Pax & I watched Brick last night. This movie totally rocks! The dialogue and the cinematography are perfect renditions of classic noir -- but in a modern California high school setting. This made it thoroughly unrealistic, of course, but writer/director Rian Johnson was obviously going for a somewhat dreamlike quality. The high school campus is deserted except for the main characters, and the only parent on scene is the mother of a guy in his mid-twenties.
This film is simply brilliant. I don't want to say much more about it for fear of spoiling the whole surreal experience, but I do hope that Johnson keeps up the excellent work.
Kelly swiped this from somebody, and now I am swiping it from Kelly.
What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by Library Thing's users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.
Anna Karenina (I may try this one again someday, perhaps with a newer translation. But I just wasn't caring about any of the characters.)
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude (It's still in Mt TBR, and I expect I'll try it again someday. It's just not a high priority for me.)
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose (This is in my Mt TBR.)
Don Quixote
Moby Dick (Melville sucks! I will never even attempt to read this book.)
Ulysses
Madame Bovary (It was okay, but it didn't really resonate with me.)
The Odyssey (Interesting, but not a huge favorite.)
Pride and Prejudice (Also on Mt TBR.)
Jane Eyre (An enjoyable read, but it's hard for me to see what all the huge fuss is about.)
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife (On my all-time Top 20 list.)
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin (I really liked this one.)
The Kite Runner (Very moving story, well told.)
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations (Part of Mt TBR.)
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged (On Mt TBR. I don't feel I can properly diss it until I've read it.)
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales (Though now I can't recall if we read the whole thing or just selected portions.)
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World (Very thought-provoking book.)
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein (Also in Mt TBR.)
The Count of Monte Cristo (I need to get a reading copy. I have a really cool copy, but it's ancient and far too fragile.)
Dracula (Way ahead of its time in many ways. Any fan of modern vampire stories should read this.)
A Clockwork Orange (Boring and pretentious. I don't plan to see the movie, either.)
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel (Another tome in Mt TBR.)
1984 (I was supposed to read this for freshman orientation at Drury. I thought it was deadly dull. They showed the film during orientation, and I thought it was boring as well.)
Angels & Demons (I read The Da Vinci Code first, so this one didn't really hold any surprises for me.)
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses (Also in Mt TBR.)
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Another one I do intend to finish.)
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (The library discussion group picked this one a while back. I had really liked the movie, but the novel didn't really appeal.)
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables (I'm having translation issues with both copies I have, so I've decided to try it again once I get my hands on an unabridged copy in the original French.)
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Just read this a few weeks ago and thought it was great.)
Dune (Yes, also in Mt TBR.)
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury (Another in Mt TBR.)
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon (Yes, I plan to finish this one. I got interrupted when it got packed during a move.)
Neverwhere (Yep, in Mt TBR.)
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five (Also in Mt TBR.)
The Scarlet Letter (Great book. I found a copy for my "keeper" shelf.)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel (Also in Mt TBR.)
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita (I read one Nabakov book and found it tedious. I'd swear it was translated by Babelfish, but it pre-dates the Internet, and everybody tells me Nabakov wrote it in English to begin with. Anyway, I'm in no hurry to read more from him.)
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey (I decided to read Pride & Prejudice first.)
The Catcher in the Rye (Ugh. Boring prattle. Yes, I was a teenager when I read it. Still thought it sucked.)
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit (I read this when I was about 11 or 12. I really enjoyed it, and I do plan to read LotR someday.)
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island (Yet another in Mt TBR.)
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers
Oops. Um, spoiler alert. :-) When Pax & I were at Chuck & Michelle's house, Chuck loaned us their copy of Soylent Green, and we just watched it this evening.
Show us your favorite pair of shoes.
It's a little hard to choose, but I think I like the pink Bare Traps a smidge better than the red ones I picked up at Wal-Mart. And I suppose I'd better, since I paid about five times as much for them.
Whose house (besides your own) were you in last and why?
On April 18th, Pax & I went to a Love, Sex & the IRS cast party at Chuck & Michelle's house. I was the Designated Driver, so I got the joy of remaining sober and watching drunk people behaving oddly.
When was the last time you drove out of town?
Thursday afternoon. After a late morning doctor's appointment here in Farmington, I ate lunch at home and then headed to work (in Aztec) shortly after noon. I did go to work yesterday, but Pax drove me, as Ténèbre was having a $933 well baby visit at Advantage Dodge. (And she has to go back next week when her new tires come in. At least the tires are already included in that whopper of a bill. They'll just charge me for the mounting and balancing next week.)
Show us a mannequin.
This dress shop has moved since I took this photo. I hope they invested in some new mannequins.
A late night challenge: Show us a photo of the full moon.
I don't have fancy equipment for taking good astronomical shots, so this is about as good as it gets for me.
I first learned about autism in a Reader's Digest story, "The Blue Rose," when I was about 8 or 9. I remember identifying with the girl in the story and wondering if I was autistic. Mark Haddon's book has re-awakened this question.
This novel, with its title alluding to a famous Sherlock Holmes quote, is part murder mystery, part coming-of-age quest, and part exploration of how its teenaged protagonist views the world as he deals with autism. It is told in the first person, and as Christopher Boone explains his quirks and defends his actions, I find myself thinking that he makes perfect sense.
Though the book opens with Christopher's discovery of the corpse of his neighbor's dog, Wellington, the mystery is not the story's focal point. The solution is revealed about halfway through, so if it's a gripping whodunit you seek, seek elsewhere. But Christopher shows us that the world is full of mystery, even in the commonplace. I would recommend this book to anybody who has ever felt out of place in everyday life or who wants a fresh perspective on the world we've come to take for granted.
What do you do on the internet that you consider somewhat of a guilty pleasure?
I play 8-Ball on the Orbitz website. Dang, but that game is addictive! I discovered, though, that if I don't severely limit myself, I get horrid pains in my neck, shoulder, and arm, so that keeps me from going overboard. The really weird thing about that game, though, is that I catch myself worrying about tilting the laptop for fear the balls will roll around on the screen. (Seriously, I'm not normally that much of a blonde.)
