Books

Congo - Michael Crichton
It's so old that they give a pronunciation guide for his name.
It's so old, they talk in wonder about the new 256k computer chip.
It's so old...
But, ya know, mindless. Except I didn't like how it ended. It's an odd book.

Hunger Games
Fire
Mockingjay
I'm on the last one now. Sucking them down in a couple days. So glad I get to these when they are all out. No more Harry Potter replay! I think they are really well done, and must be amazing movies (existing and to be).

Book

Just finished Home by Marilynne Robinson.
I had a good word for it and it's gone, darn it.
IT was a book I had to read in bits. Not one to be hurried through. In part because it was slow moving. In part because I wasn't sure I liked it. HOnestly, I'm still not sure. It was well crafted I think, but perhaps a tad too philosphical for me. A modern prodigal son story. Kinda depressing in a 'that's life sometimes' way.

Pft, what a review.

Movies and Books

Books
- Wonder - R.J. Palacio (young adult, facial deformity)
- The Table Comes First - Adam Gopnik - nonfictionfoodie culture
- The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater (young adult, horeses kill)
- Immortal Bird - A Family Memoir (Doron Weber) - son death at 16
- Diary of a Mad Fat Girl - Stephanie McAfee
=- All there Is - Dave Isay Nonfiction - stories of love recorded.
- behind the beautiful forevers - Katherine Boo (mumbai slum - nonfiction - LIfe death and hope in a mumbai undercity)
- Pulitzer finalists

Film
- Take Shelter
- In Darknes (?) - Jewish, Nazi, sewer
- Chronicle - telekinetic powers
- Chico and Rita (?) Animated
- Drive (?)
- Hugo
- On the Bowery (1957 - skid row NY)
- the Descendants
- Extremely Loud and INcredibly Close
- Warrior ?
- Hello I must be goin (?) - 19 yo and 35 yo
- the Beginners

Movies and Books

There may be repeats... but oh well!

Movies
- The Interrupters (Hoope dreams filmmaker - violence in inner cities)
- The Future (couple in LA - everyday)
- Charade (Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn)
- Dogtooth (Greek film, bizarre, creepy, keep kids from outside world)
- The Double Hour (Italian, psychological thriller)

Books
- Bond Girl: Erin Duffy - Wall street
- The Flame Alphabet: Ben Marcus (speech of children lethal to parents)
- The Orphan Master's Son: Adam Johnson (Korea)
- Emily, Alone: Stwart O'Nan (80 yo widowed matriarch)
- House of Prayer No. 2: Mark Richard ('special child' - hip defects - memoir)
- The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore: Benjamin Hale (first chimpanzee to learn human language)
- The surrendered: Chang-rae Lee (set during Korean war)
- Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis (criticism - rock critic)
- What There is to Say We Have Said: Eudora Welty and William Maxwell (correspondence

Oh boy - long time!

I can't believe it's been over a week since I wrote. I was feeling sad for a while about the wonderful women who died. But it was also working - a whole 17 hours last week! ;-) But I'm so grateful that it's part time, and that it's an excellent networking job and looks great on my linkedin profile - I did put in the description that it's part time and temporary, but perhaps I should put it in the header? I've gotten some congratulations on my new job. Oh well, I'm keeping it as is.

I've gotten to the point that I'm struggling to allocate my time wisely. Work for money, searching for jobs, attending informational sessions/networking events, revising resume, keeping up with existing contacts, radio, reading...

Speaking about reading:
Unbroken - Lauren Hillenbrand. My o my. I was not aware at all what the Japanese did during the war - horrible horrible atrocities. At one point reading the book I could not believe all that that man went through. It was a bad bad movie. But it was real.

So, after that I read
The Last Time I was Me: Cathy Lamb. Such a good change from Unbroken - I needed it. A woman who goes through a breakdown and turns her life around. Sounds depressing, but it's pretty funny because the character/the writing is wry/snarky funny, which I love. It was bad though, becasue I liked it so much that I read it outside of exercising. Too much time!

Movies
Contagion - great to watch when the person you are watching with is hacking a lung out. Pretty well done, though I thought they pulled the ending out of a hat. It felt like they were done before they were done.
Cray Stupid Love - really a lot of fun. The culmination towards the end made me roll my eyes, but was still funny. The speech at graduation an unbelievable venue, but just closed my mind to that.

OK, there's more, but I've been listening remotely to presentations during Social Media Week, and I did a 4 hour radio show last night (so much better than the first time! but kind of intimidating at the beginning when the previous DJ's friends were watching me - ack!), so I gotta go be horizontal for a minute or two.

Happy Valentine's Day!

woo hoo!

Got the temporary part time position! After the interview today I thought it was likely, but it was funny that I called M as I was driving away, and the temp agency called when I was on the phone with him to tell me that I got it. Guess they liked me :-) It's only 10-20 hours a week, but it's something. And good connections.

BTW, read Girls in Trucks. Don't bother.

What to do when you should do nothing

Go through your magazines. Problem is, if I don't do all this at once, I may have repeats. Oh well...

Movies
- Another Year [middle age to...]
- Exit through the Gift shop
- Poetry [Korean, poetry, Alzheimer's]

Books
- The Tiger's Wife - Tea Obreht [Yugoslavia]
- The Information - James Gleick [digital world -nonfiction]
- C Tom McCarthy [morse code, connections]
- Bossypants - Tina Fey
- The Preacher - Camilla Lackerg [swedish, mystery]

Recent movies and books

Just finished watching Friends with Benefits. Realllly liked it. Funny - the NY/NJ vibe I can relate to. The usual romance thing that you always love to watch. It's well done. I think Mila Kunis had a body double though.

Driving up to Seattle, after a long day of driving stayed in a motel. I bascially flopped on the bed and happened upon Hangover. It was free so I watched it. Not sure if it was because I was brain dead, but I really liked it. Likely a good percentage was due to brain-deaded-ness, but I still think it was well done. No reason for a sequel though.

Ghost Protocol in a semi-real imax theater. Very cool. Great to see in such a theater. One explosion I felt in my legs. One scene on the skyscraper my palms started sweating. It was well done.

Book: Shaghai Girls. Fine. Maybe I was just not in the mood. I thought it was going to be more mellow than it was, when in fact it was chaos after chaos (revolution, chaos, violence, immigration, etc.). Like it was kind of trying to hard to create drama.

Alice Hoffman - Probable Future. I really liked this - family of women each of whom has a special power they receive on their 13th birthday, the interpretation of the power, and results. Read it in a day which was WAY too fast. I wanted to leave it for my sister in law. Stupid me. I don't like re-reading books so I've blown it. I'll try another of her books.

That's Life

I just finished reading Keith Richards - Life. As in Keith Richards Rolling Stones Keith Richards. I was very sad to see it end. It's excellent - really brings across the voice and you learn a lot about music. For instance, I had always heard the line in Sweet Home Alabama but never understood or looked up: what I heard as: Mussel Shoals has got the Swamprush. It's actually Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers. Muscle Shoals is a town in Alabama where many legends recorded, including the Rolling Stones. Swampers is a rhythm section for hire.

It was/is a crazy life. But you can tell he's a songwriter. Poetry just kind of jumps out. M hadn't seen it when he read it, but I couldn't help but notice things like:
-- Sometimes a kiss is burned into you far more than whatever comes later.
Or
-- My feet were soaking from walking through tears.

Needless to say, read it.

Movies and Books

I get Entertainment Weekly and I've saved so many because I want to write down the books and movies that seem interesting. My big problem is writing them down. So thought typing would be better. Will post periodically. It's all for me... but maybe you'll like the list too. They are different orders of important, but not marking that here.

Movies
- The Artist
- The Kids are All Right
- The Other guys. Will Ferrell Mark Wahlberg
- Crumb - documentary
- The Help
- The Circumstance (Sundance, Tehran, girls)
- Pee Wee's Big Adventure
- Benda Bilili! (music, Congo)
- Last Train Home (Chinese migrant workers once a year home)
- The Town

Books
- You Lost Me There, Rosecrans Baldwin
- The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise Julia Stuart
- Packing for Mars Mary Roach (science, space program)
- The Dovekeepers Alice Hoffman (strong women, Bible based)
- The Warmth of Other Suns Isabel Wilkerson (Great Migration - blacks leaving south)
- Must you Go? My Life with Harold Pinter Antonia Fraser
- Half a LIfe Darin Strauss Memoir (struck girl on bike)

From Laura - 5 books

I drafted this a long time ago...

1. What book did you struggle to get through but is something you’re glad you’ve read? -.
War and Peace. It’s a classic, plus it’s one of those ‘top tier’ books. If you have read it, you are cool. And I like it even more that I didn’t read the last ten pages. I was just done. No more.

2.What’s a book whose popularity has baffled you?
The Secret. I mean, it’s not really a secret. I just wish I had written it so I could have made bazillions of dollars. A great review from Publisher’s weekly: “Supporters will hail this New Age self-help book on the law of attraction as a groundbreaking and life-changing work, finding validation in its thesis that one's positive thoughts are powerful magnets that attract wealth, health, happiness... and did we mention wealth? Detractors will be appalled by this as well as when the book argues that fleeting negative thoughts are powerful enough to create terminal illness, poverty and even widespread disasters.”

3. If you could make everyone you know read one book, what would it be?
Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales – the original ones. Because they are excellent stories, excellent allegories, and they show that it’s not all a happy ending. Which too many people these days expect out of a story. And life.

4. What book have you liked less and less as time has gone by?
Um, I really can’t think of any.

5. What book have you loved more and more as time has gone by?
I’m not sure this is supposed to count, but the original Joy of Cooking. It’s just such a timeless cookbook and has so much to offer in terms of reference and history and such.

Every Inch of Her

Just blew through the following book:

Every Inch of Her
Peter Sheridan

It was good. Fluffily handled serious issues, if that makes sense. A bit of Deux Ex Machina. But why not read it?

from Random House

Laura, do you think this applies to DWTS also? ;-)

Climbing and At Home

OK, two books. One I read, and one I listened to.

Into the Unknown: The Remarkable Life of Hans Kraus
Susan E.B. Schwartz

Really well written book about a guy who put up a lot of routes at the Gunks, and who also was a pioneer in medicine/exercise. Not sure what else I can/should say about it. But if you like biographies, you will like this. If you don't, you very well could like it, and would love to know if you do.


At Home: A Short History of Private LIfe
Bill Bryson

I listened to this on CD. Sixteen CD's! A friend let me borrow it. It was the best way to digest it because it is so dense. I would listen to it driving around town, and those short bits were what I could handle. He is Mr. Tangent. But LOTS of interesting information. Highly recommended.

Gotta read this one slowly

Quotes from The Autograph Man, by Zadie Smith

"Instead of his life being shaped like a funnel, though which things passed and maybe refined themselves, it was more like--what do you call those things? Stress balls? Made all out elastic bands and each day you add another elastic band? Tighter. Bigger. More involved. That's how it was for him. And that's how he imagined the life of a Catholic, anyway." (p 53-54)

"Sometime Alex thought that if you got all the part-time mature students in the world and laid them head to tow around the line of the equator strapped down in some way they couldn't move, that would be a good thing. Ditto anyone in night class." (p 74)

That second one is best in context, but still might be good if you read it like this.
BTW, this is the woman who wrote The White Teeth.

Not even done and reviewing

I have been slowing down on books since I don't sit and ride as much. But started this yesterday on the BART and really really good. I'm halfway done. It pulls you in from the first page and very well written. Guess I can't say much more since I'm not finished...

The Good Thief
Hannah Tinti

more more more

One book (I've been slacking since I'm doing a circuit training class - less time to read. Though there are excellent articles in Rolling Stone, which when I think of it, is almost like saying there are excellent articles in Playboy, though not quite).

Martha Mason - Breath. Martha spent most of her live in an iron lung. Of course an interesting story but not exceptionally written. Part of it she wrote and it's such flowery language...like she's in the 18th century. But again, interesting.

Social Network. Honestly, I didn't know what to expect and wasn't too excited about watching it. But it was really good! M didn't want to watch it so I did when he was away. I'm glad I did.

That's it. For now...

This is Not the Story You Think it Is...
A Season of Unlikely Happiness
a memoir
Laura Munson

I quoted something from this last week or the week before. The story of a different approach to adversity. A specific adversity - her husband saying he wanted to leave her. It was interesting to read this approach and to compare it to how I might have reacted, and how many others might have reacted. I don't know how I feel about it quite honestly. What she did required much patience and understanding, and to live in that moment and keep that in mind is a tremendous challenge.


Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead
The Frank Meeink Story as told to Jody M. Roy

It was great to read this as I was home dealing with my mom. Such hardship he lived with - a great steadying book for me. In a weird sense.

Books seek you out or you seek them?

"While we're being cynical, let me add here that yes, I am well aware that there is far worse suffering than this. And yes, 'tis true that I grew up in tennis whites at a fancy-ass Chicago country club, went to a New England prep school, and was a debutante, for that matter. But I'm here to tell you that those things don't make it any easier to be happy. Not happy in the way I mean happy. Not free. In fact, those things can make it easier to pretend that you're happy. There's suffering in pretending. Suffering is a relative term, and is only as important as it ultimately pertains to you--that is, if we want to change the world. And I do. But before we can do that, we have to start with what we can control and be responsible for, and that's good ol' number one."

This is Not the Story You Think it Is...
A Season of Unlikely Happiness
a memoir

Laura Munson

Recent books

Carrie Fisher: Wishful Drinking
Yes, that Carrie Fisher. Sardonic through and through. A couple times I laughed out loud, though it should have been more - again I read it too fast. Short and quick.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Memories of My Melancholy Whores
Really beautiful. A short read (115 pages). Because it's so short I hesitate to say much - a poet's take on aging and love.

Tana French: In the Woods
I wrote on FB after finishing this that sometimes I just want to read books that aren't like real life. Again, hard to explain without giving anything away. The first chapter was irritating because it was so flowery and unnecessary big words I thought, but then it calmed down and was well done.