(6 movies watched)
Not great acting, yet enjoyable film
It’s a teacher movie, but different
Gentle Midwestern humor
Classic for a reason!
Top-notch performance by R. Zellweger
Tallulah the Tooth Fairy
Dr. Tamara Pizzoli & Federico Fabini
Read for Librarian Book Group
Tallulah is a different kind of tooth fairy and we find out about her life in this iconic picture book that I think has much too many big words. Kids will go for the pictures. Adults will go for the concept.
The Important Thing About Margaret Wise Brown
Mac Barnett and Sarah Jacobs
Read for Librarian Book Group
Of note: at the point of reading, the name Margaret Wise Brown meant nothing to me. If I had to guess, it was going to be someone who fought for civil rights in the 1950s. That guess was wrong. I also didn’t know that Margaret Wise Brown wrote The Important Book which would have added to a good base understanding of the structure of this book.
An odd little picture book about the author of Goodnight Moon and other stories. The books establishes Margaret Wise Brown’s uniqueness and also made me quite curious about Anne Carroll Moore, the librarian at the New York Public Library who served as a gatekeeper of children’s books.
Soft illustrations conjure a bygone era. I would have liked more back matter, especially cause of death.
A Place to Belong
Cynthia Kadohata
Read for Librarian Book Group
Hanako—an American citizen—moves with her family to Japan after spending several years in a concentration camp (the US called them “relocation centers” or “internment camps”) during World War II.
In Japan, she find grandparents who adore her and her brother and she tries to make her way in this new land. Filled with a lot of visual detail and intermittently illustrated with black and white drawings by Julia Kuo, this is a great novel of starting over when that seems like the best of a bunch of bad choices.
Best Friends
Shannon Hale & LeUyen Pham
Read for Librarian Book Group
A graphic novel that examines the anxiety and pitfalls of sixth-grade friendships and also the role of girls in the world. It includes good mid-80s details and some good scenes of Lagoon, the amusement park outside of Salt Lake City. It’s also got a pretty awesome fantasy story as written by a very young author, but expertly illustrated.
Very well done!
The Revolution of Birdie Randolph
Brandy Colbert
Brandy Colbert again writes a wonderful novel. In this one, Birdie, a good girl, stretches her wings as she comes of age.
As always, Colbert manages to balance friendships, love interests, parental expectations and her main character’s own interests and wonderings during a summer in Chicago.
How she does this in a brief 325 pager and so regularly is beyond me. If you haven’t checked out her stuff, now’s the time.
Butterfly Yellow
Thanhhà Lai
Read for Librarian Book Group
It’s 1981, and Hằ ng has recently arrived in the US. She’s looking for her brother who was lost in one of the last airlifts out of Vietnam at the end of the war.
She sets out on her first day in the country and finds Lee Roy, a recent high school graduate and son of college professors, who wants more than anything to be a real rodeo-riding Cowboy. Together the unlikely pair spend a summer figuring out the world as it is presented to them.
Hằ ng’s English words rendered in Viennese words made for hard reading. Though I liked the idea, in practice I mostly skipped over them and hoped that Lee Roy was going to do some summing up.
Also, this book has a scene with flirting via diagramming sentences, which I LOVED.
Patron Saints of Nothing
Randy Ribay
Read for Librarian Book Group
How many books have I read with Filipino main characters? I suspect it’s close to zero, which is the number that Jay, the main character in this book, has read.
This is a great chronicle of travel to a homeland you’ve never really known. There are current events (President Duterte ) that affect the plot. There’s a lot of loss and sadness, which is always good to explore when boys are main characters.
Neighborhood Girls
Jessie Ann Foley
This book is about female friendship when friends are used as armor, rather than people you deeply care about. There’s also really great Catholic girls’ school stuff and some good commentary about tattoos.
Jessie Ann Foley writes books I want to keep reading, even after they are done.
Unpregnant
Jenni Hendriks and Ted Caplin
Looking for a zany road trip book? Cool. You might like this. Second question. How do you feel about abortion?
Aside from the complex policies, opinions, and feelings about the big A, this book touches on how we present ourselves to the world, friendships, and actual relationships vs. how people see them.
This was an enjoyable, breezy read. For those of you who like to have the book read before the movie appears, act now. They’ve already cast it.
Dear Emma
Katie Heaney
A detailed chronicle of Harriet, the anonymous writer of Dear Emma, her college newspaper’s advice column, and how she reacts to being ghosted. Depicts a college life of procrastination, not much studying, and is a great portrait of friendships new and old. Also a retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma.
State of the Union: A Marriage in 10 Parts
Nick Hornby
Ten very brief vignettes of a couple as they meet up in a bar before heading to couple’s therapy.
I continually ran into the problem of not understanding who was talking. Other than that, it was interesting to see the evolution of the marriage.
The Last Thing You Surrender
Leonard Pitts, Jr.
Another great entry into the (extremely large) WWII canon, this one follows several characters from Mobile, Alabama as they do their part to help the war effort.
This novel fully examines the effects Jim Crow had on characters both white and black with many memorable scenes ranging from horrifying to small moments.
I had no idea that one of my favorite newspaper columnist also writes novels and I will look out for his other books.
Little Fires Everywhere
Celeste Ng
Ng’s portrait of two families living in her hometown of Shaker Heights, Ohio was exactly the kind of novel I like.
Without using too many words, Ng builds her story on the friendship between Moody—a life-long resident whose family has lived in Shaker Heights for generations—and Pearl, a newcomer. From this friendship we see all that is good about the suburb and how that goodness can have drawbacks.
The 12 Tribes of Hattie
Ayana Mathis
I think my lack of connection to this book comes from the stories being disconnected from each other. I never could see how the family was all together. Even a family tree at the beginning would have helped.
This is one of those books that I only finished because I had nothing else to read.
The Brave Cyclist
Amalia Hoffman, Chiara Fedele
Read for Librarian Book Group
A picture book story of Gino Bartali, a Tour de France winner who used his bicycling skills during WWII to smuggle papers to help Jewish people establish new identities. I appreciate Fedele’s dedication to capturing Bartali’s prominent nose.
Nisha Ganatra directs a film chock full of terrible acting,* and yet still manages to create a very enjoyable movie-watching experience. The plot has an interesting conundrum (offering to be a surrogate for your married, infertile sister) and the movie itself is a delightful time capsule of late-90s New York City lesbian culture. This is a great example of how serious flaws sometimes aren’t enough to bring down the movie.**
(with some caveats)
Cost: free via Hoopla, the library’s steaming service that isn’t Kanopy
Where watched: at home
*Apparently, there’s a good reason that the main character’s acting isn’t great. See the trivia section. Jill Hennessy is in this and isn’t bad, but she isn’t great, either.
**Ganatra also directed one of my favorite films of this year: Late Night
Director and co-writer Nisha Ganatra stepped into the lead role of Reena after the actress originally cast in the role quit the production shortly before filming began.
Because it happens near Halloween, there’s a costume contest on the Saturday night of our square dancing event. It’s fun to see what people come up with.
Jim and Eileen had great fun dressing up as a gangster and a moll.
Tiffany and Rebecca’s costumes showed off their great gams.
And Tara and Leslie’s turn as Mormon Missionaries won a prize.
Every week, I will have an updated list of movies recently watched on Netflix, or Kanopy, and rented from Redbox. You can click on the links to read the reviews and decide if you want to watch any of these movies.
If you do, leave a comment and tell me what you thought.
I volunteered for the After Hours event at the Hollywood Library this year. This year’s theme: Stranger Things
There were a lot of themed activities (which I didn’t get because I haven’t watched the series, but which Matt assures me were on point) and the usual After Hours things.
This included pizza delivered and exclaiming over costumes.
Plus button making, and this waffle station.
And everyone’s favorite: the running and screaming tag game that happens after the library closes.
As usual, it was a fun night at the Hollywood Library.
Hopefully someone had stopped needing this post-it note. It was nicely nestled against the fallen leaf.
Finding this, I wondered if Found was still around. I thought not, because so many more things are digital now, so what is left to find, but it turns out they are still around! They even sell a set of postcards!
Among the things in Matt’s mother’s storage space: a framed poster of the crew team at Matt’s college.
There he is in all his glory.
The inspiring words on the poster say: The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work. —Vince Lombardi
Thanks to work paying for our tickets, we got to see Mr. Coates talk about his new book the Water Dancer. There was also supposedly a copy of the book we could all read, but I never saw it.
I’ll track it down, though. I enjoy his writing.
Julia Hart directs and Lily Rabe inhabits Miss Stevens and together they create a story about the parts of teaching that don’t have to do with standing in the front of a classroom. Lily Rabe is a complex Miss Stevens* and watching her students watch her make the choices she does is only part of the fun. At times, the movie balances the teacher/student relationships on a knife’s edge and the tension is in seeing how Miss Stevens will react; in addition, Timothée Chalemet pushes the envelope the most in an excellent performance.**
Cost: free via Kanopy
Where watched: at home
*I was captivated by her performance. She has a really interesting face: lots of emotion and she looks different from every angle.
**That at one point tips over to “too big” but otherwise is exemplary.
The headrests on the front seats of Miss Stevens’ car are incorrectly positioned, causing a safety issue where a crash could potentially lead to the decapitation of the driver and front passenger.
(Oh internet comments. Sometimes I love you so much.)
