I have this tendency to keep doing things I hate simply to have them done. I also have this tendency to keep doing things that I love that are bad for me past the point of moderation. Eric is great for this. When I have already eaten too much and the waitress comes by and looks at my plate and asks if I’m finish, Eric says yes. He is smart enough to know when I’m done, or rather when I should be done. I love this.

He has also helped me to just give up on books I don’t like. I never used to be able to put a book down in the middle of it. I had to see it through no matter how awful it was. But since we’ve been together, Eric has been very helpful at telling me to just put the book down already if I hate it that much.

Yesterday I abandoned my first book of 2008, Maynard & Jennica by… someone. Rudolph Delson. (No wonder his characters have weird names. His name is Rudolph.) I kept with it for over a hundred pages, mostly because it had a blurb from Mohsin Hamid, who wrote the Reluctant Fundamentalist, whom I adore. Generally I don’t follow blurbs, because it’s just authors writing something nice for their buddy. And I should have known better. This book was one of those “eccentric New Yorkers” books. Had I known this, I may not have read it. I hate eccentric New Yorker books. In fact, I find New York is very overrepresented in fiction these days in general. Have you people ever left Manhattan? When I like a New York book–like Free Food for Millionaires, for example–it is because it overcomes that strike against it.

Worse, it was not just an Eccentric New Yorkers book. It was a book with a gimmick. One of the few books I abandoned before page 50 was Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, whose previous book I love with such extreme passion, that it tells you just how annoying the gimmick was that I dumped the second so quickly. Maynard & Jennica’s gimmick is that the narrator changes about every page. Like, if we’re on the subway. First character A narrates how the subway stops. Character B jumps in and tells us how Character A is funny looking. Character A thinks Character C is hot. Character C then tells us this very long tangent that has nothing to do with the subway. Then back to Character A. If these jumps were more spread out it would be okay. If it was all done omnisciently and just examining multiple points of view, I would allow it. But the jumps come just as you’re gaining narrative momentum. And worse, they all look like this:

JENNICA GREEN, not explaining why she is on the subway that day.

I finally just dumped it since I had gone quite some time, Maynard & Jennica hadn’t even met yet, and it was turning into one of those books where everyone is actually connected though they don’t realize it. I hate those even more.

Happily, though, my previous days of reading were very good. I finished A Man in Full, which I’ve been reading for ages. It’s nearly 700 pages. I enjoy Tom Wolfe quite a lot, even though there are plenty of reasons for me to hate him. Like how his female characters are never really fleshed out. (But his male characters are all basically big fat idiots, so I guess that’s okay.) And how his characters tend to go off on these internal monologues which usually are in praise of themselves. But I adore him anyway. I am now listening to I Am Charlotte Simmons in the car, which is hilarious. It’s a hilarious book–I’ve read it before. But it’s also something like 25 cd’s. It will take me 6 months to get through. I can’t cheat with his audiobooks, though. I can’t skip down a page. (I do this a lot. Old speed reading habit.) So I am involved in every single word.

I also read two of my library books this weekend. Both were short, but that’s okay since A Man in Full was so long. Last Night at the Lobster is a novella that’s gotten its fair share of attention in the press. It deserves it. It’s exactly what it says it is, but the Lobster is Red Lobster. It’s closing and this is the story of it’s last night open. Having spent a little bit of time in food service in my younger days, I could tell that O’Nan nailed all the interactions between staff. There are always petty battles and grudges in these jobs. It’s wonderfully written. (And just the opposite of that eccentric New Yorker crap I was just talking about. I am glad Stewart O’Nan recognizes we don’t all live in fancy city apartments and work big fancy jobs.)

The second one was Slam, by Nick Hornby, a YA novel. I like Hornby a lot. I think I can actually say I’ve read every single thing he’s written. Including The Polysyllabic Spree, which was just about books he likes. And Songbook, which was just about songs he likes. I hated his last book (abandoned in the middle of the 2nd chapter, perhaps a record) but loved this one. Like most YA novels, it’s got a pretty run-of-the-mill plot, but he tells it well and makes it quite enjoyable reading.

I have one library book left: The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It is hard to go to something you know is going to be bleak, but I will try to muster the energy at some point. Today I probably won’t read much. There will be cooking and There Will Be Blood. (I’m hoping to catch a matinee.)

Nothing has quite been doing it for me lately. I watched Hairspray finally and felt like it was poorly directed and put together, though I liked it okay. (Then again, I never saw the stage production. But still, I think you could have made different directing choices and made it a much better film.) Still, I’m a musical lover and I doubt I’ll ever watch it again.

I’m reading a book called Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him, which I think is a kind of cool title. It’s about art and stuff. But it just feels like the same old chick lit set in a gallery. The characters, many of whom are rich collectors, are the same old cliches. I think it tries too hard to be funny. And I hate that the main character describes herself as not really pretty, but the author is gorgeous. This is something that seems to be happening a lot lately, these amazing looking women writing books about “plain” girls. Yet these “plain” girls always seem to find plenty of men who find them attractive. It irks me. And I am bored. And I may quit since I have four (4!!) books that are on my to-read list waiting for me at the library today.

The movie outlook is not quite as good. I have a couple of interest at home that I haven’t watched yet. But I am falling-over-exhausted after working every day of the three-day weekend, so I may indulge and go see something in the theater. Especially if Eric ends up working. (I’m thinking it’ll finally be time for me to catch There Will Be Blood. Best title ever.)

If you don’t know I’m a total book geek, then you don’t know me very well. But despite my heights of nerd-dom, my book loving is generally confined to reading books at home and occasionally talking someone’s ear off when they ask for a book recommendation.

I have only been to one book reading/signing that I can recall. (It was for David Sedaris in Austin and it was very fun.) I guess I don’t pay much attention, and I’m usually not the type to be jumping up and down when a book comes out. I usually wait a while and then read it on my own schedule.

But there are exceptions, and it looks like one of them is coming up. Salman Rushdie has been a visiting professor of sorts at Emory this past year. As soon as I found out I desperately wanted to sit through his lectures, hiding in the back unnoticed. And while I haven’t gotten around to going through his personal papers at the school library, I admit I still want to. But despite the fact that Emory is mere minutes away from us, Salman has felt terribly far and unreachable. Until now!

Rushdie is giving a lecture in February that’s open to the public. And it’s even on the weekend so I don’t have to ditch out on work. I am hugely excited. I’ve read a good amount of Rushdie since finding him about 4 years ago and I’m thinking of rereading some of his work. (I have tried to bribe Eric to read Midnight’s Children, since he’s agreed to come to the lecture with me, but I have a feeling it won’t work out. Which makes me sad because Eric will be at the lecture without understanding the awesomeness that is Rushdie.)

I am so very pumped. I’m also thinking about attending a local reading/signing for Joshilyn Jackson, a local author with a couple books that I really enjoyed. She’s going to be in town in March promoting her new novel and I think it may be a good way for me to branch out by getting out and doing something book-ish.

In college and law school I was stuck in Utah for 7 years. This has its disadvantages. However, it took me about 5 years to figure out that it had one unique perk I could take advantage of. So my 2nd year of law school I volunteered to work at the Sundance Film Festival.

Because I was in Provo instead of SLC like most volunteers, I was placed working in the Screening Room at the Sundance Resort. For those of you unfamiliar with the festival, most of the screenings are in Park City at a variety of locations–not all of which are supposed to be movie theaters–but a handful are elsewhere. The Sundance Screening Room is a well-kept secret a lot of the time. Far enough away from Park City that we weren’t hounded by tourists and filmgoers and celebrities, but still with all the great films you could ask for.

I didn’t quite have the hang of how to properly work the Festival my first year. I didn’t see very many films, and never even got up to Park City proper. But I loved my little theater. We were a small crew so everyone knew each other. This worked out well for me. I was supposed to be on the lowest possible rung at the theater (we didn’t have concessions so I wasn’t stuck there) taking tickets and having general usher duties. But a lot of the workers had been there for a few years and had a system of ushering. Instead, no one wanted to work the cash box (which is technically a better job) so I happily stepped in. It was a good job for me–I’m quick with numbers–and it gave me a place to sit. It did make it a little more difficult to sit through films, though.

That first year we were low on celebs. Being at Sundance, of course, Robert Redford was our most expected prize. He is known solely as “Bob” on the mountain, particularly during the Festival. When you say “Bob” everyone knows who you’re talking about. And while I rubbed elbows with plenty of people who rubbed elbows with Bob and said he’d said he was coming to that night’s screening, he never showed. Our other big bust was a no-show by Britney Spears, of all people, after we’d had a call that she was coming with her entourage and that we should reserve seats. She never showed either. As I recall, the only people I met that year were J. K. Simmons (formerly Law & Order’s Dr. Skoda, currently Juno’s dad) and Sam Elliott (formerly of every western ever, currently on Golden Compass). They were in a film by Campbell Scott–who also didn’t show, which made me incredibly sad because I love him–and were making the rounds.

My second year was much better. I took more hours (which meant skipping more class, which I was happy to do) and went not just to screenings in my home theater, but to Park City and even to parties. I had my same great job with a lot of the same crew. That was the year that one of our regular moviegoers bought us all entry into Sundance’s fabulous Sunday brunch (perhaps the best brunch I’ve ever had in my life). And the year the Dad from Family Ties was a regular in our theater (I had the show’s song stuck in my head for weeks–sha la la la) and when a million people showed up to see Napoleon Dynamite, I made sure he was one of the ones who got in.

It was another year when Bob failed to make an appearance, though I met with his daughter Amy several times. I met the very nice director of Pieces of April. And anyone who knew me at that time probably heard the story about how I literally RAN into Zach Braff, who was shilling Garden State. You probably also heard the story of how I missed Gael Garcia Bernal–who showed up to one of the private corporate screenings at our theater–because I’d gone to another theater to see his movie to make sure I didn’t miss it. It was the cause of much mourning.

These days I think back fondly on Sundance. But I don’t really miss it, though I do miss my Sundance fleece that finally died a year ago. The only way I would want to do it again is exactly as I did it before, as a full-time volunteer with a pass that got me into pretty much anything. I don’t expect to go back, but I highly recommend it to any film buffs in the area.

In the midst of the yearly top-10 list craze, I heard someone say that they enjoyed watching Freaks and Geeks more than pretty much anything they’d seen this year. I admit, I’m inclined to agree. While there were plenty of movies I really liked this year, the joy of turning on any episode of Freaks and Geeks is right up there with the best of them.

I missed the show when it came on in 1999. It’s understandable. I was in college, I didn’t watch a whole lot of television. But I did hear about it. And I’ve heard about it ever since. If you keep up with television, you can’t help but hear people pining for the return of Freaks and Geeks and how most shows just can’t compare. I never expected to like it much, it was a high school show after all, but I figured I’d get around to it. It had Mike White as one of its main creative forces and I love him (The Good Girl is a film I particularly love).

So with the writer’s strike and all (How much do I hate not having new episodes of 30 Rock and The Office and How I Met Your Mother? A lot.) we’ve been doing a lot of catching up with shows we missed on DVD. So far, we’ve had a few shows where we watch every single episode and others that can’t hold our interest. (In the former category, Entourage and Arrested Development. In the latter for me, 24. Seriously, why does everyone think that show is so good? I was okay with season 1, but have now bailed on 2 and 3 because they sucked so hard.)

But Freaks and Geeks is by far our favorite. The closer we got to the end of the show, the more I loved it and started to dread it ending. (It’s been a month or so, but I’m still known to mention how much I love Haverchuck without prompting.) Every episode of the show covers a high school cliche–getting beat up by a bully, the school dance, a big crush, peer pressure, even the old one where your single parent dates one of your teachers–but they address it in a way that actually feels real and intelligent. The cliches and stereotypes always ended up getting turned on their head.

Of course, one could argue that I love this show in large part because the main character is a smart girl. I’m a sucker for such things. Had there been a bunch of “bad kids” in my school who were cute and funny, I may have ended up a lot like her. I like that she’s good at math and that at one point she dates a guy that she quickly realizes is dumber than she is by a lot. (Many smart girls go through this. It’s rough. He likes me! But he’s dumb. But he likes me! But he’s dumb.)

If you are looking for anything new to watch to relieve strike-induced boredom, I highly recommend getting the DVD’s.

They announced the winners of the Newbery and Caldecott medals yesterday. I have a very soft spot for Newbery’s. In 5th grade I decided to read all of them. I didn’t quite succeed, but I made a lot of progress and many of them became favorite books of mine. I thought this year’s Newbery winner sounded a little out of the ordinary, and found this sweet article about the winner, an elementary school librarian who originally wrote the book as a series of monologues for the 5th graders’ play to make sure every kid would have an equal part.

I have added Book #4 to my list for the year thanks to Eric picking it up at the bookstore the other day. We’ve gone on quite a YA (Young Adult) streak this past year since we’ve found some really great stuff. But our favorite by far has been Scott Westerfeld. Eric is partial to the Peeps books while I’m a devotee of the Uglies books, but both of us agree that he’s really great.

Extras, my book #4, is the 4th book in the Uglies series. First of all, if you haven’t heard of them, I recommend starting with Uglies right away if you can find it. I was surprised that these books managed to become so popular without me hearing anything about them. And I was even more surprised that I hadn’t heard of them when I realized how good they were.

What really impresses me about Westerfeld, particularly with the Uglies series, is how he manages to tackle a big complex issue in each book. Uglies, for example, deals with a lot of body image issues that girls have, but not in an after-school-special kind of way. Extras tackled the youtube phenomenon. It never feels like he’s preaching at all, because the books are all set in a futuristic society so everything comes through a different lens.

One thing that sci-fi books often struggle with (while I hesitate to label the Uglies books sci-fi, they technically are) is the idea of dialect. When society changes so do patterns of speech and Westerfeld is awesome at this. You pick up on what the characters mean, you feel like the language has changed, it never feels like too much of a stretch. Eric, who always calls me “baby,” now occasionally throws in a “baby-la” thanks to Pretties, the second book. And I’m finding myself picking up little bits of the Extras language now.

But the best thing is how good his characters are. They follow the classic YA formula of confronting and overcoming obstacles, growing and changing teenagers, etc. But his characters always seem to grow legitimately; have legitimate flaws, face legitimate trials, and make legitimate choices. They also manage to have cool unexpected plot twists that keep you really engaged.

I have to recommend audio books for these, we listened to most of Uglies on a long drive and I was somewhat disappointed when I devoured the books so quickly when the audio took a nice long time.

I have become a podcast junkie. It used to be that I listened to books on cd all the time in the car. But now my commute is much shorter so it takes weeks to get through a book. So instead I’ve started listening to podcasts and now I don’t just do it when I drive, but also when I do my weekend trip to the grocery store. (Which I’m about to do.)

One of my very favorites is Radio Lab, which is just perfect. It is smart enough to inform and interest but isn’t out of my grasp. I can listen while I’m looking for the right kind of cheese and be completely engaged. It’s usually pretty science-y, which I enjoy quite a lot. But last week they had an episode that had me totally enraptured. I heard it in one sitting on a long drive in the car and I’m glad it worked out that way.

The episode was called The Ring and I. I had no clue what it was about when I turned it on, so I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be an exploration of Wagner’s famous Ring Cycle, a set of long and difficult operas. I love opera, but I’m relatively uninformed. I have the few that I’ve seen that I enjoy, but getting regular opera tickets is an expensive undertaking and I usually don’t have the patience to listen to it on cd. The Ring Cycle, in particular, is a lot to swallow since it totals to around 20 hours.

RadioLab not only walks you through all the individual operas, sharing the highlights and the story, but also introduces you to that small group that is particularly obsessed with them. It was educational, I learned a lot about leitmotifs, which was perhaps my favorite part. But the best thing, really, was just driving there, hearing what everyone said, while I listened to Wagner. Wow. It was one of those transcendental types of experiences that only comes from the best art. And since I’m one of those crazy types who loves learning about everything, I felt like I could really appreciate it more by the end instead of just hearing it with no context. I highly recommend taking an hour some time and giving it a listen. The Radio Lab archives are also quite tremendous.

I have always been the most prolific reader I know. That is, until Eric. I mentioned late in 2006 that I wanted to start keeping track of the books I read and set a goal of hitting 75 in a year. I never did do it, but Eric did and last year he went over 100. That’s nearly 2 books a week every week. I doubt I can beat it and hold a full-time job. Granted, Eric does plow through some sci-fi in a sitting pretty often. But I am often the same way with mysteries and I don’t read nearly as much ambitious stuff as I used to.

So this year I decided to start keeping track with help from the blog. But I’m off to a bad start. After getting quickly out of the gate with Book #1, which I read in an evening, Books 2 and 3 took quite some time each. I feel like I should be farther ahead.

Worse, I’ll stay behind because we didn’t go to the library today. We haven’t gone in weeks and it’s normally my main source for books. I probably have some hefty fines. But it’s not our fault! We found out late Friday evening that the landlord would be turning off our water for plumbing work for most of the day. So we weren’t exactly in a condition to be out and about given we hadn’t showered or brushed our teeth until late afternoon. I suppose we’ll have to squeeze it in on Monday.

Meanwhile, I’m in the middle of A Man in Full, which I read a couple years ago. It will take me a while. It’s my “court book” meaning it’s the book I keep in my bag to take with me while I’m waiting for court and other such meetings. I plan to eventually take it out of there, but for at least a little while it will accompany me around town and hurt my shoulder because it’s so heavy.

I put this film off for a long time due to its plot summary. Two men torture a family, that’s about all there is to it. I veer away from most horror, but I finally succumbed after I saw the trailer for the remake. I realized that I would be able to rope Eric into watching it with me, which is usually a necessity with anything remotely scary. And while this wasn’t nearly as violent as I expected, it was quite frightening. I’ve never been so scared by a golf ball in my life.Everything I say will be rife with spoilers, so I’ll at least put it all after a jump. Read more

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