 Book and Movie Report |
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I went to the library for the first time in ages and ages and checked out a bunch of books. During my strongest bouts of germophobia, I convinced myself that I could not touch books that had been read by other people. I decided it was time to bite the bullet and return to the place where I spent so much of my life until a few years ago. It was also time for me to check out some young adult fiction because it's just been too long. I read Rats Saw God by Rob Thomas, the creator of Veronica Mars. It was a good read. It's about a formerly successful high school student who is a stoner by his senior year and is failing English and is assigned to write a 100-page essay in order to graduate, so the book alternates between the present and his essay, which looks back to his life before now. It's no surprise that Thomas writes well for and about adolescents. (He taught high school journalism for five years.) I checked out a bunch of his other paperbacks and will surely read them all. (Read more about this book and his others here.) I also read Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta. It's about a girl whose mother has a breakdown and how she deals with that and with school, where she's one of only a few girls. I liked it. It didn't change my life, but it was a decent way to spend a couple of hours. I'd heard great things about A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly. I really like the concept of the book, but I had trouble getting into it. It's strange that it's based around the murder from An American Tragedy and A Place in the Sun because I just watched the latter and had no idea that this book was related to it as well. I don't know. I couldn't really get through this one. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro was not as good as I wanted it to be. It was definitely intriguing and beautifully written and interesting. But I found the font kind of irritating, honestly, and I felt like it never really got where it was trying to go. Mostly it just made me feel kind of squicky inside. And then there's Rosie by Anne Lamott. This is far from the perfect novel. It's uneven and kind of a big mess from start to finish. But here is the thing. I kind of loved it anyway. I loved it because I love her and I love the way she writes even when she's writing totally spastically. I loved every single character, and it didn't matter to me that it's almost like an editor never saw these pages. It was the first of her fiction that I've read, and I plan to read more and see how she's developed in this realm over the years. So … A Place in the Sun. The darker side of Monty. I cannot believe that Elizabeth Taylor was only seventeen when filming this movie. She was so beautiful. This was a good movie, but it didn't exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. I suppose it's not meant to. It's very strange for me to see Shelley Winters at such a young age because I mainly know her as Roseanne Connor's grandmother. I had no idea what this movie was about going into it, but it certainly wasn't the lighthearted romance I presumed it to be. I was like, good Lord! This is miserable! But I'm glad I saw it. I also watched The Upside of Anger solely because Keri Russell is in it. It's not the best movie I've ever seen, but I enjoyed it mostly because Joan Allen and Kevin Costner are both really, really good in it. Like, kind of unbelievably so. Joan Allen is too skinny, but she sure can blow the roof off of a scene. The 40-Year-Old Virgin is a very dumb movie. But I still kind of liked it because all of the actors were just really good. And I had nothing but faith in Judd Apatow going into it and wanted to support one of his projects because Freaks and Geeks means so much to me. And I giggled. And I cried a little, even, from laughing during the showstopping musical number, because crying during showstopping musical numbers is what I do. Another library acquisition was the audio version of Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver. My sister has this book, and I remembered reading the introduction years ago and wanting to read more but never got around to it. I'd never listened to an audio book before, and I broke this one in this weekend. It took me a while to get used to the cadence of Kingsolver's voice, but pretty soon I was totally hypnotized and pretty much just in love with her and every word she read. I listened to it with my heart in my throat and tears in my eyes for much of it. I still have about seven hours to go, and I look forward to every one of them.
About this time in ...
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