Jan

26

In the Mood for Something Scary

Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

I’ve been reading and yet I feel like I have little to say about what I read.  That’s kind of sad.  The Edgar nominations came out recently so I’ve had a little more mystery reading than usual, none of it good enough to take my breath away.  I read yet another book about 60’s radicals, convinced that it had to get better.  It didn’t.  I really think I just need to quit that genre all together.  There are only 2 books in it that I’ve ever liked and there are far too many in existence.

Actually, I did read one really interesting book recently, Sombrero Fallout by Richard Brautigan.  I’d never heard of Brautigan before, a lot of his books are out of print, which is kind of strange because he seems very Vonnegut-esque to me and Vonnegut never seems to go out of print.  Actually, I thought the book had a lot more emotion and poetry in it than Vonnegut, so Brautigan sure seems to have a lot going for him.  The book followed two basic storylines, one where a humorist spends a night mourning the loss of his Japanese girlfriend, and the other where the story the humorist began to write–where a sombrero falls suddenly out of the sky–continues going after he throws it in the trash.  It’s a weird dichotomy because the man himself is deeply sad, while the story that won’t stop is completely surreal and bizarre with flashes of very dark humor.  I’m interested in finding some more of his writing.

I’m currently starting the humongous biography of Graham Greene.  It is only the first volume and it’s so large that I feel like I should call it a “massive tome.”  Sadly, it is currently suffering from the problem all biographies have: children are not very interesting.  So far, the author does have some things that irk me, like how he mentions that Greene had a fear of birds and then must quote every reference to a fear of birds in every book he’s ever written.  Or if he’s trying to imagine what a certain event must have felt like, he’ll use another writer’s work to do it.  I have to assume that since he knew Greene himself that there is a real knowledge here and not just guesswork, but it seems to feel like guesswork quite a lot.  Nevertheless, I am waiting for the exciting stuff: the travel, the affairs, etc.

I haven’t been doing quite as much reading lately because I have been trying to finish my knitting project and I generally like to have something to watch while I do it.  (Reading and knitting simultaneously does not work.)  Plus I’ve been on this scary-movie kick for over a year and it’s gone in high gear while I’m trying to find things to watch.  It’s the strangest thing, because I am the kind of person who actually gets scared by scary movies.  It started when I saw The Orphanage, which was so scary and great that I kept wanting to find something else just as good.  So far, the search hasn’t gone well.  It may be that nothing is so good as The Orphanage.  There is a fine line to walk.  Over the summer, Eric and I went to see The Strangers and it was so scary that I couldn’t watch it.  Literally sat there in the theater not watching for a good hour.  So I try to do a little research now and find stuff that will work.  We rented some old Cronenberg stuff, we’ve watched old Sam Raimi stuff, and that’s gone better.  I’m currently watching a lot of foreign thrillers, since Eric claims he is “too tired for subtitles” lately.  My favorites lately have been Les Diaboliques and A Tale of Two Sisters, both very different but quite good.  Les Diaboliques feels very Hitchcockian (not a surprise, since they were contemporaries), it’s the kind of movie that I think would have gone over well when I was younger.  Back then we couldn’t watch anything truly scary but still liked to get scared and there were movies like Wait Until Dark and such that you could watch to hit the middle.  Les Diaboliques is not exactly scary, but it’s definitely suspenseful.  (Although I did figure it out about 3 minutes before the big reveal.  Just enough time for me to feel proud of myself, not so much that I got bored.)  A Tale of Two Sisters is of the Asian horror school that isn’t so concerned with shock value and more with atmosphere.  It does a good job of giving you just enough information that you think you know what’s going on, but always keeps you off kilter.  I was very impressed with the roll-out of the twist, followed by another, and then with the explanatory backstory.  It all worked really smoothly.  Not surprisingly, this has been remade.  (There was a write-up in the Times on Sunday with a picture of the cherubic girls of the new version.  They are far too pretty to be scary.)  (Other enjoyable flicks in this vein in the last year were [REC], and Let the Right One In.  Both are foreign.  The former has already had a US remake even though it was never officially released in the US.  Don’t see Quarantine, try and find yourself a copy of the original.  There is talk of remaking LTROI.  That talk needs to die.  There’s even been long discussions of a remake of The Orphanage.  Apparently in the US we have no ideas.)

I will be starting another knitting project now that I’ve finished my last one, which may mean more foreign thrillers and such.  Knitting during scary movies is great because you don’t have to watch the screen if you think something scary is going to happen.  You can just look at your knitting.  This doesn’t work so great with the foreign films, because you’ll miss the subtitles.  Still working on a solution to that.

Jan

8

More Good TV

Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment

As you may know, I am officially over my debilitating morning sickness.  Towards the end there I wasn’t sure what I would watch to keep myself from going slowly insane, but I did find some last minute lifesavers.

First, Damages.  A legal show.  Which means I won’t watch it.  I used to be a big Law & Order fan until I actually practiced and then I realized that it was all a bunch of crap with the occasional legal/ethical dilemma that made me want to hurl.  But I was desperate and I do enjoy reading the occasional legal thriller so I thought maybe I could go for it.  While Damages bends the rules, like all legal/medical/procedural shows, its crimes aren’t as bad as many others.  What I really liked about it, though, is how effectively they spun the intrigue within an episode and across the whole season.  It’s the kind of show where at least once per episode you say, “What??  No!”  The fact that they managed it so consistently was quite impressive, even if the excessive flashback-ing was annoying.  (That may just be because I watched the episodes all in a row.)  It is a better legal thriller than any book I’ve read in years and the endless twists never felt annoying to me, instead it just changed the game over and over.  My only disappointment came near the end of the season when it seemed like all these big buildups kind of fizzled into just plain old answers.  I shouldn’t have fallen for it.  In the last episode there were like 10 times I said, “No way!!!” as everything you thought was true turned out not to be.  I love that.  Just like I love con movies.  (See Nine Queens, The Spanish Prisoner, House of Games, etc.)

Damages has just started its second season, which was one major incentive to watch it.  If I liked it, I’d have a new show.  Yesterday had the premiere and I admit it wasn’t quite as strong out of the gate as I’d like, but they planted lots of seeds and I’ll give them a little time to grow.  They did do one nice reveal that was way more subtle than usual which I enjoyed, though I’d already suspected it now that I have a feel for how they work.  The one thing that drove me crazy is how they’ve made up Rose Byrne this season.  In the first season she wore preppy/frumpy clothes with preppy/frumpy hairstyles and it was very endearing.  But now they’ve got her all glammed up with lipstick that’s far too dark and it looks like she’s lost about 20 pounds since her arms look like they’d snap if you blew on them too hard, and yet she’s wearing sleeveless blouses the whole time.  I miss preppy/frumpy Ellen.  But at least there is always-awesome Glenn Close.

The other show I really got into is Friday Night Lights.  It’s the kind of show that people have been telling you is really good ever since it came on and yet you never really listened.  I find this happens a lot, but usually I’ll give the show a try.  I think I was just way too busy the year this show started and I kind of forgot about it, but it was available on Hulu and I’ve just finished the first season.  It is just as good as everyone says it is.  I like the handheld style, the casting is excellent, and they manage to do the Texas thing about right.  (Occasionally it’s a little too much, sometimes too little, but it averages out okay.)  The writing is top notch, in a show with a lot of high school-aged characters you’re going to have some hokey storylines, but they always manage to pull it off in a fresh way without it feeling like an after-school special.  Mostly I love the relationship of the Taylor family, there is a teenager who actually acts like a teenager, instead of being either difficult or saintly depending on what the script calls for; there are husband and wife who fight and bicker but always support each other; it just feels legit.  And I like football, so I never mind watching the sports scenes.  I’m working through Season 2 now so I can start watching Season 3 once it comes back on.

As for life outside tv, I’ve been reading through one of those big novel collections with 6 books of 30’s and 40’s noir/crime fiction.  I like the straightforward style, they’re fun to read, but I’m finishing up the last one and probably won’t explore too much further.  I do have another collection of Raymond Chandler novels since I’ve only ever read The Maltese Falcon which I’ll get to next.  I started off the year very well with Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation, which I’ve wanted to read for a long time.  It’s not often nonfiction works well as a plane book but this one really did.  I kept having to read paragraphs aloud to Eric because I couldn’t keep it to myself.  I followed that up with The Comedians by Graham Greene, which I mostly read sitting on my balcony in Cancun.  It was bizarrely appropriate reading, since the book has a lot of Greene’s typical feelings on American and Europeans who go off for a lark in a foreign country without realizing what they’re getting into.  Cancun isn’t quite Haiti, but it still left me feeling a little guilty.  Nevertheless, I liked it, a solid offering.  It fits nicely with something like The Quiet American where Greene has a definite message, but what saves the book from feeling preachy is just how thoroughly he acquaints you with the country and the people.  Greene’s Haiti felt a look like the Dominican Republic I’d recently encountered in Junot Diaz’s The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which isn’t surprising since they have similar problems with brutal dictators.  I’ve always liked Greene’s “travel” novels, with the exception of the Catholic one set in Mexico, and I hope to read more of them.  But it did have me setting a relatively high bar for a New Year’s Reading Resolution.  I’ve decided to take on Greene’s three-volume biography.  It’s quite an undertaking, but I can’t think of anyone whose life could be more interesting.

As for movies, my fervor has lessened.  I think I’ll wait until the Oscar noms come out and then catch the remaining Best Picture nominees just so I can feel justified in my choices.  I did convince Eric to go see Slumdog Millionaire, and while it wasn’t quite as transporting the second time it was still pretty admirable.  He enjoyed it, which made me happy, though we both agree that Wall-E is still #1 and if it’s not nominated it’s going to be a far less enjoyable contest.  The only movie that may not be nominated that I’ll definitely see is Revolutionary Road.  I know it won’t live up to the book.  It is impossible.  It doesn’t mean I’m not a bit curious.  (Speaking of RR, I really liked this article that explains that RR is not actually about what’s wrong with the suburbs.  It hits the nail on the head.)

Jan

4

Best Books of 2008

Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

My Best-of lists this year are more complicated than usual. I read so much that I couldn’t just make one list and I ended up making 4. The first two don’t involve date of publication (although anything pre-2008 is marked with an asterisk) and are simply listed by favorites in their genre. My official 2008 list and pre-2008 list may have a few repeats, which is to be expected. By the way, if you’re counting, the grand tally for the year was 141, which may very well be a new record for me. I read an awful lot of fluff this year, but I was surprised at just how much strong stuff there was and how difficult it was to pick out the very best of so many worthy contenders. (With one exception, nonfiction was not included.)

Mysteries:

1. Lush Life by Richard Price. Someday Price is going to be recognized as one of the best contemporary novelists we have. This year he got a lot closer to that with this massive and amazing crime novel set on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Price does what he does best: shows you something real with full characters and razor-sharp dialogue.

1. When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson. I had to make this a tie for first because there was no way for me to pick between these two. Atkinson and Price have very different writing styles but both manage to weave in excellent characters and multiple storylines with grace and depth. Atkinson’s book was depressing as hell, but I loved every second of it and I hope we see more from the Jackson Brodie series.

3. In the Woods*/ The Likeness by Tana French. I read both of French’s books this year, and while I prefer the first I would feel like a jerk if I didn’t include the second. ITW is perhaps the best first-person mystery narrative since the old noir stuff, or even Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. French is, like almost all of the writers on this list, more concerned with people than crime, and her stories are expertly told.

4. PopCo* by Scarlett Thomas. The fact that this book is all about codes and codebreaking probably has a lot to do with why I liked it so much. I read it at breakneck speed and felt kind of like a little kid with my fascinations with Thomas’s many devices. It is the kind of book that you can tell is written by an extremely smart person, and it’s the rare mystery that makes you feel smarter from reading it.

5. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale. This is something of an outlier on this list, since it’s nonfiction. But it was just as engrossing as any fictional mystery I read this year. It’s even better to the mystery aficionado, since this crime was really the birth of the crime/scandal/mystery novel.

6. Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith. While I don’t know if this one was at the very top of the enjoyment scale—I had several minor criticisms—it was definitely high on the ambition scale which moved it up a few notches. You don’t see many mysteries that try to do something completely different and this one does by moving the whole thing to Stalinist Russia. Sure, there are 85 million plot twists, but they’re all pretty good.

7. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Apparently the Scandinavians are good at mysteries. I just wish they’d translate them faster. This was a tightly plotted one with a lot going on and a very different kind of approach.

8. One Step Behind* by Henning Mankell. I wasn’t kidding about those Scandinavians. (Not on this list, since I wasn’t crazy about her new book this year, is my favorite, Norwegian Karin Fossum.) I tried to read one of Mankell’s books once and I couldn’t get into it. This year I finally went for it and found I liked him quite a bit.

9. The Spellman Files* by Lisa Lutz. This one is technically from ‘07, though Lutz also had a sequel come out this year and it looks like a third is to follow. This is definitely a train you should jump on. Lutz is hilarious. Most writers have trouble with high-concept comedy writing, Lutz not only nails the humor but has great mystery elements as well. Her kooky family of P.I.’s are, not surprisingly, probably going to be in a movie soon.

10. The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson. I know that Southern girly fiction is the kind of genre I’m not really crazy about, but I am nuts about Jackson. I read her blog. I’ve read all her books. And her new one was a lot of fun, with plenty of her standard crazy characters and dysfunctional families. You can tell she’s a real Southerner, not just someone who happens to be from the South. The rural/suburb showdown works really well here and is great even if you’re not a mystery fan.

Honorable Mentions: Down River by John Hart, What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman, A Field of Darkness by Cornelia Read, Black Seconds by Karin Fossum, A Cure for Night by Justin Peacock, The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos, Missing Witness by Gordon Campbell.

YA:

1. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: Kingdom on the Waters by M. T. Anderson. Since this is a special occasion I’ve used the full title of this incredible book. I said after reading it that it was perhaps the best YA ever written and I’m willing to stand by that. In fact, it’s so good, I think it should be required reading for adults. But read the first volume first.

2. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. When I think back to the YA books I loved the most when I was younger, the more gruesome the better. This book has a gruesome premise but plays out beautifully with strong emotional resonance, an amazing story, and great characters. The heroine deserves several more books, so I hope this series will be long.

3. The Astonishing Adventures of Fan Boy and Goth Girl / Boy Toy by Barry Lyga. Of these two of Lyga’s books, I definitely prefer Fan Boy, which was one of the most interesting first-person teenage boy narrators I’d ever had the pleasure of reading. This book made me feel like I was a teenager again. Boy Toy is a very different book in some ways, but a gutsy one. I expect great things from Lyga, who seems to really want you to have something to think about when you read his books. I appreciate that.

4. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks / Dramarama* by E. Lockhart. Frankie is the kind of book I want girls to read when they’ve started dating. It’s about what it means to be a girl in some ways, but it has a lot of the lessons I remember learning. Dramarama was like finding myself as a teenager again, except with a gay best friend who sings showtunes with me. What I love about Lockhart is that she sees the future of her heroines and even if things get really tough, you ultimately end up with stronger, fuller girls with a clearer future.

5. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. This is definitely a technical book, and if I was a sci-fi geek this may be higher on my list. But I give props to Doctorow for writing an intense book and at least helping someone like me to have a basic understanding of the technology involved. Very Orwellian and very exciting.

6. Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer. I’ve always loved apocalyptic novels. But I don’t know if one has ever scared me as much as this one did. As everything plays out, you find yourself thinking that you probably wouldn’t be doing that great in these same circumstances. The first-person diary style narration works surprisingly well. The companion book, The Dead & The Gone, is also strong, though I think it’s in Life where Pfeffer shines brightest.

7. Extras by Scott Westerfeld. Uglies was one of my great discoveries from last year, although Pretties may be the best of the series. Extras was a big change, but I found it to have the incredible ideas and creativity that I expect from the series. Maybe not quite as strong as the first few books—it is tough to switch main characters—but still completely worthwhile.

8. Unwind by Neal Shusterman. There’s one part of this book that literally had me squirming in my bed. It elevated it from being another crazy futuristic YA book to being one that really left you feeling chilled. Perhaps it could have stood for a few tweaks along the way, but the fact that I read this several months ago and it still creeps me out tells you something.

Published in 2008:

1. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: Kingdom on the Waters by M. T. Anderson. It was incredibly hard to pick a #1 for this list. I really enjoyed my ‘08 books, but I have to say that this is the one I’ve raved about the most and probably the one that will affect me the longest.

2. Lush Life by Richard Price. So much more than a mystery, I think it’s a big step forward for Price in some ways. It’s also nice to see him move into a different kind of neighborhood and blend in just as well as ever. (If you haven’t read Clockers, you should get on that right now.)

3. The Age of Shiva by Manil Suri. I read this back in August, but it continues to be one of the books I talk about and recommend most consistently. I find most men don’t write women well, but Suri completely nails it. This book shows the difficulties of being a woman in a patriarchal society and an independent one. Plus it’s a beautiful look at India. I’m thrilled to pass around Suri’s second novel, since when I describe his first, The Death of Vishnu, it never quite manages to sound appealing. I think this is a good introduction to Indian fiction as well as a good book for women.

4. When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson. Having re-read one of Atkinson’s earlier books this year, she’s definitely cemented herself as one of the strongest writers around. But she plays such an interesting role since her books have strong literary appeal but also are the kind of thing you could pass along to a friend of yours who doesn’t read much.

5. A Mercy by Toni Morrison. I suspect there are a lot of people like me. They’ve read Song of Solomon and Beloved and The Bluest Eye. And then they just skipped all of Morrison’s more recent stuff because they heard it just wasn’t that great. Well, it’s time to get back in. A Mercy is brief but fascinating, a study of all kinds of enslavement, and a look at a time rarely written about before our country was anything resembling a country. I sped through this one pretty quickly and was very happy to get reacquainted.

6. Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O’Nan. I often think there’s not enough real-life fiction these days, and what there is often focuses too much on the outer edges of society at the very top or the very bottom. In this book, O’Nana takes a long hard look at the middle, where he follows the employees of a Red Lobster the night before they’ll be shut down. Anyone who’s done restaurant work or other meaningless jobs will see people they recognize here and find a lot to enjoy.

7. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. The second YA book on my list, it strongly deserves the spot. I am going to make all of you read YA if it kills me. It’s some of the best stuff out there.

8. The Philosopher’s Apprentice by James Morrow. A gutsy satire that kind of feels like a trip down the rabbit-hole at times. I haven’t heard or read hardly anything about this book, which is a shame, because it was tons of fun to read.

9. Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum. This one barely squeaked under the wire. I liked Bynum’s somewhat-aimless teacher heroine. I felt like I could really feel her, especially when it came to the feelings she had for her students. I wish the book could have been a little fuller, but I’m curious to see more of Bynum.

10. Duma Key by Stephen King. An unusual choice, I admit. But I had to give credit where it’s due and in the last several years, King has really outdone himself. Now it’s no Lisey’s Story, which was my favorite book the year I read it, but it’s big and brassy and sweeping and scary and manages to contain all those bright Florida colors.

Honorable Mentions: City of Thieves by David Benioff, A Person of Interest by Susan Choi, The Uses of Enchantment by Heidi Julavits, Palace Council by Stephen L. Carter.

Published Before 2008:

1. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. The best book I read this year hands down. It still lingers in my head. The only books I’ve read in the last 5 years or so to have a similar reaction are perhaps Sophie’s Choice and American Pastoral. Richard Ford, in his introduction, called the book a secret literary handshake and I know exactly what he means. I want to find someone, pull them into a dark corner and put this book in their hands and say, “Just read it. No questions asked.” It was a gift, a gift so great that I can’t believe I’d never heard of it before this year. Should be up there with Gatsby as one of the great American novels.

2. Howards End by E. M. Forster. I am mad at myself for watching the movies of Forster’s books before reading them. I have to wait a good year now to read A Room With a View so I can appreciate it properly. Howards End was a joy of a novel, the reason you read old classics, I want a copy to put on my bookshelf, pull out every few years, and curl up with in a big chair.

3. A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro. As of this year I’ve read all Ishiguro’s novels but one. This one, his first, is not quite his best—who can beat Remains of the Day?—but it was one that I enjoyed immensely. Ishiguro’s immaculate style is on display, the story is riveting and multi-faceted, and I felt like I was watching a painter paint while I read it.

4. Starting Out in the Evening / Breakable You by Brian Morton. I wish I’d read SOITE before seeing the film, but then again I never would have found the book if it weren’t for the film so I owe it that. The translation was so good that it was practically having the same experience twice. I also enjoyed Breakable You quite a lot. Morton really gets inside his characters and fleshes them out. His writing is lovely and I found myself moved more by him than perhaps any other novelist this year.

5. The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence. Someday I’m going to finish Women in Love, the book that follows The Rainbow. But I haven’t found it quite as engrossing as the first. It’s the kind of book that follows a family through generations, something that normally annoys me, and yet I liked seeing the same rhythms playing out, watching the actions and reactions trickle from parent to child. I don’t think it’s my favorite Lawrence, I really loved Sons and Lovers, but I am certainly enamored.

6. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. What took me so long to read this? I have no idea. I had an audio version of this book and I loved the narrator so it endeared it to me even more than it would have. I recognize that at its heart it’s not an overly complicated book, but I thought it did what it set out to do remarkably well. Wish I’d read it at 16.

7. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. A crazy book. Unlike anything else I’ve read. But I could not put it down. At all. It was also incredibly creepy, and few books ever really do that.

8. On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. Yeah, yeah, yeah, another point for McEwan. I’d hate the guy if I didn’t love his books so much. Amsterdam was insanely good. Atonement was insanely good. Saturday was insanely good. And On Chesil Beach, while not as big and triumphant as the others, is still quite a success. At one point I felt my heart breaking. The fact that he can write so many different kinds of stories so well makes me love him, even if I kind of hate him for being so damn consistently good.

9. The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Another one where I’m late on the bandwagon but glad I got on. At first it felt like a book with ADD, but once I settled in I got used to the style. Lovely and horrible are not easy to do in tandem, but McCarthy nails it. One of these days I really am going to read Blood Meridian. Seriously.

10. Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters. It should be no surprise that a Sarah Waters book is on one of my lists. I love her. I am kind of dying for her next book to come out, since I read all of hers within about a year. This book never went where I thought it was going and the twists and turns were great fun. I also think this is the book where Waters lets loose and just has a rollicking good time more than her later ones. I look forward to the day when she’s no longer seen just a lesbian writer but a great one.

Honorable Mentions: Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Under the Skin by Michel Faber, The Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem, Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.