25
Dinner: turkey meatballs, whole wheat pasta, homemade pasta sauce: olive oil, Roma tomatoes, green onions and garlic simmered and mashed until sauce-y. Topped with shaved parmesan. Yes.
4th day in a row at the pool. Much quieter today, plenty of time to read. Got more sun and the hair is FINALLY starting to lighten up after the home dye-job disaster of early 2012.
Lots of water: Pamplemouse. And my favorite iced tea: Celestial Seasonings Cool Brew-Peach.
50
Hated the ending to Blue Angel. Seriously. The guy gets busted for his affair and as he leaves the mock trial on campus realizes he's been set up from the very beginning. Just then the campus bells, which he has always found annoying until now, begin to chime and he feels liberated from his buttoned-down back East existence. BOO.
Read two more today: Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons and Mister Posterior & the Genius Child by Emily Jenkins.
Ellen Foster was better when I read it the first time, but it was called Bastard Out of Carolina then and it was written by Dorothy Allison. Gibbons has a decent voice, but I could never told how old the narrator was supposed to be in the telling and it distracted me from the story. Also, it was unclear if her father was black or if he just associated with blacks. This seems small, but the way her grandmother treats Ellen because of the grandmother's disdain for Ellen's father makes the distinction important. Quick read, but not great.
Mister Posterior etc. was good, but it too has a better corollary. The Summer of Naked Swim Parties by Jessica Anya Blau does a much better job of capturing early 70s sexual rebellion-post sexual revolution. I didn't hate Jenkins' book, but I did find the eight going on nine year old narrator's comfort with the naked ass flashing that occurs over a period of months outside her bedroom window to be disingenuous. I have a hard time any kid, when confronted with a "wiggly, hairy" male ass would be so mellow about it that they'd refer to it as "just a bottom". Maybe I'm uptight, but I didn't buy it.
Showing posts with label Blue Angel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blue Angel. Show all posts
14 June 2012
13 June 2012
25-50-75: Day 17
25
New salad obsession has ruled my life yet again. Spring mix, cherry tomatoes, green onions, goat cheese, almonds, white wine vinegar and olive oil dressing.
Book room work is done. Gym is on deck for Friday morning--tomorrow I'm typing up inventory--any suggestions for a good workout playlist?
Day three at the pool; oh, sun. I do love you so.
50
While I was home for the River Festical, I read a book I forgot to write about: Velva Jean Learns to Drive by Jennifer Niven. It's Appalachia before WWII and Velva Jean's mother, just before she dies, tells her daughter to "live out there" as she gestures to the world beyond the windows of their small mountain home. I was completely transported by this book. The era fascinates me anyway--prohibition, moonshine--and the setting is brilliantly described. Having just read the Bondurant novel and watched "Hatfields and McCoys", I was primed for a novel set in that are with a female protagonist, and Velva Jean does not disappoint.
As she grows into a beauty, she becomes fixed on a young revivalist preacher named Harley Bright, the same young man who she used to call the moonshiner's boy when they were young and he was trouble, before he found his way to salvation. The novel covers her life before him and with him, and throughout its telling there are rich descriptions of land and love, of what it means to want someone so badly you lose yourself in the wanting. It was beautiful and full of aching hope.
The novel of today is Blue Angel by Francine Prose. It is a decidedly different beast. Most everything else I've read would be pretty accessible to most audiences, but I have a hard time imagining everyone would love this. Set on a small east coast college campus, the protagonist (Swenson) is the novelist in residence and is teaching a particularly diverse writer's work shop including a young Boston Brahmin girl he refers to as Back Bay Barbie. This--among many other things--cracked me up, but if you aren't familiar with the references this book would probably either be a snoozer for you or a plain old irritation.
Case in point: the campus is worrying about sexual harassment in the wake of an incident at a neighboring state school. The dean throws a dinner party to feel out the English department about the climate on their own campus; one professor talks about his class referring to Poe as a child molester after learning of his marriage to his 13 year old cousin. Another says a particularly evangelical young lady told him she felt 'unsafe' after a class discussion surrounding possible gay overtones in the relationship between Pip and Magwich in Great Expectations. Finally, the female poet in residence shares a story about trying to open her students' minds to the notion of what a poem can mean. To do this, she read them "This Be the Verse" by Philip Larkin. Her students did not respond well, and one of her colleagues tears Larkin apart for being self-pitying and essentially a waste of time.
Now, if you read the above paragraph and laughed because those references all resonate with you, then this is your book. If not, skip it. Me, I'm having a ball. Of course all of this surrounds the central story of the professor who falls for his weird looking but incredibly talented young female student and the havoc it wreaks on his wife. Not very original, but Prose can write, so I'm eager to finish it.
Next up, either The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacob or I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron. Any votes?
New salad obsession has ruled my life yet again. Spring mix, cherry tomatoes, green onions, goat cheese, almonds, white wine vinegar and olive oil dressing.
Book room work is done. Gym is on deck for Friday morning--tomorrow I'm typing up inventory--any suggestions for a good workout playlist?
Day three at the pool; oh, sun. I do love you so.
50
While I was home for the River Festical, I read a book I forgot to write about: Velva Jean Learns to Drive by Jennifer Niven. It's Appalachia before WWII and Velva Jean's mother, just before she dies, tells her daughter to "live out there" as she gestures to the world beyond the windows of their small mountain home. I was completely transported by this book. The era fascinates me anyway--prohibition, moonshine--and the setting is brilliantly described. Having just read the Bondurant novel and watched "Hatfields and McCoys", I was primed for a novel set in that are with a female protagonist, and Velva Jean does not disappoint.
As she grows into a beauty, she becomes fixed on a young revivalist preacher named Harley Bright, the same young man who she used to call the moonshiner's boy when they were young and he was trouble, before he found his way to salvation. The novel covers her life before him and with him, and throughout its telling there are rich descriptions of land and love, of what it means to want someone so badly you lose yourself in the wanting. It was beautiful and full of aching hope.
The novel of today is Blue Angel by Francine Prose. It is a decidedly different beast. Most everything else I've read would be pretty accessible to most audiences, but I have a hard time imagining everyone would love this. Set on a small east coast college campus, the protagonist (Swenson) is the novelist in residence and is teaching a particularly diverse writer's work shop including a young Boston Brahmin girl he refers to as Back Bay Barbie. This--among many other things--cracked me up, but if you aren't familiar with the references this book would probably either be a snoozer for you or a plain old irritation.
Case in point: the campus is worrying about sexual harassment in the wake of an incident at a neighboring state school. The dean throws a dinner party to feel out the English department about the climate on their own campus; one professor talks about his class referring to Poe as a child molester after learning of his marriage to his 13 year old cousin. Another says a particularly evangelical young lady told him she felt 'unsafe' after a class discussion surrounding possible gay overtones in the relationship between Pip and Magwich in Great Expectations. Finally, the female poet in residence shares a story about trying to open her students' minds to the notion of what a poem can mean. To do this, she read them "This Be the Verse" by Philip Larkin. Her students did not respond well, and one of her colleagues tears Larkin apart for being self-pitying and essentially a waste of time.
Now, if you read the above paragraph and laughed because those references all resonate with you, then this is your book. If not, skip it. Me, I'm having a ball. Of course all of this surrounds the central story of the professor who falls for his weird looking but incredibly talented young female student and the havoc it wreaks on his wife. Not very original, but Prose can write, so I'm eager to finish it.
Next up, either The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacob or I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron. Any votes?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)