This week my procrastination has taken a more entertaining form in the guise of movies and television. There are a few things that I watch on a weekly basis (rarely on television, hulu is such an wonderful/awful thing) and I usually clock a couple movies a week thanks to Netflix and the easy accessibility of Redbox (yes, I use both…)
So, here was this weeks lineup so far -
Once Upon a Time on ABC
Once Upon a Time comes on Sunday nights on ABC. This year ABC is impressing me in big ways. I adore their Sunday night programming. Though this show is sometimes campy it really is quite fun. They happened to be the first show I saw in this new style of making Fairy Tales modern (and the first in a recent wave of obsession over Snow White… two movies are coming out next year about her) so that might be why it’s so high in my estimation. However, I enjoy it. And sometimes entertainment is merely for amusement (or literally: staring stupidly at something).
Next up, also on Sunday nights is
Pan Am on ABC
This show is fan-freaking-tastic. Any of you that experienced the same love of Mad Men have found your placeholder until the new season. And this show features all of the espionage and glamour that are left out of Mad Men. The relationships between the pilots and stewardesses all mixed together with the political climate of the 60s and amazing wardrobes and destinations. What more could a girl ask for? If it exists, I don’t know of it. I love these ladies and their cat-eye eyeliner and perfectly coiffed hair. I love the pilots with their confidence and resourcefulness and despite their misogyny. It’s a great show.
Crazy Heart with Jeff Bridges
Monday I watched Crazy Heart. I’m a little late to this movie, but I still found it quite fascinating. I grew up on country music, so these throwback sorts of movies get me. I’ve been known, on ocassion, to rock an amazing Garth Brooks t-shirt given to me by my best friend Pam. When asked whether I’m wearing it to be ironic or serious the answer is always, “Yes.”
Tuesday night is the night of two of my favourite shows, but I rarely watch them ON Tuesday night because I work then swim then come home and furiously type. But here they are:
New Girl on Fox
I LOVE THIS SHOW. I spent the whole episode cracking up. It’s my favourite and on a weekly basis I feel like it was written just for me. It’s absurd. But not too absurd to completely miss real life. Just watch it. They’re very short episodes and one day after he graduates I’m going to steal Daniel Cura and force him to watch every episode with me and keep my fingers crossed that he makes a turtle face at least once.
Glee on Fox
I think that if you’ve found my blog you are not living under a rock, so there’s not much I can say to add to this show. I like it. Darren Criss is the main reason I keep watching these days because I’m always fascinated by how they dress him. I can’t decide if I would have been impressed by someone dressing like him in high school or if I would have avoided him… It’s a mystery. But he’s still adorable. And bow ties should be a more common thing. Merely so I stop swooning every time I see one.
American Horror Story on FX
Camille is a fan of horror. I am not. I’ve foresworn scary movies (except for the Scream franchise, because I think those are so funny) and generally blood and stuff makes me squidgy. This show is bizarre to me. I don’t have a good frame of reference for horror. But it plays something like the Saw movies. It’s all scary in your head stuff… with bits of gore thrown in. Honestly, I’m not quite sure why I keep watching it. (Sisterly bonding time?) Camille said that someone suggested to her it’s a modern re-invention of The Addams Family… Jury’s still out on that one. They have had some great guest stars the past two weeks. I don’t know. I’d say watch this if you’re a fan of horror. If not… don’t do it.
Last night I also watched Captain America (and was not as disappointed as I expected to be) and I have Charlie Bartlett waiting for me to watch sometime this weekend. (Charlie Bartlett is one of my all-time favourite movies).
As a recap I also finished Anna Karenina, 84, Charing Cross Road, and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society AND I’ve written about 9,000 words since Sunday. I’ve also managed to work and do some other vague things this week. This post is about 500 words too long, so I’ll let you go. Tomorrow you’ll only be interested in reading this blog if you’re interested in buying me presents. Until then, farewell.
It’s possible that you, my loyal readers, may have wondered what happened to me yesterday after my triumphant review of The History of Love. You may have suffered a brief panic attack or heart palpitations, or something like that, when you realized that THE ENTIRE DAY had passed without as much as a 100 word snarky comment about anything.
I know I did. My heart palpitations were the result of my remembering at 10:45 that I was scheduled to work at 11 am. I was en route to a great little bagel place that happened to be sort of on the way to work. Luckily, Camille was with me and she played courier for my unprepared self for the next hour or so.
So, I worked from 11-6. And then I swam a beastly 1,450 yards. The whole while thinking about what a momentous day November 15th was supposed to be.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to announce that on November 15th, 2011 that I accomplished to major milestones. And I’m so excited to tell you about them I don’t know in which order to type them up. I guess in the order they happened will suffice.
On November 15th, 2011 at approximately 9 pm I finished Anna Karenina, the Russian behemoth that has plagued my existence since June.
AND
On November 15th, 2001 at approximately 11:20 pm I hit and passed the goal of 25,000 words.
My official word count at the time of writing this post is 25,177 words. Yes, all about the same story. Now, I only have 25,000 words to go. And at this point I’ve made up all the words I was behind on… so I can take a slightly more relaxed pace dropping from 3-4,000 words a day to the much more pleasurable 2,200.
And now it is 11:40 and my eyelids are quite droopy. So, I will bid you goodnight. (Chalk it up to eccentricity, since you’ll probably read this sometime midmorning on Wednesday the 16th).
…why Markus Zusak is awesome. But first, this:
Markus Zusak reading The Book Thief
1. He’s a published author – this doesn’t make every published author awesome, but it wasn’t the obvious first choice so I went for it.
2. He’s Australian – which most people would have listed first, but we’re all about the unexpected surprises here at anecdotalmusings. Also, I’ll point out to you something the host pointed out about 8 times last night: Markus Zusak is a “bit of Australian Eye-Candy”. This moniker did well with the audience. Jen and I realized at this point that the majority of the audience was probably crossover from the “Twi-mom” phenomenon. We actually watched one of the moms get all touchy with Mr. Zusak which made us both quite uncomfortable.
3. He’s a really good published author – seriously. If you haven’t read The Book Thief yet you should do it right now. You don’t know how long you’ll be alive, best not waste another moment.
4. He coached Rugby. Which he called football. Also, he apparently, on occasion, wears beanies.
4. He’s one of the most engaging authors I’ve heard – I’ve sat through several readings/author appearances and they’re always slightly awkward. The audience is filled with a lot of expectation and the author, though vastly entertaining on the page, is either shy & unsure or overly confident & cocky. Neither of which breed a pleasant interaction. Markus, however, is used to speaking to large audiences of teenagers. He mentioned that at the start of his career he mostly spoke to groups of 200 fourteen year old boys who were forced into assembly rather than gym and were ready to rip him to shreds. If you’ve worked with teenagers before you know that you have to endear yourself to them rather quickly or they, rather quickly, will make your life hell.
He began the evening telling a story from his teenage years about life as the youngest child and how fortune favored him one day with the opportunity to “get his brother back” for some of his ill-treatment. The story involved hard-boiled eggs and learning to crack them on one’s forehead. It was quite funny and surprising the way the story developed. He told the story in order to provide examples for four things he felt were important his writing process. Unfortunately, I don’t remember all four, but it was a wonderfully enlightening experience. He talked about the importance of detail for veracity and distinction. He talked about knowing your audience and gearing the story toward them. He talked a lot about writing the kinds of books that only he could write and how careful he is about only including the sorts of details that are vitally important to his story.
Jen and I were both excited to learn that he writes his stories chronologically (a refreshing sort of fact since everyone seems to think writing them from the end is trendy) as well as writing out notes and working on his novels in notebooks. He was very encouraging to the students that were in attendance at the reading last night after having spent most of the day with the Tampa Prep students (I might have been a bit green when I heard about that). I love to hear authors encourage students, not only to read, but learn how to write as well. I think it’s an essential part of education. There was a really good turn out, too. Though Jen and I were the only ones that fell into the college-age/young professional category.
It was quite the fun evening. And inspiring. We’re quickly approaching NaNoWriMo. With that in mind Jen and I both are waiting in breathless anticipation to begin projects that we’re both excited to write about. Young Adult Literature is easily passed over, but if you can do it well, I feel like the community generated out of it absolutely wonderful. It’s something I’d like to be a part of some day.
It’s fitting that I’m reviewing this book today. It is, after all, officially Fall now. And though I know several of my friends greatly enjoy this time of year because it means that we can wear scarves and drink spiced hot drinks I find myself despondent over the close of Summer. I wish I had my own collection of Dandelion Wine stockpiled in the basement to keep away the Winter Blues. Little bottles of liquid sunshine; reminiscent of the bygone days of Summer.
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
This is actually the first complete collection I read. It introduced me to a wonderfully “down-home” Bradbury. The premise of the collection is set in 1920s Green Town, Illinois and young Douglas Spaulding in particular. The name of the collection is described in Douglas’ words as: “Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered.”
It’s a beautiful, fantasy filled romp through the last days of childhood. And though the time period was some 80 years before I read it, I felt connected to the story. It brought me back to the year we lived behind my grandparents in a camper. We planted rows of vegetables that we ate almost straight out of the ground. We had a fire every night and roasted marshmallows quite often. My bed was the couch and we had a little barn storage unit that was our closet. We were right on the edge of the woods and every day I would sneak back there and try to walk around as quietly as possible. I also remember eating a lot of cornbread. I learned to drive the 3wheeler then. I know now that it was a rough spot financially for my family, but I loved every minute of it. It was like an adventure all the time. (And it could be why I’m fascinated by Airstreams and want to live in one).
This idyllic, rural setting pulled at me. I rediscovered some of the memories of my childhood. And vicariously experienced some of the more terrifying tropes that are popular in small town fiction. There is a dark scary ravine that shatters one child’s understanding of invincible parents. Much about the children’s lives hinge upon the availability of ice cream. There’s also a surreal element established by the technology of machines that are built or used in the town. Douglas and his brother Tom continually reveal a magical understanding of the world and occasionally older people in the town reinforce this idea (mostly their grandparents). The main element of the story is Douglas’s slow awakening toward adulthood. Some of the things he learns are too heavy for a child to be burdened with, and Bradbury saves him, but allows the reader to experience the sadness.
What sounds and smells pull you back into Summer? In Florida it’s virtually Summer year-round, but there are certain things that make it clear that the freedom of Summer is actually upon us. What’s your favourite part?
Dandelion Wine is packed to the brim with nostalgia, melancholy, and wonder all wrapped up in vividly developed characters and a realistic setting. Several of Bradbury’s other collections revisit Douglas and Green Town. There’s even a sequel: Farewell to Summer. As with any Bradbury novel Dandelion Wine met with some harsh criticism. However, it completely captured my imagination.
I believe reading Bradbury has taught me the most about being a writer. He opened my eyes to the fact that you can learn to be a writer by reading other writers. I do not mean copying those authors you admire, rather reading them in order to discover the elements that make a story click together. That’s at least what I think I’ve been learning. It is definitely a major motivation in reading all that I read.
The week of Bradbury has finally concluded, I believe. I can’t promise I won’t talk about him again. But I’ll try to let enough time pass. I’m off now to listen to my new Thrice album and keep people safe as they swim. You enjoy your Friday. And maybe check out the Marksmen show tonight. That is, if you enjoy good music.
Cheers!
The first official day of fall is not until September 23rd so I find myself in a dilemma. Most of my “book reviews” have gone up under a Summer Reading heading. Now I’m curious if I should immediately switch to a General Reading sort of heading as soon as the 23rd hits or still categorize everything I’ve finished before Sept. 23rd as Summer Reading. Ah, the bothersome details of the life of a blogger. These are things you probably don’t even notice about the posts’ categories. Oh well. If you have any sort of feedback, feel free to share. For now I’m going to discuss another book I read a few years ago.
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Let’s take a gander at that beautiful artwork, shall we?
1984 Grand Master Series Edition
If you click that picture it takes you to a pretty cool post showing the evolution of the cover art from its original publication date of 1950 until 2009. The 1984 version is pretty much my favourite. There’s also a graphic novel version of this collection.
Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles: The Authorized Adaptation by Dennis Calero
I only just discovered this version. I may look into it a bit further since I do love this collection so much. Earlier this summer I made a foray into the world of Graphic Novels (which made Pam pretty excited) and I have a bit more patience for them than I did before. I’m a fan of the sedate in my entertainment.
Anyway, now that I’ve given you about five billion pictures to look at let’s talk about the collection. Hmm, where to start? Okay, I’ll be honest I most assuredly did not want to read this book when it was first suggested to me. I even went so far as to read just the first short story and half of the second and claim I didn’t like it. Accordingly I gave it back to the friend who let me borrow it and attempted to distract her from her Bradbury conversion of my imagination. (Turns out my kryptonite was Dandelion Wine). Once I read DW I decided to give The Martian Chronicles another go. I’m so glad I did.
Here are the things I love the most about The Martian Chronicles in no particular order
1. It is unapologetically frank about human nature, specifically our tendency to destroy almost everything we come in contact with. Granted, I believe that the created universe is naturally in a state of decline with or without humanity’s intentional help. However, this book takes some of the lessons learned by great explorers of Earth’s history (Columbus, Vespucci, Marco Polo, etc) and provides quite literally an alien landscape that makes the “history lesson” palatable.
2. Sort of continuing on that theme Bradbury does not assume that the future propels humanity into either Brave New World extremism or conversely, the horror of 1984. He treats the future as though it will be pretty much typical of 1950s America. The man is 91 years old and I don’t know what fortune-telling witch he met as a child, but he is for the most part correct. (More so than say, Zemeckis. Regardless, I still expect a hoverboard in four years). In The Martian Chronicles he acts as though racial tension and Communism will still be the major threats of the everyday American’s reality.
3. Perhaps my favourite stand-alone short story of Bradbury’s belongs to this collection. It’s called “Night Meeting”. I wrote about it a little over a year ago here. I think it is my favourite because it deals with the fickle nature of time. Time is one of those things that completely fogs up my brain. I just don’t understand it in a broad sense. I understand how the day to day stuff works. But anything outside of my limited perception? No way, dude. It’s just too big a thing for me to really understand. Too many grey lines. Too many things humans just can’t quite figure out. I love what Bradbury did with this short story. It reminds us that even the vivid civilization right in front of us is a fleeting one in History’s scope.
I could go on and on forever about this collection. Chances are, if you know me in real life, or work with me, at some point I have gone off on some tangential Bradbury monologue and The Martian Chronicles featured heavily. For some more basic information you can read about the book here. I most definitely endorse this collection. Read it. You won’t regret it. I plan on using it to trick any possible future sons I have into loving to read.
On a related note one of Bradbury’s space themed short stories “The Long Rain” (which is actually in The Illustrated Man) is about an attempt to colonize Venus after the colonization of Mars. It’s pretty bleak. But again, fascinating. And reminded me a bit of the torrential rains we deal with here in Florida sometimes.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by too much Bradbury, never fear. Tomorrow will be all about puppies. Maybe.
Cheers!
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
I would be hard pressed to tell you which of the three collections I’ll talk about this week is my favourite collection. But The Illustrated Man does sell itself hard. The premise for the story itself is fascinating to me. Several of the short stories in the collection appear in other collections as well. So when I read The Illustrated Man it felt odd to recognize them. However, given the new premise for the collection I felt as though I was given an opportunity to read them for the first time all over again.
In this collection the “main character” traveling one night comes across a man tattooed completely from head to foot. There is only one space on his back that is not filled in with ink. It supposedly tells the future.
The unnamed narrator looks at all of the Man’s tattoos and the reader gets to vicariously experience some of Bradbury’s most imaginative stories. “The Veldt” gives me chills to this day. “The Fox and the Forest” has a great Hemingway sort of feel to it. “The Exiles” breathes life into some of Literature’s most beloved characters (and some of Bradbury’s favourite authors). Can you tell that I was completely fascinated by this collection? I absolutely loved it.
Apparently Bradbury received mixed reviews for the framing and the collection of the stories. However, I found them wonderful. Each story chosen demonstrates Bradbury’s ability to span genres, to make the future appear acceptably foreign yet relatable as it actually is, and completely creep the reader out. They are parts horror, fantasy, science fiction, and parable. Wonderful fodder for the imagination. Reading something by Bradbury puts me on a high for several days.
You can read a bit more about the collection here. Now, this book was made into a movie which I attempted to watch once. But it was filmed in 1969 and had far too much brown in the scenery. I didn’t make it much past the first five minutes or so. However I’d like to give it another go and since I’m keeping my Netflix/Qwikster account I’m sure that will be possible. Plus this poster is really freaking cool.
The Illustrated Man, the movie
Tomorrow we’ll talk about the second collection I read: The Martian Chronicles.
Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory
I found a review of this collection on Goodreads ; there were some vague references to Ray Bradbury and that was enough to pique (I always accidentally say this word as “pee-kew” instead of peak) my interest.
I became a fan of short stories about three years ago when I first came across Dandelion Wine and The Martian Chronicles. Discovering Bradbury’s collections are what spurred me on to attempt some writing of my own moreso than anyone else I’ve read. It was after reading “The Veldt”, “There Will Come Soft Rains”, “The Fog Horn”, and the list could go on forever I realized that being a “real writer” didn’t mean only churning out Dead Russian-sized perfect novels. It was liberating to experience a complete story encapsulated in such a small package.
It’s been a good year for short story cycles. First there was James Franco’s Palo Alto: Stories which I reviewed here. And then this collection jumped across my radar and I flipped.
Readers, meet Ben Loory. A man who has written a little bit of everything in almost every genre that counts. Mostly short stories from what I’ve seen so far. And it’s obvious that this dude was paying some sort of homage to Bradbury. Loory’s collection features angsty teenaged extra terrestrials, man’s search for meaning in an alienating environment as well as giving face to some of the things modern man fears the most: chaos.
I greatly enjoyed his short stories. One of my favourites was about a man who experiences a great adventure when he illegally gets his hands on a medieval sword. The rest of his life is spent pining after that experience and he loses his wife, his friends, and eventually his sanity.
Another that stood out greatly to me featured a skeptical man desperately trying to understand God. His story does not end happily either.
It’s a tragically sad collection. Only a few of the stories have what you could typically call a “happy ending”. Which might be why I enjoyed the collection so much. It’s nostalgic in a way that makes you wonder at the plausibility of nostalgia. The stories are rife with a realistic magic that’s not interested in making the main characters happy. It made me think of a child approaching the world with wide eyes, only to discover that the paint has faded, and what looked fabulous only seconds before has turned into some drab sideshow. You can read one of his stories called “Bigfoot” here.
I wholeheartedly endorse this book. Especially if you feel as though you don’t have time to read. A collection of short stories is a great way to get back into the swing of things. They’re sort of connected, usually by theme rather than characters, and broken down into bite-sized chunks perfect for a half hour’s rest.
Again I apologize about yesterday. Look forward to my unabashed celebration of Ray Bradbury’s career tomorrow.
Cheers!
I just spent the last two hours working on a blog post for you guys about Ben Loory’s Stories for the Nighttime and Some for the Day.
And then the webpage mysteriously reset and I lost it.
Moral of the story? Getting distracted by awful Nicholas Cage clips on YouTube is not a good way to spend your afternoon and is likely to cause you to lose whatever you were working on. Because he’s a vampire.
yes, you are a vampire, i have proof
I’m going to log off for a little while now. I’ve spent too much time on the computer already.
Cheers!
And see you tomorrow with a real blog post.
So the internet tells me that November 1st is the release date of Water for Elephants on DVD.
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
The things I learned from Sara Gruen -
1. It is possible to write in a man’s voice even though you’re a woman. At least she convinced me and since I’m a girl that might be easier than if I were a guy… but I don’t know. Jacob Jankowski has a wonderfully developed tone. I enjoyed it immensely. In the reverse it made me think of this scene from As Good As It Gets
2. NaNoWriMo is sort of a legit thing - National Novel Writing Month takes place every November. This blogger writes that at least part of Water for Elephants was written during NaNoWriMo though much research was done beforehand and the novel itself took a bit longer than just the month of November to reach completion. However, when investigating the claims that Gruen wrote it during NaNoWriMo she came across this list of works published after NaNoWriMo. Okay, I promise to stop typing that.It’s getting on my nerves, too.
3. Research is a really important thing. Most of the events of her story were taken from actual circus history. Which, let’s face it, is rife with bizarre, secretive stories. One of my major complaints with a popular teen lit series that shall remain nameless is that the research was limited to google and based upon very silly ideas. Gruen actually came down to the Ringling Museum here in Florida to discover more about her topic AND invested in a ton of books as well.
Now I’ve recently come to terms with the fact that I need to actually make effort in the arena of getting published. It’s possible National Novel Writing Month might be a bit of a kickstart for me. We shall see.
Happy Wednesday!
