Wow. Soooooo good.
A follow-up of sorts to her debut “In the Woods”, taking the #2 character from that book and putting the focus on them (and I hear an auxiliary character in this book will be the focus of her third).
Really intriguing mystery, characters that become sooooo real… The descriptions are rich and thick, and the emotions are layered and tangled.
French has just written two of the most interesting, and unusual, mysteries out there.
“What Happened to Anna K.” by Irina Reyn
Updated Tolstoy. Enthusiastically reviewed in People.
“The Amnesiac” by Sam Taylor.
Recommended by Very Short List.
Eating: Inconsistently. One day, super. One day, super bad. Two days…
Making: Trouble.
Reading: Same as last week: Volume 1 of “The Man Without Qualities” by Robert Musil.
Watching: La L’Olympics, baby. As should you be.
Listening to: The latest albums from My Morning Jacket and Carla Bruni (swoon). Back to back. And all the stuff I bought in June that you might hear about tomorrow, if you’re lucky.
Eating: Goldfish. (Original flavor) They just never get old.
Making: One secret thing. Sometimes. Rarely. When lying on the floor gets too boring.
Reading: Neither Dad nor I have finished last month’s challenge book yet (it was too damn big to carry around so I was only reading it at home except when do I read at home? Not often, turns out), but we decided to move on to this month’s for now and go back and finish the other after…. so that means I’m reading Volume 1 of “The Man Without Qualities” by Robert Musil. It’s not laugh out loud funny but there’s sort of a dry sardonic undertone. So I’m enjoying it.
Watching: Firefly, for the zillioneth time (and then Serenity but of course). Since both Carrie and my future husband are watching it right now, I needed a refresher in case they feel like talking about it.
Listening to: Stuff I bought in June like Fleet Foxes and Shearwater and Jakob Dylan and The Fratellis and James Hunter and Lil Wayne and Port O’Brien. Yeah I have this dream that I will review all June & July albums by month’s end and be ALL CAUGHT UP in time to start fresh with the “school year” so to speak. But don’t hold your breath, I wouldn’t want to be the cause of any untimely deaths.
The best movie I saw in July was also the only movie I saw in July (or the only one I saw for the FIRST time anyway…). It was The Dark Knight and it was pretty fantastic. I had reservations, but they weren’t “I don’t love you” reservations. More like “I do love you, but I probably wouldn’t marry you, because I know you’ll only hurt me in the end.”
The best book I read in July was Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart, which was just outrageously fucking funny.
The best gig I went to in July was either the Fleet Foxes set at Pitchfork or the Earlimart show at the Hideout. Probably have to tip the hat to Earlimart since the sound was better (purely by locational happenstance), but I remain equally entranced by both.
My favorite tunes in July were Fleet Foxes and (more) Joseph Arthur and The Kills and Nana Grizol “Love It Love It”(which you sooo need) and this totally awesome mixdisc/playlist I made for Juno. My question for you is*: What would you give me to get a copy of that?
Random personal highlights: Visit from the Nipper. Secret Family Craft Project.
Lowlights? Long slow stressful month. This summer has sucked some fucking rotten ass, let me tell you. I mean, except for that it’s all shit I can’t tell you.
*Do you remember when I used to use this phrase ALL THE TIME? Dang, I miss it.
Funny, wry and matter of fact. Cow tipping, Berthe Morisot, Kudzu (vine) creep, and John Berryman: her subjects are flung far and wide but always treated with the same intense gaze.
You can feel the Mississippi humidity seeping off the pages. These poems are fresh, verdant and fecund.
Similar to Billy Collins, she writes simply, but deeply.
Very, very different than the other YA vampire fiction out there these days.
Male protagonist, certainly interested in romance/sex but not consumed by it the way Bella (Twilight) is. A more realistic/scientific look at the phenomenon, if you will, despite the fictionalness of it all. Lots of cool Manhattan stuff: underground, bureaucratical, conspiratorial.
Certainly pulls you right along. Enjoyable easy reading. I mean, other than the bug stuff. If you are bug, insect and gross-phobic the way I am…well, let’s just say it was hard for me to even let my fingers touch the pages of the Parasite chapters as a) soooooo nasty and b) some of my worst nightmares CONFIRMED!!!
But on a separate note, as I said with the other: It kinda cracks me up how every “new” installment to vampire lore needs to put their own tweak on the legends. This rewrites a different part of the legend, but I still fail to understand the reason to need to make those tweaks to what are centuries old “beliefs” (if you can call them that). Your writing should stand out as something special, even without that tweaking; if you feel you have to tweak aspects of the overall Vampire legends in order to stand out, maybe you’re concentrating on the wrong thing. I’m not saying that’s Westerfeld’s problem (I think this book is certainly well written, which I can’t say about the other series, which is much more superficial and really only works on an emotional level), but why the need to change the mirror bit of the mythos? Yeah, in YA speak, I don’t “get” that urge.
Mindblowingly fucking hilarous. Truly comedic. Completely non-PC, an equal opportunity satirist taking on everyone/thing. Smart and sarcastic, yet willing to show a softer side on occasion. Brilliant.
In the tradition of “Confederacy of Dunces”, but I enjoyed this more. Takes it a few steps further, less bitter, more fun. And in addition to the narrator and (anti-)hero Misha Vainberg, the author himself plays a bit part in this book (from afar), the emigre writer “Jerry Shteynfarb” author of “Russian Arriviste’s Hand Job” [Shteyngart wrote “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook”]. Poking fun at yourself equally as to others = always fertile ground for hilarity.
This is in no way one of the funniest quotes in the book, but it’s emblematic of the general tone: “We give these American schmendricks a map of the world and say, ‘Point to the general area where you think Congo is located.’ Nineteen percent point to the continent of Africa. Another twenty-three percent point to either India or South America. We count those as correct answers, because Africa, India and South America all start out wide and then taper off at the bottom. So, for our purposes, forty-two percent of respondents sort of know where Congo is.”
So the book. Yeah. It’s really crude, and often gross, and TOTALLY AWESOME.
Family tension, even in other people’s families, can really set me on edge. This book had me anxious from page 1, just waiting for Bad Stuff to Happen as the tension and anxiety of each character grows and grows. Definitely had me on the edge of the seat.
Really neat characterization and very finely detailed: the mom’s art (so cool), the dad’s writing. The intricacies of the familial relationships were so well plotted: you love someone, but you see their weakness; you hate when they act a certain way, but you know how to handle them when that’s the case; etc.
When the moment of crisis comes, it was not at all what I expected, and that includes the follow-up events.
But I have to wonder what the blurb writer was thinking. Because the last sentence on the front flap blurb? Yeah, that’s NOT what I got out of this at all.
Just in time to write up Best of July… I mean, once I get the individual reviews of that stuff up. So slackerass I am this summer.
The best movie I saw in June was Wanted, which I just loved. But I also thought The Fall was visually stunning.
The best book I read in June was a tie between Lush Life by Richard Price (gritty, real and modern day) and Life Class by Pat Barker (artistic and historical). I also really enjoyed Dark Roots by Cate Kennedy, dark short stories, and I just cannot get enough of Patricia Briggs sci fi/fantasy stuff this year.
The best gig I went to in June was definitely Sea Wolf. Soooooo wonderful live.
My favorite tunes in June….were mostly things I bought in April. When I look back through my posts, I was listening to a lot of: Joe Purdy, Joseph Arthur, Fleet Foxes, Meg Hutchinson, Mason Jennings, the aforementioned Sea Wolf and Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin.
Random personal highlights: Amy’s whirlyball birthday party (whirlyball! so much fun!); Weis [college roommate] here for a weekend; out to dinner with Cinnamon.
Lowlights? I’m sure there were some (primarily secondary browsing location and stress related presumably) but thankfully all I can tell you right now by looking at my calendar is that I was too lazy to go to the Printer’s Row Bookfair this year (either day!) and that’s pathetic.