Skip to main content

This week in my personal entertainment

Watched Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle last night. Ooooo, I loved it! I've heard people/critics say that it's not his best, but I found it delightful. Perhaps I'm biased because of the dog who reminds me of mine, but I think not. I am always blown away by his imagination.

Watched "Network" today. I missed a lot of the movies of the 70's because I was too young to see them, and by the time I wanted to see them, everyone I knew had already seen them. I've been trying to catch up, but sometimes the moment is just lost. I'd seen so many parodies of Apocalypse Now that it just struck me as funny when I finally saw it. Network is funny, but obviously deliberately so. I must read some Paddy Chayefsky (forgive me if I misspell, Gentle Reader). I had seen The Americanization of Emily when I was a teenager and I remembered it being good. Watched it again recently and realized it was brilliant. The lines, the acting. I didn't like Network as much, but was again boggled by his prescience.

I'm at an awkward point I reach every so often where I don't know what to read next. I was wandering amongst the books of our house that I haven't read. You must understand that we have more books than some lending libraries because of my husband's passion for books as well as mine. I love free things. I will pick up bags of books if they even vaguely interest me, if they are free. Unfortunately, sometimes nothing seems quite right. I want something with some substance, but Kim Stanley Robinson's Years of Rice and Salt seemed too weighty to get into. I tried rereading Old Curiosity Shop a few weeks ago and found that for once I could not get into the Dickensian language. Mysteries seem too light. Blech. I ended up pulling out a slim volume of short stories by John Crowley. Crowley is one of my favorite authors whom I've never managed to finish. My husband adores him and introduced him to me early on. The language is exquisite and very dense. I've started Little/Big two or three times and Aegypt as well and find myself so swept away by the writing that I wanted to go and write and ponder great thoughts myself instead of finishing the book. His writing demands complete attention, and I seldom give complete attention to anything. It's why I love Proust and have yet to make it through the whole of A La Recherche du Temps Perdue.
This is the intro. to the book of short stories:

We say to console us for the loss of Paradise
God gave to us alone among all his creatures
Hope and Memory. We might rather say,
Only because we are creatures burdened with
Hope and Memory do we intimate a Paradise
which we alone have lost.

You can see how one might spend a very long time simply considering those words and never manage to start the stories at all.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Adapting a book--The Prestige

I was completely blown away by the movie of The Prestige , and I thought then about reading the novel, but it seemed too soon. So I carried the author's name around with me for over a year (Christopher Priest) and then, finally remembered to buy it through an odd sequence of events. We watched The Painted Veil based on the novel by Maugham starring Edward Norton, and while I decided I didn't want to read The Painted Veil because of it's differences from the film (which was more romantic and tragic) it reminded me that I had wanted to read Fight Club (the movie version of which starred Edward Norton) and that reminded me that I had wanted to read The Prestige (which did not star Edward Norton, but was up against The Illusionist which did). Whew...so it's all Edward Norton's fault. The Prestige is a very good novel, and yet, the movie differs from it considerably. And I am still trying to figure out what exactly that means. The central premise is the same, AND HE...
Post a Comment
Read more

Putting my money (read time) where my mouth is

Some Duran Duran with some songs that I believe prove their musical merit. eSnips gives me the power and I'm going to use it. ( Bwahaha ) Get this widget Share Track details This is one of my all time favorite songs. I have it on a B-Side Collection, although I can't find any mention of what it was B-Side of, just that it came out in 1988. The words are quite haunting, as is the melody. But, I can hear you say, this is not at all a standard D2 song. Well, no, but what is a standard song by any band? How do you average that? Thomas Dolby's singles were always abnormal compared to the rest of their respective albums. Same with Barenaked Ladies. I think the B-Sides are often truer to what the band wants to be without the pressure of the labels for commercial success. Get this widget Share Track details This is probably more like Duran Duran you're thinking of, right? It's from Pop Trash , released 2000. The words are based on the true story of a boy who was building ...
8 comments
Read more

The end of Cloud Atlas

Feel I must write this--promised it to myself, can I finish before midnight (when I said I would go to bed at 11)? Where was I? Oh, yes, section 5, where it gets interesting--because it's the future, at least 25 years, hopefully more. I say hopefully, because I don't want to be living in this future. The section is called "An Orison of Sonmi-451." An Orison (I had to look it up, proving I don't remember my Shakespeare) is a prayer, but in this future world where language has taken as many turns as in Orwell's 1984, it is more a confession or final statement. Sonmi-451 is a clone (as the name might suggest). The section is not entirely original. It owes much to Brave New World and Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (made into the film Bladerunner ). I find it interesting that 40 or so years ago--when Dick wrote his book he believed that future slaves would be Androids, replicants. Now we are much more likely to presume they will be clo...
5 comments
Read more