| In a nod to all the decade retrospectives... |
[Jan. 5th, 2010|04:59 pm] |
"Nostalgia" by Billy Collins
Remember the 1340's? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called "Find the Cow."
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.
( Read more... ) |
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| Retrospecticus! |
[Dec. 30th, 2009|08:59 pm] |
My retrospective-type stories for the week include The Decade's Best Movies (which started as a Top 10 list and took on a life of its own), My Favorite 10 Films of 2009, The Best Movie Lines of 2009, My 5 Most Hated Films of 2009, My Favorite 10 Plays of 2009, and My Favorite 50 Plays of the Decade. (Note that the 50 Plays is just a list, and the Inferior 5 Films is only slightly more than a list.) I also did a story (with Scott Henry) about some interesting/significant events in Atlanta A&E over the decade. If I get my act together, I might have a 'Favorite Books of the Year' post.
Some leftover movie reviews include a combined piece on Nine and Broken Embraces, A Simple Man, The Young Victoria and Sherlock Holmes.
Was looking forward to going to the Book Nook after Sweetness went to sleep all day. Then it started sleeting, so I stayed home. |
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| Hall of Shame: Books I failed to FINISH reading this decade |
[Dec. 28th, 2009|11:07 pm] |
We had a daughter during the decade, and an unintended consequence was that my reading habits kind of went to pot, although they've been getting better recently. Here are books that I abandoned for one reason or another:
Atonement - Ian McEwan (read the first chapter on two separate occasions, thought it was good, just couldn't pursue it)
Saturday - Ian McEwan (read about 100 pages, didn't like where it was going)
The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky (I could finish 'Crime and Punishment' and 'The Brothers Karamazov' about 20 years ago - why not this one?)
The Human Stain - Philip Roth (Picked it up after seeing the movie, but since I knew how the story ended, I couldn't get traction.)
The Lord is My Shepherd - Harold Kushner (less than 200 pages, but couldn't sustain my interest)
The Stories of John Cheever - John Cheever (There's just so many of them.)
Me & Shakespeare - Herman Gollob (SLEEP!)
The Rule of Four - Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason (It's like the Princeton University Alumni Association wrote The Da Vinci Code)
Shalimar the Clown - Salman Rushdie (I actually liked the Kashmir sections very, very much, but had to take it back to the library and never checked it out again for some reason)
I, Claudius - Robert Graves (Well, I'd already read it once in high school, so...)
The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolano (Read the 1st 120-ish page section, and had enough.)
Descartes' Bones - Russell Shorto (A really interesting nonfiction book that came due at the library, then I had to read lots of books for work)
Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor - Brad Gooch (Quite good, but I read half of it for an interview, and put it aside after writing the story)
Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follet (My family LOVES it and I started it on vacation, but after the heroine went through a series of horrible episodes, I put it down around page 300) |
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