Via A Bluestocking Knits (which was via Mason-Dixon Knitting) I have discovered a blog that is all about memes about books. I enjoyed reading other people’s responses so I decided to do it too. This week’s is about how you take care of your books.
What kind of care do you take of your books? Let’s review, shall we?
I recently finished reading Ian McEwan’s Atonement, which I really enjoyed. In lieu of an actual contentful post, here’s a passage from the book that I found very evocative.
She was walking under a bridge as a train passed overhead. The thunderous, rhythmic rumble reached right into her bones. Steel gliding and thumping over steel, the great bolted sheets of it high above her in the gloom, an inexplicable door sunk into the brickwork, mighty cast-iron pipework clamped in rusting brackets and carrying no one knew what–such brutal invention belonged to a race of supermen.
I like that a lot.
I went to see The Departed on Friday evening. It was really excellent. I agree with most of Matt Yglesias’s review; unlike many, I enjoyed Jack Nicholson’s hamminess, and I thought the final scene was perfectly plausible (at least, as plausible as anything else in the movie). The final shot (of the rat against the statehouse) was maybe a bit much.
I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t recognize the police shrink, since all the rest of the characters were very well-known actors. Turns out she is relatively new; great performance from her. The scenes where Matt Damon is wooing her are some of the most delightful parts of the movie.
Finally, I really appreciate movies that can manipulate my emotions without making me groan afterwards. This one has portions that honestly are sad or hilarious; not too much blatant manipulation.
Definitely recommended.
Friday evening Tim and I went to see The Pillowman at the St. Louis Rep. From the description on the site:
In a totalitarian state, a young man—butcher by day, aspiring writer by night—is detained and faces an interrogation by a cruel, corrupt detective about the gruesome content of his lurid fairy tales, the plots of which bear striking similarities to a number of horrific child murders happening in his town.
Based on that description, I was a little worried that the play would be too disturbing for me, but I decided to go because it was supposed to be really good. It turned out to be excellent.
The play is really about storytelling - it turns out that the main character filters his life through his stories, and gains courage from telling them. As the play unfolds, we discover that all the characters are storytellers in some way or another.
The set design reflects the themes of the play. The “real life” scenes are set in an interrogation room, which is completely utilitarian, featuring only a table, chairs, and filing cabinet on an essentially bare stage. But these scenes are interspersed with scenes of the main character telling his stories. The rear of the stage becomes another stage, framed with what looks like a decoration on a storybook. The sets for the stories are colorful and stylized, with bold lines and exaggerated angles. The actors are also dressed colorfully, and act out the stories with exaggerated motions as the writer tells them. The contrast works very well.
Quite a bit of meta is to be expected with a story about storytelling. One bit in particular made me laugh. The main character is telling a story to his mentally-handicapped brother, who interrupts to ask what aggravated means. The storyteller says it means annoyed or irritated and goes on. While I can’t be totally sure, I think this is a dig at overly-prescriptive editors, who insist (based on questionable etymology) that aggravate should only be used to mean worsen, with irritate reserved to mean annoy. (Note that the first page of Google results for “aggravate irritate” consists almost entirely of style guides making this prescription, with only one link referring to the actual etymology and supporting the use of aggravate for annoy. Linguists agree.)
The only criticism I had also involves the use of language; while I generally have no issue with the appropriate usage of Anglo-Saxon profanity, I don’t understand why fuck had to be used in what often seemed like every sentence, frequently many times per sentence. I can only assume that this was also some sort of statement, as no other words were overused to that extent, but I don’t get it.
Overall, it was a great production, and if anybody in St. Louis has a chance to check it out I’d recommend it.
At Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen asks why we usually read books in chunks and rarely do the same with movies. I think the explanation is partially that books are longer, and partially habit - we frequently see people with bookmarks, and rarely see people pause movies for longer than it takes to go to the bathroom.
I’ve found, however, that breaking this habit is quite freeing. I’ve only done so recently, following a conversation about Netflix utilization. I remarked that I used Netflix mostly to watch TV shows on DVD, because an hour-long TV show is exactly the length of time I usually want to spend sitting on the couch watching TV (42-55 minutes without commercial breaks). I find it difficult to sit still for longer than that*, plus I am rarely willing to block out two hours of my evening for media consumption. (When I’d first moved to DC and didn’t know anyone, I watched a lot of movies, but when I have a social network and other stuff to do, I don’t have that kind of time in the evenings.)
The person I was talking to pointed out that there’s nothing stopping me from watching movies in hour-long chunks. I don’t think I’d ever considered this before, but it sounded like a good idea. So far the only movie I’ve watched this way is Kinsey, which was very good. I don’t think it suffered from being split down the middle - it was engaging enough that I remembered what had happened in the first part, but not so much that it was hard to stop watching in the middle. I think I’ll continue doing this with other dramas that aren’t super heavy, as well as comedies and documentaries. Thrillers or psychological dramas probably won’t work. And the movies have to be ones Tim doesn’t want to see, because we share the Netflix subscription.
I’m really glad my friend suggested doing this, because it should let me see many more movies than I would be able to if I stuck to watching them all at once. In particular, movies that I’m not sure I want to devote a whole evening to, but can easily watch 45 minutes of as a study break.
*Actually, I can easily sit and read for longer than an hour. Movies usually make me either squirmy or sleepy, either of which interferes with watching. A good novel can hold my attention for much longer, but even though I’m a fast reader, I still can rarely finish an adult-length book at one sitting.
I’ve been tagged by Adrienne. This is going to be kind of embarrassing.
1. One book that changed your life?
I had a really hard time thinking of an answer to this question. Several books have contributed to my belief system, and some have been very important to me, but most of the time I seek out books that have to do with something I’m already interested in; they rarely blindside me.
But there is one that I could honestly say changed my life, and it’s not at all in the way it was supposed to. Sometime when I was a teenager, I read one of those execrable Chicken Soup for the Soul books that featured people’s encounters with angels. All of the people felt very touched by their experiences and strongly believed that they had met angels. But they were from various religious (and nonreligious) backgrounds, many of their beliefs conflicted, and a lot of the stories didn’t make much sense. It was like reading ghost stories. Clearly not all of these people could actually have encountered angels, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought all of the experiences were probably unreflective of objective reality. It sounds strange, but I think that was the first time I realized that people can strongly believe they have experiences that aren’t actually real. It was the start of a fine life as a skeptic.
2. One book you have read more than once?
I have four shelves of fiction in my living room, and I’ve read about half those books more than once. I’m a comfort reader. To pick one: Tolkien’s The Hobbit.
3. One book you would want on a desert island?
Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card. I thought about trying to pick a longer or more substantive one, but I already know that this book makes a good companion. I first read it when I was spending a month in Munich, staying with a host family and studying with a class including hardly anyone I knew. I was lonely and homesick, and reading it took me away and kept me sane.
4. One book that made you cry?
Oh man, there are so many. I’ll say Watership Down. Animals get me every time.
5. One book that made you laugh?
Cheaper by the Dozen, by Frank Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey. It’s really not at all similar to the stupid Steve Martin movie by the same name; it’s a memoir and it’s hilarious. I highly recommend looking for it.
6. One book you wish had been written?
How about a well-edited medical review book, free of typos and mistakes? Any subject, I’m not picky. I’m currently trying to study from the most popular pharmacology review (which I won’t name) and I am not impressed.
7. One book you wish had never been written?
Hm… Robin Cook should have stopped writing books a decade or so ago (or hired a better editor). Though the last one I read did provide fodder for mocking.
8. One book you are currently reading?
I’m partway through Neuromancer, by William Gibson. Not loving it, but what kind of geek would I be without reading it? Also Queen’s Ransom, by Fiona Buckley, third in a series of mysteries set in the court of Queen Elizabeth I. Good cozy historical mystery; not demanding in any way, but well-written and with interesting period details.
9. One book you have been meaning to read?
Pride and Prejudice. And I really am going to finally read it now - I got a copy for my birthday (thanks sisters)! I’ll start it once I finish my mystery. And, uh, Robbins’s Pathology. We’ll see how that one goes.
I know I’m supposed to tag people but I don’t know who to pick. Sisters, you interested?
At least three times in the past week, I’ve turned the car radio to NPR and been stuck listening to talk about The Da Vinci Code. I don’t get it. It’s a bad movie based on a worse book. What’s to talk about?
Evidently a lot of people think the book is an important expose of Church teachings. I don’t know if these people didn’t notice that it was in the Fiction section, or what, but just because ignorance is widespread doesn’t seem to me to be a reason for NPR to waste airtime on it. Perhaps they’ve decided to try appealing to the masses rather than the elites? If so I’ll start listening to the classical station.
I’m fairly sure that the Ugg boots trend is one that I will never join, because even now my first association with Uggs is not some trendy celebrity or fashionable classmate, but Rush Limbaugh, who I clearly remember shilling for the boots in the mid-nineties.
Not sure what that says about me, but I’m fairly sure it’s something that Ugg wouldn’t like me saying about their boots.
I’m not sure what the reviewers and the gay community are smoking, but Brokeback Mountain isn’t a love story. It’s a tragedy.
As someone who’s frequently disappointed with the heterosexism of the mainstream media, who wishes that a broader spectrum of human experience would be presented for those who don’t fit the standard mold and for those who need to understand that others don’t, I was really looking forward to this movie. A mainstream homosexual love story - with cowboys, no less? What a wonderful step in the right direction.
Unfortunately, I was disappointed. It was an excellent movie, don’t get me wrong - all the praise you read about the windswept scenes, the perfect performances, the exquisite depiction of forbidden love is all on target. (Though I do wish Heath Ledger had mumbled a bit less - his spot-on portrayal of a laconic cowboy was slightly marred by the fact that I often couldn’t understand him.)
But the movie is not a love story. Yes, the love between the two men is central to the story, but both men neglect their families and their work. Ennis del Mar’s wife finally divorces him and evidently finds happiness elsewhere, but not until she’s lived through years of disappointment and sadness, and their children have witnessed fights and their father’s willingness to take time off from work to go on “fishing trips” but not to spend time with them. The two men are never able to be together on any sort of permanent basis, and eventually Jack Twist is brutally killed.
Of course, a large amount of the tragedy is a result of homophobia - they didn’t really have the option to make the choices that might have made them happy, and the culture they lived in pushed them into marrying and procreating with women they evidently couldn’t love. And obviously Jack’s death is completely due to violent homophobia. The film gives a glimpse, as Andrew Sullivan puts it, of “the damage done to so many lives by the powerful, suffocating evil of homophobia.”
But despite the tragic circumstances in which the characters found themselves, I can’t quite buy that all of the results are ascribable simply to homophobia. No, there weren’t really any good options open to them, but I guess I hold the old-fashioned belief that once you’ve married someone and had kids with them, you have to do the honorable thing and stick it out, or at least end it in the least painful manner possible. Rushing off with the person you really love a few times per year isn’t OK, at least not when it makes your spouse miserable and keeps you from fulfilling your obligations to your family.
Dale Carpenter has a really excellent article, in which he makes a similar argument to mine (except much more eloquently).
The film speaks powerfully to the sense of lost love and opportunity every closeted gay person must feel. “Heartbreaking” is not too strong a word to describe the loss this film confronts us with. But it’s difficult to buy the widespread idea that the love between Jack and Ennis is an unvarnished good thing made tragic only by a homophobic world.
…
But the deeper reason their love doesn’t completely register is that every time they go off together one is left wondering, what about the kids? What Ennis and Jack experience as an exhilarating liberation from the mundane and the stifling is for their families an abandonment. Ennis at least talks about living up to his familial obligations, but in truth he’s checked out of them almost from the start.
(The whole thing is really worth a read.)
I really hate agreeing with Focus on the Family, but this is pretty close to what my reaction was:
“If you read what Hollywood is saying about it, they’re calling it ‘an achingly beautiful love story,’ ” Price said.“But I don’t see it that way at all. You see two characters obsessed with a type of bondage that they don’t know what to do with. They don’t know where it came from, and they don’t know how to resolve it. And they both end up experiencing tragic consequences in their lives.”
That’s the film I saw.
And that’s why I was disappointed. Rather than an uplifting love story, we got a tragedy that plays right into the hands of the people who think that gay people are hedonistic homewreckers, and homosexuality is a one-way ticket to unhappiness and despair.
On the other hand, I think my expectations were unfair. It isn’t right to expect particular members of oppressed groups to serve as paragons, and it’s no more fair to expect a film to act as an ambassador for acceptance just because it’s one of the first to feature homosexual lead characters. And I don’t think the parts that bothered me are any worse than what’s often found in movies featuring heterosexual love interests - certainly when I saw Walk the Line a few months ago, I couldn’t be very happy for Johnny Cash and June Carter, given what I’d seen happen to his first wife and children. Singling Brokeback Mountain out for painting an unflattering picture of gay people makes no more sense than claiming Walk the Line gives a bad impression of heterosexuals.
Brokeback Mountain isn’t a gay love story, any more than Romeo and Juliet is a teenage love story. It’s a tragedy with gay protagonists; an extraordinary story featuring characters who aren’t. It might not be the film I was hoping to see, but it does a wonderful job of being the film that it is.
Last night Tim and I went to see I Am My Own Wife at the St. Louis Rep. (I got free tickets through a class I’m taking.) I enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s a one-actor play about the semi-true story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a transvestite who lived in East Berlin through both Nazi and Communist rule. I’d never seen a one-man play before; in high school and college drama departments the rule seems to be to choose shows with as many characters as possible to let everyone participate. I was worried that it would be excessively arty and difficult to follow, but it worked very well. I never had trouble figuring out which character was speaking; it helped that the actor did different accents for most of the characters, but the body language was very important too. And the minimalism of the set worked in the play’s favor - there wasn’t anything around to distract.
Since the play is set in Germany, there was a fair amount of German worked into the dialogue, and I enjoyed that, especially when I could catch the jokes sooner. I was especially impressed that the actor did multiple accents in German, not just in English. There were quite a few things that were amusing to a speaker of both languages, mostly the sad attempts of the Americans to speak German. Also, the title character had a habit of saying “became” when she meant “received” (e.g., “He died and I became his furniture”), which I thought was funny because I used to make the opposite mistake: in German, bekommen means to receive, while werden means to become. So learners of German often (incorrectly) use bekommen in sentences about things like what they’d like to be when they grow up, where werden would be correct. I’d never noticed a German-speaker doing that, but I assume the real-life Charlotte von Mahlsdorf must have and that’s why it was in the play.