What I'm Reading Now -- At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends

Much to my own surprise, I'm on the the fifth book in my 2021 Reading Challenge!  The latest selection is At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends, which is the January selection, a book by someone famous for something other than writing.  (Remember, one of my personal rules is that I don't have to read them in order).

It's a hefty book.  I wasn't sure I would want to go back to a massive presidential tome after the approximately five years and three attempts that it took me to get through Truman.  Nevertheless, here I am.  Maybe my affinity for reading historical tomes, lost during all the dull reading of law school, is finally making a comeback!

So far I have read the "Warning to the Reader" and about a page and a half of the forward, and it looks promising.  I like his style.  Hopefully it keeps up throughout.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers -- Take 2

I liked this book.

Body decomposition and funerary history are subjects I don't know a ton about, so it was interesting to learn.  Did you know that if you leave your body to science, you have as much control over whether you end up as a training tool for a would-be plastic surgeon versus a crash test dummy?  Okay, that's not quite true.  You can exclude certain things that you don't want your body to be used for.  But within the scope of procedures not specifically excluded, they can and will ship you off to wherever they deem your body to be the most useful.  So trying to pick your alma mater medical school as the destination for your corpse, unless you are someone with a whole lot of pull at the school, is pretty much a lost cause; you'll be headed off to the highest bidder in no time.

But as Mary Roach explores some of those places that you might end up, though many of them are odd or sort of gross, they all serve a purpose of sorts.  I came away thinking that, although some options are more palatable to my conscious brain, I will no longer be conscious so maybe I don't really care that much.  Or maybe I do.  I haven't decided yet.  But it has definitely made me think.

The book ends on an investigation into what may be the then-future of cadaver decomposition (the book was published in 2003), which though not developed there got its strongest foothold early in the scientific development in Sweden.  

***SPOILER ALERT***

It's composting.

Cool, right?  Weird, but neat.  You can live on in the form of a mighty tree or flowering topiary!  Something to think about.  Probably has a better view and more fresh air than an anatomy lab.

Movies -- A Recap -- Part XII

If you're in the mood for something cute and funny, try Morning Glory.  I liked all the people in this movie, but for some reason I doubted it would be any good.  It's not an Oscar winner, but it was entertaining.  And as much as it seems like it would be easy to hate Rachel McAdams (I don't know why, it just seems like she should be hate-able), I can't hate her.  She's a winner.

Christine was an interesting pick to watch right after Morning Glory.  It's a similar theme (women making it in journalism), but based on a true story and 40 years earlier.  It's set at a Sarasota news station.  All I can tell you is that things in this movie took a very different and very dark turn in the interest of getting a sufficiently bloody and gritty story (because that's what we viewers love to see).  The title character, Christine Chubbuck, goes a bit far ... but I fell asleep, so I actually didn't see the key scene.  If you google the movie or check out this page, you'll quickly find out what it is.

S and I watched a pair of sort of weird, sci-fi, historically-inspired movies: Overlord and The Vast of Night.  Overlord is the story of the unsettling discovery of some Nazi experiments on the townsfolk which is made by some American soldiers dropped behind enemy lines just before the planned D-Day invasion. The Vast of Night is about a couple of radio operators in the 1950s who hear suspicious sounds over the wireless.  What was so weird about this one was that it was on Amazon Prime.  You know how they make suggestions about what to watch next.  The suggestions we got after this movie were basically porn!  First of all, I didn't know they had porn on Amazon Prime.  But second, I have no idea about what this movie about a couple of radio nerd kids in the 1950s indicated to Amazon's algorithm that port would be a good next choice.  Very weird -- and sorry, K, if that messed up your suggestions too!

I don't know how Brawl on Cell Block 99 got on the list.  Maybe it was another weird Amazon recommendation, after it decided porn wasn't appropriate.  Brawl was a bit graphic, so be ready for that.  I found Vince Vaughn's character to be contradictory in a way that was more intriguing than it was annoying. But still, it wasn't very good.

For a change of pace, if you're in the mood for something cute and sort of sweet, and if Community entertained you, try The Tiger Hunter.  It stars Danny Pudi (who played Abed on Community) as a lovelorn Indian gentleman who heads off to the US in the 1970s to make a name for himself and win the love of his life.  It's predictable, and the accents are wildly inconsistent, but it's still Abed, so I loved it.

If Abed's not for you, try This is Martin Bonner instead.  Similar sweet, not-much-happens sentiment, but a very different film.  Martin Bonner is played by Paul Eenhoorn (whose name you probably don't know, but you'd likely recognize his face).  Martin abandons his life out west to move back east for a fresh beginning.  He gets a job working for a program helping released prisoners transition to life on the outside, and befriends one of the participants in his program.  The movie is the story of restarting, and friendship.

I find Adam Driver irritating.  I think this might be because I first got to know him as his character Adam Sackler, the sad-sack boyfriend in Girls.  I didn't like that character, and so I don't like Adam.  But I do think he's a good actor (and probably a nice person -- I acknowledge that my Girls-based character judgment is likely unfair).  I liked him in Marriage Story, and I liked him in Paterson.  He plays a bad poet who has a weird girlfriend.  I actually didn't like the movie at all, but I like how his character makes it seem so appealing just to sit around and think and write.  Especially while we're still waiting for everyone to get vaccinated, it seems quite timely.

The Handmaiden is a film out of South Korea.  It's a bit difficult to categorize.  Is "strange erotic mystery" a standard movie category?  That's where I would put this, I suppose.  This has one of those things I love most: unreliable narration.  This mimics a Rashomon-style retelling of the same story from the perspective of multiple characters.  Love that, as a technique.  As far as the story of the movie, I give it an "eh."

Movies -- A Recap -- Part XI

Destination Wedding was funnier than I expected it to be.  Two of my old faves, Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder, play two wedding guests, neither of whom is happy to be there.  The story is exactly as predictable as it sounds, but the comic timing of the two of them is great, and they make a cute pair.

 

 

 

The Aeronauts was not a very good movie.  By the tail end there is finally a little bit of emotional traction which is absent throughout the remainder of the movie.  It is an interesting story, although I have no idea if there is any basis in reality, and if so how much.

While on the subject of science history (or something approaching history perhaps), we watched Radioactive.  It's about Pierre and Marie Curie.  Rosamund Pike played Marie Curie, and I really liked her in that role.  It is certainly an interesting history, to the extent that it is true; it is just that it seems like a lot of liberties were taken in the interest of drama, when really that probably wasn't necessary.  Not to mention (although I am), that it just goes a little to far in some places.  For example, it connects (or tries to connect) the Curies' work and the atomic bomb and Chernobyl.  Stick to your own story.  And it gets into sort of a weird mystical thing at the end.  Hm.  Now that I'm writing about it, really the only good thing was Rosamund Pike

Sometimes it's good to go back and watch an old movie again.  Take The Hunt for the Red October, for example.  I recall, as a probably-too-young child, seeing parts of this movie.  For the first time as an adult, I watched the whole thing from start to finish.  Holy cow, the tension! It is aged, but has done so better than I would have expected. I'll give credit for that to the stunning cast.  Enjoyable.

Here's another one that it's hard to believe I hadn't seen: Amadeus.  Right?  How can I not have seen this?  I loved the interweaving of the story of his life and the creation of his music.  His life happens, and the inspiration pours from that into his music.  It reminded me a lot of Shakespeare in Love, how you would hear little snippets of language in dialogue on the street as the Bard traversed London which would then end up in his plays.  Although, Amadeus actually came out 14 years before Shakespeare in Love, so maybe Shakes actually reminds me of Amadeus.  This was, in case it somehow escaped your notice, a huge Oscar winner: best actor for F. Murray Abraham; best picture; best adapted screenplay; best director; set design; costume design; sound; and makeup.

Due Date was quite a change from the last two.  It was sort of funny.  I've always really liked Robert Downey, Jr., despite his personal missteps.  I do not feel the same way about Zach Galifianakis.  Very hit or miss, mostly miss.  However, he was less annoying than usual in this one, which had some decently funny moments.

I can, without reservation, say that I did not like I'm Thinking of Ending Things.  I can get behind a good psychological thriller, but this one was just not good.  My favorite pop culture podcast described it as "a movie you pretend to like when you're dating a guy who's studying film."  Couldn't agree more.

I love Carey Mulligan.  I mostly love Jake Gyllenhaal.  I was predisposed to like Wildlife.  It's based on the Richard Ford novel (which I have not read, but would be interested to hear contrasts if anyone has).  Joe is a teenager in mid-century Montana whose parents' marriage is on the outs.  When his father (played by Gyllenhaal) loses his job and takes a job - against his wife's wishes - fighting a wildfire, and leaving his wife and son to fend for themselves.  Mom makes no bones about the fact, with Joe, that she's unhappy about that choice.  I went back and forth between hating the dad and hating the mom more.  Joe turns out to be the only adult movie.  But, despite hating the parents, I liked the movie for what it was.  It's a bit dark and sad, but if that's what you're in the mood for, it's got you.

13th got a lot of press.  I thought I would like it.  I like history.  But I didn't like it.  I could say that I didn't like it because it left no room for opposing viewpoints, which is true.  Really, though, I think I didn't like it mostly because it's boring.  It felt about twice as long as it actually is.  The music is well-curated though.

American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West -- Take 2

I was always going to like American Wolf.

What surprised me about it was how interesting I found the portions of the book that related not to the wolves directly, but rather to wolf policy.  There are, as with any issue no matter how big or small, differing viewpoints about whether wolf reintroduction to Yellowstone National Park was a good thing.  Farmers and ranchers have opinions, hunters have opinions, park and wildlife folks have opinions, politicians have opinions (and constituencies), lots of people who probably don't know anything about it have opinions.  And somehow, much to my surprise (dismay?), I found these segments fascinating.  Watching all the players move around each other was like watching the whole room of dancers waltz in one of those old-timey movies.

It was, of course, not my favorite part of the book.  This was obviously the wolves.  Because wolves are cool as can be.  I did find it a little bit difficult at times to remember which wolf was which (especially when they went only by the ID numbers rather than cute nicknames), but there is a family tree at the front of the book (another thing I love) which helps sort out some of that confusion.

All in all, a win - and a relatively quick read, I found.

Goals 2021 -- April Edition

You may have noticed that I'm several days late with my April goal.  This is, in part, because S and I took a short little backpacking trip over the last weekend.  The weather was beautiful, the hike was secluded, and the lack of cell service (actually, the lack of even a cell phone) was refreshing.  (Of course, there's the mountain of un-dealt-with work that one must inevitably return to after such a respite, which is no fun, but let's pretend that's not real.)

So for the remainder of this month, I will make an effort to get outside, sans telephone, to enjoy the spring weather.  With any luck we won't be drowned with rain, so my efforts will include the following:
- Mountain biking
- Dining al fresco
- Reading in the fresh air
- Getting the remainder of my gardens planted

This calls back to my goals from February and March - separating work and play, and getting the springtime yard/garden work done.  How, one might ask, does this Add a Little Fun to my life?  Well, same as I said last month: unlike many people (and unlike many other tasks -- looking at you, cleaning the bathrooms), I enjoy yard work.  And of course I enjoy being outside.  And eating, and reading, and biking, and podcasts. So let's do more of those things.  Because they're fun.