I’ve just moved my domain and am in the process of unpacking. I can’t find the silverware or the towels. It’s a mess in here. Please stop by again in a couple of days when I’ve sorted things out. Thanks!
I got Scout a cat tree for Christmas. It was only fair. I got a new sofa. At first she preferred my sofa to her cat tree, but things have changed. She’s in the top of that cat tree when I leave in the morning and there when I come home at night. I put a bird feeder and house outside the window so she has her TV. Is there a cat equivalent to a couch potato?
A couple of years ago, I visited a friend in Australia and discovered Tim Winton. Every morning, while Hels was teaching school, I’d walk to this little restaurant overlooking the bay for breakfast, then take a long walk on the beach to this little bench I found in the dunes. There I’d bury my feet in the sand and my head in The Riders and Tim Winton had a fan for life. Since then, I’ve read The Turning, a collection of short stories, and this past month, my book club read Dirt Music.
I loved this book. It’s a bit grim, but then none of Winton’s books have a laugh track. The characters are wounded and they act like wounded people. Sometimes what happened didn’t always make sense to me, but I went with it. These characters are grieving, someone or something, and grief makes you crazy as my friend Lolly says.
The story takes place in a fishing town on the west coast of Australia. Rock lobsters have made them all rich, but McMansions haven’t changed anything. Old tempers flare and sleeping grudges wake up. The discontented wife of the town’s unofficial leader has an affair with an illegal fisherman tortured by loss. It starts off as two people finding relief from their lives in each other and turns into so much more. And like almost all of Tim Winton’s work, he doesn’t make the decisions for you. But he finds poetry in unexpected places and in people you wouldn’t believe had a soul. You’ll need someone else to read this book at the same time so you can talk about the ending.
Read Dirt Music. Go to the beach. Find yourself a bench.
There are few things in this world that get me as giddy as reading these words: “an army of murderous beasts commanded by an evil sorcerer (Ray Liotta)“. Ray Liotta? Goodfellas Ray Liotta? Field of Dreams Ray Liotta? I-got-the-top-of-my-head-sliced-off-by-Hannibal-Lector Ray Liotta? Now he’s Evil Sorcerer Ray Liotta in In the Name of the King? I have to see this movie.
If you’re looking for a way to decide who to vote for in the upcoming primaries/caucuses, check out the article in today’s Slate by Darren Garnick. He followed the candidates around New Hampshire, trying to have each one take a picture with his baby daughter Dahlia. Maybe you can judge the candidate through Dahlia’s reaction. She’s cuter than Tim Russert anyways.
I was watching Huckabee on CNN at the gym today. He said–I’m not kidding–”irregardless”. Twice! At least he pronounced it correctly. That’s something, I guess.
I’m a huge fan of Alison Weir’s nonfiction books. She focuses mostly on Englands Tudor era, but has also written impressive books on Eleanor of Aquitaine and Isabella (wife to Edward II). So I was thrilled to see a novel by her, Innocent Traitor, about Lady Jane Grey. I’ve always been fascinated with Lady Jane’s story. As grand niece to Henry VIII, she was a pawn in the play for power by her Protestant parents and the Lord Protector, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. She was married off to Dudley’s son and forced onto the thrown after the death of her young cousin Edward VI to prevent the Catholic Mary (soon to be known as Bloody Mary) from taking over. Queen for only nine days, poor Jane was executed at 16 for being a traitor.
It’s a fascinating and compelling story. Only not so much in the novel Innocent Traitor. (Doesn’t that sound like a romance novel?) I think what makes Alison Weir so good as a biographer and writer of history works against her as a novelist. I think the best historical novelists stay truer to the story they are trying to tell and molding the facts to fit into the story. It pisses people off who have strong opinions about certain events, but for every The Other Boleyn Girl (Anne Boleyn doesn’t come off well), there’s an Anne of a Thousand Days (where she’s an innocent victim of Henry’s lust). When it’s fiction, let it be fiction. Mold the world and events into a good story. I felt like Ms. Weir couldn’t let go of the facts to get to the story. She’s reporting the history through dialog and scenes. It leaves a flat story. Stuff happens, but I don’t care so much. And in a novel, the reader has to care what happens.
I just read that Ms. Weir has a new novel coming out about the young Elizabeth. My thirst for all things Weir would usually compel me to buy it. But after Innocent Traitor, I may be able to resist.
An Entertainment Weekly article about James Marsden, Cyclops in X-men and the prince in Enchanted, says, “Marsden shrugs off the eye-candy stereotype. ‘To me that’s a cop-out. You should be taken seriously for your talent.’” This is a blown-up quote opposite a full page picture of Marsden in a wet t-shirt. I love a healthy dose of irony right before bedtime.
The best Christmas presents in the world are books. I got several this year and have already finished one, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. It’s spooky and perplexing and lush and thrilling as all books of mystery should be. I hate to use the phrase “literary mystery” but in this case it’s really applicable. The novel is set in England where Margaret Lea, a young bookstore clerk and biographer, is asked to write the story of the elusive Vida Winter, the most popular living writer in England. Who Vida Winter really is is the mystery and the subject of the lost Thirteenth Tale, a short story that never made it into print and all the world wants to read. And it has one of those great moments about 3/4 of the way through that made me sit up and gasp. Then I knew I wouldn’t be getting any sleep that night because I’d have no choice but to finish this book.
Honest to God. I didn’t think they’d have a snowball’s chance in Hell. I was completely prepared for Tennessee to lose today against LSU in the SEC championship game. But dagnabbit…they were putting up a fight! Got my hopes up. Dangled the carrot of a season pulled out of from the bowels of hell (also known as a 50-point spanking by Florida) in front of me. The defense was blitzing and sacking. The points weren’t racking up, but they were ahead, even if was by a 1-point thread. And then tragedy. Damn fourth-quarter-interceptions-run-in-for-a-touchdown! And even more cruel, I was listening to the game online in the second half when, unknown to me, the broadcast skipped back to the third quarter when Tennessee scored and went ahead by 1, so I thought it was happening at the end of the fourth quarter! I was so excited! I thought they’d done it! But then reality, that narcissistic mistress, came crashing through the door of my hopes and dreams and served me up a big helping of despair. Only sorely disappointed sports fans can manage such atrocious metaphors. At least Cal lost…to Stanford. How embarrassing is that? Oh, wait, I just saw the West Virginia/Pitt score. #2 in the nation and they get beat by lowly Pitt!? I’m feeling a little better now. At least it took an exceptional play by a top-ranked team to beat Tennessee. That’ll have to do in the Dignity Department until the bowl games. What a weird, weird season.