In the last 24 hours: pickled cabbage, pickled green beans, vietnamese grilled pork, homemade banh mi, grilled chicken wings, chicken stock. Was going to make rice paper too, but maybe tomorrow.
Author: mike
Books, April 2011
*** Arturo Perez-Reverte – The Flanders Panel
** Arturo Perez-Reverte – The Sun over Breda
*** Philip K. Dick – 11 Science Fiction Stories by Philip K. Dick
*** David Foster Wallace – Oblivion
I actually saw the horrible movie version of The Flanders Panel. It was horrible, though you do get to see Kate Beckinsale’s boobs. The book was significantly better, in that it was entertaining though immediately forgettable. Breda is another of Perez-Reverte’s “Captain Alatriste” books. I liked the first one a lot; this one less so. There’s a lot of “war is miserable” stuff in it, which I usually don’t particularly mind, but this book just didn’t connect for me. I’ll probably keep reading Perez-Reverte and Alatriste if I’m in the mood for entertaining adventure books; he’s generally pretty good.
Hey, old short stories by Philip K. Dick. They were entertaining at the time, though mostly not particularly memorable. I often find “golden age” science fiction a little strange to read because it’s so distinctly of its time in some ways; for example, no one writes about Martians or Moon men any more.
Oblivion alternated between fantastically annoying and thought-provoking. This was my second read; the first time I found it fantastically annoying, evidence I thought that DFW was out of ideas and had crawled up his own meta asshole. I started a review that I never finished. Same thing this time, except a couple of the later stories were good enough to deflate my need to rant about how annoying it was, and I didn’t finish the review. Some day, I will manage to properly review this book. Oh DFW, you wily bastard.
Movies, March 2011
*** Little Dorrit
*** Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
*** Nicholas Nickleby
LIttle Dorrit was good, yet another Matthew-Macfadyen-in-period-dress miniseries. Matthew Macfadyen: your sign of quality! There were some really irritating characters that made it annoying to watch, but I’m not sure if that’s Dickens’s fault or the producers’. NIcholas Nickleby did not have Matthew Macfadyen, but it did have Romola Garai, your other sign of quality period entertainment. It was also good. Scott Pilgrim was entertaining too.
Books, March 2011
*** Herman Melville – Bartleby the Scrivener, a Story of Wall-Street
** David Sedaris – When You are Engulfed in Flames
Bartleby was my first Melville; I somehow managed to get through high school without reading Moby Dick. It was pretty good; I’m planning on reading more Melville.
I used to think David Sedaris was hilarious and occasionally moving, and I didn’t get a whole lot of either from this book. I don’t know if he’s changed or I have, though I did think he came across more like an entitled schmuck whining about first-world problems than I ever did before. Maybe it’s that now instead of just being a regular entitled American schmuck like the rest of us, he’s now a famous and wealthy schmuck living what sounds like a marvellous life.
It is a truth universally acknowledged…
Elizabeth Bennet: I am very sensible of the honour of your proposals, but it is impossible for me to do otherwise than decline them.

Mr. Collins: I am not now to learn, that it is usual with young ladies to reject the addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept, and shall hope to lead you to the altar ere long.

Elizabeth: Upon my word, Sir, your hope is rather an extraordinary one after my declaration.

Chris Tucker: YOU GOT TURNED THE FUCK DOWN!
[Elizabeth climbs into waiting barouche-landau and drives off. Mr. Collins leaps onto his plunging black charger and gives chase]

Mr. Collins: I say, I shall hope to lead you to the altar ere long!

Elizabeth [urging the horses on]: I am perfectly serious in my refusal! — You could not make me happy, and I am convinced that I am the last woman in the world who would make you so!

Mr. Collins [leaping over ravine]: I cannot imagine that her ladyship would at all disapprove of you. And you may be certain that when I have the honour of seeing her again I shall speak in the highest terms of your modesty, economy, and other amiable qualifications!

Elizabeth [just making it onto a ferry, as Mr. Collins reins in at the shore]: I wish you very happy and very rich, and by refusing your hand, do all in my power to prevent your being otherwise.

Mr. Collins: When I do myself the honour of speaking to you next on this subject I shall hope to receive a more favourable answer than you have now given me.

[Mr. Collins expression of steely resolve; dramatic chipmunk music]
[Later…]
Mr. Darcy: You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.

Elizabeth: Yes yes oh yes!

[They kiss]

Mr. Collins [appearing from behind a shrubbery]: I understand that it is common with elegant females to become engaged to another gentleman in order to stir the passions of the man they truly intend to accept, and shall hope to lead you to the altar ere long.

[dramatic chipmunk music]

Elizabeth: Oh for fuck’s sake!
ET THIS, BRUTE!
Brutus and the conspirators cluster around Caesar, stabbing him repeatedly with their knives until he lies dead on the ground. Camera pans up to show the large and expanding pool of blood around him. Closeup on Brutus as he turns away, a look of grim achievement on his face. There’s a rustle behind him. Brutus slowly turns to look, and sees Caesar stumbling toward him, holding someone’s blood-soaked knife.
“ET THIS, BRUTE!†snarls Caesar, and plunges the knife into Brutus’s eye. Blood sprays out in slow motion. Caesar throws himself over a nearby parapet into a convenient chariot and gallops off, the surviving conspirators in hot pursuit.
(for this contest)
Readers retain less info from ebooks?
Found this comment on a Boing Boing thread interesting. The original post itself (well, the poster it references) is stupid, but it inspired some interesting comments.
Studies have shown that students who used ebooks and ereaders retained a lot less information than those who used print books (I work in an academic library at a university that took part in the study). Ebooks eliminate the tactile part of sense memory. That is, where you saw the text on a page, and how far into the book it was, and if there were diagrams or illustrations or figures on the page or opposite page all plays a huge part in how you recall information. That all becomes fluid and relative in ebooks. While ebooks might be convenient for carrying around large books, you lose all relationship to them. It all becomes just a stream of words on a screen.
I’ve definitely noticed this as a general feeling. I enjoy my Kindle, but I do feel a bit adrift on the sea of “words on a screen”. I do miss the direct spatial sense of where I am on the page and the tactile sense of where I am in the book.
Movies, February 2011
*** Mushi-shi
*** The Girl who Played with Fire
**** Downton Abbey
*** The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
E and I saw the live-action movie of Mushi-Shi at SIFF a few years back and enjoyed it. This animated series was the original, which explains why the movie is sort of disconnected and episodic. In the series, each episode is largely standalone — a mystery which Ginko the Bugmaster must somehow figure out and solve by applying his knowledge of Mushi, the mysterious supernatural-ish creatures that come in all kinds of forms. It works pretty well in this form, and is exactly like the X-Files or House or any one of a number of TV shows where each episode poses a question that only the hero can solve. The animation is beautiful and some of the stories are interesting, insightful, or touching. That said, the whole thing wasn’t totally captivating; I often did something else halfway while watching the shows, and when my attention took me somewhere else and I didn’t finish the series, I didn’t mind that much. I may even watch some more episodes here and there, if there’s nothing else on.
We watched the first “Girl Who…” movie a while back. I wasn’t crazy about it, thought it was more violence-against-women than I really needed to watch more of. E, however, wanted to check out the other two, and I’m glad we ended up watching them. These two, the third in particular, stepped away from the gratuitous violence of the first movie and were more about Lisbeth’s history and the politics and conspiracies linked to it. The third really got to a long-craved moment of catharsis that was well set up by the whole series, back to the first movie.
Downton Abbey continued our BBC-period-miniseries festival and was outstanding. We liked it a lot. Hugh Bonneville is awesome and the other people too.
Movies, January 2011
*** Crazy Heart
* The Ten
*** The Way We Live Now
*** The Savages
** Leonard Bernstein: the Unanswered Question, six talks at Harvard
*** The Men who Stare at Goats
*** Exit through the Gift Shop
I liked Crazy Heart a lot more than I expected, given my lack of interest in alcoholism or country music, but it just worked and I got sucked in and enjoyed myself. Jeff Bridges as great. The surprise appearance of Colin Farrell as the country superstar helped as well.
I started watching The Ten, couldn’t even get through the first story. It was horrible.
The way we live now was part of our ongoing film series of literary costume dramas in miniseries form produced by the BBC or A&E. Also part of our ongoing Matthew Macfadyen series; he’s been very busy with the costume dramas in the last decade. I wish I could say it was also part of a Shirley Henderson series, because E and I love her, and we really should find some more stuff she’s been in. The BBC costume miniseries is almost the perfect thing for watching at home on DVD or netflix instant: long enough to be complex and sophisticated and keep you occupied for a while, but not so long you get sucked into a months-long commitment like a multi-season HBO series. Anyway, this one was quite good.
The Savages was good and seriously grim. I mean, middle-aged people dealing with their declining father, and also their own screwed-up lives. What could be more fun? Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman were great, and the movie was very good, but depressing as hell.
I wanted to like the Bernstein lectures more. The ones I watched were a little snoozy in places (though it could be that I only found time to watch them late at night, and I was doing it rather than sleeping). The bigger problem for me was his struggle to assemble a theory of music that is based on contemporary (in the 70s when he gave the lectures) theories of linguistics. Clearly, he’d spent some time learning about these linguistic theories, but at the same time the analogy didn’t end up seeming very useful. Aside from a convenient way to explain a few basic concepts, he didn’t seem to use anything from linguistic theory that actually helped make the musical theory more understandable, either to the lay audience or (I’m guessing) to someone deeply knowledgeable about music who wanted a new way to think about why some things are “good” music and some are not. Instead, he just ends up spending a good 1/3-1/2 of each lecture explaining a bunch of linguistics that is mostly irrelevant. I’d like to see more Bernstein lectures where he just tries to explain music on its own terms, or even just talks about what he likes or finds interesting; he didn’t need the linguistics analogy to be interesting or understandable.
The men who stare at goats was really funny but I think I wanted it to just be nuts. And after a while, it wasn’t. By the end it seemed kind of pedestrian. I wanted it to just go over the top and stay over the top and then either end with over the top or end with someone being clearly 100% nuts. Still, it was kind of funny.
I kind of half-watched most of Exit Through the Gift Shop, and it was pretty entertaining. I get the whole thing about how it may or may not be a hoax and how it almost doesn’t matter, since either way it’s pretty much a satire and finger in the eye of the art scene. Or something. So that’s nice.
Books, February 2011 (The Patrick O’Brian Special)
*** Patrick O’Brian – The Yellow Admiral
**** Patrick O’Brian – The Hundred Days
**** Patrick O’Brian – Blue at the Mizzen
** Patrick O’Brian – 21: The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey
I finally made a push to finish the last three books of the Aubrey/Maturin series (21 doesn’t really count, being an unfinished fragment). A number of reviewers have described O’Brian as one of the finest writers in English (up there with Jane Austen), and this series as one of the best and longest-running novels ever written. With that in mind, I was a little worried about having the story feel unfinished, since I knew that O’Brian had died before completing 21 (and, for all I know, had contemplated writing many more). However, whether deliberately or not, Blue at the Mizzen, the last complete book, makes an almost perfect ending to the whole series. The last three books are excellent, and they form a story arc that wraps up in Blue, and that nicely caps the whole series. The overall driver to the story has always been the war with Napoleon; in these books he is exiled to Elba, escapes, and then is finally defeated at Waterloo. Jack’s part of the story has largely centered around his first passion: the British navy and his advancement through the ranks toward admiral, along with his many victories and setbacks. In these books, he first fears that he will be “yellowed” (passed over for promotion) and then, finally, achieves his dream, becoming an admiral and flying his blue pennant from the mizzen. Blue ends with him on his way to lead a squadron as admiral. A central thread in Stephen’s story was always his relationship with Diana. In these books, she dies, he almost loses the will to live from grief, and then he ends up courting Christine Wood. Christine is beautiful and intelligent, and unlike Diana a compassionate and considerate person. A marriage to her would be opposite the tempestuous one he shared with Diana. Blue ends with Stephen still unsure of her answer, but gaining confidence that she will accept as he goes to meet her. I already started rereading the series last year, and imagine I will read these books many times more. O’Brian really is an amazing writer, he’s created a wonderful set of characters, and the series is one of the best and most engrossing I’ve ever read.