number nineteen, are you bored yet, also another movie

why hello, another week another book. this week i read:

xxii. the discomfort zone, jonathan franzen
this guy jonathan franzen, seriously, he is popping up in EVERYTHING that i've been reading recently. one of his essays from 'how to be alone' referred to how 'the corrections' came out the week before september 11, so blah blah blah. then, i was in the midst of reading this book which is somewhat of a memoir, in a less hilarious less exaggerated david sedaris kind of way, when i started also reading 'the best american essays 2004', in which one of the first is by a female writer who proceeds to develop a relationship with an unnamed male writer who proceeds to make it big with a book released the week before september 11. i mean, what? if i hadn't read these pieces within a short period of time i doubt i would have picked up the connection.

aaanyway, i enjoyed this book because he described himself as being a fundamentally ridiculous small person, and i always like when good writers write about their childhoods. hell, i even like crappy writing about childhood (to wit, i liked the childhood parts of 'memoirs of the geisha', but i never intend to read it again, the writing was so ehh)


also i watched:
20(xiii) antichrist
holy effing shit, way to be provocative, lars von trier, i've never seen anything else by you and now i don't know if i want to. sure the acting was pretty incredible, and some images were amazing in their horror and that sickening dread kind of clarity, ugh. but i mean come on, you don't have to be explicitly extreme in order to convey the crazy in a psychological thriller, to the point where it becomes patently unrealistic and shocking for the sake of being shocking.

19 boooooks

xx. less than zero, bret easton ellis
the first thing i could think of to compare this book was like an older catcher in the rye, but on crack. kindof depressing when the most positive thing in the book is that the main character eventually shows revulsion to abhorrent things. also if they were going to be taking drugs all the time i kinda want to know whether they actually have effects or not, because it seemed like there was not much difference nor addiction, just bleeding noses. the writing was nothing special, in that way didn't compare with salinger.

xxi. possession, a.s. byatt
pfft, a marathon. and i didn't even read all of it. well i read it but i flicked through large parts of it. it was seriously 3 books in one, and i was only interested in one of them. ye olde victorian correspondence, ugh. and poetry. allll i could think was that the author sure put a lot of effort into it, writing all that. for ultimately a relatively simple story. maybe the booker prize was for the effort, and the writing in the parts i found boring, because the main story was pretty standard. quantity, quality, all that.

47 - new toy

ch-ch-check it outtt!!

from now my new resolution is to actually take this to work and use it, because now thinking back i have had so many cases worthy of before-and-afters, like, beautiful.

19(xix) disgrace, j. m. coetzee

having read this i am now interested in seeing the movie, the book is clearly about race and its implications in south africa and yet no one person's skin colour is described explicitly. i guess it would warrant reading again but i need time away from the somewhat minimal plot before i'm going to want to read for the details in the writing, i think. doesn't really help either that i am also reading 3 other books at the moment.

19(xviii) of mice and men, john steinbeck

i don't know why i didn't read this earlier, east of eden is one of my favourite books. upon realising that this is pretty much required high school reading in the US i was trying to reflect on what typical things we read at school and all i can think of is shakespeare, jane austen, what else? thomas hardy? did we ever read any novels written after 1950? now that i'm looking at the syllabus possibly some students read 'of mice and men' but i don't remember our 'texts' being very interesting or powerful. maybe my memory is being unfair. lord of the flies! i am the cheese! hmm.

i wonder if learning to analyse texts ruins those texts which are forced on you, yet sets you up to appreciate literature you choose in the future. sigh, english was not fun. at the same time i don't necessarily consciously analyse while reading if i can avoid it, i let my subconsious deal with it and then just feel a general sense of whether a book is 'deep' or not.

therefore i don't really want to go into details about this book because i thought it was really good but i don't want to expound on specifically why, there is a lot of general knowledge about this book out there but i want to enjoy it on its own without getting into that whole thing. and i don't really want to break it down into what it means, because i'd probably end up sounding horribly cliched when the whole point is that i liked the general sense of it, and that feeling you have when you imagine devastation that you have never felt in reality, but you still really feel it, that is magic and can't be described in words.

20(xii) nine

the musical, not the quirky cartoon. ergh, oh the trials and tribulations of being a famous old man with too many ladies on his plate! the songs were no good, only 2 of them were remotely catchy. the accents were all over the place and distracting. nicole kidman was not as annoying as usual but that was probably because she was hardly more than a statue. marion cotillard is like insanely beautiful. compared to chicago, there is no comparison.

20(xi) - the counterfeiters

quite a good movie. oscar-worthy? maybe not. 'typical' of many movies about the nazis in WWII i suppose, i think it's interesting that german and american cinema seem to like to show the same things, like people who are brutal, people who will turn any situation to their advantage. i dunno, maybe i expected more insight or something? i was sad for TB boy but the political activist was a little too strident, however he did end up making a difference. i guess i judge movies on whether i would see them again; not in any hurry for a repeat of this one, though i would watch it if it was on tv. to compare i never want to see or hear about 'love, actually' ever again, holy crap.

hmm well, speaking of the oscars, i find it interesting that they still hold such standing, like academy-award-nominated actors and directors are henceforth known as such, when it is KNOWN that the awards are not necessarily given to the most deserving. avatar, seriously? i am totally being unfair right now because i haven't seen it, but i don't even want to! acting and plot are most important to me, and it seems obvious that avatar is lacking in those areas. right? also, up, cute but no wall-e that's for sure. all i can think about when someone mentions it is that the famous adventurer looks like statler from the muppets aka one of the ghosts in shackles from the muppet christmas carol. i mean, the resemblance is too close to be a coincidence. also also, i watched the trailer for 'the blind side' and thought, omg typical american redemption the land where dreams are made story, blergh.

ANYWAY cynicism aside i will be seeing 'precious', 'the hurt locker' and 'district 9' soon, stand by. (i also really want to see 'a serious man' but can't find it for the life of me.)

mindful entertainment

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xvi. how to be alone, jonathan franzen
hmm, a bunch of essays on a variety of topics, they felt a little detached, like he had been commissioned to write pieces for a variety of magazines and publications, which is probably actually the case for most of them.

xvii. a moveable feast, ernest hemingway
similarly to thoughts i had while reading 'a short history of nearly everything' and 'fun home' it's a little eye-opening to imagine that famous authors alive in the same period actually knew each other even though they always seem like discrete figures. maybe that's what history is about? i never studied it.

20
ix. religulous
the title is never explained but i guess it's supposed to imply ridiculous-ness. which bill maher does to great effect, by pointing out inconsistencies inherent in all religions, not to mention plagiarism and jealousy and a distinct lack of peace. where does logic end? he's preaching to the choir though, i often wonder how religious people would view these kinds of documentaries, probably with the same kind of cynicism that goes the other way as well. basically the unsolvable problem.

x. cold souls
the concept that your soul can be extracted from your body is quite strange, because never was 'the soul' defined; is it the good parts, the bad parts, what parts do they leave for normal functioning? i would have preferred the movie went more in this direction and maybe more also about soul residues, rather than going off on a tangent about trafficking and stereotyping russians.

38 - piano

inspired by watching the film 'vier minuten' (by the way super depressing but really good), have learned a couple new pieces, i seem to be better at piano than i recall. but like any kind of practice boring basics need to be done too, sigh. also, have been playing on a digital piano which seems nice and easy but very different to a real piano! not as real, not as subtle nor skillful, not as much finesse.