Movies, books, tv
- Thread starter zeke4ahs
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LMAO! My pleasure! He's a treasure. @Cortez88 describes the genius of his writing perfectly somewhere in this thread. Anyway Straight Man is one of the funniest serious novels I've ever read. Enjoy!
One of the funniest serious novels I’ve read is Something Happened by Joseph Heller.
I will pick it up! Catch 22 is the only one I've read and it's of course a classic
He has a line in Mohawk about the towns streets. It’s something like “the streets were designed by a madman and constructed by a bunch of drunks”. Reread the first 1.5 pages of Risk Pool and tell me you don’t know everything about the dad. Everything. And it’s fing funny. I love the line about the mom “not cornering the pussy market.”
A few. My favorite is "God Knows", which is a first person account of the life of King David. Very funny.
Hey, I'm still in the middle of "Straight Man", but I noticed that on HBO Max, that "Empire Falls" is a two part movie with Ed Harris, Paul Newman, etc...Is it worth a watch? Will it ruin the book? Russo wrote the screenplay.
I have not seen it. He won the Pulitzer for empire falls. I strongly recommend you read the book. And I love Paul Newman. Top three favorite actor. But books are always better.
I will say empire falls is amazing but I think he won not for the book but for the body of work. Like cormac McCarthy won for the road but i thought his previous books were better.
Unlike Angela's ashes or confederacy etc that are one offs
It also has Helen Hunt, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Joanne Woodward, and Robin Penn Wright. That's a who's who.
Is Ed Harris not up there as one of the best "everyman" actors?
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anon_6hv78pr714xta
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Great cast, but I have to say, I read the book and then started watching the show and was disappointed enough to not get past the first 15 minutes. I say read the book first. Nobody's Fool, however, is a good movie.
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anon_6hv78pr714xta
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In keeping with my interest in books about ordinary people doing things that I see all the time but don’t know anything about, I just finished Long Haul, a fascinating and well written book about long haul moving. The driver tells the stories of customers who are his characters and while you are along for the ride you learn all about trucking and hard labor. The author lives in Boulder which itself is a tell.
Yes! Amazing. Animations, music, and projections are terrific. The wonders of digital images and music on full display. Don’t miss it.
My hold on Remains finally came through, although about two weeks late (I had hoped it would coincide with some long planned PTO). Started it today. I'll save the review for when I've finished, but this is a very different book than the previous two I read. At first, the writing came across as stilted and overly formal, but as the narrator opened himself up more to the reader, I started to understand that Ishiguro is absolutely inhabiting an early 20th Century English butler. So what felt distant at first, after a few chapters, has me engrossed.
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anon_6hv78pr714xta
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So, I finished it. I thought it was good. Very good. But, I thought it could have been more. Stevens is going on a journey here, really multiple journeys, and the three main ones are 1) accepting the nature of his relationship with and feelings for Miss Kenton, 2) coming to grips with the truth about Lord Darlington, and 3) discovering whether or not he has truly led a life of dignity.
I thought all three of those threads were slightly underdeveloped. I would have preferred Ishiguro had delved into each of them in a little more detail. That said, I can understand why that would have been difficult, given the structure of the book. The entire book is essentially nothing more than a diary, and the writer of the diary is the most unreliable of unreliable narrators. For Stevens to dig any deeper into the reality of his life than he did would have threatened the believability and authenticity of the narrative.
I think I now better understand the melancholy or mono no aware that Ishiguro is supposed to exemplify. Although I understood and recognized this concept in his more recent books I read, this book really embodies it. There is no resolution whatsoever, because even though Ishiguro goes through the motions of building tension and leading to a climax, the narrator learns nothing, gains no transformation. The climax passes him by, like a mild breeze that doesn't even gain his attention. And so he ends the novel the same person he started as, only a week older.
I think I like Never Let Me Go better. The more developed plot in that novel still ends with the same type of non-resolution resolution, but it hits harder because it is in the context of a steeper climb and fall in narrative tension, and because the climax directly affects the main character more clearly. The ending to that novel was more wrenching where Remains is "merely" very sad.
All that said, don't take this as any kind of sharp criticism. It was still a masterpiece, and I'm glad I read it.
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anon_6hv78pr714xta
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For me, regarding the subject matter and ultimate emotional punch, a lot depends on when I read these books in my life. Never Let Me Go might have resonated more with me if I had read it when I was younger since the characters are kids.
Remains of the Day is the kind of book that would not have resonated at all with me when I was younger, but now hits me hard. The sense of missed opportunities, a missed life, and maybe worse, dedication to an ideal that was an illusion or just plain wrong that was supposed to make up for all those missed opportunities--those are very realistic, very common, and very, very sad.
On this subject (that may or may not apply to you; maybe you are older than me), I'm reminded of my experience with Hemingway--I read most of his books in high school and could ace a test about them, but I didn't really "get" them until I was in my 30s. Similarly, one of the best books I've read in the last 20 years is Gilead, but I could not have identified with it until I was older and a father and had experience consciously trying to be kinder to people.
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anon_6hv78pr714xta
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I'm now reading The Quiet American by Graham Greene. Anyone read it? Interesting, if not exactly on point, parallels between that book and the U.S. adventure in Afghanistan. It's less than 200 pages and one theme is a really mature look at the attitudes of the young and idealistic vs. old and jaded when it comes to love.
This thread will go well
I was going to start a thread on the Ted Talk below on the problems with our meritocracy belief, it seems to fit here. Below are a couple paragraphs.
This way of thinking about success arises from a seemingly attractive principle. If everyone has an equal chance, the winners deserve their winnings. This is the heart of the meritocratic ideal. In practice, of course, we fall far short. Not everybody has an equal chance to rise. Children born to poor families tend to stay poor when they grow up. Affluent parents are able to pass their advantages onto their kids. At Ivy League universities, for example, there are more students from the top one percent than from the entire bottom half of the country combined.
01:51
But the problem isn't only that we fail to live up to the meritocratic principles we proclaim. The ideal itself is flawed. It has a dark side. Meritocracy is corrosive of the common good. It leads to hubris among the winners and humiliation among those who lose out. It encourages the successful to inhale too deeply of their success, to forget the luck and good fortune that helped them on their way. And it leads them to look down on those less fortunate, less credentialed than themselves. This matters for politics. One of the most potent sources of the populous backlash is the sense among many working people that elites look down on them. It's a legitimate complaint.
www.ted.com
I was going to start a thread on the Ted Talk below on the problems with our meritocracy belief, it seems to fit here. Below are a couple paragraphs.
This way of thinking about success arises from a seemingly attractive principle. If everyone has an equal chance, the winners deserve their winnings. This is the heart of the meritocratic ideal. In practice, of course, we fall far short. Not everybody has an equal chance to rise. Children born to poor families tend to stay poor when they grow up. Affluent parents are able to pass their advantages onto their kids. At Ivy League universities, for example, there are more students from the top one percent than from the entire bottom half of the country combined.
01:51
But the problem isn't only that we fail to live up to the meritocratic principles we proclaim. The ideal itself is flawed. It has a dark side. Meritocracy is corrosive of the common good. It leads to hubris among the winners and humiliation among those who lose out. It encourages the successful to inhale too deeply of their success, to forget the luck and good fortune that helped them on their way. And it leads them to look down on those less fortunate, less credentialed than themselves. This matters for politics. One of the most potent sources of the populous backlash is the sense among many working people that elites look down on them. It's a legitimate complaint.
The tyranny of merit
What accounts for our polarized public life, and how can we begin to heal it? Political philosopher Michael Sandel offers a surprising answer: those who have flourished need to look in the mirror. He explores how "meritocratic hubris" leads many to believe their success is their own doing and to...
You probably should have led off with, "Here Bulk, hold my beer."This thread will go well
I was going to start a thread on the Ted Talk below on the problems with our meritocracy belief, it seems to fit here. Below are a couple paragraphs.
This way of thinking about success arises from a seemingly attractive principle. If everyone has an equal chance, the winners deserve their winnings. This is the heart of the meritocratic ideal. In practice, of course, we fall far short. Not everybody has an equal chance to rise. Children born to poor families tend to stay poor when they grow up. Affluent parents are able to pass their advantages onto their kids. At Ivy League universities, for example, there are more students from the top one percent than from the entire bottom half of the country combined.
01:51
But the problem isn't only that we fail to live up to the meritocratic principles we proclaim. The ideal itself is flawed. It has a dark side. Meritocracy is corrosive of the common good. It leads to hubris among the winners and humiliation among those who lose out. It encourages the successful to inhale too deeply of their success, to forget the luck and good fortune that helped them on their way. And it leads them to look down on those less fortunate, less credentialed than themselves. This matters for politics. One of the most potent sources of the populous backlash is the sense among many working people that elites look down on them. It's a legitimate complaint.
The tyranny of merit
What accounts for our polarized public life, and how can we begin to heal it? Political philosopher Michael Sandel offers a surprising answer: those who have flourished need to look in the mirror. He explores how "meritocratic hubris" leads many to believe their success is their own doing and to...
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I watched the initial season, but I've subsequently dropped my you tube tv subscription. You mentioned elsewhere that they were "rerunning it on PBS". Is that still the first (only?) season?
I've just ran thru a televised version of Das Boot on Hulu. It apparently is a 1 season series, since it seems to be a German tv adaption from 2018. It's a lot more involved that the movie, with a sub (no pun intended
) plot involving events in the sub's home base on the occupied French coast circa 1942.An Alsatian (German) girl who comes to visit her brother, gets romatically involved with a Gestapo detective, and entwined with a renegade Underground outfit headed up by a crazy American woman who became a morphine addict after being wounded in Spain. Meanwhile the brother who is basically a factory worker gets commandeered to sail on the U Boat after their radio operator get's drunk and seriously burned prior to the sub's departure. Intrigue at sea and on land as well...
Season 2 of World on Fire has not been released yet, even in the UK. I think that’s coming in 2022. Das Boot sounds interestingI watched the initial season, but I've subsequently dropped my you tube tv subscription. You mentioned elsewhere that they were "rerunning it on PBS". Is that still the first (only?) season?
I've just ran thru a televised version of Das Boot on Hulu. It apparently is a 1 season series, since it seems to be a German tv adaption from 2018. It's a lot more involved that the movie, with a sub (no pun intended
An Alsatian (German) girl who comes to visit her brother, gets romatically involved with a Gestapo detective, and entwined with a renegade Underground outfit headed up by a crazy American woman who became a morphine addict after being wounded in Spain. Meanwhile the brother who is basically a factory worker gets commandeered to sail on the U Boat after their radio operator get's drunk and seriously burned prior to the sub's departure. Intrigue at sea and on land as well...
Okay, so I finished "Straight Man". I enjoyed it thoroughly.
"Empire Falls" next?
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anon_6hv78pr714xta
Guest
You know I have never read a book on any electronic device. You are in for a treat
I got a Kindle as a present years ago. While I still enjoy reading paper books, Kindles are much easier on the beach.
New series The Chair with Sandra Oh. Three episodes in and it's been fun from the start.
