uberlisting, May 2015
It's funny: you can't tell, when you're putting together your Uberlist, how much your circumstances will have changed through the course of the year. I'm already at a point where so many of my goals on the list seem way the hell out of reach, and maybe even irrelevant. And I've accomplished still other things that the list hadn't even anticipated. My guess, looking back on earlier years' Uberlisting, is that these things would have occurred even if I hadn't lost my job. Ah, viccissitudes. Anyway, a few things hacked off the list.
5. Read a book - May
A few books read midyear, but I think May was the month where the Discworld novels really took off for me. After going on a weird downward slope with my first DW books (the lively and engaging PYRAMIDS, the plotless and discouraging EQUAL RITES, and the first-novelyish first novel in the series THE COLOUR OF MAGIC) it was a delight to read MORT, probably the first book in the series that I felt was truly great. (And it was followed in short order with GUARDS! GUARDS!, which I thought was even better.)
30. Read a film book
SHOCK VALUE: How A Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, And Invented Modern Horror is by Jason Zinoman, a New York critic and former co-worker (!!), and his breezy overview of horror from the 70s and early 80s gave some marvelous food for thought. (How is playwright Harold Pinter arguably the highfather of contemporary horror? Jason makes a fascinating, and weirdly presuasive, case.)
31. Read a film book
Been a while since I've read a new book in the BFI Film Classics/Modern Classics series, but I got a few of them for my birthday. Roger Luckhurst's monograph on Alien straightforwardly unpacks the plot of the movie, linearly going from character to character, charting the movie's making alongside its deeper meanings. Not an indispensable user's manual (as many of the BFI books are), but a nice parallel read on the movie.
50. House of Sparrows entry - May
Was moved to write on the historic unearthing of the 1916 Sherlock Holmes, making its American debut courtesy the Silent Film Fest. Not my favorite movie in the festival, but the thing reeked of history.
5. Read a book - May
A few books read midyear, but I think May was the month where the Discworld novels really took off for me. After going on a weird downward slope with my first DW books (the lively and engaging PYRAMIDS, the plotless and discouraging EQUAL RITES, and the first-novelyish first novel in the series THE COLOUR OF MAGIC) it was a delight to read MORT, probably the first book in the series that I felt was truly great. (And it was followed in short order with GUARDS! GUARDS!, which I thought was even better.)
30. Read a film book
SHOCK VALUE: How A Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, And Invented Modern Horror is by Jason Zinoman, a New York critic and former co-worker (!!), and his breezy overview of horror from the 70s and early 80s gave some marvelous food for thought. (How is playwright Harold Pinter arguably the highfather of contemporary horror? Jason makes a fascinating, and weirdly presuasive, case.)
31. Read a film book
Been a while since I've read a new book in the BFI Film Classics/Modern Classics series, but I got a few of them for my birthday. Roger Luckhurst's monograph on Alien straightforwardly unpacks the plot of the movie, linearly going from character to character, charting the movie's making alongside its deeper meanings. Not an indispensable user's manual (as many of the BFI books are), but a nice parallel read on the movie.
50. House of Sparrows entry - May
Was moved to write on the historic unearthing of the 1916 Sherlock Holmes, making its American debut courtesy the Silent Film Fest. Not my favorite movie in the festival, but the thing reeked of history.