Posted by: Sally Ingraham | January 22, 2012

Movie Mayhem: World Cinema Series and Foreign Film Festival

world cinemaTwo of my favorite bloggers simultaneously started hosting movie watching events this month, and then kind of joined them up to make one delicious mash-up of true (foreign) movie mayhem. Of course I am beside myself with joy.

Caroline of Beauty is a Sleeping Cat came up with the World Cinema Series, which aspires to take the viewer on a whirlwind trip round the globe via film. Her guidelines are simply to find movies that open a door into another culture, preferably made by people from that culture.

Richard of Caravana de recuerdos invites interested folks to attend his Foreign Film Festival and watch movies from directors whose country of origin or residence is not your own.

Both of these charming hosts will be collecting links and occasionally publishing round-up posts so that everyone involved can keep tabs on what everyone else is watching. Richard’s list of links is here (January’s movies at least), and Caroline’s is here (she’s hoping to get at least one film from every country!)

And now, of course, I have a few titles of my own to add to the list:

the guardThe Guard (Writ. & Dir. John Michael McDonagh. Stars Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle. Ireland, 2011)
In a small Irish town, a cop with a perverse sense of humor and a talent for rubbing people the wrong way must team up with a straight-laced, by-the-book FBI agent in order to bring an international drug-trafficking ring down. Not an unusual plot by any means. But Brendan Gleeson (whom I am growing to adore) brings outrageous weirdness to Sergeant Gerry Boyle, balanced by an equally strange dignity. Although initially I wasn’t sure I liked Sgt Boyle, I grew to really care about this odd, socially awkward, probably lonely yet seemingly content man. Don Cheadle isn’t bad either, and the rapport between the two is believable and funny. Almost every scene in the movie has amusing elements, and even the characters with tiny parts are full-bodied (Mark Strong makes his usual hilarious appearance and Fionnula Flanagan is lovely as Sgt Boyle’s ailing mother). It’s not a very sensitive or politically correct movie, with the F word fired like machine gun rounds and plenty of cracks at the expense of Americans or anyone with the misfortune of being from Dublin. Although I was reminded of Guy Ritchie films while watching it, I was amused to find out that writer/director John Michael McDonagh is the brother of Martin McDonagh, who brought the ridiculously good and even more wonky In Bruges to screen (a movie that incidentally also stars Brendan Gleeson). I watched The Guard almost accidentally, but I am more than pleased to have discovered it. If you’re in the mood for a comic thriller (with some rather pretty scenery) this could be just what you’re looking for.

soul kitchenSoul Kitchen (Dir. Fatih Akin. Writ. Fatih Akin and Adam Bousdoukos. Stars Adam Bousdoukos. Germany, 2009)
Greek-German restauranteur Zinos has a lot on his plate. His restaurant in Hamburg is fairly successful, but his girlfriend is leaving him for a job in Shanghai and his brother is out of jail on day-parole as long as he pretends to work for him. When Zinos throws out his back and can no longer cook, a talented (if somewhat volatile) new chef seems like just the ticket. He soon alienates the local customers by refusing to serve their favorite run of the mill fare, and to make matters worse the tax office suddenly comes calling and health inspectors mysteriously show up on Zinos’ door. Soul Kitchen and everything Zinos holds dear teeters on the edge of a cliff. Zinos’ haphazard quest to save his restaurant and get on with his life is a thoroughly endearing tale. The performances (especially Adam Bousdoukos as Zinos and Moritz Bleibtreu as his disastrous but lovable brother) are excellent and the story perfectly combines slap-stick humor, food porn, music, and the dreary, wintery streets of Hamburg to make a highly enjoyable movie and one that I definitely recommend. Fatih Akin (born in Germany but of Turkish decent, fyi) directed the excellent The Edge of Heaven which I saw a few years ago and want to see again. I will also gladly add Head-On to my Netflix queue and, although I didn’t really have any interest in it before, New York, I Love You which has a segment directed by Akin that I’m now curious about. (And that reminds me that I’ve been wanting to watch Paris, je t’aime again – I guess New York, I Love You is considered a companion piece… SO MANY MOVIES TO WATCH!!)

And so my world travels for this year began on the coast of Ireland, and then moved to Hamburg, Germany. Where to next, I wonder, and who will take me there? Many thanks to Caroline and Richard for the extra incentive to travel via film and explore the work of more foreign directors in 2012. I can already tell it’s going to be a fantastic ride. Onward now, to the next port of call.

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Posted in Adventure, Fatih Akin, Movie Mayhem, Movies, World Cinema Series and Foreign Film Festival 2012 | Tags: , , , , ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | January 19, 2012

Purple Clouds and Lupine Ladies

I was going to write some movie reviews tonight, but I am really enjoying The Savage Detectives and I want to keep reading…! For the moment I will simply share with you the remarkably purple-grey clouds that were hanging over the beach and the silver ocean this afternoon.

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All day I sat in my parent’s house, doing projects and watching movies and making tea, and eyeing the glowering skies without much hope that they would disperse and let the sun shine through. I went for a walk simply to un-kink my back and get my sluggish blood moving. The drama that awaited me was unexpected and wonderful. Surprised, once again, by beauty – and how incredibly blessed am I to be here, to see it? I was struck rather forcefully by what I had read only a few days ago on Joel’s blog Of the Hands. He wrote about the incomprehensible grace and blessing and good fortune of moments like these and his/my/our responsibility to give something back – not in an effort to deserve such moments, but as a natural response to the overabundance of good things, joyful things, beautiful things in our own lives. Pass it on, spread it round, build with it.

Today’s purple clouds were a reminder and confirmation of the purpose I am pointing my life toward. Sure, I am going on an adventure and will be learning new skills in exciting places and will be given so many more amazing moments and pictures to take – but I have a purpose, and work to do. It’s time for me to give something of myself back, as a thank-you for those purple clouds. Time to plant my lupines.

“You must do something to make the world more beautiful.”

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Posted in Adventure, Hiking/Walking, Maine, Non-sense, Personal, Photography, Weather | Tags: , ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | January 14, 2012

On the Road Again

Well, I am in motion.

It occurred to me that I need to stop saying “I am moving”, because that suggests that I have a final destination. In reality I have only a few stops on the journey plotted out with my final destination still very much the stuff of legend.

I left my home of the past 6 years this morning with a car-load of miscellaneous stuff and headed a mere 3 hours down the coast to my parent’s house. I will linger here for a few weeks before I head cross country in February. So it begins.

After being excited about my upcoming adventure for weeks and being stoic about leaving friends and cats and cellos behind, I reached a boiling point this morning and shed a few tears. And then a few more. A general melancholy prevailed into the afternoon, and as the sun started to think about setting, I came to the conclusion that it was time to freeze my tear ducts into submission.

To the beach I headed, where the wind buffeted me far more than my emotions had managed to. There were bunches of birds, and wild waves, and I nearly got frostbite taking pictures. Just what I needed.

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Though my walk refreshed me, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to indulge in a few more wistful sighs before the day is out. After all, with tomorrow’s dawn comes the next chapter of my life and I expect the rough surf of today to wash away my footprints and present me with a fresh stretch of beach, patterned with wind ripples, lightly dusted with gull droppings, and hiding all kinds of sea glass and sand dollar treasures.

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Posted in Adventure, Hiking/Walking, Maine, Non-sense, Photography, Weather | Tags: ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | January 11, 2012

Rough Seas

Yesterday, after agonizing for hours over what books I could realistically keep and travel with (only one box will accompany me across the country…) I felt rather tumultuous and had to get outside before my emotions overcame me. Fortunately the wind and heavy skies off Schoodic Peninsula did not depress me more, but matched my stormy mood and invigorated me. My pictures failed to really capture the powerful crashing of the waves on Schoodic Point, so you’ll just have to believe me when I say it was thrilling – a powerful “Huzzah!” from the sea, fiercely wild. Just what I needed.

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After reading the page about Schoodic Peninsula that I linked to above, I realized that I had jumped across one of the diabase dikes that they mention – ‘large veins of dark basalt that have forced their way through the older granite‘. It was like a broken road or an odd giant flight of steps tumbling down into the ocean. I wish I had taken a picture – I’m usually so good about noticing odd geologic details. I guess the enormous crashing waves distracted me! Oh well. If you’re ever out at Schoodic Point, look for the diabase dikes. 🙂

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Posted in Acadia, Adventure, Maine, Non-sense, Photography | Tags: ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | January 10, 2012

Researching the Zombie Apocalypse

Zombies are not particularly high on my list of preferred paranormal critters. I am more willing to heart werewolves or dig vampires (NOT sparkly ones though). Mostly it’s the disgust factor that gets me. Rotting flesh, broken body parts still somehow hanging together, the glazed stare, the groaning… Yech. I can get behind beautiful but deadly. Undead and falling apart and oozing and brainless…not so much. It’s all a bit gratuitous. Even so, there are a few zombie-related stories that I have enjoyed – I giggled my way through Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and the movie Zombieland was quite fun (I’ve been meaning to watch it again).

Out of the blue, I recently read two zombie books in quick succession. I was intrigued by the creativity of each of them – the way they pushed the boundaries of zombie mythology and the zombie lit genre.

...and Teeth

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan is a curious blend of dystopia, historical fiction, and zombie apocalypse. Mary has grown up in a village buried deep in a vast wood, utterly secluded from any other settlements – if other settlements even exist. The Sisterhood tells her that they are alone in the world and the Guardians keep it that way, mending and monitoring the great fence that surrounds the village. No one leaves. No one enters. And always, unrelentingly, from the other side the Unconsecrated watch, pace, tear at the wire and steel, and fling their battered bodies against the fence in unending desperation. In spite of the horror that lurks beyond the fence, Mary dreams of the ocean that her mother’s stories have led her to believe lies far away beyond the forest. When the fence is breached, she must choose between her village and the people she loves, and her dream of a better future somewhere beyond the forest where the cold salty waters of the sea still surge.

The culture that has developed post-apocalypse over the decades of seclusion in Mary’s village is one of the strengths of the story. It is detailed and curious, with the Sisterhood providing a strangely religious structure to it all. It is fascinating to think that after civilization-ending events, people would scatter and pocket so thoroughly that they would forget (after several generations) that other places/people existed. It’s a bleak setting, and throw something like the Unconsecrated into the mix and it moves quickly from bleak to horrible. The writing itself was rather good, although some of the characters weren’t gripping. Still, I read it in an awful rush (merely a few hours), caught in a torrent of words, unable to put it down and so emotionally involved in the story that I had trouble shaking it off for a day or so after finishing it.

Few questions are answered and few threads tied off by the end, but I felt all right about that. I actually have no interest in reading the sort-of-sequel to the book, content to let the Unconsecrated lie.

Although in a way, Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion felt like a companion piece to The Forest of Hands and Teeth. The latter questioned whether the Unconsecrated retained any of their personality, of their humanity, if the wife left living after her husband was infected could become infected herself and find him, join him, be recognized by him. An interesting question. In Warm Bodies, that question is addressed in a remarkable way. The main character is a zombie. Here again the world finds itself post-apocalypse, with the remnants of the civilized world holed away in sports stadiums, rigged out to be mini fortified cities. The undead stumble around an America devastated by wars and social collapse, trying (although they have half forgotten why) to rebuild some semblance of the lives they once knew. They have homes, schools, marriage, religion – or at least the forms of such things. R appears to be a young man (although he has no idea how old he was when he ‘died’), and has retained some of his good looks. He has grey skin and a shuffle, and he does feel an overwhelming urge to eat brains now and then, but he still has all of his body parts and most of them are unbroken. He collects records (loves Sinatra) and tries desperately to remember his name. He can barely hold three syllables together, but his inner life is vibrant.

You’re hoping the story is not going to go there – but where else could it go? Yes, R meets a human girl. The memories and experiences that he somehow consumes along with a particularly delicious brain cause R to begin seeing and feeling things differently. The split-second decision to save Julie instead of eating her forever changes R’s (non)life and the lives of every being (living or undead) in the world.

The writing is sweet, darkly funny, full of pop-culture references and with distinct undertones of Frankenstein and elements straight out of Beauty and the Beast. Unlike so much of the dystopian lit I have encountered recently (which has left me emotionally distraught) I closed Warm Bodies with a happy sigh. Maybe it’s a little silly, a little improbably (and the visual takes some getting used to…) – but what good is a myth if it can’t evolve? I am a HUGE fan of this version of the story and frankly, if I were to land in the midst of a zombie apocalypse I would much rather it was the world of Warm Bodies than The Forest of Hands and Teeth! Just saying.

I would recommend both books to the zombie-lover and to those who are unsure of the specific genre or the horror genre in general. They both have scary (or squee-worthy) elements, but this is balanced by good writing and interesting stories. Warm Bodies especially is just fun, plain and simple.

On a side note (with a few-spoilerish moments), while reading these books I kept thinking about Emily of Evening All Afternoon‘s Disgust Project, and specifically about some notes she made on disgust during her recent review of House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski.

“…films featuring monsters or zombies that drip pus, ooze, or other bodily substances while also threatening the protagonists manage to combine disgust and fear with very little problem. Maybe the difference is that, while the film’s audience can be startled and drawn into the suspense of the story, they still know that they are not in real danger and so have that part of their brains free for the disgust reaction. Whereas, even in a film, when a character is in a life-or-death situation he or she is probably going to prioritize the fear and adrenaline over the “eww” factor.”

When it comes to zombie stories, it is the combination of fear and gross-out factor that make the zombie characters, more or less. As Emily says, the audience is able to experience BOTH the scare and the “eww” because there is a disconnect between the events on the screen and your living room. What I found interesting about both books (Warm Bodies in particular) was the character’s ability to minimize their disgust toward the zombies once the threat and the fear was lessened. I suppose a great deal of the disgust reaction comes directly from fear – of the unknown, of what’s not understood, of what lies buried in that gross gunk that might be deadly to you…

In The Forest of Hands and Teeth there were moments when Mary felt a strange connection to one of the Unconsecrated and with her fear lessened a bit, she felt empathy toward the miserable being instead of disgust.

This concept is ampped up in Warm Bodies, where Julie and her friend Nora come to see R as so much more than just a bit of walking rotting flesh. Like I said, one of the hardest things about that book for me as a reader was the visual – getting squeed out by imagining what R really looked like. I had to move beyond that – far beyond. Awkwardly, the book is a comment on outward appearances vs the beauty within, and certainly R’s feeling of being trapped inside his own head, limited by his mono-syllabic communication skills, reminded me of someone suffering from a stroke or paralysis of some sort. The idea of zombie-ism being a disease or infection caused by a virus is not new, nor is a ‘cure’ for zombie-ism, but it is dealt with here in Warm Bodies in a new, probably unrealistic, but lovely way.

Anyway, these books were a bit more than just horror flicks for me. I found them genuinely interesting, as well as fun and spooky and sensational. If you’re in the mood for zombies, either of these would be just the ticket. Don’t believe me? Simon Pegg says so too!

Now excuse me while I go have a Dawn of the Dead/Shaun of the Dead movie marathon.

(…just kidding!! It is way too dark and I am way too alone in the house tonight to do any such thing. Eeep!…)

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Posted in Authors, Books, Carrie Ryan, Isaac Marion, Non-sense, Novels, Reading | Tags: , , ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | January 10, 2012

Icy Gifts

I made plans to go walking with a friend today, but it was a stroke of genius that we chose to actually hike. There isn’t any snow on Mount Desert Island at the moment, and the ice isn’t as abundantly treacherous as usual on the trails in Acadia National Park, so we ran up the backside of The Beehive to The Bowl with little difficulty aside from lungs that gasped a bit as they sucked in cold air.

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When my family first started coming to ANP in the mid-90s, my sisters and I cut our teeth (sometimes literally) on the trails around The Bowl and The Beehive, and since I have lived in or near the park I have made a point of continuing to hike in the area several times a year. It seemed fitting to make this one of my last hikes before I leave the Acadia region.

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This jaunt through the sunny woods was a treasure hunt with ice formations standing in for delicate handmade lace, sparkling gems, and a ballroom floor made of crystal. The Bowl, a pond cradled in the arms of the surrounding mountains, was frozen solid. I skittered and slid out across it, stopping to marvel at the suspended bubble explosions and geometric designs left in the snow, and pausing to listen with new astonishment (every year I am astonished again) to the drumming of the ice.

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Have you heard ice music? The booming, clicking, popping, whistling of ice shifting and settling and thawing and refreezing? Honestly I don’t know exactly what causes it – especially the sounds I heard today. They had a particularly bizarre resonance – a thwack-pop with a truly melodic quality, accentuated and reverberated by the mountains swooping above. I stood in the middle of the pond and felt the sound move through the ice and up through my body, catching my breath as it ricocheted off and away. Not quite frightening, but certainly awesome in the true sense of the word – awe-inducing, knee-weakening, tear-sparking brilliance.

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I could have stayed out on The Bowl for hours letting that sound vibrate through me while the sun poured down, running and sliding when the mood struck me or the cold bit through my layers of fleece. I did stay for a long time, but there were a few more sights to be seen before the end of the day.

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Dusk found me at Compass Harbor, the scene of many a picnic and sunbathe over the years. Today I watched the sun set, scattering pink confetti over the ocean swells and across the distant form of Egg Rock Lighthouse. A loon surfaced in front of me and preened for a minute before diving beneath the silver-flecked waves again. It was peaceful and cold, increasingly cold as the sun faded.

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I hurried back to town, knowing that good friends and fish sandwiches and pints of Guinness awaited me at The Thirsty Whale – a cozy end to my second-to-last day (for awhile) on MDI.

I have one last date on Friday with the Island that I have lived on or near-to for six years. I won’t try to plot out the perfect last day, but will let it unfold naturally like this one did and accept whatever parting gifts Acadia has to offer me.

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Posted in Acadia, Adventure, Food, Hiking/Walking, Maine, MDI, Non-sense, Photography, Restaurants | Tags: , , , ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | January 8, 2012

Simenon, Sagan, and Stifter

In December I read three very short books (the longest was under 130 pages), all in translation, two French titles and one German.

I have read a variety of positive reviews about Georges Simenon’s rather famous works (recently Isabella of Magnificent Octopus was working through his back catalog), and I have picked up a total of five novels by him in preparation for my own enjoyment. Richard’s less than thrilled December review of The Widow stopped me up short and finally did what all the positive reviews hadn’t managed – I actually read a book by Simenon.

Maigret and the Hundred Gibbets (trans. Tony White) was my introduction to Inspector Maigret, one of the most famous detectives in literature – one of the great “moral” detectives. He and his stories are known less for their action and mystery and more for the journey Maigret embarks on each time as he comes closer to understanding the people around him and himself. In the Hundered Gibbits Maigret casually follows a nervous, down-on-his-luck looking fellow whom he had observed posting thousand-franc notes as ‘Printed Matter’. Discreetly accompanying the man to Brussels via train, Maigret takes the opportunity to switch out his suitcase. When the man discovers that his suitcase is gone, he promptly shoots himself. Shocked and feeling more than a little guilty, Maigret is compelled to find out what the man was up to. His investigation leads him all the way to Liege (Simenon’s birthplace, incidentally) to a garret room where the story of a horrible night years ago is retold (and relieved) and the events which brought that poor man to his miserable end are revealed – too late of course. I wasn’t blown away by the story, or by Maigret, although the details and characterizations were pretty excellent. It was well constructed but just didn’t grab me. I think I will try again – perhaps read something non-Maigret, such as Red Lights which I have on my shelf. I do really want to see some of the screen versions of the Maigret stories – I imagine they translate well. From the wiki article it appears that I have many to choose from. Does anyone have a suggestion about where to start/your favorite on-screen Maigret?

Also discovered through Isabella of Magnificent Octopus was Adalbert Stifter’s Rock Crystal (trans. Elizabeth Mayer and Marianne Moore), which I pulled off my shelf as a bit of holiday reading. Set on Christmas Eve in a remote village in the Alps, it is the briefly epic tale of two children’s journey from their home to a neighboring village and back, through the high pass and a sudden snowstorm. The writing is deceptively simple, and the story plays out gently but with such subtle suspense that I nearly fell out of my chair before I realized I was on the edge of the seat. It is icily beautiful and not really what you would suspect. I am super curious about Stifter and want to venture further into the work of a writer whom Thomas Mann called “one of the most extraordinary, the most enigmatic, the most secretly daring and the most strangely gripping narrators in world literature” (thanks to my lovely NYRB edition for that quote – reminds me that I ALSO need to read some Thomas Mann…). I just might make this book a Christmas reading habit.

I picked up two books by Francoise Sagan at my local library’s book sale last summer, mostly because they were old UK Penguin Books editions. Bonjour Tristesse is a nearly compelling description of the haphazard destruction by a young woman of her father’s relationship with a woman who threatens their carefree way of living. Told by Cecile herself, you see all of her confusion over her own actions and her struggle to determine what is best for herself, for her father, and for the woman whom she actually likes and respects. It is frightening and fascinating to watch her experiment with her powers of manipulation, and interesting to see her both think seriously about the consequences of her actions, and blithely ignore them depending on her mood or the day. Being inside her head is a bit weird, a bit off balance. Cecile seems to suspect that she missed some essential lessons, growing up as she did without the influence of a mother and with a father who is rather immature and who has treated her more like a pal than a daughter – and she is torn between embracing the good influences of Anne, her father’s potential new wife, and hating to see their life together changed. A classic tale really, handled rather well here – although here again (as with Simenon and his Maigret) I didn’t really connect with the characters. The seaside location is evoked rather well and other details are sketched in pretty deftly. It’s worth noting that the author was only 18 years old when she wrote the book (published and an overnight sensation in 1954). Even though I didn’t love this story I look forward to reading Sagan’s second book, A Certain Smile, sometime soon. And I must add the movie Bonjour Tristesse to my list, as well as Sagan, a movie based on the life of the author…

I am culling books in preparation for my move (or avoiding doing so, at the moment…) Would anyone like my copy of Bonjour Tristesse? The cover is the tiniest bit loose but otherwise it is holding together very well, and it’s a 1962 edition I believe. Up for grabs – I don’t mind shipping internationally.

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Posted in Adalbert Stifter, Authors, Books, Francoise Sagan, Georges Simenon, Movies, Non-sense, Novels, NYRB, Reading | Tags: , , ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | January 5, 2012

Smoke on the Water

Since I seem to be in no danger of going to bed yet (though the clock is eyeballing 2:30 a.m. yeesh…), I may as well post some pictures of the outrageous smoke that was tumbleweeding across the surface of the ocean yesterday morning. The air was colder than the water I believe (I’m convinced!), which caused the smoke.

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Oddly enough, even in such copiously cold temperatures, out of the wind and in the sunshine I was warm enough to sit down and put my feet up for a few minutes. Once again, totally worth getting up early to see.

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Posted in Adventure, Bar Harbor, Hiking/Walking, Maine, Non-sense, Photography, Weather | Tags: , ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | January 5, 2012

What We Have Here Is…an appendix of sorts

Time to flip through my bookish endeavors, adventures, and mischief of 2011. Let’s see…

*thumbing back*

The year seemed to blaze past, but while last January doesn’t seem like that long ago, I am curiously foggy on what I was reading. I had some wicked winter colds in January and watched a lot of television shows and movies, but surely I was reading too?

Poking through my lists should help – my book list, audio book list, and oh, what’s this? my “unfinished reading list”? Ah, that’s right. Soon after cheering myself on with the enthusiastic cry, “more international literature, more Bolano, more Perec, more female authors, more of the classics, maybe something really, really old…!” I resolved to finish fewer books in 2011.

I suppose I accomplished that – I read 45 books, which is 8 fewer than the year before. And I did not finish 8 books. At the moment I am finding it both snicker-worthy that I recorded this and annoying that I didn’t keep a better record, as I am sure I actually did not finish more than 8 books, but I can’t remember what they were… Humph.

conversationsOf the books I did not finish, there are a few I want to return to – Conversation in The Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa, and the second (and then of course the third) volume(s) of Javier Marias’ Your Face Tomorrow. Conversation was the March pick for The Wolves, and I just couldn’t find my way in it at the time. I want to try again – maybe even this year. I read the Fever and Spear bit of YFT in July as part of Richard’s readalong, and it left me “dizzy and delighted and disturbed“. The second volume promised to do the same and more, but I had to abandon it when the August work insanity struck. In a quieter moment I’ll pick it up again.

I see that The Fugitive by Marcel Proust was the first book I finished in 2011, and I even wrote about it (something that began happening less and less frequently as the year progressed…). I suppose Proust’s Finding Time Again – the final volume of In Search of Lost Time – sits soundly on my “unfinished reading list” although I didn’t record it there. My bookmark, lodged 20 pages in, was beginning to take root when I yanked it out a few weeks ago. I resolved to either begin the volume again in 2012 or just say, “Hell with it,” and start the entire thing over again. I wouldn’t mind revisiting Swann’s Way which I have (probably too) fond memories of…

ouatFebruary saw the completion of The Cairo Way readalong hosted by Richard. That was an experience, one that still makes me growl “Bah!” when I remember it. Ah, Mahfouz. I won’t be venturing into Egypt with you again any time soon.

February also saw the resurgence of an old reading love – fantasy/YA/YA fantasy, the South Pole to my literary fiction/works-in-translation/serious books North Pole (or is it the other way round?) I broke up with YA Fantasy in 2010, officially turning my back on a genre that was increasingly unfulfilling and uninteresting. I didn’t think the relationship could be resuscitated, but as the great funk of 2011 drew to a close, it was Lament: The Faerie Queen’s Deception by Maggie Stiefvater that gave me back my reading groove.

The months of February and December offer the clearest picture of what my reading life will likely resemble for awhile – a brilliant mixture of classics, works in translation, YA fiction/fantasy, and literary fiction (whatever that last genre is). You guys, I finally feel complete!

In February in addition to the two bits of Stiefvater YA fantasy and the last volume of The Cairo Trilogy by Mahfouz, I read: Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau (a favorite of the year), Charles de Lint’s Moonheart and Virginia Woolf’s Flush (odds and ended here), and participated in the Persephone Reading Weekend with Someone At a Distance by Dorothy Whipple. As for December – heck, December needs its own post as the 7 books I read all deserve to be properly written about. Suffice it to say there were three YA novels, three books in translation, and one book by Farley Mowat, however you go about classifying him!

Reading this way – hitting all my favorite types of books in a month, and of course reading a lot of books – is infinitely satisfying to me. Although it seems mildly far-fetched to imagine that I will do this frequently in 2012, given my expected tumultuous lifestyle as I move across the country and embark on a new adventure in making a living, I do hope to get a lot of this type of reading done.

anything ubuLet’s see, other highlights from my reading year: the Once Upon a Time Challenge V hosted by Carl V. was comfort-food fun, while the Anything Ubu Readalong hosted by Amatuer Reader was another thing entirely. Carl V.’s R.I.P. VI was fiendish once again (dang, no wrap-up post. *sigh* Book reviews are here, here, here, and here…)

And of course, The Wolves. Last year was our year to be ‘non-structured’ but we were pretty spot-on in comparison. This year we were all over the place. I broke my running record and didn’t finish Conversations in the Cathedral, as I mentioned, which led to all kinds of haphazard behavior in regards to posting long after discussions were scheduled, and not even bothering to read several of the group’s selections. Oops. The future of The Wolves is in question, but I feel confident that the various members will continue to read together now and then, and will certainly continue to challenge each other to read hard, weird, fabulous books that at least one of us will love and one of us will hate at any given time. Cheers, you guys! (Wolfish reading plus other nonsense can be found here.)

Thinking back over the year several books/book-related-experiences leap out at me which kind of constitute a “best of” or “favorite books of” list for 2011. Here goes:

(1) I already mentioned Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau (translated by Barbara Wright) – so much fun! Makes me gleeful just to think of how inventive and bizarre this book is.

(2) Rosalind Belben’s Our Horses in Egypt keeps coming back to me – the incredibly well done “voice” of Philomena the horse will be a reference I return to anytime I encounter a talking animal.

(3) Kraken by China Mieville as well as Embassytown (never reviewed but thoroughly enjoyed) proved once and for all that Mieville can write copiously, fantastically well. I can’t wait to read everything else he’s written or will write.

(4) Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian (translated by Grace Frick) surprised me most wonderfully with its rich historical details and immensely engaging story. The search for the author’s gravestone which followed my reading of it is one of my favorite things I did in 2011. Incidentally, her book A Coin in Nine Hands (translated by Dori Katz – the 1959 rewrite not the 1934 original) was also quite good.

(5) I listened to the audio book version of The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins during my commute to work this fall and haven’t been able to get off the dystopian stories fast-track since then (currently working through Patrick Ness’ Chaos Walking trilogy – eep!). I was spell-bound by the volatile premise of The Hunger Games and pretty much fell in love with the character Peeta Mellark, so that was fun. The thing that made the experience great though, was sharing it. I raved about the books to some friends and was rewarded by watching them fall under the spell too. Squealing over something with someone else is twice the fun! I can’t wait for the movie, which is coming out in March. EEP!

(6) Another great audio book I listened to was Dune by Frank Herbert. Whoa. That book is intense and intensely beautiful. I am such a sucker for stories set in the desert, and desert warriors. Dune has so many layers and ideas and such a rich plot. I definitely feel the need to physically read it sometime, and it reminded me that there is a whole world (and worlds upon worlds) of sci-fi out there that I’ve barely tapped…

(7) Maggie Stiefvater’s newest book, The Scorpio Races is gorgeous and funny and perfect. My adorable and wonderful little sister gave me an autographed copy of it for my birthday (squee!), and I read it in an afternoon and then immediately started it again. I’ll write a proper review of it soon (theoretically…). It’s easily the best thing she’s written. I kind of want to go read it again right now!

Eh, I’ll leave that bit at 7, even though it’s a weird number. I guess the only thing I have left to babble about are those stats I so love. Here they are, or at least here are the interesting ones:

All Books and Audio Books: 58

Fiction: 56
Non-Fic: 2
Plays: 3
Short Story Collections: 6
Graphic Novels/Comic Books: 4
Male Authors: 28
Female Authors: 19
Translated Works: 12

Once again mostly fiction. No poetry to speak of this year, but a few plays and more short stories than last year. Less graphic novels, slightly less books in translation, and just about the same male/female author ratio. Hmm. Interesting. I’ll make no promises or resolutions, but I would like to read some poetry this year and perhaps a bit more non-fic. It’s probably time to knock another tome off the pile, something like War & Peace or Middlemarch, but again, my life in upcoming months is going to be unstable and not very conducive to big reading projects. We’ll see. I also have a rather insistent desire to reread all of the Little House on the Prairie books. WE’LL SEE!

Anyway, there’s 2011 in bookish review.

And here we go, on the road again. Do your literary worst, 2012! (Or don’t. Depending.)

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Posted in Adventure, Book related, Books, Non-sense, Reading, Reading Challenges, The Wolves | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | January 3, 2012

Movie Mayhem: Christmas Movie edition

There are lots of things about Christmas that I am not a fan of – sometimes I feel downright Grinchy about the whole thing. I remain a fan of film though, and at this time of year my movie selections get rather more into the spirit of things than the rest of me does.

jingle

While I feel no need to see Christmas With the Kranks ever again, or Deck the Halls, or even Jingle All the Way (although Schwarzenegger’s battle to get his kid THE toy of the 1996 holiday season is certainly epic…), there are a few movies that I like to watch on a yearly basis. As a kid, our family Christmas movies were The Santa Clause, Borrowed Hearts, The Little Match Girl, and A Christmas Carol. These days I like to watch, at the very least, Love Actually, The Holiday, and The Nightmare Before Christmas.

This year I went a little bit overboard. I saw a delightful stage production of The Christmas Story, and this inspired a “bad Christmas movie party”, the intention of which was to watch frightful things like Thomas Kinkade’s Christmas Cottage, or The Twelve Dogs of Christmas. In the end my friends and I couldn’t really stomach wasting 4 or 5 hours of our lives watching such seasonal fluff, so instead we knocked off two out of my three favorites listed above. The third I watched with my four sisters on Christmas Day. Check those off the list.

love actually

I actually became mildly obsessed with Christmas movies this holiday season. I was spending a lot of time making my presents and avoiding packing or organizing or planning for my coming move by doing craft projects. A natural multi-task was to rack up a collection of less-than-usual Christmas movies. I don’t ask for much more than a bit of seasonally appropriate music, a tree, pretty lights, a Santa costume, or a mention of Christmas dinner. And I far prefer a bit of action and daring-do over excess tinsel or (god-help-me) the SAD Christmas movies (avoid The Family Stone unless you enjoy sniffling into your cocoa!). Therefore, my list includes:

die hard– Die Hard (A “Yippee ki yay” to all, and to all a good night!)
– Lethal Weapon (You’re never too old for this Christmasy sh*t.)
– The Long Kiss Goodnight (Don’t mess with Mrs. Santa!)
– Red (Retired Extremely Dangerous and not very good at decorating for Christmas – yet.)
– Trading Places (Getting rich, getting even, and getting merry.)
– Grumpy Old Men (And a Merry Christmas from Moron and Putz!)

gremlinsA few that I didn’t get to this year that shouldn’t be forgotten:

– Gremlins (Don’t EVER give someone one of these for Christmas!)
– Bad Santa (Taking the Grinch to a whole new level…)

And finally a couple of movies that were new to me that I liked a lot:

hogfather

Hogfather (Writ. & Dir. Vadim Jean. Based on the novel by Terry Pratchett. Stars Michelle Dockery, Ian Richardson, David Jason, and Marc Warren. UK, 2006)
This excellent adaptation of the Pratchett novel by director Vadim Jean brings to life Hogswatch (the Discworld equivalent to Christmas). On this particular Hogswatch things are not going well. The Hogfather has gone missing. Death and his trusty servant Albert attempt to stave off disaster by impersonating the Hogfather while Susan, Death’s granddaughter, tries to figure out what is going on. Meanwhile, the nefarious and utterly creepy Mr. Teatime is plotting an elaborate assassination, and the Tooth Fairy’s castle is under attack. If this all sounds ridiculous, you are making the right assumption – but that is beside the point. Susan is a perfectly prim and proper governess-heroine, and Death in the Hogfather’s outfit is something worth seeing. There are witty asides and adult jokes to keep you snickering, and as with most things Pratchett, it’s not all silliness. There is an interesting underlying thought about the importance of myth and belief, and their influence on a person’s comprehension of right and wrong. But mostly Hogfather is a vaguely Victorian Gothic tale populated by Death of Rats, monsters in the basement, bumbling wizards, and quite a bit of festive jolliness. I’ll be watching this again next year. (Thanks to L for pointing out Vadim Jean’s Discworld movies.)

arthur christmas

Arthur Christmas (Dir. Sarah Smith and Barry Cook. Writ. Peter Baynham and Sarah Smith. Stars James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie, Jim Broadbent, Bill Nighy, and Ashley Jensen. UK, 2011)
How could a Christmas movie from Aardman Animations be anything but awesome? Running operation Christmas with the precision of a moon landing from Mission Control at the North Pole, Santa’s oldest son Steve fully expects his father to resign after his 70th Christmas and turn the whole thing over into his capable hands. Arthur, poor bumbling enthusiastic horrible-Christmas-sweater-wearing Arthur, the younger son, shuffled over into the Letters office where he can cause the least amount of havoc, just wants to have a pleasant dinner on Christmas Eve with his family. Both sons end up disappointed. With Santa snoring in bed and Steve furiously jabbing away at his communication thing-a-ma-jig, it falls to Arthur to discover that one child has been skipped, missed, lost in the margin for error so small as to be insignificant. Full of Christmasy spirit, Arthur takes it upon himself to deliver her present, enlisting the help of Grandsanta, the old low-tech sleigh, and an elf from the wrapping department. He must overcome his long list of paranoias, battle off lions and the air force and bad directions, and remind everyone what being Santa is really about. Not the most original story, but wonderfully, hilariously told. Warm fuzzies all round.

I might watch at least one more before Epiphany (Jan. 6th) and the official last day of the holiday season. I’ve been meaning to watch Joyeux Noel ever since Caroline reviewed it last year, so maybe I’ll finally get to that. Or there is Scrooged, or National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, neither of which I’ve seen. So many Christmas movies, such a short holiday season… (yeah, right!)

What are your favorite Christmas movies? Do you have any to recommend? (If you recommend I’ll Be Home for Christmas I will puke on your shoe though, promise!)

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Posted in animation, Book related, Christmas Movies, Holidays, Movie Mayhem, Movies, Non-sense, Terry Pratchett | Tags: , ,

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