bits

oh yes this week i made like a cultured person and went to the theatre to see iv. 'true west'. it was hilarious and disturbing and all that good stuff. the american accents only slipped occasionally.

i also realise i failed to review lxv. 'the book of other people', ed. zadie smith. i liked this a lot, a good anthology is enjoyable to read.

i finally dumped my phone photos so here is some fancy advertising:

written evidence of my insect nature, march-nov '10 (and terrible prescription-style handwriting)

oh look i lied again.

whereupon lied = forgot.

lxiii. let the great world spin, colum mccann
well i saw the doco 'man on wire' and have to say i much preferred that. yes, there were some good parts but overall i felt like it all fit together way too nicely in the same way that 'crash' the movie did.

lxiv. this side of brightness, colum mccann
a bit waffly and somewhat predictable, non-epic family epic.

therefore unlikely to read any more colum mccann in the near future.

nothing witty here

sorry for the slight hiatus.

i read a bunch of medical memoir type books, not worth reviewing. i saw and re-saw a bunch of movies also not really worth reviewing, including toy story 3, baby mama, easy a. ok i take it back.

xxx. easy a - it is rather sad when a movie which has received 'good' reviews turns out so average. it was like a montage.

xxxi. despicable me - only good for the fluffy unicorns and minions.

xxxii. scott pilgrim etc etc - man! another well-received movie falling in a splatter. no reasoning behind anything means no meaning.

xxxiii. please give - this was good. it is typical that i would like this. weird and extremely awkward.

xxxiv. the runaways - this was also surprisingly good. even better with commentary, fucking hilarious to hear dakota fanning, kristen stewart and joan jett shoot the shit.

i also watched top chef: just desserts! i kinda sorta want to be a pastry chef. without all the work.

abode of despair

erk, i finished reading the most depressing 'classic' book ever today, lx. the house of mirth, edith wharton. i thought it would be a social lesson of the times in that jane austen-ish way, but no. tragedy not without comedy but definitely without a happy ending. to quote jfranz, 'the heroine of House of Mirth, Lily Bart, is one of the great characters in American literature, a pretty and smart but impecunious New York society woman who can't quite pull the trigger on marrying for money. Wharton's love for Lily is equal to the cruelty that Wharton's story relentlessly inflicts on her; and so we recognize our entire selves in her.'

also i read the entire thing in ebook on my phone, which was terribly disconcerting, because when i reached the second last page i had no clue that it was the end! i literally spluttered out loud. it might as well have been chapter 4 of book II or that swirly bruise on jupiter, that's how much i've realised progression through a book's thickness means to me.

books books the musical

lvi. inferno, eileen myles
i need to read it again, a poet's novel is not really meant for reading quickly. that said, piss and fruit, shit.

lvii. death in the afternoon, ernest hemingway
i guess bill bryson possibly got his modus operandi from this book. technical details, aficionado stuff, random dialogue, bull fighting.

lviii. squirrel seeks chipmunk, david sedaris
aesop's fables of prejudice and bigotry, more like. pretty awesome. i wish they were more in-depth but maybe that would be impossible.

lix. a fraction of the whole, steve toltz
i was initially very hesitant about this book due to its immense size and therefore hopeless portability. but it was probably the fastest 700 pages i have ever read. rollicking plot. simple words. sure, a good australian novel, but perhaps not a booker prize shortlist.

nanowrimo fat fail

yeah, already given up. so far i have written 3083 words out of an expected 8333. so you can see how well that's going. i'll keep writing but i don't expect to reach the target. quantity over quality is bullshit and really screwing with my brain, i can't do it. plus why bother when there's this for inspiration:
http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2010/11/02/nanowrimo/index.html

lvi. life and times of the thunderbolt kid, bill bryson. one-word review: ehh. memoirs by those who have not been fucked up are boring.

right this second i am peeved about trackwork on my line this weekend, when i have to work at 8.30am tomorrow, suck. does not help that i had a relatively but not catastrophically shit day at work, but i was due for one. things have gone swimmingly for too long, and i was just thinking yesterday that i hadn't had any problems in a while. bam, and the dirt is gone.

saving my words for nanowrimo, t-2 days. need as many of them as i can get.

/o\

liii. to have and have not, ernest hemingway
after the last relative disappointment of 'a farewell to arms' this was relatively pleasant to read, harry morgan is a hard-ass! wonder if dexter's dad was named after him, unlikely. my only quibble was the long irrelevant passage at about the 3/4 point about a side character i didn't care for.

liv. freedom, jonathan franzen
hmm. given the unsullied wall-to-wall positive reception i had relatively high hopes and pre-ordered (!!) this book. an unprecedented move for me. then just before i started reading the news came out that the UK first edition was in fact an early proof. my copy is one of these. anyway, it seemed promising at the beginning. until the characters were exposed for their true natures. in contrast to the corrections, where there was sympathy to be felt towards each character's situation, there was none to be had here because each person's unlikeable properties were inherently due to their rebelling against their parents and therefore enmeshed in their personality. i was equally frustrated but where there was something to identify with in each of the Lamberts, the Berglunds were all the types of people that i don't like much. i am wondering now if it is because i don't identify with so many intrinsically american themes, you know the ones which are caricatures - rednecks, petty suburban revenge, etc - but which are relatable if you know people like that. which i don't.

i also did not much care for the 'theme' of 'freedom' which was rather heavy-handed at times - oh ho ho so many types of 'freedom' and how restrictive they can be oh ho ho.

in any case the point of this is that i am now curious to read the final proof edition to see if it is any better. i in fact sent off my title page to harpercollins to redeem my new copy. like a true pedant i copied my incised page and taped in the photocopy. sooo when i get the final proof print i guess i will read it again. and compare.

lv. ah sweet mysteries of life, roald dahl
this was ok, now i want to read danny the champion of the world again.

\o/

in the last 4 days i have for the very first time been parasailing, camel riding, shark and sting-ray petting and deep sea fishing. ev and i had a break up in port stephens and it was pretty awesome to just have fun and not work. fish-wise i caught 2 pretty big sergeant bakers, 3 small yellowtails and a pike.

before that i read lii. the man who loved children, christina stead. it was every bit as creepy as the title suggests, though in a disgusting abusive cult of personality way. i guess the power of the writing is in how getting sucked into this strange unpleasant family life and then thinking about it!! by the end some events which seem crazy and impossible at first, pretty much HAVE to happen for there to be any sort of redress of justice. impressive but disturbing.