1. We were supposed to get our first real snow this week, but although some flakes fell, it was mainly sleety rain. I'm only a marginal skiier myself, but the avid skiiers in the family are avidly looking forward to some major dumps.
2. We had a great time in Colorado at my nephew's wedding. It's wonderful to attend a wedding where the couple looks so radiantly happy. Also spent some good time with my mom, my sisters and their families and one of my favorite cousins. But weddings tend to be about the wedding (funny thing, that), and there's never as much time to talk as you wish there would be. Fortunately it's time for the next triennial family reunion next summer so I will see them all again soon (and Cheery-o, too).
3. For the first time in a long time, we're traveling for Thanksgiving. Mel couldn't get the weekend off, so we're driving to Seattle to see her (and also our Seattle friends). I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do for blog posts while I'm gone, but I'll come up with something. I don't think I can write six posts in two+ days two weeks in a row.
4. I've read two books in the past month (The Descendents by Kaui Hart Hemmings and Landline by Rainbow Rowell) that share an odd plot device. Both books are about a marriage in trouble, actively made worse by the selfish, thoughtless actions of the first person narrator. But when the story opens, the narrator has already had some kind of come-to-Jesus moment and realized that he (in Descendents) or she (in Landline) has to change. So there's a bit of a disconnect-- it's hard to believe that the decent, regretful, earnestly-trying-to-do-better narrator is the same person that caused all the trouble to begin with. It sort of works; I enjoyed reading both books. But both times it felt like the author had cut some important corners. Since we never see the narrator being awful, the author doesn't have to work very hard to convince us that the main character is worth sympathizing with. It felt a little bit like cheating. Not necessarily a bad thing, it was just strange to read two books with a similar setup so close to each other.
5. Since I can't think of much else to tell you, maybe I'll continue with the reading report. In another completely accidental pairing, I finally read Tina Fey's memoir Bossypants and enjoyed it thoroughly. I wasn't completely drawn in until about a third of the way into it, but once it got going, it was interesting without being a gossipy tell-all, and honest without being TMI. Although it was definitely amusing, it was less laugh-out-loud funny than I thought it would be. But that's OK. I listened to the audiobook, which Fey narrates herself. Authors are usually not the best people to do their own narration, but in this case I think she did a great job. Who else were they going to get to do it?
Anyway. the oddly accidental pairing is that I read Landline immediately after, and there are some pretty obvious parallels between the two. I have no idea if it was intentional (probably not), but since I read them back to back, it seemed pretty wild that they were both the story of a woman who is a comedy writer and gets her own TV show, has a husband who is a stay-at-home dad, and has to figure out how to juggle motherhood and marriage--one a non-fiction memoir, one fiction.
6. I also read The Stockholm Octavo by Karen Engelmann. It has glowing --really glowing-- reviews from many of my favorite sources for reviews. It sounds like a book I would love: interesting history, understated romance, a mystical element. I should have loved it. But you know that moment when a story takes off and you become totally immersed? Yeah, that moment. It never happened. Normally I would have quit reading, but those glowing reviews keep pushing me onward. Maybe the ending would pull it all together! But it didn't. It might be worth reading if you're into eighteenth century European history--if I ever knew the Swedish king was a key figure in the French revolution, I had forgotten--but mostly I'd pass on this one.
7. Since most of us around here are in our fifties (not all, I know, and those of you who aren't, thank you for putting up with the rest of us), I thought I'd pass along this website Next Avenue, which describes itself as "public media’s first and only national service for America’s booming 50+ population." They have some interesting stuff, including this list of the best websites for us fifty-somethings.
Have a great weekend. The lyrics in the post title are from Cake's "Love You Madly," apropos of nothing. I just like the line.
1 comment:
Clicked link, I'll go check it out. The 50 person's thing . . .
Glad the wedding was a good one. Weddings are often fun, sometimes funny, generally hopeful, but the occasional one where you're thinking, this will never last, where it has that air of desperation, those are sucky ones to attend.
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