Month: September 2019

Books read in September 2019

Well this is interesting. Only seven books read in September? [Pause to uncover journal where all books read are listed] Yep. Only seven.

Picture Books

Field Trip to the Moon
John Hare
Read for Librarian Book Group

A wordless picture book of a field trip gone awry with delightful consequences for one student.

Middle Grade

Stargazing
Jen Wang
Read for Librarian Book Group

Great depiction of a friendship when the parents don’t entirely approve of the friend. I also enjoyed Moon’s gasp-worthy bursts of anger, as well as her belief she came from the stars.

Young Adult

The Things She’s Seen
Ambelin & Ezekiel Kwaymullina
Read for Librarian Book Group

Very mysterious novel set in Australia with a dead girl as the main character. She’s hanging around keeping her father, a police detective, company. He’s still pretty sad she’s gone.

While she is helping him solve a case, many things unfold. There are some poem bits here and there that I found cringy, but other than that, this is a good book. It’s also quite short.

Grownup Fiction

Where the Crawdads Sing
Delia Owens

This book has wonderful descriptions of the marsh and Kya. There’s also a lot of rooting for Kya, given her terrible upbringing. I can see why so many people are reading this book.

Aside from those things, I cannot understand why they are still excited when they get to the end of the book. The dialogue is wooden, especially anytime anyone is in love. The physical descriptions of sex had me cringing. Also, the mystery is solved one way, and then resolved in a different way in the last few pages, which I did not at all find satisfying. It felt like the author finished the book and the publisher wanted a different ending, so we ended up with a “but what really happened was…” debacle.

The Goldfinch
Donna Tartt

While I found the prose of this book serviceable, never have I ever worried about a character as much as I have Theo. Tartt excels at characters: Boris, Hobie, Pippa, and even minor characters are complex and compelling.

I read seven-eighths of this book in four days and then it took me another four days to get through that last little bit because I was so very worried about Theo.

Grownup Nonfiction

The Millionaire Teacher
Andrew Hallam

Hallam got to his millionaire status by implementing standard FIRE techniques (extreme frugality and index fund investing) before there even was a FIRE movement.

Here he presents nine lessons, eight of which have to do with investing.

The Effortless Sleep Method
Sasha Stephens

The author recovered from chronic insomnia and walks us through what she did to get to better sleep. She shares mistakes and makes suggestions.

I really liked what she had to say about Sleep Restriction, as I have been trying that for a few years now and find it to be the torture she describes.

Top Movies: September 2019 (I went easy on a few movies this month)

(8 total movies watched)

Yesterday

The 2019 baby boomer nostalgia movie that’s actually good!

Annihilation

Five women attempt to figure out what the Shimmer is all about.

Hot Summer Nights

Not so much Good as it is “good” if you have a specific itch.

Hustlers

A story of friendship and family

Now and Then

Again, more of a “good” than a Good.

Downton Abbey

Assuming you know who all the people are, this is GREAT!

For Insiders, the Downton Abbey Movie is a Gem

The review:

Michael Engler creates an excellent two-hour episode* of Downton Abbey which will be enjoyable to all who have watched the show and which also will probably incomprehensible to newcomers.** While I wasn’t particularly pining for the Downton gang, the movie reminded me how much I loved the characters, and the movie—unlike, at times, the series—had a tight, comprehensive plot that touched on nearly all of the characters.*** Overall, a great movie, assuming you have done your background research.

The verdict: Recommended

(assuming you are already a fan)

Cost: $11.35
Where watched: Regal Tigard Stadium 12 (where they waste time making you pick your seat)

Consider also watching:

  • Downton Abbey Season 1
  • Downton Abbey Season 2
  • After that, the plot gets very soap opera-y
  • If you like the characters, the rest of the series is worth watching

Further sentences:

*It’s not really a movie, just a longer version of the show.
**Who are all these people? If you haven’t watched the show, this movie isn’t going to enlighten you.
***Bates wandered in an out and otherwise wasn’t present, but nearly everyone else was around.

Trivia:

The mansion that King George V and Queen Mary visit after Downton Abbey, where the ball is held at the end of the film, is Harewood House. Although the name of the village is pronounced as it is spelled (Hare-wood), the House and the title Lord Harewood are perversely pronounced Har-wood, as was correctly done throughout the film.

Here’s a bonus picture because I just love it so much

Now and Then Would Have Been Better Off Sticking with Then

The review:

In 1995, Lesli Linka Glatter directed Now and Then, a coming of age movie with a lot of young actresses who then were girls but now are grown up and still fun to watch.* The plot is a little thin, and would have been better without the grown-up story, but it was a fine palate cleanser on a Friday night. Plus, it’s a good 1995 time capsule.**

The verdict: Good

(Again, we’re not talking fine wine. We’re talking house red. Or possibly Two Buck Chuck.)

Cost: Netflix monthly subscription ($8.99)
Where watched: at home

Consider also watching/watching instead:

Further sentences:

*Gaby Hoffman is always a treat.
**And possibly a good 1970 time capsule, though that was before my time.

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

The movie (a.k.a. The Gaslight Addition) was actually written about a town in Indiana named Winchester, and its gaslight addition. The author of the story I. Marlene King grew up there, as did the director Robert Wise, in vastly different years. Winchester declined to have their name associated with the movie, so the name became Shelby, but later Winchester began to preserve areas mentioned in the movie.

Hostiles Does Go On

The review:

Scott Cooper’s Hostiles is full of good acting and is so very long it seemed as if a presidential administration had passed by the time I got to the last frame of the movie.* This was an interesting study of a quasi-kumbaya journey wherein an Army Captain comes to a deeper understanding of the treatment of American Indians and his part in it. I’m all for re-examining the many effects Westward Expansion/genocide had on the people who were already here, but I found this story to be mostly unbelievable.**

The verdict: Skip

Cost: Netflix subscription ($8.99/month)
Where watched: at home

Consider watching instead:

Further sentences:

*Good acting is good and all, but when the story is dragging its feet, good acting isn’t enough.
**Plus, it’s another Native American story told via the white people’s experience. Plus the body count was very high, and guess who made it to the final frame and guess who ended up dead? Plus, I didn’t believe the final arrangement of people. Not gonna work. Pretending so overlooks a lot of history.

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

The book Captain Blocker (Christian Bale) is reading at the beginning of the movie is Julius Caesar’s Commentarii De Bello Gallico (The Gallic War) in the original Latin. The page shown is from Book V, describing the social and economic structure of first century B.C. ancient Kent. In 55 B.C., Caesar invaded briefly the south of the England.
(Thanks, IMDB commenter who can read Latin)

Hustlers is Worth Your Dollar Bills

The review:

Lorene Scafaria has made my favorite kind of movie with Hustlers: that which seems to be about one thing, but which is, in fact, about another.* While you could get distracted (as those guys at the strip club did) by all that flesh, in Scafaria’s deft hands this is not a movie about women who remove their clothes for economic gain, it’s about women who game a system that puts them at the bottom of the billions that are made by exploiting women’s bodies. Excellent performances all around** and there’s a lot of heart in this film.

The verdict: Recommended

Cost: $6.70
Where watched: Studio One Theaters

Consider also watching:

Further sentences:

*I think it helps that it was a woman who wrote this story. Despite the various stages of undress, this was a film absent of the male gaze.
**Jennifer Lopez is such a commanding presence. The range of emotions on Constance Wu’s face was amazing. It’s great to see Mercedes Ruehl and I’m always happy when Julia Stiles is on screen.

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

Jennifer Lopez trained for pole dancing in preparation for the movie. She even had a detachable pole in her house.

Hot Summer Nights Gave Me What I Was Looking For

This is not a good likeness of Timothée Chalamet

The review:

Elijah Bynum gave me what I wanted with Hot Summer Nights* and also included a bonus side of 1991-era Cape Cod summer.** This is supposedly about a normal teenager who becomes a drug dealer, but really, it’s about showing how much money he and Hunter Strawberry (that was the local drug dealer’s name!) made selling drugs,*** falling in love with a girl, and making some not-great (though age-appropriate) choices. The part where I was supposed to be getting amped up came across as boring, and it’s one of those movies that I spent the next day thinking about all the things that didn’t really make sense,**** but it hooked me up with what I needed on a Friday night and thus was just fine.

The verdict: Good

(barely)

Cost: free via Kanopy, Multnomah County Library’s streaming service
Where watched: at home

Consider also watching/watching instead:

Further sentences:

*I had a hankering for a Timothée Chalamet performance, and Call Me By Your Name wasn’t handy
**Plus, I’m betting they didn’t have much money for the soundtrack so it features lesser known (a.k.a. not cliched) music of the time.
***There is not one scene of Mr. Chalamet actually dealing the large amount of drugs they were supposedly dealing
****The narrator is just the omniscient town observer, for instance. Was that just lazy writing? What about main character motivation? Why was Chalamet’s character wanting to continue to expand the business? The questions went on and on.

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

Part of the movie takes place around The Perfect Storm of 1991. William Fichtner (Shep), also appeared in The Perfect Storm (2000), a movie based on the true story of the Andrea Gail, a commercial fishing boat that was lost at sea during the storm.

I see you, typo. But I’m not going to fix you. Never trust the grammar on the IMDB quotes page.

New Phone! Google Pixel 3a

I made the switch from Virgin Mobile to Google FI. Both plans are similar: low monthly cost and you buy your own phone. Google FI has a variable rate for data and I might be able to lower my monthly charge slightly.

On the left, the new phone. On the right, the old phone.

I gave my usual three-minute search for a case. The new case (left) isn’t as good as the old one.

We shall see what the Google Pixel has in store for me.