Day: July 31, 2024

Books Read in July 2024

*Book Group Selection | Bolded Means Favorite

Picture Books

*Two Together by Brendan Wenzel

Early Chapter Books

*Born Naughty: My Childhood in China by Jin Wang, Tony Johnston, and Anisi Baigude

Young Adult

*Break to You by Neal Shusterman, Debra Young, and Michelle Knowlden
Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

Grownup Fiction

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
The Measure by Nikki Erlick
But How Are You, Really by Ella Dawson
Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton
Honey by Isabel Banta
A Winter in New York by Josie Silver
Need Blind Ambition by Kevin T. Myers
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra

Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner

With a decades-spanning plot and two instances where I gasped “No!” this was pretty much my perfect read.

The Women by Kristin Hannah

Sometimes the dial on historical fiction is turned too much to the side where we establish scene by naming songs and describing clothes and hairstyles. That was the case here. While Frankie’s story resonated with me, I kept getting pulled out of it by too many historical details that didn’t add anything to the plot.

Young Nonfiction

*Rising from the Ashes: Los Angeles, 1992. Edward Jae Song Lee, Latasha Harlins, Rodney King, and a City on Fire by Paula Yoo

Grownup Nonfiction

The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae

Free Movie at Cinema 21: Didi

Letterboxd hooked me up with a free ticket to see Didi, a film I was planning on prioritizing. I got to the theater early as directed in the email. It was a little chaotic because the people with the list were nowhere to be found. It turns out they were at the Lloyd Center theater and had to make their way from Northeast Portland to Northwest Portland and then find parking in Northwest Portland.*

*There is off-street parking for Cinema 21 after hours, but people have to know to look it up on the website. Most don’t, and they circle endlessly looking for a spot.

But they got to the right place and we got to see a fine film about the summer before high school. The woman playing the grandmother looked familiar to me, and it turns out the director of Didi, Sean Wang, was also the director of the short film Nai Nai & Wài Pó, which was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary short for the 2024 awards. The grandmother was Wang’s own grandmother (Nai Nai, in the short film).

Thanks, Letterboxd and Cinema 21 for this good movie outing.

Unpacking the Trunk: Bon Jovi Concert Shirt

The trunk originally had a bunch of clothing in it—mostly favorite dresses—but in the mid-aughts, I took them to the high school youth group at First Unitarian and let them take home anything they wanted. The t-shirt from my first concert, however, remained tucked away.

Here, from Bon Jovi’s New Jersey Tour, is the concert t-shirt that I complained cost more than the tickets (about $30 when the tickets were about $18-19). T-shirts are probably cheaper than tickets currently, but that’s because tickets have increased in value, not that the shirts have gotten cheaper. (I just checked and Olivia Rodrigo tour shirts are $45.00; tickets are something like $99 to $450 at their original price.)

Anyway, from my perspective today, the skull iconography is odd. It seems more in keeping with Guns and Roses etc. than Bon Jovi. But this might have been before they got full into western iconography.

This shirt was worn twice. I knew when I bought it, I wasn’t going to make it out of the house with the back visible. The word “ass” was a no-go for public display. The same went for the school dress code.

I bought it anyway. I wore it to school the day after the concert with a jean jacket I never took off even though it was early may and past jean jacket weather. There was one other time I wore it, but I do not remember what it was.

So this shirt is in GREAT shape.