Lots of nice weather although we have entered a hot stretch. Today I am going to see a play in Ann Arbor. The title is MLIMA, The playwright is Lynn Nottage. It's about an elephant that is murdered. The theater is very tiny, which usually works out well. Lots of tiny theaters in Michigan. Too many of them do the same old stuff though. This one never does.
Started watching Inhuman Resources on Netflix. I remember the author from a big splash novel about a decade ago. Pierre Lemaitre (Alex?). Have only seen one episode but it seems
promising. French.
Watching Grey's Anatomy but I am not sure I can stick with it for 20 seasons. Medical shows are not my favorite. Sad to be done with Slow Horses. I hope the next season comes soon. Still watching After Party. Some episodes are much better than others. Also watching Commission on Prime. Artists in Seattle get commissions to paint buyers a picture. So far everyone wants abstract art. I need a good doc show to cleanse the palette. In the past I have watched a series on Portrait Artists and Landscape Artists.
Reading the Sarah Winman book for my book group. (Still Lives)
Megan has a short story in JCO new anthology, which just arrived. Some of the authors will be at the Mysterious Bookshop on Thursday night.
What about you guys?
31 comments:
Most of my series at the moment are wrapping up for the season, or already have, so it will be a matter of repeats and imports for me (and the continuing production of documentary and music series, and podcasts).
Impressive lineup in the Oates volume! I've heard Raven Leilani's name before, but she's the one I've yet to read.
Glad your weather is cooperating, Patti, even if it is a little too hot. I hope you enjoy the play.
Todd Mason
12:53 AM (6 hours ago)
I liked IN THE CUT, the novel much better than the film adaptation (and first read an excerpt from it in the appropriate-year volume of Susie Bright's BEST AMERICAN EROTICA annual). I suspect that she indeed was a habitué of such gatherings because those who throw them often (and frequently not for the best reasons) appreciate having persuadable conventionally-beautiful women around, and her wit and charm would be bonuses...likewise, I have to wonder if meeting Roman Polanski isn't a mixed bag at the best of times...
This was definitely before his preferences became known and a criminal matter.
The above should have appeared under the last post but more chance of visitors seeing it here.
Happy Labor Day to all!
It's been a strange, nothing week. Idalia missed us completely, so that was good, but it rained like stink a few days later which put us under a flash flood watch; the flood(s) didn't happen, so that was also good.
There was some concern that Christina's deaf student might be moving due to a military transfer but we learned that the family is staying here, so christina's job is secure for the year.
After nine and a half years, Jack finally had his feeding tube removed. He has steadily gained a bit of weight over the past six months so it was time. Jack is excited because he can now take up martial arts. To celebrate, they took to Jack to Sweet Frog for sundaes. The following day, Christina and Jack went to the zoo to visit Mark, who introduced Jack to Linus the peacock and Jack was able to hand feed him. (Mark also feed Linus -- two yummy blueberries) so Linus fell in love with Mark and followed him through the zoo for the rest of the afternoon.)
Yesterday's planned birthday dinner for Kaylee fell through when Amy came down with COVID. A rescheduled date has not been determined. COVID Amy was scheduled to start her new job. **sigh**
No television mthis week.
It's also been a strange reading week. I have slogged through several books, finishing Mark Rich's lengthy but flawed biography of C. M. Kornbluth (interesting but I could oinly take it in small doses), reading Mickey Spillane's standalone THE LAST COP OUT (my FFB, b ut also a slog to finish), and Paul Tremblay's critically acclaimed THE PALLBEARERS CLUB (It's unique structure and ambiguous approach did not work for me). I also read F. Paul Wilson's two books published as by "Nina Abbott": Rx MURDER and Rx MAYHEM -- a little lighter than Wilson's usual fare and the heroine, a small-towm family physician, annoyed me. To cleanse my palate, I'm currently reading THE PROTEUS CURE, a medical thriller Wilson wrote with Tracy Carbone, a good book, but Wilson's libertarian views on the medical profession can be slightly off-putting. I also read two graphic novels: James Tynion IV's BATMAN: FEAR STATE SAGA and Tom Scioli's biography JACK KIRBY: THE EPIC LIFE OF THE KING OF COMICS. I found that Tynion (a multi-award-winning comics writer) tried to do too much too fast with too large a canvas and that Scioli's portrait of Kirby as a hair-trigger, street-smart tough guy clashed with the wimpy artist who let Stan Lee and others roll all over him. So it's probably me, but not a great reading week.
Next week will be better. I hope the week will also be a fantastice one for you also. Take care.
It would be a great week if I could get through half the books you do, Jerry. My reading speed is glacial although I guess that analogy doesn't work anymore as glaciers seem to melt rather quickly.
Glaciers still move rather slowly, Patti! Thanks for the further posting help. It does seem that the one word in the Susie Bright annual title got a post not by you bounced previously...I wonder if somehow Jeff somehow runs afoul of guest-comment censorship somehow engaged on your blog by default. But, who knows.
The Mark Rich Kornbluth bio was so famously hostile to Kornbluth's frequent writing partner Frederik Pohl that I haven't even tried it as yet. Glad for the mostly good news, Jerry...hope it's a Very mild case of Covid.
Indeed, Polanski certainly had my sympathies from a distance as a kid, given what happened to Sharon Tate and how, until he chose to drug and attack a teen and has avoided taking any responsibility for that, much less facing prosecution. I don't think that kind of behavior arises from Just Nowhere, nor does it seem likely it came out of grief.
The play sounds interesting, though not a cheering nor laff riot experience.
Well, the play was well acted but a bit didactic. It was composed of many short scenes detailing the hunting of elephants in Africa, their sale (tusks), government involvement, etc. But still worth seeing as it was short and the young Black cast was so enthusiastic and excited to talk about it afterwards with the audience. All of them were professional actors and did themselves proud.
Too many people are dying, is the first thing. Two weeks ago my friend Cindy in North Carolina (65) died in her sleep. Jimmy Buffett (76) on Friday. We just heard that our friend Beth's younger sister (probably in her 60s?) died over the weekend.
And as Jackie keeps saying, yet Trump lives. Where is the justice?
We saw Jackson Browne at the Beacon last Monday. Good show. It ran just under 3 hours, from 8 to almost 11. He is exactly our age (born between the two of us). We stayed at a Marriott on 28th Street off Sixth Avenue and got upgraded to a King Suite on the 18th floor, which was very nice.
Really nice weather the end of August, but we have gone into the first heave wave of the summer now that it is September, which is weird.
We have a matinee of SWEENEY TODD on Wednesday, with Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford. We've seen it several times, but not recently.
It opened originally on March 1, 1979 and we saw it on March 3 (the Saturday matinee). Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou were fantastic. Three months later, my mother came to New York for my cousin's wedding, so we got tickets to see it again with her. The following year (July 1980) we saw it in London, with Denis Quilley & Sheila Hancock. Lastly, on Christmas Eve 2005 we saw the revival with Michael Cerveris and Patti Lupone. This was the production where the actors on stage also played instruments.
I read a rave about DARK WINDS, the latest Chee/Leaphorn adaption on AMC, but frankly, I wasn't terribly impressed. This is based mostly on PEOPLE OF DARKNESS, not THE DARK WIND, as the title suggests. Either way, Chee is a Tribal cop, not a PI as in the adaptation. Leaphorn, the major character here, is not even in the book, as far as I can recall. The whole plot is about the death of his son in an explosion four years earlier, but Leaphorn did not have any children. I thought it was OK, nice scenery and nice to see a lot of real Indian actors, but they could have done better.
We're watching the final 5 episode fourth series of TREME on HBO. The Swedish THE TRUTH WILL OUT definitely improved a lot as it went along and we will definitely watch the second series. I think it was Acorn. THE CHELSEA DETECTIVE is back, also Acorn, and I like the replacement assistant much better than the original. She is sharp and snarky, but in a good way, and there is none of the post-postpartum angst of the first series. The third and last series of the Norwegian RAGNAROK (Netflix) got terrible reviews, but we're slogging through it, almost afraid the see the panned final episode. Watching FROZEN EMBRACE (Finland), another MHz Choice cop show. Also AGATHA KOLTES (French; sadly there is only one 10 episode series) and CANDICE RENOIR. Jackie is watching EVERWOOD on Prime.
Let's see if this disappears like last week's did.
I read it, Jeff. Hope it sticks.
I saw the first season of Dark Wind, which was okay. Was this the first or second?
HBO is picking up all these old AMC shows. Was A Discovery of Witches any good? How about Interview with a Vampire. Sort of liked first episode of UNFORGOTTEN. How long before they bond as tightly as Nicole and he did. Not long, I bet but it might be good for the series is they didn't.
Wish I lived in NY and could go to all of these great plays and concerts with you.
Yes, she was obviously upset about the husband (understandably) on UNFORGOTTEN, but her behavior towards poor Sunny was not good.
This was series two of DARK WINDS.
We also started the second PROFESSOR T series on our local PBS station last night. It's weird seeing this adaptation after watching all of the original Belgian version. I'm really not sure it needed to be adapted, but it is certainly watchable.
Did not watch any of Interview With a Vampire or A Discovery of Witches.
I am truly impressed with how much you all manage to read in a week. I'm afraid to post here because of how little I read in comparison, revealing me as a fraud!
It's the time of year when soccer overlaps with hockey, so I'm on the pitch or the ice every evening & on weekends. I coach both my kids' soccer teams so summers are busy. My daughter's team (6 yrs) won their end of year tournament in her age group so we're really proud. My son (10 yrs) did well also, but we are in the midst of hockey try-outs which is quite stressful as it's his top sport & there's always much disappointment (born in December he is perennially disadvantaged).
I am reading Russell Banks's The Sweet Hereafter & enjoying it immensely, along with the usual run of short stories (this week re-reading some classics from an anthology titled Backpack Literature).
I don't watch much TV as I just fall asleep. I've never seen Grey's Anatomy & medical shows are also not my thing (but can recommend the CBC radio program/podcast White Coat, Black Art which is excellent). I recently watched Dead to Me on Netflix but the last season only half-watched as I was quickly losing interest. With the kids I watched the Super Mario movie which was awful, & with my son the new Spiderverse film which we both loved. The last grown up movie I watched was the horror film X which I quite enjoyed.
Patti, glad you enjoyed the play and have so many opportunities to see plays where you are.
We are watching THE AFTERPARTY and have finished all but the last episode which hasn't aired yet. Also watching ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING, season 3. Finished GOOD OMENS season 2. We started BEYOND PARADISE this week and also LONDON KILLS.
Reading: My last book in August was a Maigret book by Simenon: A MAN'S HEAD. It was a strange mystery and I enjoyed it. Not many likable characters in the short book, but it made more sense than some mysteries.
Last night I finished THE EIGHTH DETECTIVE by Alex Pavesi. Now that is a strange mystery. It consists of eight short stories in the mystery genre, written by a man 20 years before. An editor, Julia Hart, visits him on the island he had retired to; they are reviewing the stories, determining if they can be republished. They read one story, then discuss it and how it fits into a mathematical theory of mysteries that the author developed. The reader can tell something else is going on but what? I liked it overall, and the stories can be enjoyed on their own, also.
Glen read two books in the last week: INTO IRAN by Michael Palin and HEBRIDES by Peter May. HEBRIDES combines photos of the Outer Hebrides with Peter May's writing on his experiences there while working on a TV show and related to his Lewis trilogy set there.
Currently Glen is reading 1939 by Frederick Taylor. The subtitle describes it as "A People's History of the Coming of the Second World War". He is liking it and there are other books by that author we would like to read.
Alternative title for A MAN'S HEAD (the title I have) is A BATTLE OF NERVES. Even though on Amazon, they claim it is book 9 in the series, it was actually the fifth to be published.
Jackie loves medical shows, so we have watched GREY'S ANATOMY from the beginning, in case you have any questions.
Thanks, Jeff, I wondered where it fit in the series. I knew it was early, but not how early.
My mother loved GREY'S ANATOMY and HOUSE so I think so much of her watching it. The acting is great, character development good but boy those surgical cases. Especially the ones with children.
Casual-We mostly had those years when your life is about your kids (or jobs) and your involvement will mean the world to your kids. And I only read a book most weeks and have no excuse.
Simenon is a real wonder. Most of his books he wrote in three weeks. I have been working on a single poem for months!
The Sweet Hereafter is the one about the bus accident, right. I will look it up. I think I have read all of his books. Megan met him a few times and couldn't say enough good things about him. Thw 8th detective sounds intriguing. Too many books for one lifetime.
Saw The Equalizer 3. Entertaining if not great. Just watched the Little Richard documentary on CNN.
We have a weekend long festival in Royal Oak called Arts, Beats and Eats. They had Joan Jett Friday night. Better than past fare like Starship and Bret Michaels.
Read the new David Grann, The Wager. Now I am reading Airslip by Christopher Priest.
Weather is nice slightly on the hot side with a bit of rain last week.
My oldest daughter just had surgery to reattach some tendons and ligaments she had damaged last week. Her oldest son is off to Western Michigan University has a Mechanical Engineering and Business major. I would lose it on the Engineering courses but always found Business courses to be quite easy.
Thing about GREY'S ANATOMY is that it starts OK, but gets soapier and soapier (in all the worst and laziest ways) as it goes along even in the first season...about the point where I dropped it. I liked HOUSE considerably more, even as it is perhaps the most nihilistic medical series of any durability in US television history (nobody here gets out unscathed). Watching on a sick day an early marathon on the long-vanished Universal cable channel, which filled the commercial breaks with Humane Society solicitations, was almost enough to encourage at least breaking into a bottle of antidepressants.
I'm not a fan of Anne Rice's work, at all, and the two AMC series INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE and A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES definitely keep true to the spirit of the novels, as much as I could get through them (about a hundred pages into INTERVIEW, just a glance at most of her work since, some excerpts of her "Anne Roquelaure" work, that was also clumsily-written, in anthologies). Again, soapy, even when gothic soapy, isn't my favorite mode...unless the writing is very clever. These are not.
Whereas Joan Jett would on her worst day be better than Brett Michaels or (alas) Starship on their best days, Steve. Best of luck in recovery for your daughter.
Frank, coaching as well as having relatively young children is one of the most forgivable reasons for reading in moderation that there can be.
I liked DARK WINDS season 2 better than Jeff did, but it did rely on people doing unlikely dumb things at too-convenient times much more than it should. Variations on Hillerman's novels not too annoying to me at all...clearly the series, not altogether unwisely, wanted as many fairly-fleshed-out characters as they could juggle. [Not much of a Spoiler, but arguably one: Chee is on his way to becoming a reservation cop again by the end.]
That Word again got my first version of the comment above removed. Really, somehow that and other words might be triggers for automatic censorship in your comments, Patti...
I was briefly confusing the UK's Frederick Taylor with a very big deal in US popular history, as you probably recall, Frederick Lewis Allen, Tracy!
Been wondering about TE3, Steve. I went to that festival the first year but the crowds were oppressive. Maybe it is not as popular now.
I don't know what word we are talking about, Todd. Can we mask it somehow?
Good op ed piece in NYT today about how kids should not be focusing so much on careers but on an education. I agree.
Diane and I returned from the San Diego BOUCHERCON late last night. We decided to fly on LABOR DAY and except for a 90-minute delay in taking off from SD, the flight to Chicago was uneventful. Diane had provided a 3-hour "cushion" between our flight landing in Chicago and our flight to Buffalo. But, with the delay, the "cushion" shrank to one hour. We were worried our bags might not make the Buffalo flight...but they showed up on the carrousel at the Buffalo Airport!
Megan's panel was great! In fact, all of the panels I attended were very good. The San Diego BOUCHERCON ranks up there with the best of the bunch! Wonderful hotel, great restaurants, plenty of sights to enjoy! And the weather was delightful: 70s.
Now that we're back in Western NY, the entire area is under a Heat Advisory with temps in the 90s. Yuck! The next few days will be going through all the mail and newspapers that have accumulated while we were gone. And, dealing with Jet Lag....
Let's see if I can refer to Beethoven's "Eroica" and mention that the word I refer to, which seemed to trigger the removal of comment, has a T in it between O and I, and the use of the similar word without the A at the end (referring to Rice's series of books in that mode) seems to be what got my post today knocked off.
You can post/type it, but I can't. No idea if something like this is afflicting Jeff's posts.
Sadly, Patti, who can afford college in recent decades if it isn't putting one directly into a slot? I paid for half my own college expenses, and my father (at least) was grumping about investing in the other half (the USAF and FAA paid for his over his one hitch in the former and decades in the latter). And I could pay half by going to public universities (and NoVA CC to get some core curriculum items not covered by my AP tests done even more inexpensively) in the '80s, when U Hawaii Manoa charged $317/semester instate and Geo. Mason U in VA instate ran about $840 per semester, and I got my BA in 6 semesters and two summer sessions (and two quarters at NOVA, not at Jill Biden's campus)...I don't know too many public campuses now offering these rates, much less UC's instate Free tuition of the same era.
Read Alex Gray's Echo of the Dead featuring Glasgow DSI William Lorimer and Clare Macintosh's The Last Party set the border between North Wales and England over the long weekend. Also finished Michael Koryta's latest, An Honest Man, set in Maine last night. Also been playing Jimmy Buffett on the Sirius Margaritaville station. Didn't take any of my Buffett t-shirts to the lake on Friday and they were sold of Landshark in a restaurant on Lake Winnipeg that evening. May have been an omen.
Really, that is so crazy. I hope that is not the start of something onerous.
I never saw that Koryta release mentioned. G
Friends from Glasgow will appreciate thevGray book.
Recently read 2021's EVERY CITY IS EVERY OTHER CITY by John McFetridge and I enjoyed it A LOT. Set in modern day Toronto with a movie locations guy who moonlights as a P.I. when the film shooting season dies out.
Also read THE READER by Bernhard Schlink. I think the novel gives great perspective at the aftermath of a 15-year-old in a sexual relationship with an adult. So many adult males will say, "I wish I had that when I was a teenager." No. You really don't.
Started reading EPILOGUE by Will Boast. Boast published a book of short stories a few years ago that I read when I was a member of the state library associations awards committee. EPILOGUE is his memoir where his mother died when he was in college. Then his brother died in a car wreck. Then his alcoholic brother died when Boast was 24. (I suppose this is standard modern memoir fare.) He then finds out his father had family from an earlier marriage. (So, it's a double modern memoir.)
My wife and I delivered Boy #1 to his rental house in Minneapolis as he starts his junior year of college. Boy #2's first day as a H.S. Senior started yesterday.
My mother visited us for a few days last week with one the English relatives when the grandson and granddaughter went to the East coast.
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