Just finished a good book that I didn't enjoy. It was entitled Contents May Have Shifted, written by Pam Houston. It was an interesting read, a bit like a collection of journal entries which, when taken in their entirety, told an outline of a tale about the protagonist, a writing professor with a penchant for exotic, even extreme, travel (much like the author herself). I didn't completely realize that I wasn't enjoying it until I finished and began a new book with a more linear story. Interestingly enough, at the same time that I was reading this book, Billy was reading A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway. And, hang onto your hats, he didn't enjoy that book -- even going so far as to say that he "didn't think the writing was very good." OK, as an English major, I'm not even going to dignify that comment with a comment.
The larger point, I think, being that we both stuck with the books we weren't enjoying, and finished them. As I wrote in my last post, I buy books. Real. Books. So, it takes a lot for me to walk away from a bad book. Lord help me, I even finished The Bridges of Madison County, though, frankly, I did snicker and roll my eyes a lot while doing so. I could probably count on one hand the number of books that I have begun and not finished, and I'm even going to count The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper. It was on a class reading list in college, and something had to go that semester as I was carrying fifteen units of upper division English classes, and my head was swimming. So here it is, my confession to the world: YES! I READ THE CLIFF NOTES INSTEAD OF THE BOOK!!! I feel a whole lot better now that I have gotten that off my chest, though I still feel just very slightly guilty that I got an A in the class. I can handle it, though.
But here's a recent book I didn't finish: The Girl with the
Then came the movie which, again, I understood that I must see. Right. My friend, Christopher, took the bullet for us when we were all in Carmel, and went to see it. He came back reporting that there were two good things about it: the credits, and Daniel Craig. And yet. And yet, I still hear people raving about both. I guess that's what makes life and people interesting. That there is always something for everyone -- although, in my opinion, any tale involving Natty Bumppo is a long shot in that equation.
Here's another confession: We saw Julie and Julia when it first came out. I so enjoyed the Meryl Streep/Julia Child portion of the film (as well as the memoir it came from). When the film made it to cable a few months back, I watched some of it several times. And what I mean by some of it is that I DVR'd it, and then only watched the Julia parts, thus saving myself from the incessant whining in the Julie segments. I thought about other films I could watch like this, and how much time it would save me in life. Like in the original Hayley Mills, Parent Trap, one could skip the whole Boston portion of that movie and just watch the beginning part when they are at camp, and the part that takes place in Monterey (the father's home is a house to die for, I think). This would be sortakinda (I've decided that this should be a word) like that short subject film that runs through all of Shakespeare's plays in under five minutes, mas o menos.
Our friends, Jim and Sue, were in town recently and when we met for dinner, I discovered that Sue is also a voracious reader. Somehow, in the past twenty-five or so years of knowing them, this got past me. Billy and I were throwing out book titles to her, trying to remember, off the top of our combined heads, books that we had recently read and enjoyed. These were the ones which raised to the top, and that we both agreed upon: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson; The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon; Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold; Away by Amy Bloom. Sue recommended a few books to us as well, including . . . wait for it . . . The Girl with the
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