Everything I ever read...
Submarine: A novel, Joe Dunthorne
Remembering what it is like to be a teenage boy. Very witty. October 2008
Robert Eisenberg, Boychicks in the Hood: Travels in the Hasidic Underground
Hey, I remember that world... sort of... except that I was never really part of it (I thought of myself as modern orthodox, not ultra-orthodox) and memory does fade after two decades. Or does it? Even if I wasn't in it, I was right there next to it, and sometimes even in it, if briefly. Hard for me to believe now. In some cases I actually know more about things the author explains than the author himself does. In some cases I think I know what the orthodox people he describes are thinking better than he does. That's not a criticism, just an expression of how deep I really was in the edges of that world. Eisenberg does a great job of taking the initiated or uninitiated visitor on a tour of ultra-orthodox life as it is really lived. For me it is almost healing... for most it will simply be fascinating. September 15 2008
The Island of the Blue Dolphin
To my daughter in August and September, 2008
Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine
The mirror of the crisis of capitalism, and how crisis is used to advance fascist interests. August 2008
Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time (1962)
First read to me by Mrs. Murata in 6th grade, I've spent the last few weeks reading this to my daughter at bedtime and she has been entranced. It is always fascinating to reexperience something as an adult and marvel at all of the things one missed or didn't understand the first time through There were many such things as I read the book again but I think that the message about totalitarianism got through to me even in 6th grade. July 30 2008
Leon Speroff, The Deschutes River Railroad War, 2007
This history of an obscure Oregon line and the competition to build it (they built two, one on each side of the river) provides a window into both Oregon / Northwest history, and into the flavor and vibe of late 19th and early 20th century railroad magnates, and the bare knuckled politics, violence, bribery and back country dealings that they engendered. Also, we get a sense of just how hard it was to work as a laborer on the railroad - hard and hot. The photos are beautiful too. July 28 2008
Carole Katchen, The Underground Light Bulb, 1969
A fondly remembered (from 1971, my 6th grade year) tale about being true to yourself and not immitating others. I discovered it in a box, yellowing and falling apart, and read it to my son this evening. Simple fable, great pleasure. July 14 2008
Diana Wynne Jones, A Tale of Time City
Completed in early June, I began with Leora reading this book to my daughter 6 months ago or more when she was not quite 7 years old. Because I read only every other chapter, on alternate nights, I have no idea what it is really about. But by the time we reached the end, my daughter took over the reading and would read me to sleep for several weeks. So, again, I missed a significant part of the story, and I still have no idea what it is really about. She however thought it was wonderful, and who am I to argue? It was in the last 6 months, while reading this book that she became a reader, capable of reading almost anything. The other major reading project in her life has been to have read to her, by Leora, the better part of the entire Anne of Green Gables series. But frankly, I've lost track of all the books she is consuming. June 22, 2008
Stacey Richter, Twin Studies
Short stories. Cavemen and the title story are particularly good. April 2008
Martin Cruz Smith, Wolves Eat Dogs (2004) (The Arkady Renko Series #5)
April 2008
P.G.Wodehouse, Hot Water
A romp through the swell 1920s. It could not possibly be lighter. April 11 2008
Martin Cruz Smith, Stalin's Ghost (2007) (The Arkady Renko Series #6)
March 2008
A.Monroe Aurand, Jr., Little Known Facts about Bundling in the New World (Aurand Press, 1938)
I was walking by Powells Books when I saw in the window this 25 cent 1938 pamphlet on a subject of longstanding interest to me - the historical social mores of sleep, courtship, night and gender relations. Four dollars later it was mine. April 10 2008
Geraldine Brooks, People of the Book, 2008
I greatly enjoyed this backwards through time exploration of the history of the Sarejevo Haggadah, and the hands and places it might have passed through. April 8 2008
Goggles
To my daughter, March 30 2008
Planet
March 28 2008
Mercedes Helnwein, The Potential Hazards of Hester Day: A Novel in 1400 Miles (2008)
Wow! This wonderful high energy story is one of the best I've read in a while. The protaganist is relentlessly and enjoyably pissed off at the world and everything and everyone that gets in her way. She reminds me of a modern day female Holden Caulfield (Catcher in the Rye), utterly convinced of the idiocy and foolishness of the adults in her world, and determined to claim her own angry deranged vision. Like Caulfield and his sister, her love for a younger cousin keeps her centered and human. I read this in 24 hours, and recommend it very highly. I want to read more from Helnwein. March 23 2008.
Sid Fleischman, McBroom's Ghost
Read to me by my daughter, March 22 2008
Helen Lester, It Wasn't My Fault
Read to me by my daughter, March 22 2008
Daniel Pinkwater, Slaves of Spiegel
Outloud to my son at bedtime....
Daniel Pinkwater, Alan Mendelsohn, The Boy from Mars
Inspiring. March 13 2008
Martin Cruz Smith, Stalin's Ghost
March 6 2008
Shouhua Qi, Red Guard Fantasies and Other Stories
Little windows on contemporary China - if not perhaps great literature, still illuminating. Late February 2008
Stephen Fry, The Hippopotamus (1994)
Yep, that's Fry of the Fry and Laurie videos. This is massively amusing and gloriously raunchy. Fry manages to be funny about sex in more different verbal positions than I had thought possible. Half of the novel is epistolary. While visiting a fine English estate, and solving a most peculiar myster, he also manages to weave in a good Jewish / Zionist / English historical narrative that is remarkably plausible and completely unexpected. He makes a compelling case for secular view of the world. He seems, as an author, to be having one heck of a rollicking good time, even if, assuming he has any relation to his main protaganist, a poet, he probably sweated blood to write it. Nobody knows how to end a novel, and neither does Fry, but that detail hardly matters. Apparently he also wrote a book called "Liar." I look forward to reading it too. February 29 2008
Myla Goldberg, Bee Season
I was half way through this way cool story of contemporary mysticism and spelling bees before I realized that the title had nothing to do with the apiary profession. My spouse finds me the most wonderful books to read. I had never thought about even the possibility of a relationship between Jewish mystical practices and spelling bees, but Goldberg weaves them together as if they were always meant to be part of the same story. She also does a fantastic job of getting inside the minds of a fifth grade girl, an adolescent boy, a more than a little troubled mother, and an oblvious (aren't we all) but well intentioned father. Half family drama, half mystical exploration and mystery story, this will be one to return to some day. Richard Gere was in a movie based on this book too, and I simply must see it to find out if they did this little novel justice. February 25 2008
Ben Schrank, Consent: A Novel
Who am I to complain? Ben Schrank wrote a novel, I didn't. But I thought this could have gone in a much creepier and more other worldly direction that it did. I won't tell you what does happen, but the metaphors stay sadly, and merely, metaphorical and the golem never becomes real in the way I expected. Kind of enjoyable... kind of a big let down. I would have written a different novel. Maybe I should some day. February 21 2008
Gillian Gill, Nightingales: The extraordinary upbringing and curious life of Miss Florence Nightingale (2005)
This wonderful tale of an upper middle class Victorian life has taken over my life for the better part of the last two weeks, read piece by piece, 20 minutes at a time as I commuted on the MAX to downtown Portland. Initially, the book seems impossibly dense, going into minute detail about the pre-Victorian lives of Florence Nightingale's ancestors. A fellow commuter on the train, observing me reading it, pronounced that she had tried to read it and found it impossible. I was at that point almost ready to agree with her, but soon enough it gripped me. We learn the minutist details of Florence Nighingale's life from the extensive correspondence she engaged in with friends and family. We are offered a portrait of her sexuality (unclear if the concept even applied), her likely medical diagnosis upon returning from the Crimean war (a rare bacteria found in goat milk, which she probably consumed to avoid the water and alcohol that was available there), and a portrait of how this highly educated woman battled against the extraordinary sexism that was normative in Britain in her era. We find that she had an extraordinary father who chose to educate her as well as any son. We are reminded that a woman of her age and class could go almost nowhere without an escort, and that for much of her childhood and young adult life she, a person who craved solitude, was like any woman of her class, never alone, even in sleep, but always attended and accompanied. I found this as engaging as any novel, and as much a portrait of Victorian England, particularly its upper middle classes and their habbits and manners, as of Florence Nightingale herself. In the end she invents the profession of nursing administration and changes her world's perception of the roles and aspirations that women could have, but the strain of her battles against convention and in wartime create a most peculiar and strained personality. It appears though, that while she twisted under the load, she did not break. The final images we have of her are of a conventional, solicitous (if largely by the written word) and loving auntie to many members of her extended family. February 18 2008
Lisa Westberg Peters, Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story
A children's story of evolution, very nicely explained. Read to my daughter again, January 31 2008
Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (2007)
Compelling and engrossing narrative of a young teenager co-opted into the government forces in the 1990s in Sierra Leone. Beah's tale reminds me of some Holocaust stories I've read. I must remember to go back and read this one again some day. January 31 2008
Aba Oseh Booshote (Daddy Embarrasses Me)
I translated to English for my daughter this tale in Hebrew of a father who embarrasses his son. January 28 2008
Kent Walker with Marck Schone, Son of a Grifter: The Twisted Tale of Sante and Kenny Kimes, The Most Notorious Con Artists in America: A Memoir by the Other Son (2001)
This is an absolutely gripping can't put it down until you've read the last page memoir of man and his sociopathic narcissistic social climbing money grubbing thieving and murdering mother and brother. I was fascinated and horrified (in a delightful way) on every page of this book. This will remind you of every narcissistic self-aggrandizing person you've every met, but taken to a level that is simply stunning. And it's not just about criminality, but it seems like a metaphor for other bigger things than one duo's psychopathology. It reminds me of the American corporation as well with its ethic that one's own interests are the paramount value and the ballsy in your face never-cop-to-anything style that corporations and sociopaths like Sante Kimes rely on. We watch as Sante Kimes, combines a career of petty shoplifting and car thieving with bank and real estate fraud on a large scale, scores a millionaire husband, manipulates her family member's lives in the most intimate and personal ways, and uses anything and everyone that gets in her path, while still attracting friends and being remembered by the author, her son (Kent Walker), as a warm and fun person who wrapped him in a cocoon of love. The book reads like Kent Walker sat down at a tape recorder and just started talking, while Schone knit it altogether. Normally that would be a recipe for disaster, but Schone and Walker have done a great job. This is a story that can only be told from the first person perspective by the man who lived it. Walker is self-reflective and contrite about his own role in facilitating his mother and brother's criminality and cruelty over the years, and makes what seems like a reasonable and plausible case for his own efforts to avoid being drawn into their dramas and scams. He acknowledges that love and greed stopped him from cutting off relations entirely, although he appears to have made numerous efforts to report his mother's fraud and murder plans to the police over the years, and seems to have been largely ignored. Who do you have to kill before they'll arrest you around here? In the end we are left with the pathetic and yet remarkable image of a tired and essentially insane old woman serving 120 years for murder and related fraud but still plotting her strategy to persuade the world that she was framed. Walker acknowledges in the end that his mother and brother are irredeemable (worse than Charles Manson says one attorney who knew both), and regrets, if only partially, the years when he believed and acted otherwise. This book is so over the top, and so mind blowing, that it must be read to be believed. It is also interesting at this stage of my life to be reading memoirs from people who are about my age (48) or even a little younger, and finding these memoirs set in the very world and at the very same time that I was living my life. So as this drama runs between Las Vegas, Hawaii, San Diego, and Los Angeles in the 1970s through 1990s, I am reminded that I was walking those same streets as these people, and was roughly the same age as the author. You always suspected that there was more going on than you knew, and this memoir tells you one completely idiosyncratic slice of that hidden world that was all around me... and yet the decades and the places are all so familiar. I was there, doing other things... but these folks were there too, and look at the mess of a life they were living. We probably passed each other on the freeway. January 26 2008
Allyson Beatrice, Will the Vampire People Please Leave The Lobby? True Adventures in Cult Fandom (2007)
This is the best book about internet culture that I've ever read. It may also be the only one, but never mind that. Beatrice has done something I've never seen before. She has gone and captured what online culture and the offline world around it felt like in the late 1990s through early 2000s. Her particular angle is the bizzare world of Buffy the Vampire fandom, something that my wife partook in but that I never grasped at all. But her comments on that experience and related internet cultural realities are spot on. Here's one comment I particularly liked, in "The Internet Wants Your Daughters". "You don't expect electricity to take responsibility for your kid's health. Why expect the internet to prevent your kid from getting hurt?" January 22 2007
My lifetime bibliography with each book I read and every book I can remember reading.
The Valet
Very amusing French sex comedy. September 13 2008
Falling Down
Never saw this until now. Early Sept. 2008
The Secret of Roan Inish
With the kids, 8 to 9:30 in the evening, Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 1 2008
Obama Nomination Acceptance Speech, OPB
Late August
Jon Stewart - The Daily Show
I watch every episode on my computer. August, September 2008
Death at a Funeral (2007)
Mildly amusing British take on the body disposal problem... mostly forgetable. With Leora, August 10 2008
Juno (2007)
Juno is an enjoyable little romp through teenage life, with an interesting subplot about pregnancy, abortion and adoption. (The following is full of plot spoilers.) The final outcome of the 'what to do' question was highly annoying since the most ethical choice not involving abortion was not even present on the menu: open adoption. Instead, Juno gives up the child in a closed adoption, denying the child, possibly forever, the chance to know her biological father and mother. Then the movie concludes with her teenage/childhood restored to its proper trivial mumble pop course. This is so utterly unrealistic as to annoy on a deep level. For the record, the preferred ranking of alternatives in Juno's case would be, in my view (most desirable to least) (1) abortion; (2) keeping the child to be raised with the support of her family; (3) open adoption and... nothing. Closed adoption should not even be on the menu. Abortion is obviously the preferred option for a potential life that no one is interested in. But if the baby is to be born, it too has rights, foremost among them the right to some kind of relationship with its biological parents. Even allowing for her immaturity the Juno character, as portrayed, could have been assisted in mothering by her own family, or could have maintained a relationship with her child through an open adoption. The coldness of the Juno character to the life she bears and births just didn't add up. If we are really to believe that this was how she felt, surely she should have had an abortion, rather than creating a child and abandoning it so completely. It's puzzling why the film makers didn't include open adoption.... I suspect ignorance. But given the portrayal of the adopting mother as something of a witch, and the dysfunctional relationships shown elsewhere, maybe the filmmakers see any mothering to be a negative. Of course the Juno character does not seem like a nurturing mother. There is truth in that. I've known of cases where young women feel so completely alienated from their fetus that they just want to be done with it any way they can. But her support network hardly helps her think of it differently. The movie addresses the abortion versus adoption question, but it leaves unexamined the break the relationship versus keep the relationship question. All of the options are break the relationship options (abortion and closed adoption.) Worse, breaking the relationship in the end becomes a path to keeping Juno's relationship with her current highschool boyfriend. Continuing the babies versus happiness theme that the adopting parents act out, the boyfriend rejects her as an expectant mother, but he returns to her as a woman unencumbered by a child. That may be realistic, but it isn't pretty... and yet somehow in this film it IS intended to be pretty. Happiness in the Juno world is freedom from parenting, and happiness is regaining your childhood. You could even suspect this movie of having an antiabortion agenda, not because she rejects the abortion itself (a perfectly reasonable choice in itself) but because the closed adoption model functions as, and is offered as, a substitute abortion, ending the (potential) relationship completely. The movie Juno promises that you can "get rid of the baby" after birth just as completely as before birth. In contrast, what you don't get with grandparent/parent raising of a child or with open adoption are the opportunity to end the relationship. So you could imagine that closed adoption would feel more like an alternative to a teen considering abortion, and you could imagine that an antiabortion agenda would be served by offering the "substitute abortion" which is closed adoption. I consider if far more ethical to end a life before it starts than to intentionally begin it without a relationship to one or more biological parents. I believe in the rights of children once they are born, and those rights include a right to know their biological parents. I can't help but suspect this film of some kind of dishonesty and hidden agenda, offering one ethically problematic choice (closed adoption) as a substitute for another (abortion.) I think there are better options than either of them, but they force a woman (and, we hope a man) to confront the responsibilities associated with creating a life. If you've got a problem with the responsibility of a life long relationship, definitely, definitely have the abortion. But don't imagine you can escape those responsibilities by giving the baby away and hiding from it forever. Regarding this critique of the movie itself, the film makers could always say "it's just a story, just one of many stories that could be told," but it never hurts to consider what agendas a film's writers may be promoting, wittingly or unwittingly, and why they chose this story and not another. And yes, you can say I'm just another man pontificating about something I'll never face, but I have a few women and future women in my life, and a few adopted friends, so maybe I know something about all this. With Leora, August 10 2008
Frontier House
I was prepared to dislike this historical "reality" show, but I found it quite rewarding. Three modern families are "transported back in time" to 1883 on the Montana frontier and must cope with life using only the tools available to people of that era. The attention to historical accuracy, and the acknowledgement of departures from it, were quite impressive. Homesteading frontier life appears as a desperate race to avoid starvation and to prepare for the winter. Many choices had life and death implications. Because the story was set in 1883, I reflected on my own ancestor, my great-grandfather
Jacob K. Smith who set out for the South Dakota frontier in 1880, around the age of 25, opening a grocery story in Mitchell, South Dakota, probably not unlike the one recreated in this film. His first wife and child died in that frontier town, and given the conditions portrayed in this film it isn't hard to understand how. But Jacob Smith opted for the town life, selling first groceries and later land, and made Mitchell South Dakota his home until his death in 1932. My son was not interested. I think he finds new material stressful, and prefers to watch a limited set of movies and videos repeatedly. So I watched with my daughter, August 2, 2008
Silvarado
Derivative and silly Western, but quite watchable... so long as I have Leora to explain to me who is who, whose horse belongs to which, and how this or that remark fits into the plot. When it comes to movies, I'm plot impaired. July 29 2008
Devil's Playground
Amish teenagers on Rumspringa making the decision to join their church or live an English life. July 3 2008
Melinda and Melinda
Dear God, please, if I ever start to watch another self-absorbed, boring, badly written, (did I mention self abosrbed?) Woody Allen flick filled with stupid upper east side stick figure characters, all in the performing arts, yet living in huge apartments, mouthing utterly familiar Woody Allen lines and mimicking Woody Allen mannerisms, then just strike me down right then and there and spare me from wasting another 2 hours of my precious time on this earth. Your humble and obedient servant, Miles. (One interesting thing about this film was the way he got the conversations that people have on staircases... the staircase as a real-life stage. But it was hardly worth watching the movie just to see that.) With Leora, on a Wed. while the kids had a sleepover at their cousins' house. June 18 2008.
Rocky and Bullwinkle
A few episodes from the third season with my children, Father's Day morning. June 14 2008
Idiocracy (2005)
Blade Runner meets Sleeper. I thought this was just great. I don't recall ever seeing a dystopian future comedy. June 13 2008
Porco Rosso (1992)
Beautifully animated story of a heroic Italian seaplane pilot cursed with the face of a pig. With the children and my son's guest, May 31, 2008
Hot Fuzz (2007)
Kids at sleepover, so it was mindless movie night for Leora and me. We enjoyed. May 29 2008
Robin Hood by Larry Blamire (The Blue Monkey Theater Co.)
The four of us enjoyed an afternoon of light comedy and slashing sword play. Leora had bought tickets, wondering if she could even persuade me to go, but I went and greatly enjoyed being there with my kids and her. It's been a long time since I saw a play. Afterwards I declared that I never want to see anything but comedy again... no dark tragedies for me. May 11 2008
Frisco Kid
An oldie but a goodie. Watching it I realized I knew every scene like an old friend. Here and there were a few surprises or forgotten moments that were also enjoyable. May 3 2008
The Apple Dumpling Gang
Family movie night, March 29 2008
Horatio's Drive
The story of the first transcontinental car trip in 1903, with Leora and the children, March 23 2008
Lie with Me (2005)
March 21 2008
Hide and Seek (2005)
Very moving and thought provoking. March 6 and 7, 2008
A Bit of Fry and Laurie (circa 1988)
More Fry and Laurie, late February, early March 2008
A Bit of Fry and Laurie (circa 1988)
Random episodes, after kids were finally asleep. January 29 2008
Who Killed the Electric Car?
January 24, 2007
Who the Fuck Is Jackson Pollock? (2006)
January 23 2007
Commune (2006)
A very enjoyable tale of 1967 to 1987 counter culture living at Black Bear Ranch, in Siskiyou County, California. "Free Land for Free People" was the slogan, the money came from rock stars and welfare checks, and the result was a beautiful mess, and some children who seem to have come out alright. See pictures of naked dancing in the 1960s and then watch what happens when hippies get old and move on, or not, as the case may be. Very relevant to my own thinking about how to live and very enjoyable. January 20 2008
Green Acres
A few random episodes from the first season with my children. My son particularly likes this. January 1 2007
2007
Ratatouille (2007)
Family movie night, evening of December 31, 2007. We were all asleep by 11.
A Scanner Darkly (2006)
With Leora on a Friday evening. Creepy, but also boring, in the way that stoners are always kind of boring. Still, I enjoyed this. It sort of requires a second viewing to fully comprehend. December 29 2007.
My lifetime filmography with every moving picture show I can remember seeing.
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
1990
1989
1988
1987
1986
1985
1984
1983
1982
1981
1980
1979
1978
1977
1976
1975
1974
1973
1972
1971
1970
1969
1968
1967
1966
1965
1964
1963
1962
1961
1960
1959