What I'm Reading Now -- Rebecca

In truth, I'm actually pretty far into Rebecca already, so I'll keep this short because I want to avoid spoilers.  But I'll say that it took me about the first 50 or 75 pages to get into it, but once I did, I've been really into it.  Which is great, because this is one of several long books selected for my 2022 Reading Challenge.

The Snow Child -- Take 2

I wasn't sure this book was going to be for me.  It fit the January category that I needed for my 2022 Reading Challenge, and I happened to have it, so I went ahead and gave it a go.  I was pleasantly surprised by it.  The writing was simple, but in a way that fit perfectly with the story.  

The main characters, Jack and Mabel, leave their families on the east coast and move to Alaska after a traumatic miscarriage that neither of them had fully processed.  It's the 1920s.  The two of them get a little piece of land and start their lives over, building their own home and trying to make a go of farming.  The life is not quite as simple as they hoped, as they remain haunted by the child they left behind.

One night, during an early-season snowfall, they build a snow child.  They give her a face and dress her up in a scarf and mittens.  In the morning, the snow child is gone, but a set of small footprints lead away from the location and into the woods.  They see a girl, wearing their scarf and mittens, out in the woods.

Over the years, they get to know the girl.  She comes around every winter, but disappears into the colder high country for the summer months.  There remains something mystical, and slightly fantastical about her.  Mabel is reminded of an old Russian fairy tale about a snow child that her father used to read her when she was young.  The snow child -- like the girl Faina -- appears every winter and disappears every summer.  But the snow child's story always ends with her disappearance.  Having come to love Faina as the child they never had, Mabel and Jack work to ensure Faina does not meet the same fate. 

If you know me, you are probably as perplexed as I am about why I liked this.  As I mentioned, first, the writing style perfectly suited the content.  These are simple frontier people, educated but not complicated.  The prose is as well.  It fits the story, the way good architecture fits in its landscape.  Second, though I've never been to Alaska, I find the idea of it fascinating generally.  Third -- and this is why it's important to read some books at the appropriate time -- it was cold here.  Sometimes you need to read a cold book when it's blazing hot outside, but sometimes those cold, whistling winds and long, dark nights really help set the mood.  That was the case for this read.

What I'm Reading Now -- The Snow Child

Even though I'm not quite finished with The Boys in the Boat yet, I'm going ahead and getting started on The Snow Child, my first book for my 2022 Reading Challenge.  I don't want to get too far behind, because I have several big books on my list this year!

The Snow Child is my Winter Wonderland selection -- set in snowy Alaska in 1920.  A pair of homesteaders build a snowma--, er, snow child, who appears to come to life.  But things apparently are not quite as they seem.  [Cue creepy music.]

A good one for the wintertime, it sounds like!

Movies -- A Recap -- Part XIX -- More "Oldies but Goodies"

I was surprised to discover that I had not seen A Midnight Clear (1992). It's the story of a group of US GIs in WWII who are assigned the task of holding Allied ground in the form of an isolated villa, besieged by Germans, while they run short of food and ammunition. It has a fabulous cast. It's heavy, but weird, and almost a little bit funny.

The Four Seasons (1981) is an Alan Alda film which I really enjoyed. It follows three couples who vacation together each season throughout the year, so the viewer follows them through marital problems, issues with kids, strains on their friendship, and more. It's funny and a bit risque.

I watched The Journey of Natty Gann (1985) a lot as a kid. I loved her determination and independence, and her dog/wolf.  The titular character is played by Meredith Salenger who went on to do lots of stuff, though nothing hugely newsworthy.  

Field of Dreams (1989) is truly a love letter to baseball. S has made a valiant effort of becoming a baseball fan for my benefit, but I didn't realize that he hadn't seen this movie until we watched the game between the White Sox and the Yankees this past summer. For my part, I forgot how darn funny the first half of the movie is, and I've seen it so many times that watching it is like visiting old friends.

Dogma (1999) is another cult classic that S hadn't seen. That really surprised me, because it seems to be right up his alley.  It's quick and funny, but certainly more of a niche flick than Field of Dreams.  We had to get it from the library in order to watch it. I couldn't figure out why it wasn't on any streaming service, but the internet enlightened me to the conventional wisdom that, rather than being owned by by the Weinstein Company (and accordingly being taken into receivership), it actually is owned by the Weinsteins personally - to this day - and has not been licensed to any of the streaming services.

I don't have any idea how we stumbled onto Voyage of the Damned (1976).  It's certainly not because either of us had read the book; I didn't even know it was a book until I started looking into this whole situation. It's a retelling of the true story of the SS St. Louis, a cruise liner which left Hamburg in 1939 headed for Cuba.  Many of the passengers aboard were Jews fleeing the increasingly oppressive Nazi regime, hoping for refuge.  I won't spoil the ending, but even if you don't want to watch the whole movie, check out the IMDB link above or the Wikipedia page to find out, if you're interested.

I'm sure I've mentioned previously that one of my law partners is super into old movies.  TCM is his favorite television station.  He has, for years, been bugging me about seeing Sophie's Choice (1982), which I finally did!  It's a small but excellent core cast: Meryl Streep as Sophie, Kevin Kline as her on-again-off-again boyfriend Nathan, and Peter MacNicol (who's been in all sorts of things but whom I recognize most clearly as the nutty Dr. Janosz Poha from Ghostbusters II) as their third wheel Stingo.  I won't tell you what the titular choice actually was, but suffice it to say that the main thrust of the plot is an exploration of Sophie's experience in Nazi-controlled Europe, including being sent to Auschwitz for a period of time.
Question: in the version we saw, either there weren't subtitles when the characters were speaking Polish or German or we couldn't figure out how to turn them on.  Was this just us, or was this a deliberate choice on the part of the director to omit them?
Either way, it was an excellent film.

And a couple of oldies but not-so-goodies (which don't get pictures):

Coneheads (1993).  I don't know what possessed us to watch this movie.  But it's really dumb. 

Beautiful Creatures is a popular a kid. I loved movie name.  The subject film here is the 2000 edition.  It was weird, and I didn't care for it.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

 

2022 Reading Challenge

In an effort to see if I can make it through a whole year of books, K and I are doing another reading challenge this year!  I've picked some dense ones this year, plus I'm still working on The Boys in the Boat, so I better get my reading glasses ready.

As usual, I'm making/carrying over some of my old rules.  Here's what I've got this year:

1. It has to be a book I already owned;
2. It has to be a book I had not read yet (or at least haven't finished yet);
3. Though I can go out of order, some of the months are clearly themed (e.g., January, February, October), so I will try to read those books at least close to the month they are selected for; and
4. I had initially planned to carry over some books from last year, which I didn't actually do but I'm just throwing out that this is a possibility for the future.

The 2022 categories/descriptions and selections are as follows:

January: Winter Wonderland (set in a wonderful place - somewhere beautiful, with a rich culture, or magical)
The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey

February: Seeing Red (with "red" in the title or a red cover; bonus points if it has both)
Rebecca, by Daphne DuMaurier

March: Sub-Genre Sound Off (a sub-genre of your favorite genre)
Jack: A Life Like No Other, by Geoffrey Perret
Note: I struggled with what my favorite genre was.  Eventually I fell back on history, because I was a history major in college and at one point it was definitively my favorite.  Plus, it was the category I could easily divide into sub-categories on my bookshelf: history >> American history >> the Kennedys.

April: Classics or Currents (published before the year you were born or within the last year)
The Sorrows of Young Werther, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Note: technically, the edition of this book that I have was not published before I was born.  However, the original was, so I'm going with it.

May: Author Introduction (an author you've never read anything by)
The High Adventure of Eric Ryback, by Eric Ryback

June: Name or Number (with a name or number in the title; bonus points if it has both)
The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley, by Jeremy Massey

July: Around or Out of this World (set in a country other than where you live, or by an author from another country, or set in space or on another planet)
Muddied Oafs: The Last Days of Rugger, by Richard Beard (British)

August: Creature Feature (has a creature - mythical or real - on the cover)
Good Dog. Stay., by Anna Quindlen

September: When Text Isn't Enough (includes more than just text - a map, illustrations, a family tree, letters, etc.)
The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Note: I picked this one because it has so many special additions: maps, six family trees, a pronunciation guide, and an appendix.

October: Thrills and Chills (ghost stories, haunted houses, true crime, murders - anything that keeps you on the edge of your seat)
Dracula, by Bram Stoker

November: Dynamic Duos (with characters that make the perfect pair)
The Reading Promise, by Alice Ozma

December: Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice (holiday themes, love stories, happy cries, comedies - anything that makes you feel good)
The Incredible Journey, by Sheila Burnford

Here we go again!

2021 Reading Challenge Recap

As of the end of this year, I have gotten through 8.25 of the 12 books I was supposed to read for my 2021 Reading Challenge (although I did also read three postal book club books, so I almost made my count!).  Here's how I did:

January: a book by a person who is famous for something other than writing
At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends, by Dwight Eisenhower
READ

February: an author's debut novel
Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe
READ

March: a book about an animal
Winter World, by Bernd Heinrich
READ

April: a book about an area of science you know nothing about
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach
READ

May: a prizewinner
The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, by Daniel James Brown (among other things, the American Bookseller's Association's 2014 adult non-fiction Book of the Year)
Reading

June: a book in translation
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, by Pablo Neruda (trans. W.S. Merwin)
READ

July: a book that's been banned
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley (banned numerous places, including Australia, India, and Ireland)
Did not read

August: a retelling of a myth or fairy tale
The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller
READ

September: a classic mystery
Sherlock Holmes: Selected Stories, by Arthur Conan Doyle
READ

October: a graphic novel
The Best We Could Do, by Thi Bui
READ

November: a collection of letters
What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self, ed. Ellyn Spragins
Did not read

December: a book that's set in your hometown or state
The Slide, by Kyle Beachy
Did not read

So, all in all, for a person who hasn't read much lately, I think I did okay! So good, in fact, that K and I are going to have another reading challenge in 2022.  Stay tuned...

Happy New Year!