunctional family.

AND, Debby, I can't tell you if Jeremy Davies is in Lost Season 4, but I will say that if he was, he would be AWESOME.

Now back to watching the Twin Peaks pilot...

2008-03-29T19:19:00.003+03:00

(Amanda)
Sorry it's been so long since I posted. I'm past the lots of long papers AND moving of a week or two ago so I can settle my brain and refocus on what really matters ~ watching stuff and reading about you(debby) reading stuff.

So it's finally happened. A movie shocked me. Repeatedly. I never thought it would happen.

I am always extremely affected by quality films (and telly) and I've seen plenty of stuff that pushes any and all boundaries. I'm no sociopath, but I also can't think of a single movie that shocked me. But it's happened!

First off, in a class (the Psych of Horror) last semester we watched Audition (directed by Takashi Miike) ~ a fantastic Japanese film that literally made me almost literally faint. My vision was entirely replaced by white sparkles, I broke out into a cold sweat, and I had to brace myself in my chair to keep from falling out. It was the foot/piano wire bit (for anyone who has seen it ~ everyone seems to have their own unbearable bit). Woah, lordy. So Audition affected me, physically, more than any movie I'd ever seen.

In my current horror class, two nights ago, we watched another Miike film, Visitor Q. But, my goodness, it shocked me. In, probably, five ways. Nothing Audition-style faint-inducing. But in five entirely new ways! I'd describe the ways, but this is a child-friendly blog and you don't want phrases like 'extremely graphic necrophilia', 'extremely graphic lactation (that leads to many sorts of lactation-based curiousness)', and 'poop' cluttering up your children's hearts.

The movie is amazing, by the way.

Takashi Miike ~ you are a champ.

2008-03-18T09:56:00.001+03:00

(Debby)
The Known and What I Thought I Knew

Part of the point of a public library is the freedom to pick random books that one doesn’t know anything about. Sometimes this works out great (case in point would be Hyperion). Sometimes…not.

The Table of Everything – Trudy White.

At Goshen College, students can push books (well, more like booklets) through Pinchpenny Press. It’s a great outlet for creative energies and aspirations. I got to edit a Pinchpenny Press book that was a collection of poetry and essays on environment & place. It was great fun, except for laying everything out in that fancy publishing computer program. Three or four years later, I had the odd experience of finding a copy of that book at a Mennonite Relief Sale in Oregon. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

Trudy White, here, took the equivalent of a Pinchpenny Press collection of short stories/reflections/drawings and managed to get a printing press in Australia to publish it. And then it suffered the fate of so many books – it was donated to Book Aid International, and shipped to the Kenyan Library system. I’m not sure how she would feel about that, either. Sadly, it tends not to be a sign of high esteem for a book.

Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson

That’s right – KIDNAPPED! Man, how’s THAT for a blast from the past? Actually, it turned out that I didn’t really know anything about Kidnapped at all – my vague memory of it is actually of Treasure Island, I suspect. There aren’t really any pirates in Kidnapped; there is a shipwreck, but it is short and basically self-inflicted out of ignorance. What there is, is a whole lot of Scottish politics that I am trying very hard to understand but which is just a little bit out of reach. Like, Whigs and Jacobians and MacGregors who go by the name of Drummond because of some feud – actually, there seem to be a lot of inter-clan feuds – and Highlands versus Lowlands and whatnot.

All around, this book is AWESOME!!! Seriously, I cannot think of anything I would want to add or take away from this book. Maybe part of what I like so much is that I have to follow the political bits (which are a huge chunk of the plot – who is a Whig and who is a …um, not a Whig? Something about Kings? and France. Definitely something involving France) as though it is a mystery that I am finding clues for and trying to put it all together. But anyways, I really and truly enjoyed this book, and I am currently reading the sequel, Catriona, and so far it is, if anything, even more wrapped up in Scottish politics, and it is continuing to be awesome.

2008-03-12T13:46:00.002+03:00

(Debby responding to Amanda)

Oh I am SO PLEASED that you are taking this Science Fiction film class. I just feel like chortling and rubbing my hands together, it pleases me so much.

So you watched Solaris? YEAH!! I agree - not as long as I had expected. A month or two ago I watched the newer George Clooney version, too. I was glad I'd seen it, although it still didn't have the emotional OOMF that the BBC radio play had. I want to find the novel all these movies are based on - um, it's called Solaris. Written by a Polish dude. Stanislaw Lem? Lev? Something like that.

I really, really, REALLY hope that it is Jeremy Davies you are talking about as being in Season 4 of Lost. I LOVED his character in Solaris - a great change from the older movie. OH LOST SEASON 4 WHY OH WHY ARE YOU OUT OF REACH FOR ME??? Is it Jeremy Davies? No, wait, don't tell me. ARGH!!

So now that I've realized that Eraserhead is NOT the movie with the guy with pins all over his head, I am more open to some day watching it.

2008-03-11T19:21:00.005+03:00

(Amanda)

My So-Called Life.

I know I saw this back in the day, but barely. The not-allowed-to-watch-TV ethos of my household was very limiting.

So I've watched a couple of disks worth and ... OH ... MY ... WORD. This show is so incredibly good. When I've read people's reactions to Freaks and Geeks (my absolute number one show), so many fans are giddy about how closely they can identify with the it all. To me, F&G is hardly at all tied to my reality, so I love it in a not-at-all-related-to-my-experience way. Well, watching My So-Called Life puts this feeling in my gut that makes me finally appreciate those F&G fans and their true fanaticism. Now, I'm not saying this new show has replaced Freaks and Geeks as my number one true love. The show is flawless and fantastic, absolutely. What really gets me is that Claire Danes is my age, exactly, so this show is incredibly specific to my own time and experience. I don't identify with Angela's broodiness, but I feel so emotionally connected to being that age at that time.

That the show is dated as hell is incredibly funny to me. Mid-high school wasn't THAT long ago, but, apparently, it was. That's a hell of a lot of flannel, is all I'm saying. But, no, it's more than the flannel. The show just hits me with a frequency that was felt by the older fans of Freaks and Geeks and the much older fans of, I don't know, Harry and the Hendersons.

Anyway, so, the show is absolutely amazing. Claire Danes is SO GOOD as Angela I can hardly handle it. Ahhh, the mid-nineties and early high school. TGFMSCL.

2008-03-11T19:15:00.003+03:00

(Amanda)

Big Love Season 2 : Fantastic show. Lordy, polygamists are really into blackmail!

Extras series finale : Ha ha ha! There's some serious high quality there, mate.

Eraserhead : Finally I can say I love David Lynch without feeling like a wanker for not having seen Eraserhead.

Solaris(1972) : Did not seem as long as it was. Great film. Look forward to watching the remake someday, partially because it has the dude who is my favorite new character from Lost season 4.

The Bad Seed : Amazingly entertaining and surprisingly awesome.

MY SO-CALLED LIFE : deserving of a separate post...

2008-03-11T09:46:00.000+03:00

(Debby)
on reading modern novels dealing with religion (some more directly than others)

Modern books. Somehow they leave less of a clean feeling than pre-1900 books. Well, but that’s not a bad thing, just more emotionally challenging.

Whit – Iain Banks

The thing about Iain Banks is that he writes unnecessarily horrifying / disturbing books. But he also writes really satisfyingly sweet and all modern pop-like books. I can’t seem to figure out which it is going to be until too late. Happily, this one is interesting and fun, really good characters, nice internally-consistent world of a cult.

Bee Season – Myla Goldberg

Oh it’s great! Not what I was expecting, but great! Jewish mysticism + spelling bee + Hari Krishna + mental illness. Beautiful. I saw a bootleg DVD on the street. I guess they made it into a movie, and with Richard Gere. That’s depressing.

No one belongs here more than you – Miranda July

Short stories, of people who are a little…off. By the time I was done with the book, I was unsettled, uncertain whether I was a little off, too. But nonetheless, I also found it oddly comforting. I mean, it’s true….

“Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person’s face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It’s okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.”

Mona Lisa Overdrive – William Gibson

I’m a sucker for William Gibson. I mean, the man invented cyber-punk! Even if his novels aren’t the greatest works of art, they are always worth 100 shillings used. This one sort of revolves around a woman who can access the meta-gods of the internet, or something like that.

Happiness – Will Ferguson

A Canadian writes about what would happen if an American wrote the perfect all-encompassing self-help book. What follows is fluffy fun times! Not worth staying up at night and using to contemplate the meaning of life, but a good time nonetheless. (thanks, Sasha! And for the Miranda July book, too)

2008-03-10T14:57:00.002+03:00

(debby)
NORMALITY IS RESTORED!

A good sign that things are getting back to business-as-usual in Nairobi is that the National Public Library's hours are back to normal. They had cut them back significantly since the elections. Open till 6:30pm Monday-Thursday once again. Whew.

The library recently slapped up photocopies of a poster all over the inside and outside of the building. The poster has a picture of a white dude with a furtive look on his face and one hand in his jacket, and at the top it says DON'T STEAL, NEIL!

Ah yes, Nairobi, where 'normal' life as an American means a constant low level barrage of surreal little details.

2008-03-10T12:43:00.002+03:00

(Debby)
Perhaps, like me, you have at times wondered: what does Blade have that Buffy doesn’t? Well, now I have watched Blade (the first movie only). As far as I can tell, here are the answers to that age old question:

- a heck of a lot more F-bombs. Lots and lots.
- Kris Kristofferson. But, all things considered, I’m not so sure that that is a loss on the side of Buffy, at least in this film. Although there is a good moment of him listening to Creedence.
- Wesley Snipes’s awesome haircut. It is seriously awesome.
- Wesley Snipes – You know, he’s just taking this thing way seriously. And good for him.
- vampires being out in the daytime through the magic of sunblock. tsk, tsk, people.
- Stephen Dorff’s skinny white chest
- Wesley Snipes speaking Russian

2008-02-23T08:29:00.003+03:00

(Amanda)
I'm still netflix-slogging my way through Gilmore Girls. I'd heard that it sorta lost people towards the end and, dammit, it's loosing me. I'm gonna stick with it ~ I have 1 1/2 seasons left (6 and 7), and I obviously want to see what happens with all the characters, and I still get excited when I get new disks, and I still get excited when they reference Super Furry Animals or Buffy, BUT ...
I DON'T LIKE RORY. And I think the show assumes that you like Rory. She's turned into a mega-bitch. I think I'm suffering the Ugly Betty syndrome. I watched Ugly Betty for most of the first season and, dammit, even though I grew to like some of the sub-characters and plots, I just hated hated hated Betty. And it made it really hard to watch, knowing the the show liked her.
Also ~ Gilmore Girls is too wrapped up in rich people for me. It's just not fun to watch lots of wealth if there's no normal people to counter it all. For a while there were the rich grandparents and a bunch of normal people. But the show keeps veering towards the wealthy AND Rory is obnoxious AND I still support the show and think it's GOOD, but I'll be excited when I'm finished with it and I can move onto season two of Big Love ~ a freakin' brilliant show with no flaws that need forgiving.

2008-02-23T04:16:00.002+03:00

(Amanda)
I was sick most of the week and spent a solid three days in bed. For whatever reason, I ended up watching a bunch of movies I've owned for a long time, have been excited about from the beginning, but have never watched. I rarely actually watch full-length movies, and having so many hours to kill while barely moving made this a prime movie-watching health event. Why I finally felt the need to watch these movies I've been putting off (often because I'm so excited about them I never feel like the moment is perfect enough) ~ well, who knows. Here's a list, though I might be forgetting some ...

Elephant
This Film is Not Yet Rated
Z Channel ~ A Magnificent Obsession
The Secret Lives of Dentists
Brick

Elephant
I had been strongly warned that this movie was incredibly disturbing, so I suppose I went into it with a purposefully blackened heart. It was definitely disturbing, and it did make me cry (though, to be fair, so did that great VW bug commercial of 2002), but I found it much easier to take than I expected. AND ~ wowzers, what an amazing film! Gus Van Sant, director of many famous flicks, managed to entirely surprise me with some enchanting creativity. This film is basically about a school shooting, Columbine-style. Most of the film ~ well, all of the film, is made up of extremely long tracking shots of students going about their mundane days. We follow, maybe, a dozen characters through long, surprisingly low key, shots as they wind their way through the halls, darkrooms, playing fields, cafeteria, and on and on ~ having brief or long interactions with their friends and classmates. Does that sound boring? Because it's absolutely not. I often find extreme realism to be the most fascinating TV or movie material (hmmm, that's why the first season of Friday Night Lights is so good I can hardly handle it). For filmmakers to capture something that is truly realistic and familiar ~ that's apparently rare enough that when you really see realism, it's goosebump-inducing.
Anyway ~ Elephant ~ a truly unique and spectacular movie.

I'll keep the rest of these short...

This Film is Not Yet Rated
A very great documentary about the messed up movie ratings system. Really entertaining, funny, interesting, and maddening. Good combo, no?

Z Channel ~ A Magnificent Obsession
Another fantastic documentary. Anyone interested in film should absolutely watch this. It's about the obsessive programmer for an 80's LA cable channel. Aside from the Murder/Suicide/Mental illness drama, this movie is just filled with Love-For-Good-Filmness. It makes any film buff even more excited to be what they are. And what are we? Film buffs! Embrace it! Watch this movie, people!

The Secret Lives of Dentists
This was given to me by a friend (and by friend, of course, I mean a middle aged gay meth-head from Connecticut I met once and bonded with instantly) ~ I mainly watched it so I could say I'd watched it. It was quite good, though it's kind of one of those random very-indie dramas that doesn't seem entirely necessary. But, no, it's really good. Filled with essential indie actors. Interesting look at a family going through things. That sort of movie. But, again, very high quality. And enjoyable.

Brick
That strapping young chap from 3rd Rock from the Sun, Joseph Gordon-Levitt(?), is in a lot of fantastic movies these days. Pretty much reliably fantastic, a movie with this guy in it. Brick was on lots of critics 'Best of 200?' lists and, man, what a curious film. It takes place in a modern high school, but it's a straight up film noir. Like, with this fast pulpy talk, the standard characters, all that. It's really pretty spectacular! Imagine Shakespeare dialogue dumped into a SoCal High School setting. Kinda like that, but, you know, the Noir version.

And ... post!

2008-02-23T04:06:00.002+03:00

(Amanda)
Magnet's top 20 albums of 2007:
#20-#4 : stuff.

#3 ~ Spoon Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Yes. It's FANTASTIC.
#2 ~ New Pornographers Challenger
Yes. It's FANTASTIC.

#1 ~ WEEN ~ LA CUCARACHA
That's right, Peter Eash-Scott. Ween. Best of the year. Music snobs agree. I REALLY want to include the entire pro-Ween-a-thon right here, but I will resist. Here's a random bit that I much liked : 'We must ponder the Ween essence : the uniquely brown elements (outlandish genre exercises, eye-popping instrumental virtuosity, crude-yet-undeniable humor) that set each new, twisted piece of work apart from those before it.' and 'La Cucaracha's crowning achievement is the sexy soul of closer "Your Party," which immerses the listener in a resplendent world of tri-color pastas, succulent carved meats, candy and spices. You can almost feel the shag carpet under your feet and the hash coursing through your lungs as Gene sings, "We had the best time at your party/ The wife and I thank you very much"...'
I include that last bit because 'Your Party' is freakin' awesome and hilarious and this little spiel captures the ridiculousness of it all.

2008-02-21T11:10:00.000+03:00

(Debby)

DUDE! Amanda! Guess what DVD was at the video store the other day? DARK CITY! Man, it’s been so long! William Hurt playing the accordion! Rufus Sewell not being very convinced about the movie he’s in! Kiefer Sutherland channelling Peter Lore! Is awesome. And what with fancy DVD technology, there are added extras…including…a full length movie commentary by ROGER EBERT! I can see why you like him so much – it’s just very interesting to listen to his commentary, what with him picking up on themes and talking about editing styles, genres of film, past movies, etc. Are you going to watch Dark City in your science fiction class?

2008-02-18T12:18:00.002+03:00

(Debby) I was sick for a week

Once in high school when I was sick for a week I read Cancer Ward, a Solzhenitsyn book that was totally over my head I’m sure, and succeeded in completely wrapping me up in a blanket of Sickness and Paranoia, despite not having cancer or being a Soviet bureaucrat. This time around I read science fiction & Proust. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

Dune – Frank Herbert - Yep, Dune. Done read it. Interesting if one is interested in geography and political ecology, since it all hinges on the idea that a people’s physical environment shapes their culture and religion. Hence, desert planet Arrakis leads to people with a tightly controlled society revolving around very tight conservation of water, a tight hold on the grievances in their history, and very good fighting skills.

So it was good. I can’t say I enjoyed it, but that probably has more to do with the timing – I was reading it in between bouts of throwing up and having very convincing visions of how Graca Machel and I could save Kenya (all I remember is that it involved my thighs, but not in a sexual way).

I would like Dune less if this was the only kind of science fiction out there – if Ursula LeGuin and Madeleine L’Engle weren’t in my universe, I think I would get a lot more annoyed with books like Dune. Dune is not particularly sexist; it’s just very, very male.

Ilium – Dan Simmons

Yeah, is okay, but not nearly as good as the Hyperion/Endymion series. But overall it was an enjoyable sickbed read. I liked when the organic robots talked about reading Proust.

Swann in Love – Marcel Proust

At some point in Combray, Proust talks about the invalid in the depth of the nights, seeing a glimmer of light under the door and having hope lift within him, believing that dawn has come and that night is over, only to have the servant with his candle pass by the door, leaving him in back in the dark, dreadful night. I thought about that a lot the night of the onsight of my illness, and it was comforting to think that I was experiencing a universal misery. (now I can’t find the passage, so apologies if I’m remembering it wrong)

Well, after making a big ol’ deal about how great Proust is, I’m a bit tired of him. The second part of the first book of Volume One, Swann in Love, charts Swann’s fall into love and then the tortures of jealousy, etc. I think we can say that it rather exhaustively explores sexual jealousy, with a comic tone, but nonetheless, I ran out of enthusiasm for the subject about a third of the way before Swann did.

But I’m still excited for the next section – let’s see where it goes and whether it delves into something other aspect of human life. For now, this library book is overdue so I need to return it before checking it out again.

2008-02-09T16:11:00.000+03:00

(Debby)
I still think I read more novels than you watch movies, Amanda. You probably watch more TV than I read periodicals and newspapers (is that a fair comparison? Movies=novels; TV=periodicals and serial novels? Probably, in these days of TV shows on DVD, that is not fair. But what is a better comparison?)
And speaking of movies, I think I've seen Forbidden Planet. Isn't Leslie Nielson (is that how it is spelled? Canadian? Naked Gun movies?) the captain in it? I saw it back in the heady days when I stayed with my brother and his family, and they got the Science Fiction channel. Not much bad to say about the Science Fiction channel...except for all the bad science fiction, and weren't they somehow responsible for Dune 2000?
Speaking of which, I started Dune, the book, again. I read/skimmed the first three books of the very, very long Dune series a long time ago (college? high school?), and it didn't do anything for me. But of course i love Dune the movie. And the problem with loving Dune the movie is that for whatever reason it sure does seem like the only other people in the world who love Dune the movie are people who love Dune the book, and then they tend to say things like "Dune 2000 was more faithful to the novel," which may be true, but totally bypasses the point that the only purpose Dune 2000 serves is to highlight how awesome the original Dune movie is.
Anyways, I'm giving the books a try again because my friend John, who I highly respect and who was willing to watch the extended version of the original Dune with me (while Julia alternately slept on the couch and was miserable. Sorry, again, Julia) and who did, in fact, say that Dune 2000 was more faithful but at least was willing to agree with me that it was lifeless and insipid, John recommends the Dune books.

But I have to admit, I have been side-tracked by Proust again. Checked the first volume of In Search of Lost Time out of the library again (No, I hadn't finished it last time. Got through Combray, which is possibly the most beautiful piece of writing ever, and was all satiated (is that the word? filled up?)). So now I'm on Swann in Love, also great, although I think I liked Combray more.
Hold on, I need to get up on a soapbox.

People....PROUST IS NOT INACCESSIBLE OR HIGHLY ACADEMIC - at least, not the english translation i'm reading - IT IS JUST SIMPLY GORGEOUS AND YOU WILL WANT TO WRAP YOURSELF UP IN IT.

There. Now I've made my point(s).
Recap:
- What are the proper print counterparts to movies & TV? I'm not sure
- Forbidden Planet was highly entertaining
- Dune 2000 was terrible, and not even entertainingly terrible, and I apologize to everyone who I cajolled into watching it (or at least parts of it) in the year 2001 (I think you were still in Scotland, Amanda, so you escaped seeing the one kid from Part of 5 play the 'evil' Feyid Harkonnen.)
- Proust: why was I always intimidated? Are you? Don't be! Is all good.

2008-02-09T16:01:00.000+03:00

(Debby)
Here are some books I read in December (lots of plane rides) but didn't get around to writing about.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian – Is awesome. The book’s cover is full of praises by prominent people, in which the book is described as ‘hilarious’ and ‘comic’, etc. I don’t know about that. But it is a really great story, told really perfectly.

The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins – Eh. I didn’t finish it. Somehow a let down, coming right after The Moonstone, which is totally and utterly awesome. Sometimes a book written in the 1800s totally rocks the 1800s and surprises me with 'modern' sensibilities and has a great sense of humor not like the 1900s or the 2000s. And then sometimes a book written in the 1800s is just kind of boring and wrapped up in its own sensibilties.

Underground – Haruki Murakami – The first non-fiction book I’ve read by Murakami. About the underground sarin gas attacks in Japan. Highly recommended.

The Body (short stories) – Hanif Kureishi – The problem is that I read this right after The Moonstone, and I felt strongly afterwards that I was better off sticking with pre-modern life lit. But to be fair, short stories always put me in a weird head space. And short stories that are extremely good at conveying a sense of modern alienation makes that weird head space even more uncomfortable. Kureishi wrote the screenplay for My Beautiful Launderette and wrote the play Borderlines, and did lots more stuff, but those are the only two I know anything about.

The White Castle – Orhan Pamuk – I’m pretty sure I didn’t get this book. The whole East/West interaction and self/other whatevering. But it was still awesome. I do like a book that I don’t get but still like to read. Anyways, it was Pamuk. He just writes so well. Turkey! I wanna go.

The Stone Virgins – Yvonne Vera - A tragic, beautiful book, following 2 sisters during liberation and in the post-independence chaos of Zimbabwe. Utterly compelling, utterly devastating.

I started a Dorothy L Parker book (which I had bought at full price! FULL PRICE!) and then left it on the plane to Lisbon. Sigh. It was good, as always.

2008-02-09T02:47:00.000+03:00

(Amanda)
Just watched a Gilmore Girls. Usually the score is so twee I can hardly stomach it ('la la la, la la la la la'), but this episode was the inevitable Spring-Break-in-Florida entry which inspired some actual soundtracking. Beyond the actual Shins (yay) in concert followed by a New Pornographers (YAY!!!) song, the opening to the 'check out these crazy kids, ain't nobody tellin' them what to do and, golly, they're going batshit insane!' scene featured an entire Ween song! WEEN, debby, WEEN!!!
On, and I also finished up with my watching of the This American Life TV show. Every episode brings me to tears (just like the radio show) ~ what a bundle of perfection. Even if I wasn't painfully in love with Ira Glass, I'd STILL be punched in the gut with each show's spectacularity.

2008-02-08T20:45:00.001+03:00

(Amanda)
Yo Debby. How dare you claim you read more than I watch. I promise you there's No Way.
Last night was the second new episode of Lost this season. The show has taken some crazy-ass turns and I'm loving it. I watch with an enthusiastic group of 9 ~ up until last week our Lost-viewings were catching up on the first three seasons and I was already ahead of them all. It's GREAT fun watching new ones with a group ~ being stunned together, trying to process the insanity together.
Lost = flawless/genius storytelling. I just deleted a long rant that is better summed up by that last sentence.
And ... post!

2008-02-07T20:01:00.000+03:00

(Amanda)
Yup, we will be watching Blade Runner in April. I'm embarrassed to say I've never really seen it ~ aside from that one time in Scottdale ~ but I was cutting out New Yorker pictures and that certainly can't count as a viewing.
Last night we saw Forbidden Planet, a great '56 flick that was all revolutionary-like with its character design (Robby the Robot, an iconic sci-fi lad who showed up in many future shows and films), excellent sets, and the first-ever entirely electronic score. It was also the introduction of the theremin to film. I love me some theremin.

Debby, leave me alone. I'm also not convinced that I can handle the 'aren't small town folk quirky!?!?!' of Gilmore Girls. DESPITE that, it's a great show, but because of that, it will never be a great show. There you go, that last sentence will be my print-legacy someday.

I just got started on a genuinely-fantastic-in-every-way show, Big Love. It's yet another perfect HBO show ~ this one's about a polygamous family. It's got a killer cast (Bill Paxton, Chloe Sevigny, Jeanne Tripplehorn, a couple of the Veronica Mars [wooh!] kids), a completely fascinating scenario, great characters, perfectly executed.

I have to go write a short paper for my horror class. I'm gonna try to impress my very British professor with a mind-blowingly brilliant 2-3 pages on the transformation scene in An American Werewolf in London. This is the first step in my very clever scheme that will, hopefully, result in him being on my committee. A Brit horror expert ~ yes, please.

2008-02-07T17:58:00.000+03:00

(Debby)

Books to Movies and Back Again

Bad Book to Great Movie

As mentioned earlier, probably the worst book to be made into a truly great movie would be The Children of Men.

Great Book to Great Movie

Holes – by Louis Sachar. Man, that book is the bomb-diggity. And the movie? They just do it so right.

A Movie I Always Loved and a Book I Never Could Find

Hey Amanda, are you going to watch Bladerunner in your science fiction film class? Bladerunner. My favorite my-asthma-has-gotten-bad-and-i-need-to-breathe-on-the-nebulizer movie. I have watched Bladerunner in a slightly oxygen-starved state so many times, and it was always good. I’ve also watched it since my asthma is better controlled, and I still love it. When I went to Bangkok, my first time in Asia, all I could think as I walked down the street that first day was THIS LOOKS LIKE THE SET OF BLADERUNNER! BANGKOK IS THE FUTURE! I can’t believe I’m in Bangkok and all I can relate it to is Bladerunner. OH MAN, THIS TOTALLY LOOKS LIKE BLADERUNNER!!!

I knew that the movie was based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, a pulp science fiction author. I looked for that book for over a decade. Along the way, I found a few collections of short stories – they were really, really disturbing.

Did I say that he was a really, really good pulp science fiction author? He was. He churned out amazing visions of the future – he created new realities and then explored all the aspects of mundane life within them. He created internally consistent universes. Oh, yes, that’s right – internally consistent universes.

So, there I was, in the Heathrow Airport, on my way back from the States to Kenya, feeling fairly exhausted and sorry for myself, and I finally found it – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – for way too much money, and in sterling pounds, too. I bought it, and I read it, and it was awesome. More awesome than Bladerunner. That’s right – more awesome than Bladerunner. The plot is more awesomer, the world is more fascinatingly messed up, the characters are…awesome.. I don’t…I don’t even know what else to say.

2008-01-29T14:07:00.001+03:00

(Debby) 3 things of note:

1) Daniel is not going to be writing on this blog. We are going to set up another Aunt/Nephew blog (stay tuned for that). So no worries - a 4 1/2 year old is not reading whatever we write.

2) METROPOLIS!!! I LOVE THAT MOVIE!! Amanda! Amanda! I LOVE Metropolis! I saw it that summer I went to Ohio for nerd camp and we sat around and watched Triumph of the Will and read Nietzsche (did i misspell that?) and Kerouac. Oh man - you didn't mention the whole science fiction / dystopia angle of it! Awesome. I am so glad you are in that class.

3) Here is a very long post that I wrote some time in November last year. I think it's okay if you write as long as you want to, Amanda, because I like to read what you like (although I am not yet convinced about The Gilmore Girls and the cutsiness of small-town New England).

Reading Lord of the Rings: Jumping on the Bandwagon Long After It Has Left the Station

I read the Hobbit when I was probably between 10 and 12. I loved it.

I followed that up with the Lord of the Rings trilogy. My love for the Hobbit provided enough momentum for me to get through the trilogy and all the way to picking up the Silmarillion from the local library, and there it ground to a stop. There were too many characters – I couldn’t keep track of who was who, I could barely keep track of who was a hobbit and who was a man, and I definitely couldn’t keep track of Elves and Dwarves. I hated the battle scenes, and the whole series felt like nothing but battle scenes. I remember deciding, at the end, that 1) I was probably too young – at least for me- for this, and now I had ruined these books for me forever, so I should learn from that (I didn’t), and 2) the whole thing felt like reading a series of history books, which I don’t particularly like even when the history is real, and in this case, it was not real, so why was I reading them.

And that was that for about a decade, until the first Lord of the Rings movie came out. (Actually, now that I think of it, one time when my sister and I were both sick we rented an animated version of Lord of the Rings (or the Hobbit?) and it bloody well freaked us both out completely. We already had high fevers, and all I remember is being terrified and confused the entire time. I think we might have followed it up with the animated version of Watership Down, which also was completely terrifying and confusing. We should have stuck to The Apple Dumpling Gang.)

My family all went to see Fellowship of the Ring in the movie theatres. It was a special event and something of a Christmas tradition – well, a tradition in that we don’t tend to ever otherwise go to the movies together, except that sometimes we do around Christmas time. So, special occasion. 3 things kept me from appreciating the wonder of the movie: 1) Frodo does this really creepy wide-eyed-wonder happy look during the beginning sequences, and it gave me the willies; 2) about 15 minutes into the movie I had to pee, and since everyone is constantly in mortal peril I couldn’t really leave, so I was really, really pressed by the end; 3) honestly, man, every time Viggo Mortenson was on screen I had this voice in my head going “Viggo MorTENsen…Viggo MorTENsen”. Unnerving.

Well, last fall I finally sat down and re-read the books, and they really are good. Really, they are. Not Ursula LeGuin good, but nonetheless very good. And I also watched the movies, and they, too, are good, though perhaps a bit heavy on lingering up-close hazy shots of woman’s faces.

2008-01-25T08:45:00.001+03:00

Wow, I just had my first International Horror Film class ~ we watched Shaun of the Dead. I love my life.

2008-01-24T21:53:00.000+03:00

(Amanda)
I finally figured how to post! I don't yet know what my shtick is going to be on this blog. Debby has to read a whole book for each post and I only have to watch a little telly ~ I should probably keep these short. So, yeah, I might go for the brief commentary rather than anything thoughtful...

Last night was the first meeting of my incredibly brilliant Science Fiction class. We watched Metropolis ~ a movie I have somehow never seen. It is FANTASTIC. Very ballet-like. Brigitte Helm, as Maria (and the seven deadly sins, and the Maria-bot, and on and on), is hilarious. Check out her 'seductive dance', please. If you are not seduced, you will be entertained, at the very least. But, yeah, Metropolis ~ brilliant.

I'm also plowing my way through Gilmore Girls. I'm pretty much over my lack of love for the hammer-to-the-head adorableness factor ('aren't small-town folk quirky!?!?) and I'm really enjoying the soapy plots. Rory just got together with Jess (Milo, the droop-to-the-right-mouth-Peter-Petrelli of Heroes) after a year of extreme foreshadowing ~ isn't it satisfying when the plot finally delivers what it's been promising for so very long? It is just a matter of time before Lorelai and Luke pair up ~ it's been promised since episode one. But, yeah, the witty high-speed banter ~ the show is famous for it and it's well deserved.

2008-01-11T03:04:00.000+03:00

(Amanda) Debby's giving me a stern talking-to about my lack of reading-this-blog. I am an avid reader as of now. You should be, too. Because a stern talking-to from Debby Scott is a thing of .. not beauty, really, but it is awesome. And it makes one want to read a blog. So imagine a stern talking-to, and start reading this thing with enthusiastic regularity! I mean, a 4 1/2 year old discussing his lastest Ramona read-through, Debby considering alchoholism ~ this is going to be a major phenomenon ~ don't you want to say you were there from the almost-start?

2008-01-11T02:24:00.000+03:00

(DEBBY)
new year! new format! new friends join the blog!

In the city of Lancaster, in the state of Pennsylvania, in the Eash-Scott household, Amanda and Daniel and I sat down and typed out a description for our new blog.

Daniel is my nephew. He is 4 1/2 year old. He's great. He will maybe write about books such as Nate the Great, Winnie the Pooh, or Ramona.

Amanda is my friend. She lives in Albuquerque. She's great. She will write about movies and TV shows, possibly music, possibly books.

I will keep writing about libray books.

2008!!

2007-10-24T15:54:00.000+03:00

Alcohol

…is many things, but it should not be a coping device. (Go ahead and read that again for added effect if you feel the need.)

This is the wisdom that I came away from law school holding tight to my bosom – I saw too many people depend on alcohol as the only way to relax, because it is a quick way to relax and there tends to be a need to relax and yet little time to do so. Also, it is part of the glamour of them there Lawyers – all relaxing with scotch at the end of the day with a pipe and a dog or something.

And I’ve seen a lot of folk in the NGO world – the policy wonks, the campaigners, the folk who work at convincing celebrities to care about their causes – depend on alcohol as a destressor in a stress-inducing and fast-paced lifestyle.

I’m not saying any of these folks are alcoholics. Okay, yeah, some of those lawyers definitely are. But otherwise, not necessarily alcoholics, just that alcohol plays a specific role in their lives, in part because their lives are very full and there isn’t much time for relaxation.

So for what it’s worth, I’m trying to avoid that, for a goodly number of good reasons, not least of which being that I’m on an MCC term and the work-until-you-are- wound-tight/drink-to-loosen-up/work-again cycle is definitely NOT what MCC is about. That said, I have definitely been falling into the trap of working until I’m all wound up tight. So, when one comes home late from work and one has yet again engaged perhaps a wee bit too emotionally in not only The Cause but also The Internal Politics of The Cause, one needs some way to relax. So what?

This is where I recommend the following recipe:

- 1 Sufjan Stevens Christmas Album – It doesn’t matter that it’s not close to Christmas, this is a good vibe (well, maybe skip the We Three Kings song – that one is just weird).

- 1 mug of hot chocolate – but not just any hot chocolate. It needs to be good. What works for me as a slight adaptation of an Extending the Table recipe for ‘hot creamy fruit punch’ (which is probably tasty, but that just sounds gross).

½ cup water
1 tsp. cornstarch
Heat in saucepan until mixture begins to thicken. Then add
1 cup milk
Less than ¼ cup sugar (more like an 1/8? Maybe)
Remove from heat and set aside. Then add
1 tsp cocoa powder (make sure it is good, please. No added flavourings or whatnot)
Dash of vanilla
Pinch of cayenne pepper
Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly.
Pour into your mug and let out a long sigh.
- 1 hot bath. I know, I know, it’s a lot of hot water which takes energy and it’s more water than taking a shower or a bucket bath. Now shut up and get in the bathtub.
- 1 book by Dashiell Hammett – First, let’s admire that name. Dashiell Hammett. I don’t know if it was his real name, but even if it was a pen name, kudos to the guy for coming up with a damn fine pen name. I picked up a collection of three of his novels at the public library – The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, Red Harvest. The Thin Man is my favorite and best for a bath, Red Harvest was good for insomnia, and The Maltese Falcon is the first one I read and was used for both a bath and insomnia. After I finished The Maltese Falcon, I would have said that it read like a screenplay – dialogue and short straight-forward descriptive statements like ‘Miles Archer came into the office again….He was of medium height, solidly built, wide in the shoulders, thick in the neck, with a jovial heavy-jawed red face and some gray in his close-trimmed hair.’ It has horrifying depictions of women and attitudes toward them, and even worse of homosexual men. After I finished The Thin Man, I would have said he was really onto something with his style of writing, that I liked the dialogue between the main character and his wife, that part of me enjoys reading novels written during the 20s, the 30s – times of depression and decadence and a great deal of shady dealings – for nothing else than to enjoy the fact that America’s morals were never so squeaky clean. And now I’m done with Red Harvest, and I’m just a fan. I mean, yes, it’s more violent, and maybe sexist and racist and whatnot, then I would normally admit to liking. But, with the exception of The Maltese Falcon, the characters are really good, which means that the ‘wops’ and ‘foreigners’ act out of understandable motivations; the women may be warped alcoholics but they are each unique and acting from a set of mores and beliefs even if they are twisted; and while everyone goes around pretending to be blasé about the deaths all around them, most of them are deeply disturbed by the violence or by their reactions to the violence.

So say what you will about wasting hot water, eating dairy products, listening to Christmas music, or reading detective novels, I find it all to be a Highly Effective Combination, and I recommend it.

2007-09-26T17:09:00.000+03:00

Show down: bookstore vs. library

bookstore

There is a bookstore in Nairobi that has quite an impressive collection (relatively) of fiction, and I have spent the past 3 months buying the last 3 books of the Endymion series by Dan Simmons. This past month I walked in, went straight to the wall with the science fiction type books, grabbed The Rise of Endymion, went to the counter, paid, and left.

It was good! A satisfying end to a satisfying series, and even pulled off the Messiah theme. So that went well. (incidentally, the first book is the most different in style of the 4, so if you aren’t captivated by the start, I still recommend reading it and then checking out the second book and seeing if that is more like it.)

library

The National Public Library is actually not small. It is certainly bigger than my hometown library in Scottdale, though not as a big as the Goshen public library. As with all libraries, the good books are mixed in with books that were written and published and then quickly forgotten – by anyone so unfortunate as to read them and probably by their authors themselves.

My estimation is that Kenya’s national library has a lot more of the forgettable books. A lot more. Religious fiction that didn’t find an audience abroad and so were donated by well-meaning English missionaries; polemic fiction donated by the Soviet Union during the fight for Africa’s loyalty in the Cold War; authors from abroad who fictionalize their accounts of Kenya and then generously give 10 copies to the national library; obsolete science textbooks; the Left Behind series; and countless books in a slow state of decay that have been re-covered, thus with no title on the outside, so that one has to take the book off the shelf and open the book to discover whether it is perhaps an unread Dorothy L. Sayers novel or whether, yet again, it is Nurse Jane’s First Job or John Goes to School, penned in the 1940s or 1950s by someone with an Urge to Educate and Morally Instruct.

I go to the library every one or two weeks during my lunch hour. One is only allowed to have 2 books checked out at a time, which is probably all for the best, considering my track record in returning library books on time. I always tell myself that I will spend less than 10 minutes finding a new book, and I always take at least 30 minutes. I have to establish if any new books have been added; check a few more of the many un-titled books for hidden treasures; consider whether I want to finally read the Rabbit books (Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, etc etc – I never have and am starting to doubt that I ever will); decide to give in and check out on the Everyman’s Library books that were donated by the British Council; change my mind (I don’t really want to read Robinson Crusoe today); in a fit of desperation consider checking out one of the German novels that are mixed in with the others (only once have I followed through on this – Kinder von Eden, a translation from what was clearly a not-very-good American novel. I skimmed through it, and I’ll say any German book that I can actually understand most of cannot be a good book); try and fail to find something I want to read in the mixed up section of poetry, drama, literary theory and, inexplicably, more of the Left Behind series; wander over to the children’s section and see if anything readable is over there (I have re-read some nice Roald Dahl that way); stare at the E.W. women authors - Edith Wharton, Evelyn Waugh, Eudora Welty - and try to remember the differences between them in order to determine which one I would actually like; give up on the E.W.’s, check in both the W and the S sections to see if there is any more Wole Soyinka; check if there is now more than the one Ursula LeGuin book (no) or the one Kazuo Ishiguro (no) or the one Michael Odaatje (no); finally settle on either 1) rereading a good book, 2) trying out an old classic that I never read, 3) taking an African novel in the hopes that I can manage to read the whole book without having to stop because of getting overly upset or overwhelmed, or 4) grabbing a book with a brightly colored cover, which at least means it was written, published, and donated in the past decade.

Recently, I went through that whole process and ultimately walked out with two books: Gulliver’s Travels and In Search of Lost Time (also known in its previous translation as In Remembrance of Times Past or something like that).

I sat down one night and read the first section of Gulliver’s Travels, where he visits the Lilliputians – the tiny folk. I think the next section is where he visits the big folk, and then after that I’m a bit vague – I know he visits a land of horses, and a land of stupid humans, I think. I think it’s a political satire…or commentary…or something. It’s funnier than I anticipated, although it does live up to my expectations in that now that I have put it down, I’m reluctant to pick it back up.

In Search of Lost Time is…amazing. I can’t believe I didn’t read any Proust my whole life – somehow I had the idea it was completely inaccessible and unreadable. Sort of like how I keep thinking I’ll like Ulysses, and then I can’t get more than 50 pages into it at which point I realize that I have completely no clue what is going on or who the characters are or what the book is even about (not to blame Ulysses. I recognize that it is a book of genius, i.e. way on out there beyond me). But Proust isn’t like that at all. It’s just beautiful and insightful. Hooray!

bookstore vs library

I’ve got to go with the library.

I am naturally thrifty, nevermind the fact that I am an MCC volunteer right now. And I am also naturally a risk-averse person, so going to the library frees me from the usual risks and benefits that I weigh whenever I hold a bookstore book in my hands. Will the experience of reading it be worth the cost, or will it be squandered money? (Would I have bought Proust? Even second-hand? No.)

But the freedom that I feel in a library goes beyond not being weighed down by financial consequences. When I’m in a library, I feel like the boundaries of my horizon have been pushed back. I am with others and any one of us could at any moment be plunged into greatness. And why? Because we all, as a society, have decided to support each other in this thing. We have decided that we value words, and that they and the knowledge they impart should be accessible to all. Isn’t that beautiful?

(But I’m still glad there are bookstores, especially used ones)

2007-09-26T15:50:00.000+03:00

book vs. movie

Children of Men is a terrible book. Really, I don’t think it was just that I was reading it on the 14 hour bus from Kampala to Nairobi. It is just not good. Good concept. Great concept, really. But extremely unlikable main character (one of those who is intended to be unlikable but then you are supposed to find some good things about him, only I just get MORE annoyed with him as the book goes on), slow plot, and crappy ending.

Children of Men is a wonderful movie. Really. I heard it was coming out and was disappointed – yet another adaptation of a book that doesn’t deserve to be adapted. But I was completely wrong.

The degree to which the book was carelessly written, that is how much care was invested in the move - all of the thought that went into the script and the way that it is filmed, and the commitment of the actors, all of that caring is not in the book. I’m trying to think if there is anything from the book that made it to the movie, other than the very basic premise. None of the main plot points are the same; none of the same characters die; main character has different job, different motivations, different everything other than the fact that he drinks and smokes and wears an overcoat. One of the biggest difference is the larger societal reaction to the fact that humanity has lost the ability to procreate. In the book, one of the main results is that the youngest generation (by the time of the book and movie, the youngest are about 19 years old) being completely amoral and self-obsessed, and thus a threat to society. There is some side discussion about Britain becoming an authoritarian state to keep out refugees (I might be wrong about this – did I mention that when I read the book I was squeezed between a man with one leg on one side and his pair of crutches propped against the window on the other side, while cockroaches crawled over us?). But in the movie, keeping refugees out of Britain and rounding them up is the defining task of the government. Ah, it’s beautiful and thoughtful.

Also, the DVD has a documentary on globalization/capitalism/politics of fear/etc by the director, and it has philosophers and film critics and JAMES LOVELOCK! The Gaia Theory dude!! Seriously!

So, rare event: movie wins out over book!

2007-09-10T13:17:00.000+03:00

The Good

The Fall of Hyperion – Dan Simmons

I decided to get back into spending my Worker Renewal money on books. I had randomly picked out Hyperion from the library a few months ago, and was surprised and pleased with it. Decided to actually purchase the second in the series, and was even more pleased. According to Wikipedia (John looked it up for me), this is sometimes described as a “space opera”. Yeah! In any case, I like it. Plot and character driven, with “science fiction-y” “futuristic” elements that add to the plot and transform the characters, rather than being gimmicks.

Julie & Julia – Julie Powell

Thanks to Hannah Dueck for bringing me this book all the way across the ocean and continents! It is a Really Fun book – I highly recommend it to everyone, but especially people who fall into one of the following categories:
- in their late 20s
- have ovarian cysts
- like to cook/read about cooking attempts
- like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (don’t let this scare you – it’s just that there are lots of glowing references about watching the show. yeah!)

I fall into all of those categories. I loved it! And I get extra points because it is non-fiction – memoir about setting the goal of cooking all of the recipes from Julia Child’s cookbook on French cooking for Americans and writing a blog about it and living in NYC and working for the federal government, etc.

a boy of good breeding - Miriam Toews

Thanks to Tasara Redekop for bringing me this book all the way across the ocean and continents!

My favorite passage about pudding – well, actually about making pudding – of all time. It entirely describes how I feel about it. One mother is giving advice to another:

“You know what you have to do, Knute?” said Marilyn.
“What.”
“You have to learn how to make pudding. It says on the box you have to stir constantly, constantly, and it takes a good twenty or thirty minutes before the stuff boils. So if S.F. is bugging you, you know, asking for this and that, you say, Sorry ma’am, do you want pudding or not? I cannot leave this pudding for a second.”
“Yeah?” said Knute.
“Yeah,” said Marilyn, “it’s great. I make tons of pudding and while I stir I read. Thin, light books ‘cause you only have one hand to hold ‘em. Josh can’t do a thing about it, so he actually amuses himself and I get a decent break. All hell can break loose around me. I don’t care, I’m making pudding.”
“That’s a great idea, Marilyn,” said Knute. “What happens when he gets sick of pudding?”
“I don’t know, I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll think of something when that time comes, though. Something less fattening.”

Endymion – Dan Simmons – The 3^rd book out of a 4 book series takes the premise from the first 2 books and then fast forwards to almost 300 years in the future and continues the story, only of course now it is a different story with a (mostly) different cast of characters. Things have changed drastically over the 300 years, and it is really fascinating what has happened.

But what I find so impressive is that I could start the book, be immediately disappointed to not be able to follow the characters from the first 2 books any further, and then almost just as quickly be once again sucked in to the new set of characters. I really, really am enjoying this series.

Ghost Children – Sue Townsend

Thanks to Tasara for suggesting this book from the library! Really good. Really great characters. Really well written. In a quiet way, very stunning.

But n Ben A-Go-Go – Matthew Fitt

Puggled. Snochterin. Paolo’s broo wis creeshit, the oxters o his battle tunic mawkit wi swite. The craitur’s guff wis on his claes. Owre his hauns. The caircass, no ten yaired doon the brae, wis awready stertin tae ming in the foreninn heat. Paolo’s hert banged at his chist like a steekit nieve. Jammy. He had been that jammy.

That’s a sample paragraph from this book. Set in 2090, global flooding leaving most of Scotland under water, with most people living on floating islands and all sorts of odd things going on that are kind of hard to figure out because holy crap the whole thing is written in Scots.

Published with a subsidy from the Scottish Arts Council, bought by the Ranfurly Library Service, and donated through Book Aid International, somehow this book made its way to the Kenya National Library Service. How weird is that?

Um, intensely weird. At least, it is to me. Someone else checked this book out before me, and I am So Curious about who it was and what they thought.

Overall, yeah a good book. Definitely seemed to me to be more than a gimmick to write in dialect – it was part of the overall storytelling. So that’s good. And Fitt did a good job of keeping old things and adding lots of new things to the way society is run and functions. Better than most of the shite out there being published that takes place in the future. Better than most of the shite that gets donated to the Kenyan public library system.

And...of course...Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
I can't even write about that yet. Give me some time.

2007-08-28T13:29:00.001+03:00

the not-so-good

Continuing from yesterday's post, here is my take on the two books from that list that sort of let me down:

Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem – some dude. Peter somebody.

I’m starting to feel that I may have exhausted the public library. I mean, I’m sure that I haven’t…but still. Sometimes I feel that way. I checked this one out because I’d been at the library for a while without finding anything and my lunch break was almost over. It looked like a potentially good mystery…but then it turned out to be one of those true (I think) historical accounts of murders. Well, if it wasn’t true, then I don’t understand why it was written. And if it was true, then it’s one of those books meant for a specific audience (the people interested in historical accounts of things) and I am not a part of that audience.

Song of Stone – Iain Banks

This guy is really hit or miss with me – either I really love his books, or I just hate them and feel sullied and besmirched afterwards. I pretty much skimmed the last half of the book, because I’d gotten to a point where I was pretty sure it was irredeemable, but I wasn’t sure. It’s a potentially good premise, and then it just crashed and burned. I had to watch an hour of The Backyardigans afterwards - have you heard of that show? John’s parents burned a bunch of episodes onto a DVD and they lent it to me – DANG but I LOVE the Backyardigans! 5 little animals of various cultural and ethnic backgrounds who have adventures in their imaginations each week that always involve songs and dancing - and I have to say the music is really good and so are their little dances. Oh those Backyardigans. They are so…hypnotic. I do not recommend this book. But I do recommend the Backyardigans.

2007-08-27T15:06:00.000+03:00

Summertime, summertime, sum-sum-summertime

Well, the cold season has broken, and after a few rainy days we are moving on in to the hot season. Hooray!

Still haven’t replaced laptop or camera, although plans are in the works for getting a new camera. But in the meantime, yes, I am continuing to read! So let me try to remember the past few months and see if I can reconstruct a list of the good (and not so good) reading times.

Middlemarch – George Eliot
The Fall of Hyperion – Dan Simmons
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – JK Rowling
Julie & Julia – Julie Powell
Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem – some dude. Peter somebody.
The Witches – Roald Dahl
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – JK Rowling
Fantastic Mr. Fox – Roald Dahl
a boy of good breeding - Miriam Toews
Song of Stone – Iain Banks
Endymion – Dan Simmons
Ghost Children – Sue Townsend

All in all, I'd say it's been a pretty good run! Just a few dullards. More details on these books later - I am currently somewhat at work.

2007-06-21T19:25:00.000+03:00

man, it is harder to write things for a blog when your laptop has been stolen

A sad but true statement.

But at least I could drown my sorrow in some good books - working on Julie and Julia, the last of the Dark Tower series, Smilla (yeah, yeah, again), Dance Dance Dance (borrowed from my supervisor. Murakami - apparently the sequal to The Wild Sheep Chase), and Middlemarch.

In a non-committed mood, apparently.

Oh, I finished Foucault's Pendulum (or whatever the heck it is called), and I wrote some semi-thoughtful comments on it, and they are gone, gone, gone with my USB flash drive and my camera and my ability to pridefully boast that i had not yet been robbed in nairobi. well, pride and the fall and all that. but one of the many results is that I am NOT going to write about that book all over again. Sorry.

Tomorrow I'm off to Germany and then Ghana. I like that they both start with a G. I can't think of any other ways that the two are related - can you?

I am going to take Middlemarch with me. I only read it once before, and my memory of it is now a wee bit fuzzy, but I called in sick to work so I could finish it, so I dang well must have loved it. Hooray! I remember thinking it was perfect for anyone who has been or is an idealist. Idealist? is that the word? Yeah. I think so. Anyways, here we go.

Um, I also re-read a Sayers novel - Gaudy Night. Twas lovely, yet again. Even lovelier, because more context for the characters.

2007-05-24T18:01:00.000+03:00

seriously, this book is taking forever

I don’t know. I was roaming the library, and there was a copy of Foucalt’s (Foucult? Foucault. That looks right. I can’t even spell the title. yeesh.) okay, Foucault’s Pendulum that hadn’t been there before. Why did I check it out? Maybe kind of related to me re-reading the Golden Compass trilogy - I wanted to see again why it had failed to click with me. Is it me or the books, and was it a matter of timing; have I changed sufficiently so that now is the time to read this, not then. Anyways, so I checked it out. I seriously do not remember a blessed thing about the book, except that I had kind of skimmed big chunks of it and then felt like maybe i didn’t get it because I hadn’t been paying attention.

Right. So. I am paying attention. Man, this is taking for-fricking-ever. My level of interest has gone up and down. Right now I’d say it is fairly down - plot ain’t moving, just stuck on working out the intricacies of the Templar plot and how the Rosicrucians fit in etc etc... it’s like reading a thesis. A whacked out thesis. A whacked out thesis about something that is uninteresting to me. Anyways, it makes me feel like “Oh, I don’t have the classical education to appreciate this” but then, I don’t know if I care. I’m trying to think - there have definitely been books that made me wish I’d had the classical education to truly appreciate them, but this isn’t one of them.
Well, and I’m only 600 pages into it anyways (sigh). Can’t give up now. My impulse is to skip the exposition and pick out the very small bits of plot - I could finish the thing in an hour or less. But you know, that’s what I did last time. I am attempting to be stubborn on this one.

Um, I don’t know why I’m following up The Famished Road with this thing. The Famished Road, my people, The Famished Road is one of the best books I have ever read and will ever read. It is amazing. Since I moved to Kenya, some books have really knocked the wind out of me - made me sit down and catch my breath because I can’t believe how good they are. Not just that I see things somewhat differently because of the knowledge or point of view of the book - it’s that now the world exists with these books in them, and it is a deeper, richer, better world than I thought. I would say Snow, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Smilla’s Sense of Snow, The Compass Rose, Gaudy Night, The Famished Road, and maybe The Interpreters have done that to me this past year or so. Yeah, some of them were re-readings, but they still did it to me.

I hear Ben Okri’s other books aren’t up to The Famished Road. So maybe that’s why I’m slogging through Foucault’s Pendulum now. Because it’s safe - a re-reading of something that wasn’t terrible the first time but was fairly empty of meaning for me. Want to come down gently off of The Famished Road.

Or maybe it’s just that the Nairobi library really does not have a stupendous collection of books. Well, I shouldn’t complain. It’s not so bad. And anyways, even though I don’t actually usually take principled positions, let alone act upon those principled positions - Not really – with libraries...I am sticking to public libraries. I am not turning to the ones where you have to pay to belong. Oh No, peoples. That just goes against the egalitarian beauty, against the whole point of libraries.

I know Tom Waits isn’t an author and his music isn’t a book, but sometimes I feel like it is anyways
Yep. His sentimental and his creepy are totally my sentimental and my creepy, although sometimes the mix between the two isn’t quite right for me. The album Alice is too extreme - the creepy is actually kind of scares me, and the sentimental is way too maudlin. But Blood Money? Beautiful. Perfection. The problems and the horrors of life looked at squarely without hope of some outside redemption, but including in that gaze the individual wonders and joys of life.
Anyways, no worries, I don’t subscribe to Tom Waits’ personal philosophy of life. I just really appreciate the opportunity to look at the world from his perspective.

small update - since I wrote the above, but before posting this, I have to admit that I started skimming. I don't know...they are figuring out the intricacies of The Plan and I just don't care. So much for stubbornness. Still, I got pretty darn far. For me.

2007-05-04T09:32:00.000+03:00

April is the cruellest month...well, not really. Not in Kenya, at least. Different weather, you know.

The Cat Who Turned On and Off - some author who has sold a lot of books
Why has this series (murder mysteries, always “The Cat Who....”) sold so many books? Well, that is a pointless question. Because lots of folks like to read them. I, for one, have not bought any of the books. And now, having read one, I will continue to not buy any of them. If I need a good mystery, I will not go to this series. Maybe I would have liked it better if I had an affinity to cats, or mustaches, or middle aged male characters with mustaches prefer to date lithe young things at least 20 years younger than themselves.
I reckon I’ve been spoiled by Smilla and those GK Chesterton short stories and Dorothy L. Sayers novels. Ooh! Good mysteries are great; mediocre mysteries are pointless.

Anil’s Ghost - Michael Ondaatje
He wrote The English Patient, and while I don’t really remember the movie, I remember not liking the movie. I mean, it was a good movie, I think, but I didn’t like the characters and I didn’t like what happened to them. So even though it was recommended by Mai-Linh, she-who-recommends-magnificent-books, I just didn’t read it.
Then I was roaming the Literature section of the Library, and this book jumped out at me. I think it probably caught my eye because it’s a paperback with a colored cover, and many of the fiction books are old hardbacks, with the spine taped up with colored ducktape so that one often doesn’t know the titles by just looking. So I innocently checked it out.
The main character is a forensic pathologist who works on sites unearthing and identifying causes of death for victims of human rights violations. The main action takes place in Sri Lanka.
It is. Well. It is...magnificent, and harrowing, and upsetting, and uplifting. So upsetting that at times I didn’t want to keep reading; so well-written and compelling that I couldn’t stop reading.
Sometimes I wonder whether I have changed in the past 14 months, living in Kenya. It’s hard to tell - there’s no one around who knew me pre-Kenya and it’s hard to do self-examination when everyday life takes so much energy. But I can tell some of the ways that I’ve changed by my reaction to certain books and movies. I get upset, and it is different than before. I think in the past I was protected more by my lack of imagination. Or maybe not that, maybe just a comforting sense of distance. But now I don’t feel as much distance - it’s more immediate. It’s more real. Anything to do with political repression, with prison camps, with death. I don’t know why, eh? I mean, Kenya has a turbulent recent history, and there’s plenty of repression (economic and underhandedly political) these days, but I do not personally experience that. But even in my sheltered life here, death and suffering is closer to the surface, closer by to everyday life. So I am experiencing these books more closely, beyond the initial shock. But I think that’s okay. I mean, I don’t feel completely knocked off my bearings by it. A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - I’ve always had a lot of respect for that book, for its story and the telling of the story, but I think this is the first time I’ve really believed it.

Malice Aforethought - Dorothy L. Sayers
Another early Lord Peter Whimsey book, and a darn funny one. I mean, I don’t know if it’s a funny book, but there are a whole lot of funny comments in it. Yeah, I think it is a funny book. Well, and a lovely mystery - more of a classic murder mystery than some of the others, and far more fun and interesting and better written than the classic classic murder mysteries. Yep.

The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman
Um, I don’t know. They are a good read. And I can see why lots and lots of folks love these books. They are well written, and really wildly creative stories that create alternative universes but still manage to be internally consistent, which is always a big plus. My supervisor at work lent them to me. She loves them.
I guess I just don’t take to epics. I don’t know why. With the exception of the Dark Tower series, that’s pretty epic I guess. And all those Clint Eastwood movies. And Harry Potter. But otherwise, I mean, like, the multiple generation stories - I don’t like reading stories that branch over 3 generations and you see the kids grow up and the blah blah blah. I know they are good and worthy to be read. Oh, and the Lord of the Rings. I read those when I was too young, but still. All those battles. Epic fights between good and evil. So maybe it’s the grand scope of these books that I don’t take to.
And when I say I don’t “take” to them, well, this is my second time reading them, and I stayed up way too late last night reading them. So it’s not that I don’t enjoy reading them. I just don’t take to it. I think I get tired of the characters. Lack of attention span? Difficulty staying engaged when there are battle-ish scenes? Definitely difficulty staying engaged during battle scenes. Maybe that’s my problem.
So it’s not the books, it’s me.

The Famished Road - Ben Okri
I never want to not be reading this book.

2007-04-03T11:44:00.000+03:00

it’s still march? dang, this month is long and nonproductive, although i have managed to patch up some of that dissolving quilt, and i’ve watched most of the 2nd season of Lost and went to see some Kenyan modern dance. i wish i’d known ahead of time that that long piece was about HIV/AIDS.
Crimes of Conscience - Nadine Gordimer
When I came to Kenya, I had decided that I would read lots of African fiction, and that i would not read any written by white (African or otherwise) authors.
But then I settled down to just trying to live here, in the extremely sheltered world of Nairobi, and it was hard enough for me that I just couldn’t. I just couldn’t at the end of a day immerse myself in a reality harder and brighter and deadlier and even more confusing, just on the edge of a logic my brain could understand, than the day itself had been. And I couldn’t.
Now I’m settled into my comfortable apartment, with my comfortable amenities, away from the war and destruction, let alone the life of just trying to get by on your 1 acre of land. I’m starting to get a feel for Nairobians, which is different from America for sure, but also quite different from the other 30 million Kenyans.
So then I found myself coming out of the Library with this book of short stories by a white South African who had won the Nobel Prize for Literature at some point. And I read them. And loved them. And am not sure how I feel about being able to live with and relate to White Africans’ literature more easily than the Black Africans’ lit.

Strong Poison - Dorothy L. Sayers
So I didn’t really explain my experience of reading the last Wimsey book - Unnatural Death - it was actually a somewhat upsetting experience as it happened, although in the end I came out okay. So in that book, Wimsey is younger and, as I said, more emotionally guarded, which was somewhat jarring for some reason. And the main characters surrounding the murder are various generations of spinster women who may or may not be in long and short term lesbian relationships. The choices and relationship of the elder generation (the woman whose death is being investigated) seem to be largely respected by the other characters in the book, but the younger generation is portrayed as, well, heartless and cruel or thoughtless and silly. I guess that was somewhat upsetting for two reasons: 1) Here i sit in Kenya, where homosexuality is sternly told that it doesn’t exist and if it does it certainly is illegal, which is upsetting in a similar way that Kenyans’ casual bigotry towards the “Asians” who have lived here for 4 generations turns my stomach; 2) The evil lesbian characters just weren’t as good of characters as one normally encounters in these books. I do appreciate a well rounded character, and these were not quite.
Ultimately, though, as I was saying, I came out okay, I think because I realized that this Wimsey was a different person than in the later books. My whole “Buffy” theory.
So, getting to this book, then, Strong Poison happens between Unnatural Death and the other two I’d read here - Murder Must Advertise and Gaudy Nights. It’s kind of a hinge book, in that Wimsey realizes he wants to change, that he needs to change, and that it is not easy to do so when everything around you has settled snuggly around the shape of your current self. To quote Sayers quoting someone else “Oh I am changing, changing, fearfully changing!”
Which makes me want to be shaken out of my own snug condition, but then that never seems to happen to me because of torrid love affairs, it happens because i do something like showing up for the bar exam on the wrong day. Anyways. It was a good read.

Scribbling the Cat - Alexandra Fuller
It’s nice to sit down and accidentally read a whole book without intending to do so, while it gets dark around you and you realize maybe you are hungry and should eat but then you forget again and just keep reading to the end.
So here we are with another book, taking place in Africa, written by a White African. It’s maybe a tad bit self-conscious in its language, but that’s okay because the story is so breathless.

American Gods - Neil Galman
Yeah, well, I re-read books. And I had somehow used my two book-limit at the library to check out Nadine Gordimer and Ken Saro-Wiwa at the same time, so that left me with really, trust me, nothing to read before sleeping. And I do like this book. It is fun and I like the characters enough that I just roll along with the bits that I think maybe are supposed to be profound and just enjoy them.
I still can’t think of a way to describe this book, though. Easier to just not get started.

2007-03-20T14:42:00.000+03:00

I spent a lot of time in waiting rooms (march)
Well, I had this earache that kept coming back after antibiotics, and I ended up sitting in waiting rooms quite a bit. As a result, I read a lot of UK and Indian gossip magazines. It was a weird experience. All these TV/reality TV/music/movie stars I didn’t know anything about and now I know who they are sleeping with and how they lost 2 stone and how they are taking their significant other’s betrayal with their best friend. I can’t explain why I ended up reading them instead of the work material I always carried with me. Well, yes I can. I felt sorry for myself, sitting in a stuffy waiting room, and feeling sorry for myself is not conducive (for me) to reading work materials. Ah well. Luckily, I’ve also read some good books.

- Murder Must Advertise - Dorothy L. Sayers
Well, I caved in and checked out the one other Sayers book in the library (there are about 5 copies of Gaudy Nights and one copy of Murder Must Advertise. There’s another hardback book about the same size and without a title on the cover that’s always next to the Sayers books, I always get excited and think it’s another Sayers book, and I am always disappointed to rediscover that it is, in fact, a book that’s called something like “Little Native” written in america in the 1950s about a little “native’ boy and his extremely boring adventures). Ooh, I don’t know, I just really dig these Lord Peter Whimsey books. Man! Not just a wry witty mystery, but much more somehow. wooh! Really fun look at the advertising culture back then in England as well as a good plot.

The Executioner’s Song – Norman Mailer
Oh my.
I found this in a used bookstore. The good person Ashlee Albies, back in Portland, had recently read it and had written to me about what a powerful experience it was. I figured maybe I was finally ready for it. It’s a very detailed description of all of the events before, during, and after the murders of 2 people by Gary Gilmore. Gary was famous in the 70s because he insisted on going through with the death sentence instead of appealing to have it reduced to a life sentence.
I guess I never would be ready for this book. But I also am only glad to have read it. At the beginning I read it before bed one or two nights, and I had horrible dreams in which I was part of the working poor in America and hanging out with my friend Britney Spears. They were really depressing dreams. So then I limited when I read the book.

Ficciones – Jorges Luis Borges Short stories.
My first reaction was: I am not smart enough for these stories. But, upon reflection, I have changed my mind. I am not well read enough for Jorges Luis Borges.
I mean, what is going on? I don’t know what is going on.
I can recognize that it is clever, and involves a lot of sly mocking of various literary theories and philosophical ideas, but I don’t know enough to know what those theories and ideas are in the first place. I think Europeans and probably even Canadians and most likely Americans with a certain kind of private education would totally get Borges.
There was one story I liked quite a bit, about a librarian in a universe that consists of countless numbers of cylinders next to each other, of an indeterminable height and depth, consisting of stacks of floors with book shelves, each floor with the same layout, same number of book shelves, same number of books on each shelves, same number of pages and words in each book. Each floor has the bookshelves against the walls of the round room, each floor is essentially a corridor around the edges with nothing in the middle, so that you can see up to the floor above and down to the floor below. Everyone is a librarian.

Green for Danger - Christianna Brand
The Doctor’s office is in the Sarit centre, which is an ex-pat-ish enclave (though not quite as dramatically so as some of the ex-pat shopping centres). I hate going there. But you know, part of me, a small part, also loves it. Ah well, ah well. So, I went to a bookstore while I was waiting for my appointment, and because I was feeling sorry for myself because my ear hurt and I was stuck at Sarit, and because this book was discounted to 200 shillings, I bought it. It is part of a British series of “classic crime novels”, and I was interested to read it because 1) it is a crime novel written by a British woman; 2) it was written and published during WWII, and the story is set in war-time England. I figured it would be interesting to read something written at a time when it was not clear if and when the war would end.
And it was more or less interesting. You know, not fascinating, and a bit too much descriptions of people like “He was a tall, striking fellow, shy but self-confident”. Not particularly that, but that sort of description.
In retrospect, it was not necessarily worth 200 shillings. But then again, at the time it definitely filled a need, or at least a perceived need, so ultimately I do not regret the whole incident.

An Unnatural Death - Dorothy L. Sayers
huzzah! found more Dorothy L. Sayers 2 shelves over from the other 2 books I knew the library had. So of course I checked one out right away. Wheee!!
So, super interesting: This is one of the earlier Lord Peter Wimsey books (well, I don’t know about the order in which they were written, but in the chronological sequence of the books, it is early). His character is quite changed by the time of the later books, like Gaudy Night. It’s clearly still him, but as time goes on he becomes less flippant, less prone to have war-flashbacks, and more able to open himself emotionally. And these are Murder Mysteries! Man! I am just LOVING this whole series!
You know, it’s kind of like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the TV series) in that way –the characters are impacted and affected by the experiences they go through and the relationships they form. They are still recognizably themselves, but they change. And we are, in turn, changed ourselves.
So there. Stop making fun of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

2007-03-20T09:54:00.000+03:00

February is nice and quiet

- One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
This really is an amazing book. So concise and well told. I don’t know why I’m more interested in political camps now that I’m in Kenya. Maybe because there is such a recent history of extreme political repression here.
Am I expressing sufficiently how grateful I am that this book exists? It is beautiful and full of truth. Whew. It’s just so good.

- The Professor and the Madman
I went through so many feelings towards this book! I started it way back when I was in Kahawa Sukari (I got it at a yardsale at a missionary school), and I had to stop after a while because I found it so upsetting! Then last week I picked it back up and couldn’t figure out for the life of me why I would have found it so upsetting because it was interesting and engaging...And then I got really sad and bitter by the end of it. So I’m just not sure what to make of it. The sad and bitter part i think mostly had to do with being extremely tired and coming down off of the World Social Forum adrenaline. So, yeah. Story of the Oxford English Dictionary. Interesting. I guess? Non-fiction, so we can chalk up one more paltry mark on the non-fiction side of the F. vs. N-F. scoreboard.

- The Compass Rose – Ursula K. LeGuin
I remember checking this out from a library in Portland, and just not connecting with the stories (book of short stories). The first story slowed me down and I didn’t recover from that.
So, I was excited that the library here had an Ursula book, but a bit disappointed that their one book was this one.
Well, then I checked it out and then I started reading and just could not put the book down, except that i had to at the end of each story because I felt so full and heavy with emotion and some kind of vague sense of epiphany.

- Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
It’s good, but somehow it lacks something. Similar back and forth between two stories that come together as in Hard Boiled Wonderland...but doesn’t do quite as much for me. But then, you know, I already knew that and I bought it (!) anyways, because it was at a used bookstore, and what are the chances of finding any used Murakami in Nairobi anyways? So no regrets. It’s still a dang good book.

2007-02-26T11:47:00.000+03:00

I moved! and I have a library card! and I work a block from the Kenya Reference and Lending Library! (January)
I feel so much more secure now that I have a library card and easy access to a library.
- the Stepford Wives -
Do you remember who wrote this? I don’t. Short and creepy. Really well done creepy. I didn’t see the new movie, but i know that it ends well and not all the women are murdered, so i don’t approve of it.
Whatever happened to the 1960s, when books and movies put forth stories with situations that didn’t end well, and they left it at that. I mean, sometimes things don’t end well. And most of the time they don’t end all happy or even end at all. Ooh. Now i feel like watching Bullitt. Steve McQueen!
- the Interpreters - Wole Soyinka
Sadly, this is the only Soyinka book that I can find in the library. Probably I need to look more - the other day i spotted 3 harry potter books - each one was the Prisoners of Azkaban book, and each one was in a different place on the “literature” shelf. One of them was right next to a treatise on socialism or something like that. Ah, the library. Anyways, this is the first book by an African author that i’ve read while in Kenya that I really enjoyed reading. Maybe because it takes place in Nigeria and not Kenya? I don’t know. But I really really enjoyed it - I really liked how it was written, and the characters are unique and believable and go through changes. I’m a fan! Wish they had more than one rotting copy (literally) of one book by Soyinka.
- Gaudy Night - Dorothy L. Sayers
Yeah! I just LOVE Dorothy L. Sayers! Lord Peter Whimsy mysteries! I just love them. According to my sources who went to Wheaton College, Sayers was Christian. So hooray for a Christian author who wrote excellent, character driven mystery novels and didn’t ever bang anyone on the head with theology! Also, this is a particularly good one, i thought. Really interesting. Especially if you’ve read other Lord Peter Whimsy mysteries.
And I would say it was that much more enjoyable and satisfying of a read because I found it at the library here, after wishing I could find some D. Sayers for about a year.
- Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami
Yes, one of my favorites by far. Absolutely. Why do I love it? Oh, man. See, I’m not a Great Reader. I’m not an analyzer, really, and I’m not a deeper person for most of my reading. Mostly I read for the emotional response, for the very tangible and physical sensation that reading gives me (i hear reading for pleasure releases similar chemicals as Ecstasy in the brain of some folks, and if it does, then i am definitely one of those folks), for the sensation of being swept off my feet and not knowing where the current is taking me (and oh but Murakami is SO GOOD for that) and also for small small expansions of my very guarded and tightly wound universe. Because it’s hard for me to get out of the universe in my head (and maybe the books are partly to blame for that), and books - well written books - help me see out and expand my own paltry universe.
So, yeah, this book. This book most of the time you are being rushed along two parallel tracks and you don’t know where you are going. Then they merge and you still don’t know where you are going. And then it ends, and there’s this wonderful sensation of stopping and looking around and you aren’t sure where you are, but it sure is different from where you started and that alone is enough for me.
~~~official shout out to sasha for sending me his copy~~~
- Memory - Margaret Mahey
Thanks to Mai-Linh Hong for getting me started on Margaret Mahey. She writes such wonderful adolescent fiction, with messed up teenagers who have believably complicated and extraordinarily messed up families and situations. And most of the books take place in her home country of New Zealand, which is quite interesting. This one is not her best, but it’s still a great story.

2007-02-26T11:43:00.000+03:00

working at ACORD, living at the Guesthouse and having a grumpy commute (December)
- The Wanderers - I forget the author. This is one of those Newberry Award books. It was at the Guesthouse library. I have to say - better than i would have thought! made me cry.
- The Dark Tower: Wizard and Glass - Stephen King
Okay, part of me is embarrassed to admit that I’ve been reading this Stephen King series. The Wizard and Glass is what, the 4th? I think it’s the 4th. John has been reading the series, and then I bum them off of him. This was the best so far, but almost painful to read b/c you know it’s going to end badly somehow. Overall, I am enjoying the Dark Tower series. I mean, the central character is a Gunslinger, and however much i may disagree with the messages of those spaghetti westerns, i do enjoy Clint Eastwood. And I like the idea of how he’s constructed overlapping worlds and times that can interact. well, it’s fun to go along for the ride. Also, these do not fall under the “horror” category.
- 3rd Harry Potter -
The Mennonite Guesthouse library has it. Such a good one!
- The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana - Umberto Eco
Well, i spent money on this. I usually spend my 15 USD of “worker renewal” money on books. It’s my new luxury in kenya. I mean, I never ever bought new books in the US, but now sometimes I will here in Nairobi. So I bought this book NEW, because the back cover sounded just perfect for me. And i mean, i appreciated The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum (okay, actually i don’t remember Foucault’s Pendulum at all. read it one summer during college, i think? vague, vague impressions). right, so i vaguely remember appreciating them, definitely didn’t get them per se - i mean, don’t know enough history or philosophy or physics to get them - but i enjoyed the Name of the Rose (that was during Portland, during the brief spell when i lived by myself. maybe it was a month? not even. but i sure did read that book. yep.) but still, i had this very strong feeling that there could be another Eco book that i would enjoy more. Like, another plot would do better for me. Well, that other book is not this book. It was a disappointment for me. Though i did learn more about Italy under fascism. Don’t think about that on an every day basis.

2007-02-26T11:24:00.000+03:00

guesthouse days (October)
- Snow - Orhan Pamuk
I’ve already raved about this. I know he’s a very controversial figure in Turkey, and I am not saying that I was totally agreeing with everything that he sort of celebrates in the book. But I am saying that it is a beautiful book. Beautiful in its poetry and its depth and its characters. The kind of beauty that makes me feel better about the world if someone can write a novel like this.
- Tales from a Thousand and One Nights
Oh MAN! Did you know that Aladdin (with his magic lamp and all) is from CHINA? Yes, China. Also great stories like “The Historic Fart,” and countless instances of everyday mores and systems being turned on their head completely. Wow. A really fun and disorienting experience. Jim, my Country Representative, borrowed it and said he stopped reading it after the first 3 stories because they were “All the same.” We disagree on that point.
- Islam: A Short History - Karen Armstrong
I read the forward and had to lie down because i was reeling. Or maybe I was already lying down. In any case, I reeled. All sorts of historical and modern, political and social pieces started to fall into place. Why didn’t I know this stuff before?
The beginning and end of the book were the knock-out bits for me, but the rest (it really is a “short” history of islam, which i appreciated) was engaging and really drew me along as well.
- Voyages of Dr. Doolittle - Hugh Lofting
Hmm, apparently continuing my trend of reading books that include extremely Broad and quite Ridiculous caricatures of “other races.” Not as good as the initial Dr. Doolittle book, but with some good bits and sadly also some uncomfortable bits. According to the forward, the editors cleaned it up so as to make it less racist. At least traveling in a giant snail across the ocean floor and having a duck as a housecleaner - these are good things.
- Stamboul Train - Graham Greene
A really well constructed and well told story of what happens during a 3 day train ride from, ...oh, i forget where...to Istamboul. I hadn’t read any Graham Greene, so when things turn Upsetting I was totally taken by surprise, and ended up being all disturbed afterwards and dwelling on the characters and the events (and had to follow it up right away with the next book). Written back in the days when Jews were another “race.” Yes, those days. The fact that one of the main characters is Jewish is a major part of the book, as far as his motivations and physicality and also the way that the other characters react to him. It gets Extremely Old Very Quickly.
- The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Nonracist animals! These are the animals we like. Sure, the weasels and the stoats aren’t reliable, but even Rat is on friendly speaking terms with them most of the time. I’ve always liked this one, but with this reading what really popped for me was that the characters are extremely sympathetic and relatively complex, and also there is a very internally consistent set of mores by which the animal kingdom operates. Man, I certainly appreciate an internally consistent constructed world.
- Fasting, Feasting - Anita Desai
Oh, it’s good, it’s just upsetting. Or maybe it was upsetting because of my state of mind when i read it. Really vibrant characters that shine out of relations of every-day life in India and America, but I missed the “subtle humor” that the back cover promised - it was just depressing to me.

2007-02-26T11:18:00.000+03:00

mysteries on the beach (October)
- Brother Cadfael (3 mysteries) - Ellis Peters
Medieval monk who grows medicinal herbs in the monastery, used to be part of the Crusades, and now solves mysteries. You know, if you read 3 of these in a row, you can start kind of predicting what’s going to happen. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of Brother Cadfael, but in the future I will take my time in between reading them.

- Farewell, My Lovely - Raymond Chandler
I was going to highlight this one, but I just can’t because the beginning is So Disturbingly Racist it’s hard to stomach. After the first 20 pages or so, there aren’t any more black people in it, and it turns into a really interesting and complex hardboiled detective story. Really excellent plot construction and I totally get into the writing even though a lot of it seems quite ridiculous on its own. The man likes his metaphors. But the beginning...it is not a pretty thing.

- Burglars Can’t Be Choosers - Lawrence Block
Used bookstore! There’s a fairly good used bookstore here in Nairobi, at one of the ex-pat malls that make me fairly nauseous. Anyways, I was worried I wouldn’t have enough books from the guesthouse library to take on vacation, so I hit up the used bookstore. I had read some of these burglar books before - the main character is a burglar who is a likeable chap, and in the later books is an ex-burglar who runs a used bookstore. Well, this is the first of the books, and it’s just not quite as good. Burglar isn’t quite as entirely likeable. But still, not bad.

2007-02-26T11:10:00.000+03:00

books during stressful times in Kahawa Sukari (June, July, August, September)

- Outcast - Rosemary Sutcliffe

- The Giver - Lois Lowry
I didn’t read this as a child, and I can’t imagine how I would have taken it then. I first read it in Montreal, when I was staying with Rebecca for the summer during law school. Oh MAN it’s so well done. I love books that create scenarios with slightly alternate realities and then explore them in a way that delves into aspects of human nature.
That was a stupid sentence I just wrote. But it’s still true. Like Ursula K. LeGuin. Man, when I read her books I remember why “science fiction” has the power to change a reader’s reality.

- The Bridge - Ian Banks
Banks wrote the Wasp Factory, which I don’t recommend - it’s a masterful book that is a scarring experience to read and, really, you don’t need to go through it. I know I didn’t. (Actually, my housemate in Portland, Joanna, had introduced me to his book Crow Road, and it was just lovely. So I kept ordering Wasp Factory from the Portland library to my branch, picking it up and immediately putting it in the “return” chute because it looked too disturbing. But I kept being drawn to it. Anyways, as I said, it’s really well imagined and pieced together and told, but not something I would recommend).
So, this one is a masterful book too, and I really enjoyed it for the most part. I wouldn’t recommend it widely because it does have some disturbing scenes, but I really liked the weaving together of realities (main character has a car accident and wakes up on the Bridge as an amnesiac patient in a socially stratified society that isn’t aware of a reality beyond the Bridge).

- Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
I still prefer When We Were Orphans and Remains of the Day. If I was comparing this one to those books, I wouldn’t be bolding it. But comparing it to other books in the world, it’s way up there. I mean, it’s an Ishiguro book, and dang but he knows what he is doing. He creates a world just a bit different, just a slight difference, and explores its implications beautifully.

- Miss Smilla’s Feeling For Snow - Peter HØEG
so good. This is the British translation of Smilla’s Sense of Snow. Maybe it was the first translation? The whole book isn’t as different as the title (this title is closer to the Danish title...based on my excellent Danish reading skills), but there definitely are some different word choices and even changes of tense that creates a slightly different experience.
Still the most absorbing and engaging book for me. The first time I read Smilla I was in my first semester of law school. The day I finished reading it, I looked out the window and I knew that, not only was I different, but the world was different. It was a world with this book in it, with these characters, with this level of storytelling. It stretched my expectations for literature and for myself.

- Father Brown - G.K. Chesterton
No, seriously, do you know about these stories? I sure didn’t. They are So Good!! Father Brown is an English Anglican priest and he solves mysteries of a sort. What a great character! My new favorite religious crime-solving character.

- Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Still good. A slightly different experience for me each time I read it. Sometimes I’m annoyed with some of the characters, sometimes I’m just swept away. I think this time I was just numb in general.

- The Stand - Stephen King
Well, I’ll say this. I was really, really stressed out and low when I read this, and I read it Very Quickly. And it is Long. And I am quite grateful that I had it during that time, because if I hadn’t had a 1700 page book to read that week I might have just fallen apart all together.
That said, my standards for post-apocalyptic scenarios has been set far higher now that I live in east Africa. King’s depiction of an America whose population has been decimated by a government designed plague doesn’t cut it.

2007-02-26T11:07:00.000+03:00

books during language study (May)

- Kneeknock Rise - Natalie Babbitt
- Rubiayat - Omar Khayyam

- Eva Luna - Isabel Allende
This was a thin time for books. But wow-ie, this sure was a fun one! I love the characters and the atmosphere of the book, and the idea that we can remake reality with our narrative abilities.

- Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
More disturbing than I thought it would be.

2007-02-26T10:58:00.000+03:00

books while i kept thinking “Oh My! I Am In Kenya!” (March, April)

- The Wedding Goes On Without Us - Ray Downing
This is the first book that I read in Kenya. The author reflects on experiences in his on-going journey of attempting to practice “poverty medicine,” in New York City, rural Appalachia, Kenya, Sudan, and Tanzania. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in reflecting upon what it means to truly engage in their chosen profession, and especially for those who are working in any kind of cultural setting other than the one in which they grew up.

- The Constant Gardener - John LeCarre
No, I didn’t see the movie. I’ll probably read it again some point down the line, now that I’m more familiar with Nairobi and Kenya, since apparently that’s one of the great things about it. Well, I thought it was an interesting plot.

- Wangaari Maathai’s Green Belt Book
Not really worth reading. But I hear the new autobiography is better.

- Stone for a Pillow - Madeleine L’Engle

- Grain of Wheat - Ngugi Wa Thiongo

- She Ate of the Female Cassava

- The Spiral Staircase - Karen Armstrong

- The Book of Flying - Keith Miller

2007-02-23T14:12:00.000+03:00

and now i've started a blog, but all my postings are not on this computer. so i'll just have to get on that next week when i'm back in the office. hmm. not a very auspicious start to a blog.

2007-02-23T12:26:00.000+03:00

I don’t know why i’m starting ANOTHER blog. it’s not like i’m doing a great job of keeping up on the first one. but this is something i actually have been writing to myself about, and thought i might share. BOOKS! books that i’ve read during my time in kenya. i don’t know why i started doing this. but i’m glad i have. it isn’t all the books i read, but it’s most of them i reckon. i think having a library card got me all excited about keeping track of them again, and initially i was excited about keeping track because the books i read were some of the only things that were life-giving in my life.

bold are books that i really loved.
italicized are books that i was re-reading.

what do you think of these books? have any books you’d like to recommend to others? me, i like knowing the books that people are reading. so what books are you reading?