First Quarter 2023

[fauxklore]

I will get around to writing about the Women’s Storytelling Festival and the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and a bunch of other stuff. But, first, a quick review of the first quarter of 2023.

Books:

I read 14 books this quarter.

1. Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue: I read this for my book club and enjoyed it. It has two linked stories, involving the New York Public Library and book thefts. There are a lot of great details about the setting, but the stories really have more to do with women finding their own way, despite social expectations. Not all of it is plausible, but I liked the characters enough to be able to forgive occasional preachiness.
   
   
2. Herman Melville, Moby Dick: I’ve read this a few times before, but this time was special as I was following along during the marathon in New Bedford. The reading really brought out a lot of the humor in the book for me. I also found the energy of so many fans together to be engaging. Between the interesting characters (especially Queequeg) and exciting action, who cares if the science is dated? This is still the great American novel as far as I am concerned. Worth reading over and over.
   
   
3. Karin Kallmacher, All the Wrong Places: I didn’t know what this book was when I got it. It turned out to be a particularly smutty lesbian romance. There was some potential for drama involving the main character going to see her family when her father die, but she ran out pretty quickly to return to the arms of the ex-straight woman she works with. Not my sort of thing, but I’m not qualified to judge it.
   
   
4. Leslie Caine, Killed By Clutter This is a serviceable enough mystery, but nothing brilliant. The main character is an interior decorator who was been hired to declutter a hoarder’s house. I thought the book missed the mark on the psychology of hoarding, but the characters were interesting was enough to make that tolerable.
   
   
5. Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility: I know this is considered a classic, but I thought it was a total slog. All of the characters spend their time in a flurry of inactivity, moving around to stay in one another’s houses, listening to music, dancing, playing cards and gossiping. Pretty much nothing happens and I was bored stiff.
   
   
6. Nora Ephron, Heartburn: This is well-known as a roman-a-clef, about Ephron’s relationship with her second husband, Carl Bernstein. It’s still pretty humorous, though much of it seems rather dated in these days of “me, too.” Overall, a quick and entertaining read.
   
   
7. Nancy Atherton, Aunt Dimity Digs In: Lori Shepherd is going through a rough spot in her marriage. In the meantime, her visiting father-in-law has vanished and the ghostly Aunt Dimity has left a note that he’s in trouble. So, along with the neighbor’s daughter (and a couple of Aunt Dimity’s stuffed animals), Lori sets out to uncover some family skeletons. There’s a lot of suspension of disbelief required, but the characters are interesting and it’s pretty entertaining.
   
   
8. Ann Tyler, French Braid: This was another book club book. It’s 241 pages long and I spent 230 of those waiting for something to happen. Spoiler alert - nothing does. I prefer books with plots.
   
   
9. Karin Kallmacher, 18th & Castro: I debated whether or not to read this, since her other book was definitely not my type of thing. This one is set on Halloween in the Castro district of San Francisco. It follows several lesbian couples in an apartment building where some of them live. The most intriguing story involves someone who might be a vampire. But overall, I prefer my porn to be straight like me.
   
   
10. Our Ancestors Did Not Breathe This Air: This is a collection of poems by six Muslim American women, who met in McCormick Hall at MIT, which is the same dorm I lived in when I was there. The poems cover a wide range of topics, including family and belonging and being a woman in STEM. There was a lot that I found relatable. I’d first learned of this book because of an article in Technology Review and bought it pretty much right away. It’s a lovely collection and I recommend it.
    
    
11. Dick Francis, Driving Force: When you want a book with a lot of plot and plenty of action, you can’t really go wrong with Dick Francis. This one involved ways of tampering with race horses and multiple complicated motives. It’s an exciting read, even if parts of the plot aren’t completely convincing.
    
    
12. A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh: I decided to reread this because I came across it in a stack of books I wanted to go through. I’m with Dorothy Parker’s famous review of it. To wit, “Tonstant Weader Fwowed up.”
    
    
13. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americana; I mentioned this book previously, in the context of the Crones and Tomes group, which I read it for. Ifemulu is a young Nigerian woman who goes off to college in Philadelphia and has to grapple with what being black means in America. In the meantime, her first love, Obinze, can’t get a visa for the U.S. and goes to live an undocumented life in England. A lot of things happen along the way, but both of them end up back in Nigeria. It’s an interesting book and raisws a lot of issues about identity and belonging. Recommended.
    
    
14. Elena Gorokhova, A Train to Moscow: I read this for book club. It started out rather slowly, but the pace picked up a lot when Sasha (the main character, who wants to go off to Moscow and become an actress) finds the journal her uncle kept during World War II. (Or, to use the Russian parlance, “the great patriotic war.”) She succeeds as an actress, but her romantic life, involving a childhood friend who has become a Communist Party apparatchik, is less satisfying. I found the ending implausible, but I can’t think of a realistic ending that wouldn’t have annoyed me.
    
    

Movies:

I saw 4 movies this quarter, only one in a theatre.

1. A Man Called Otto: I had loved the book A Man Called Ove. And I generally like Tom Hanks as an actor. So this was worth going to see. I thought it was a very good adaptation, with the changes to Americanize it done well. Of course, I sobbed through half of it, but that was to be expected. Recommended.
   
   
2. In the Heights: This is the movie adaptation of the Lin Manuel Miranda musical about the aspirations of a group of people in Washington Heights and what happens when they hear someone bought a winning lottery ticket at the local bodega. I watched this on airplane and found it reasonably diverting.
   
   
3. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent: This movie (also seen on an airplane) was very very weird. Basically, Nicolas Cage plays a failed version of himself, in which he is desperate for money and agrees to go to a superfan’s birthday party for a million dollars. He gets recruited by the CIA to deal with a Mafia plot. There’s a lot of violence and a subplot about his relationship with his daughter. It wasn’t a brilliant movie, but it was diverting enough.
   
   My Year of Dicks: I don’t normally watch many shorts, but I remember Pamela Ribon from the early days of on-line journals and it was nominated for an Oscar. I wasn’t really crazy about it. Basically I’m a different generation that doesn’t relate to the urgency of losing one’s virginity at 15. And I thought the conversation she has with her father was completely cringeworthy to me.
   
   

Goals:

• I haven’t really made a start on dealing with my parents’ photos and slides.
  
  
• I went to three lectures / talks (well, one was a storytelling show) in January, one in February, and three in March, so I am ahead of the curve there.
  
  
• I haven’t taken any international trips, but I have three scheduled.
  
  
• I am close to finishing a counted cross-stitch project.
  
  
• I have read 14 books so far, out of my goal of 75.
  
  
• Baseball season just started so I haven't gone to any new ballparks yet.
  
  
• I went to 2 museums in New Bedford and one locally in January, three in Tucson in February, and two in New York in March.
  
  
• I went to Saguaro National Park in February.
  
  
• I haven’t managed to spend a half hour per day on housework. I’m not very consistent, actually. I either spend 2-3 hours or do nothing.