So she's not a dude?

I was being a bit Scrooge-y last night, so this didn't exactly make my evening:

"I'm looking for a new book on the Civil War."

"...OK...do you know who the author is?" (note - there are a number of books about the Civil War)

"I think it was published this summer."

"OK, lets narrow this down to books about the Civil War published in the last year. By any chance, do you think this is by Drew Gilpin Faust?"

"Maybe, I just heard this guy wrote a great book about the Civil War. Is he any good?"

(oh, jeez) "Dr. Faust is a very respected Civil War scholar and she's the first woman President of Harvard University."

"oh."

That's it? OH? ***smoke, grrr, smoke***

Atonement

I finally watched this film - amazing, just amazing. I first read the book last year about this time, stayed up all night on Christmas to finish it and now I with I'd seen the movie in the theatre when it released. This has to be one of the best book-to-screen adaptations I've seen. The conversion of adult Briony's explanation, which is many pages long, to a television interview for her novel was brilliant. I also regret not seeing the movie in the theatre because of the cinematography. The movie is beautiful and has an amazing tracking shot for the Dunkirk beach - 4.5 minutes long and it's amazing.

And James McAvoy has gorgeous eyes.

Now I've started another movie with a UK hottie and gorgeous eyes. Sylvia.

Chomsky

Carol Chomsky died yesterday - she was a linguist and helped develop the repeated reading technique to help struggling readers.

I totally did not realize she was married to Noam Chomsky. Since 1949, too. Wow.

For once I agree with you

In an interview with CNN, Donald Trump called Bernard Madoff a sleaze bag (just search for "sleaze" on the page, it'll be about 2/3 of the way down). I may not always agree with the Donald but I do this time.

Besides, Trump is pretty much the only businessman who can call someone a sleaze bag and get away with it.

What??????

I just checked the news - the IC and UI police had to detonate a suspicious package reported to be a bomb at Burge Hall. Oh, my god. I would be so, so, so angry if I were an undergrad living there because it's finals week here at the UI. Glad to read in the article that the students are OK, even if their study schedules got messed up.

If some yahoo thought this would be a great joke, it's not very funny.

Why can't people stay home?

I mean, is being at home unpleasant? Being out in our lovely Iowa winter storm is probably the least intelligent thing people can do right now because the weather is pretty bad. The only way it could be worse is to either a) rain straight ice because then everything turns to glass or b) have driving wind because then you just get blown all over the place. But no, people seem to be posessed with a singular drive to come to the mall and the mall, in GGP's infinite wisdom, just doesn't seem to close because we have to accomodate this loonies even when the weather is terrible.

Take, for instance, the loser moron who thought it expedient to drag his three small boys (all under 10, the youngest about 4) out to the mall at 8pm in an ice storm to go to the Build-a-Bear store and the Playplot aka germ factory. Really? That's necessary? They can't play with anything at home? Bringing kids out in this weather is child abuse in my opinion.

Bogus? Excellent!!

We had a "white elephant" gift exchange today at work. As usual, full of laughs because some of the gifts are soooo silly, like a gigantic inflatable "santa-stuck-in-a-chimney" lawn ornament that we blew up in the hallway just to see what it looked like.

I, however, managed to come up with a double feature DVD: Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey. Awesome!!! Honestly, these are the only movies that I actually like Keanu Reeves in and all for the cost of a few CDs that I never listened to in the first place.

White Christmas anyone?

OK, now I feel ready to listen to Xmas music or watch movies. We are having a whole boatload of snow today. We've probably got about 1.5 inches on the ground so far with more coming. Excellent.

The drawback is that the air temperature will freeze your tail off. Brrrrrr.

Ugghh, Friday

Just hit a wall - I'm suddenly so tired that I all really want to is lay down on the floor and take a nap. Or at least, just lay down (my office chair does tip back a bit).

I started The Reader by Bernhard Schlink last night. I'm reading in translation, so I'm not sure if it's truly Schlink's style or the translator's, but the novel is riveting. The story could be a cliche (older woman, teen boy, lots of sex, etc) but I think what makes it unique is the first-person narrative - from the point of view of a naive fifteen-year-old. I decided I needed to get this read because the movie was nominated for a Golden Globe and, among other things, I'd really heard good things about the novel. Yes, I think it was an Oprah pick but I couldn't care less about that.

Speaking of Golden Globes, so many great nominations. I'm going to have to rearrange my Netflix queue to pick some things that I missed and I'm also going to have to hit the theatres hard (made harder by the fact that the local movie theatre chain has plenty of screens but low-brow taste - have I mentioned that before?). The Duchess is releasing on DVD in a few weeks, The Reader just had a limited release in the US (how does this happen), Doubt just opened, Revolutionary Road has a limited release in a few weeks, Benjamin Button releases Christmas Day, Vicky Christina Barcelona will release on DVD sometime (date unknown on Netflix) and I already watched In Bruges (yay, Brendan on the Globe nod) so that's one I don't have to track down in the cinema wasteland that is Eastern Iowa. I'm very interested to see Kate Winslet's performances; she's a favorite of mine and I'm rooting for her in the Oscar race because she's been very deserving in the past and seems to have come up with two critically acclaimed performances again this year. Note to self: you need to read a few of those novels/plays, too, before you head off to the theatre.

"Stories are light" - The Tale of Despereaux

As I mentioned earlier, I decided to re-start my Newbery Project with The Tale of Despereaux: being the story of a mouse, a princess, some soup, and a spool of thread. The movie is due out December 19 and I wanted to read the book before seeing the film (which looks very cute, by the way).

This is a story that I'm pretty sure I would have read to shreds as a child because first, and foremost, Despereaux is a good story. A story is all that matters to a child because little minds don't actively search out form, style, genre, etc. like a grown-up one might. So this grown-up mind enjoyed Despereaux's story as much as she enjoyed the writer's style. I really did appreciate the "fourth-wall" asides that DiCamillo uses throughout the book, much like a Bronte or a Dickens, where she speaks directly to the reader. It makes the story seem far older than it really is and it follows more along the lines of a traditional fairy tale or morality story. DiCamillo also uses the asides to illustrate concepts she introduces in the story; she introduces "perfidy" and "forgiveness" as well as the translation of "adieu" so not only is a child getting a good story in Despereaux he/she is also getting a vocabulary lesson (and there are many, many more advanced words in this novel than the other two that I read, but they don't seem out of place).

The other thing that makes this novel so appealing is Despereaux himself. He is far too small, too naive, too brave, and too loyal for anyone not to love him.

Vocabulary (and I'm basing this on words I probably would not have known or not known the alternate meanings to in 4th grade):
obscenely/obscene
Furlough
Merlot (Despereaux's siblings have odd names)
dungeon
conform
indulge
elemental
tribunal
perfidy
assured
egregious
ignorant
gusto
renounce
repent
bellow
defiance (I might have known this one)
ominous
covert
adieu
Cripes
all-encompassing
beleaguered
empathy/empathetic
infringe
Chiaroscuro (I only learned this about 5 years ago, so I'm pretty sure I didn't know this one)
minstrel
capacious
torturous
clout (the hitting kind, not the reputation kind)
vicious
portentous
aspiration
diabolical
comeuppance
emphatic
consigned

(that's quite a few, isn't it?)

In Honor of "Stuff I've Been Reading"

RIP to a great column (Nick, please write more about what you read - maybe now you can speak freely about books you didn't like now that the Spree is no longer looking over your shoulder). So in honor of "Stuff I've Been Reading" (and cross-posted from Please Don't Eat the Books) is the first two weeks of December.

Books bought:
Wheelock's Latin (also workbook/reader)
Domino: The Book of Decorating
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher
The B-List - a film book from the National Film Critics Association about cult classics, etc.
Doubt by John Patrick Shanley
Harry: A History by Melissa Anelli
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
Ghost Stories (Pocket Everyman's Classics Anthology)
Proof by David Auburn
Victoria's Daughters by Jerrold Packard
War and Peace (Pevear and Volokhonsky transl)
Shakespeare Wrote for Money by Nick Hornby
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
Eleanor of Acquitane by Alison Weir
The Canterbury Tales (new translation by Burton Raffel)

Books Read:
Shakespeare Wrote for Money
The Tale of Despereaux
The Castle of Otranto
The Mysteries of Udolpho (half done)
The Shock Doctrine (half done)
Eleanor of Acquitane (half done)
Reading Matters (half done)

What this highlights is a) I need to read faster, b) I need to be more careful with my money and not go crazy when it's employee appreciation week, and c) I have a problem (obviously books are like crack to me).

Absolutely mind-numbing

It's Sunday and here I sit, in my office at the hospital, entering data. Open envelope, check for signature, enter into Access, get data from HCIS. Repeat ad nauseum.

I think my brain ran away, it got bored.

Thank God for Adam and Sam with all their old Cinecast episodes. At least there's something to which I can listen.