Monday, Monday

 

Still watching DAY OF THE JACKAL, TASK, DR BLAKE MYSTERIES, PLATONIC.

I saw SPLITSVILLE with one other patron. It had the funniest, longest fight scene in memory. I came home and watched THE CLIMB, which the two writers/actors had done earlier and although it was funny, too, SPLITSVILLE was much better.

I am going to see MAN OF LA MANCHA today. From Friday to Monday I will be in D.C. so I will just leave a place to post on Monday. (It was an excellent production for community theater)

Reading DREAM HOTEL by Laila Lalami for one book group and BLACK CAKE (Wilkerson) for the other.  

What about you? 

FFB-THE HOUSEKEEPER AND THE PROFESSOR, Yoko Ogawa

 I may have FFBed this book before because I read it a few years ago first, after I read Ogawa's MEMORY POLICE. They are very different books as it MINA'S MATCHBOXES, which I read a few months ago. This is my favorite of the three. The housekeeper (unnamed) is hired to care for a older math professor who has a brain injury leaving him with a memory of only the last eighty minutes. She and her son, named Root by the professor due to his head shape and it's likeness to the sign for square root, are enriched by this relationship, and he with them. There is a lot of math in this book, which I got very little of, but it didn't really matter because this is a story about how a family can be people related to each other or people who enjoy each other even if for only eighty minutes at a time. A wonderful book, uplifting in a time we need it. 

Short Story Wednesday: "THE POOL" T.C. Boyle

 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/09/22/the-pool-fiction-t-coraghessan-boyle

We once considered a house with a swimming pool, but Phil, having had one as a child, nixed it, saying it was too much responsibility and insurance, and this story tackles that. The protagonist, a rather dyspeptic man for someone in his early thirties, allows his house to become party central for his friends and family and several issues arise over the pool. This feels like a story John Updike might have written forty years ago. Perhaps Boyle did or perhaps he's remembering such a house and pool. 

I am pretty sure I read one or two Boyle novels back in the day but they were much less upper middle class than this one. I will have to investigate.  

George Kelley 

TracyK 

Todd Mason

Jerry House 

Monday, Monday

 

Just started THE DAY OF THE JACKAL (Peacock). I have never seen the movie so I am new to the story. Also watching the new Lynley on PBS, THE PAPER, on Peacock, which I liked moderately. And still making my way through the DOCTOR BLAKE MYSTERIES. I really like that each episode is complete in itself. Nothing to remember the next time. 

Went to a great chamber music concert Saturday night. The Zukerman Trio played piano trios by Mendelssohn and Dvorak. We can get very good seats for $30 at a lovely venue. I also spent a beautiful afternoon walking the riverfront in Detroit, which now extends for more than five miles. Windsor, Canada is on the other side and two bridges and a tunnel connect the two.

It is astounding to compare many areas of Detroit to the way they were twenty years ago. Of course, other areas are still in need of help.  

And what about you?  

FFB: KARNAK CAFE Naguib Mahfouz

( From Ron Scheer on Buddies in the Saddle in 2015) It has a frightening resonance for today, here. 

Naguib Mahfouz, Karnak Café (1974)

Bit of a change today at BITS, from West to Middle East. This short novel by Nobel-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz is a sadly melancholy story of the crushing of youthful hope. Set in the 1960s around the time of the 1967 war with Israel, it describes how a generation of young Egyptians, the children of the revolution of 1954, were betrayed and lied to by their government, while being subjected to interrogation and imprisonment by secret police.

Their story is told by an older man (and stand-in for the author), who befriends a gathering of them who are regulars at a Cairo café, Al-Karnak. There they talk of politics and express their idealistic aspirations, both for themselves and their country. Abruptly disappearing for periods of time, they return shaken and demoralized. While in police custody, kept in windowless cells, they have endured harsh treatment and false accusations.

Eventually it’s revealed that they have been coerced into becoming informants, which corrodes their trust in each other and eventually leads to the death of one of them. Two, a loving couple at the story’s start, are driven apart by their guilt and shame.

Karnak Café is a troubling vision of life in a modern police state, and it sheds light for Westerners on the recent struggles in Egypt for freedom and justice. Novella-length, it takes a stand somewhat distant from political events, while clearly throwing its sympathies to the young people who speak on its pages. 

Short Story Wednesday, "How to Make Love to A Physicist"

 

I put this aside some time ago and just ran across it yesterday. I think I have only read half of the stories. This one is about a couple that meet at a STEAM conference. She is in the arts and only there to oversee. He is a physicist and this story documents the relationship that follows. She does everything she can to put him off but he hangs in there. I am not sure all men would allow this latitude but lucky for her. Deesha Philyaw won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her debut short story collection The Secret Lives of Church Ladies.

 

Todd Mason 

George Kelley 

Jerry House 

Monday, Monday

This weather is something to behold. I can't remember a better stretch of weather in many years. Saw LOVE, BROOKLYN, which was way too ordinary to be on a big screen. On Criterion I saw, MISERICORDIA which was funny but so very odd. Also rewatched ANATOMY OF A FALL, and came to a different conclusion on the fall. 

On TV watching THE PAPER on Peacock and ready to begin the new LYNLEY and TASK (HBO) Enjoying revisiting CHINA BEACH. 

Still working on ANTIDOTE, which is wonderfully researched and written but too long. We go over the same sort of ground too many times. Have to finish it by tomorrow though. Ugh. 

I did another protest on Saturday. A lot of support from passing cars. Much more than six months ago. Does it mean anything? 

We are all missing Kevin. I got a text from him today saying he has watched SINNERS and did I see it. He liked it. I am impressed that he did. Hope he gets to take a film course in college. It really makes a difference to be able to watch films critically, I think.  I only took one film class and it was on vampire films and taught by a Romanian professor. How fitting. 

What are you up to?  

 

FFB: A LOSS FOR WORDS, Lou Ann Walker

 

I was working on a piece for my writing group and looking through photos and saw a boy in my confirmation class who was deaf. I googled him and found out despite his deficit, he had an amazing career, beginning with taking the University of Texas to the Supreme Court for refusing to provide him with language assistance. And then I remembered a book I read years ago (1988) that really captured the hearing person in a deaf family (A LOSS FOR WORDS). Now that I have a moderate hearing loss, this subject interests me. The recent series CODE OF SILENCE on Britbox did a great job with this and of course, CODA, which won an Oscar. 

From the time she was a toddler, Lou Ann Walker acted as the ears and voice for her parents, who had lost their hearing at a young age. As soon as she was old enough to speak, her childhood ended, and she immediately assumed the responsibility of interpreter—translating doctors’ appointments and managing her parents’ business transactions. Their family life was warm and loving, but outside the home, they faced a world that misunderstood and often rejected them. 

In this deeply moving memoir, Walker offers us a glimpse of a different world, bringing with it a broader reflection on how parents grow alongside their children and how children learn to navigate the world through the eyes of their parents.

Short Story Wednesday: "The Wife On Ambien," Ed Park

 https://www.newyorker.com/books/flash-fiction/the-wife-on-ambien

As someone who takes Ambien, I can attest to some unusual things that happen under the influence. Although usually it's Amazon orders that I remember considering but not ordering. For instance, I considered making my NYT subscription digital rather than print and apparently I did do that because no paper was here today but a change in billing email was. Also I sometimes find cracker crumbs on my chest in the morning. I also have had deliveries of clothing in the wrong size so I am not as careful under Ambien.

A bit worrisome. I have been advised to powder the hall in front of my door to make sure I don't leave the apartment at night.  As a child I walked in my sleep so it may not be the Ambien at all. 

Fun story anyway.  

Jerry House 

George Kelley 

TracyK 

Kevin Tipple 

Casual Debris 

Todd Mason 

Monday, Monday

 It looks like CHINA BEACH is streaming on a new streaming channel called HOWDY, which is $1.99 a month. Some of the original music has been replaced. 

Three great movies. Third was It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley. Who I'd never heard of. Have you? 

Finished the latest season of UNFORGOTTEN, which was good although the third plotline may have been unnecessary. Also finished FISK, which is very funny. 

Still slogging through ANTIDOTE by Karen Russell. Just too long but well-written. Rereading THE HOUSEKEEPER AND THE PROFESSOR for my other book group. 

Beautiful weather here. Can't remember better weather over this weekend. There are a lot of festivals in Detroit area. A huge jazz festival down on the waterfront and and art festival nearby but crowds don't please me anymore. 

Kevin's classes don't start for another few days. Why get them there eight days before when there's nothing to do? And the WI kids probably went home for the holiday weekend.  

What are you up to?