Books, Books and More Books and One Movie
I've been reading a lot lately-and I managed to squeeze in quite a few books over Christmas, despite all the shopping (a new resale store opened in East Lansing and it's really good) all the cookie making (my sister and I made four different kinds of cookies) and all the other things I had to do.
1) I re-read Traveling With the Dead on my way there-and I had PLENTY of time to do it as, due to mechanical difficulties, my original plane was delayed so much that I didn't take and had to leave the next day. Let me just say, United-you suck. It's amazing I finally made it there, although I missed the concert (that was my idea, thank you very much). So, I read Traveling With the Dead-it's just as well-written as I remembered and I enjoyed it.
2) I read the two Lee Child books I had been saving-Without Fail and Nothing to Lose. I liked them but I can't say they were the best in the series-I didn't like them as much as Persuader or the one where Reacher's old Army gang gets together to avenge their friends deaths. Still, they were fun and entertaining.
3) The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
This was a great book. A disgraced reporter is asked to investigate a 40 year-old disppearance. His investigation and involvement with a young researcher (who is both prone to violence, although never without reason, and has the dragon tattoo) starts out on one level and quickly moves to something deeper. I suspected the denouement from the beginning but it still turned out to be a bit worse than I thought. It's very well-written (and the translation by a Brit is very good) and it gave me the creeps-I liked it.
4) Thunderstruck
Also a great book-tying together Marconi's invention of the wireless radio and the capture of Crippen in 1910-the first time a wireless radio was used to call ahead to nab a criminal. Tying the two together was genius-and the author goes into just enough detail on each to make it interesting (and I loved it when he mentioned the Heaviside Layer, which I had first read about in Declare) but not so much that it bogged down. It was really good.
5) American Lightning.
Oy. Maybe it's because I read it right after Thunderstruck that I wasn't impressed by this book. I read an excerpt in Vanity Fair and it seemed to have my name all over it-the early days of American Cinema, early labor unrest, resulting in the bombing of the LA Times, the man called the Amercan Sherlock Holmes-William J Burns, the man who was the first head the soon-to-be FBI (he resigned in disgarce and his chief assistant took his job-J. Edgar Hoover) and Clarence Darrow. However-it was boring. The author tries hard to tie these diverse elements together-Darrow, Burns and Labor are all involved in this case-but it doesn't work. What is DW Griffith doing here? He's a fascinating character and he brings life to each scene he's in but there's not that much of a reason for him to be here. And there's a good story here, make no mistake, but the writing is muddy and annoying.
6) The Girl in the Glass
I'm still not sure why I put The Girl in the Glass into my bag of books. I think it was underneath Thirteen (which I didn't get a chance to read) so I just tossed it in as an afterthought. This was a great book. A marvelous book. It was haunting (both literally and figuratively), funny and touching. A 17 year-old Diego lives with Thomas Schell and Antony Cleopatra (who took his name from a theater marquee). The three of them together make a living fleecing the rich of the Gold Coast of Long Island during the Great Depression. They hold seances designed to separate the rich from their money-until Schell sees what he says is a real ghost-a little girl in a glass window (at an inconvienent time, in the middleish of a seance). What happens will change all their lives. Diego must grow up, Schell must decide what he really wants from life (is he really ruthless enough to be a good con artist?) and Antony doesn't really decide-choices are pushed upon him. The butterfly metaphor is perhaps a little heavy-handed (Yes, we get that Diego is a catapillar and how he feels once he becomes the butterfly. Change is scary and hard but once you go something transformational. it's difficult to remember what it was like before)I still can't believe I almost didn't read it-it was wonderful
And One Movie. Okay, two.
I saw Slumdog Milliuonaire before I went on vacation and it was great. It was smart, the performance were good and the stort-telling was compelling. I even liked the Bollywood-style dancing they had at the end and I usually don't like that sort of thing. And the guy from The Namesake was in it! Tha father-you know-Irrfan Khan. That guy is a great actor. And even though I started out not liking Dev Patel, he grew on me. His stroy, of how got on India's version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire and how he knew the answer to each question through a different chapter in his life-it's a great story and unlike many films, it assumes a certain intelligence on the part of the audience. If you dumb down, the audience becomes more stupid-it's like assuming students are smart and they rise to it-dumbing down doesn't help anyone and this movie does not dumb down.
I've been trying to figure out what annoyed me about Valkryie. I actually liked Tom Cruise's performance-and all the Brits in it were quite good as well (and Eddie Izzard was in it! Yay, Eddie!). Good Germans, bad Germans, Germans forced to make a choice (a little late in the war, if you ask me, it's all in there. It's a compelling story, that of a group of Germans determined to kill Hitler (which you know can't end well) and what happened. So why did it annoy me? I think it comes down to the fact that Cruise used his American accent and the Brits all use their own accents-so it had the effect on me of not thinking they were really German. Of course Cruise wants to kill Hitler-he's Tom Cruise! He's an American transposed to WWII so try and kill the bad guy-the only surprising thing is that he doesn't succeed and ends up being shot for his effort. I actually saw the spot where Stauffenberg was shot in Berlin-I had to translate the plaque on the wall for my friend, so imagine my surprise when I read what it was. Berlin is full of places lie that though-everywhere you go. Berliners pride themselves on being cosmopolitan and not looking back too much-and then you turn around and see a plaque about Stauffenberg on the wall of the building that houses the French Embassy.
Anyway, I cou;dn't get past the accents-it seemed like it was Americans and Brits who wanted to kill Hitler, not Germans. It didn't seem like it was treason to me nor did it seem like a difficult decision to reach. I may have to see the German version of the Stauaffenberg story with Sebastian Koch from The Lives of Others-there's someone who who could do justice to this story.
Also, when they have the 45 on the record player (kids-ask your parents what this is)-did it really say just Walkure? Not Die Walkure? I've NEVER seen it as just Walkure-that's very poor German grammar and another thing that annoyed me. I still did like it. though. Sort of.
1) I re-read Traveling With the Dead on my way there-and I had PLENTY of time to do it as, due to mechanical difficulties, my original plane was delayed so much that I didn't take and had to leave the next day. Let me just say, United-you suck. It's amazing I finally made it there, although I missed the concert (that was my idea, thank you very much). So, I read Traveling With the Dead-it's just as well-written as I remembered and I enjoyed it.
2) I read the two Lee Child books I had been saving-Without Fail and Nothing to Lose. I liked them but I can't say they were the best in the series-I didn't like them as much as Persuader or the one where Reacher's old Army gang gets together to avenge their friends deaths. Still, they were fun and entertaining.
3) The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
This was a great book. A disgraced reporter is asked to investigate a 40 year-old disppearance. His investigation and involvement with a young researcher (who is both prone to violence, although never without reason, and has the dragon tattoo) starts out on one level and quickly moves to something deeper. I suspected the denouement from the beginning but it still turned out to be a bit worse than I thought. It's very well-written (and the translation by a Brit is very good) and it gave me the creeps-I liked it.
4) Thunderstruck
Also a great book-tying together Marconi's invention of the wireless radio and the capture of Crippen in 1910-the first time a wireless radio was used to call ahead to nab a criminal. Tying the two together was genius-and the author goes into just enough detail on each to make it interesting (and I loved it when he mentioned the Heaviside Layer, which I had first read about in Declare) but not so much that it bogged down. It was really good.
5) American Lightning.
Oy. Maybe it's because I read it right after Thunderstruck that I wasn't impressed by this book. I read an excerpt in Vanity Fair and it seemed to have my name all over it-the early days of American Cinema, early labor unrest, resulting in the bombing of the LA Times, the man called the Amercan Sherlock Holmes-William J Burns, the man who was the first head the soon-to-be FBI (he resigned in disgarce and his chief assistant took his job-J. Edgar Hoover) and Clarence Darrow. However-it was boring. The author tries hard to tie these diverse elements together-Darrow, Burns and Labor are all involved in this case-but it doesn't work. What is DW Griffith doing here? He's a fascinating character and he brings life to each scene he's in but there's not that much of a reason for him to be here. And there's a good story here, make no mistake, but the writing is muddy and annoying.
6) The Girl in the Glass
I'm still not sure why I put The Girl in the Glass into my bag of books. I think it was underneath Thirteen (which I didn't get a chance to read) so I just tossed it in as an afterthought. This was a great book. A marvelous book. It was haunting (both literally and figuratively), funny and touching. A 17 year-old Diego lives with Thomas Schell and Antony Cleopatra (who took his name from a theater marquee). The three of them together make a living fleecing the rich of the Gold Coast of Long Island during the Great Depression. They hold seances designed to separate the rich from their money-until Schell sees what he says is a real ghost-a little girl in a glass window (at an inconvienent time, in the middleish of a seance). What happens will change all their lives. Diego must grow up, Schell must decide what he really wants from life (is he really ruthless enough to be a good con artist?) and Antony doesn't really decide-choices are pushed upon him. The butterfly metaphor is perhaps a little heavy-handed (Yes, we get that Diego is a catapillar and how he feels once he becomes the butterfly. Change is scary and hard but once you go something transformational. it's difficult to remember what it was like before)I still can't believe I almost didn't read it-it was wonderful
And One Movie. Okay, two.
I saw Slumdog Milliuonaire before I went on vacation and it was great. It was smart, the performance were good and the stort-telling was compelling. I even liked the Bollywood-style dancing they had at the end and I usually don't like that sort of thing. And the guy from The Namesake was in it! Tha father-you know-Irrfan Khan. That guy is a great actor. And even though I started out not liking Dev Patel, he grew on me. His stroy, of how got on India's version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire and how he knew the answer to each question through a different chapter in his life-it's a great story and unlike many films, it assumes a certain intelligence on the part of the audience. If you dumb down, the audience becomes more stupid-it's like assuming students are smart and they rise to it-dumbing down doesn't help anyone and this movie does not dumb down.
I've been trying to figure out what annoyed me about Valkryie. I actually liked Tom Cruise's performance-and all the Brits in it were quite good as well (and Eddie Izzard was in it! Yay, Eddie!). Good Germans, bad Germans, Germans forced to make a choice (a little late in the war, if you ask me, it's all in there. It's a compelling story, that of a group of Germans determined to kill Hitler (which you know can't end well) and what happened. So why did it annoy me? I think it comes down to the fact that Cruise used his American accent and the Brits all use their own accents-so it had the effect on me of not thinking they were really German. Of course Cruise wants to kill Hitler-he's Tom Cruise! He's an American transposed to WWII so try and kill the bad guy-the only surprising thing is that he doesn't succeed and ends up being shot for his effort. I actually saw the spot where Stauffenberg was shot in Berlin-I had to translate the plaque on the wall for my friend, so imagine my surprise when I read what it was. Berlin is full of places lie that though-everywhere you go. Berliners pride themselves on being cosmopolitan and not looking back too much-and then you turn around and see a plaque about Stauffenberg on the wall of the building that houses the French Embassy.
Anyway, I cou;dn't get past the accents-it seemed like it was Americans and Brits who wanted to kill Hitler, not Germans. It didn't seem like it was treason to me nor did it seem like a difficult decision to reach. I may have to see the German version of the Stauaffenberg story with Sebastian Koch from The Lives of Others-there's someone who who could do justice to this story.
Also, when they have the 45 on the record player (kids-ask your parents what this is)-did it really say just Walkure? Not Die Walkure? I've NEVER seen it as just Walkure-that's very poor German grammar and another thing that annoyed me. I still did like it. though. Sort of.
posted by SHbookworm at 2:53 PM
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