50 Book Challenge #62: The Plot Against America

When I mentioned that I was reading this book, there was a sudden outpouring of advice and analysis from the comment section. That, coupled with the fawning reactions it received when it first came out, constituted a buildup that almost no novel could live up to. Roth's a fine writer, but I found myself remotely chuckling at his clever parallelisms of plot instead of becoming engrossed in the story. The last few chapters dump two endings on us at once: an unsatisfying explanation of the last days of the fascist presidency and a tacked-on account of the narrator's family's travails during part of the previously outlined period. Only the latter rings true, compared with the preceding pages.

Apparently this book is better when appreciated in light of Roth's previous uses of similar themes and characters, but I like my books to stand on their own, and artful writing can only partially compensate for failure of imagination, so returns on future Roth reading seem small.

Blog Meme Deluxe

Shamelessly stolen from E. Spatula. Yay for filler.

Favorite Color: Blue
Favorite Food: Pork fajitas
Favorite Month: Depends on where I am. October is nice in most places, although in Boston it was sometimes already too cold. I probably have the most fond memories from Augusts since that is generally when I travel.
Favorite Song: The Faces - Ooh La La
Favorite Movie: Rushmore
Favorite Sport: Basketball, I guess.
Favorite Season: Autumn
Favorite Day of the week: Saturday
Favorite Ice Cream Flavor: Chunky Monkey
Favorite Time of Day: Evening

9 CURRENTS

Current Mood: Relative contentment with simmering anxiety in background
Current Taste: Like tomatillos
Current Clothes: Jeans, violet hoodie, white tank top
Current Desktop: Hadrian's Wall
Current Toenail Color: Metallic light coral
Current Time: 6:02 PM
Current Surroundings: My apartment
Current Thoughts: Should I watch more Buffy, read a library book, or reread A Storm of Swords?

8 FIRSTS

First Best Friend: Erika Dicker
First Kiss: Some random guy a friend set me up with in the ninth grade
First Screen Name: FTS (for fossilized tree sap)
First Pet: Missy, a border collie mix.
First Piercing: Earlobes, involuntarily
First Crush: Alex, a boy in my first grade class. He was brunet and ate cupcake wrappers. I liked him despite the latter.
First CD: Might have been Pearl Jam's Vitalogy. Not sure.

7 LASTS

Last Cigarette: same as my first, sometime in high school.
Last Drink: cocktails during our first Court Week, I think.
Last Car Ride: To the grocery store today.
Last Kiss: Too long ago.
Last Movie Seen: I saw Brazil on DVD and Wallace & Gromit in the theater.
Last Phone Call: The Clerksville newspaper does not take no for an answer!
Last CD Played: I don't play CDs. My Ipod was playing Frank Sinatra when I was last in the car.

6 HAVE YOU EVERS

Have You Ever Dated One Of Your Best Guy/Girl Friends: Yes, multiple times.
Have You Ever Broken the Law: Yes.
Have You Ever Been Arrested: No.
Have You Ever Skinny Dipped: No.
Have You Ever Been on TV: Yes, my family was in a commercial for a dog poop removal service about 20 years ago.
Have You Ever Kissed Someone You Didn't Know: No.

5 THINGS

Thing You're Wearing: My class ring.
Thing You've Done Today: Made tomatillo salsa and hummus.
Thing You Can Hear Right Now: My cat crunching kibble.
Thing You Can't Live Without: Caffeine and the written word.
Thing You Do When You're Bored: Think about things I should be doing to keep myself occupied but which I cannot muster the energy to start.

4 PLACES YOU'VE BEEN TODAY

1. My apartment
2. My car
3. The friendly neighborhood BBQ joint
4. The grocery store

3 PEOPLE YOU CAN TELL ANYTHING TO

1. My Hill staffer buddy
2. One of my blog friends
3. My cats

2 CHOICES

1. Black or White: Black
2. Hot or Cold: Like, tropical hot versus arctic cold? Depends, do I have to do anything? Is adequate protective clothing available? In what do I live? Hot, maybe.

1 THING YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE:

Be a happy lawyer.

50 Book Challenge #61: Magical Thinking

Augusten Burroughs's Magical Thinking (not to be confused with the terminal downer by Joan Didion that the New York Times spent a few weeks flogging) is an obvious attempt to compete with David Sedaris. The latter has become a bestselling author primarily on the strength of his collections of personal essays. Burroughs, on the other hand, has become slightly less famous for his novel-length memoirs of childhood abuse and quitting drinking. I read the latter earlier this year. Perhaps Burroughs's life experiences so far do not contain enough material for another sustained effort, or perhaps his agent advised him to adhere to a more Sedaris-like form for salability's sake. Either way, the result is a consistently amusing, ribald, and self consciously neurotic collection of anecdotes. It may not be as lyrically written as Sedaris's books, and the author may be quite a bit more irritating on a personal level, but it is good for annoying people in airports with spontaneous bursts of laughter.

Other women

Sherry Fowler's post about other women reminded me of this poem:

I think, no matter where you stray,
That I shall go with you a way.
Though you may wander sweeter lands,
You will not soon forget my hands,
Nor yet the way I held my head,
Nor all the tremulous things I said.
You still will see me, small and white
And smiling, in the secret night,
And feel my arms about you when
The day comes fluttering back again.
I think, no matter where you be,
You'll hold me in your memory
And keep my image, there without me,
By telling later loves about me.

Clerksville Again

I have returned from San Diego, where even the bad weather is still better than what 99 percent of the country has. I was mistaken for a stewardess, neary hit by a car, and spent entirely too much money shopping at Horton Plaza. All in all, it was good. I didn't have my laptop, so most of the generous outpouring of advice will have to be put aside for use the next time I am in town. The fleabag hotel was very noisy, but otherwise much better than most places I stay when I travel abroad, so it was not the problem it might have been.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be writers

The author of the short story that became the amazing film Secretary is essentially broke. I don't know what's sadder: her plight, or that a famous chick-lit writer wasn't aware that critical acclaim is no good substitute for sales. (h/t Bookslut)

Law Prof Blogging

I would find the recent 40% increase in law prof bloggers more impressive if nearly ten percent of it could not be attributed to the establishment of one blog, on which not all professors post regularly.

HLS Students Shore Up Their Egos After Being Rejected From YLS

Via The Volokh Conspiracy, I note that HLS students, by a narrow margin, ranked Harvard as the nation's best law school. Best at what was not made plain. I'd be interested in breaking down this data by undergraduate institution. There's nothing more bitter than a Yale undergraduate rejected by his alma mater and forced to migrate to Cambridge for law school.

Back to the Beach

As I mentioned previously, I'm going to be in San Diego from Wednesday night through Friday morning. I'm staying downtown near the gaslight district in what may be the worst fleabag hotel in America, judging from the Yahoo Travel reviews. If anyone knows of fun things to do in the evenings near this part of San Diego, I'm open to suggestions. If you all remain silent I will end up laying in my nasty room rereading A Song of Ice and Fire in preparation for A Feast For Crows, and that could be done anywhere.

Best web marketing feature ever.

Anthropologie's Shop By Size feature is the best idea to hit online shopping since the 1-Click Order. How many times have you surfed through a surfeit of hideous fashion don'ts to find a discounted yet adorable garment, checked out the high-resolution photo, examined the available colors, and then added it to your shopping bag, only to be cruelly taunted with a declaration that it's not available in your size? Okay, maybe that's just me.

Being Parental

I thought this was a really interesting post on childishness in romantic relationships. I don't have any personal experience with this, but I can relate to the challenge of trying to break bad models of interaction.

Online Defamation Flap

Wow. Who comes out looking good from this mess? Nobody.

More here and here.

Addendum: am I the only legally trained person for whom reading "debates" about legal issues between engineers and humanities professors is like the screech of fingernails on a chalkboard?

Your Favorite Movie Sucks

I have idiosyncratic taste in film, as anyone who's had to listen to me sing the praises of Nate & Hayes will attest. But ever so often, I appall someone not with my odd ideas of the good but with my failure to appreciate movies they think are great. A short and incomplete list of movies I can't stand:

Braveheart: Sappy love story, nasty torture, and pasty white behinds. Yelling "freeeedom" is not a deeply moving political statement. I prefer Rob Roy.

Life is Beautiful: Roberto Benigni's performance is a travesty, although the scene where he rides in on the painted horse is very well composed.

Forrest Gump: glorification of stupidity and Boomer nostalgia elevated to toxic levels. Ugh.

Notorious: I've tried to watch it twice, and both times it's bored me to sleep.

Grease: I hate almost all musicals, and 1970s musicals associated with John Travolta especially.

The Producers: this is not funny. I saw a theatrical production of it and that wasn't funny either. Well, maybe the sequence with the showgirls wearing giant sausage headdresses, but I don't think that's in the movie.

Magnolia: would have been great with half the characters. And if we had drawn and quartered Julianne Moore's character for being such an insufferable psycho hose beast.

Almost Famous: Cameron Crowe should not be allowed near a film set for the rest of his natural life. After the reviews for Elizabethtown, this may become a reality. Kate Hudson may be thought pretty by some, but she cannot act and looks like a space alien mated with a kewpie doll. The sole redeeming features in this movie are Frances McDormand, who is always good, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is a living god (when are the Clerksville theaters going to get Capote, blast it all?).

2001: I think you have to be on drugs to appreciate it in its entirety. I don't have ADD, but this movie makes me think I do.

Saving Private Ryan: I have enough residual Objectivist tendencies to find this movie's sense of life appalling. It forces the viewer to identify chiefly with a coward. It has the hobbit-like Matt Damon. The framing device is ham-handed in the extreme. And then there's Tom Hanks. I hate Tom Hanks. I did like Philadelphia, but that may only be because he died.

You are welcome to excoriate me or to add your own Two Minutes Movie Hate in the comments.

UPDATE: Thanks to Timothy Sandefur for the link. I never saw The English Patient, but I had an Elaine-like reaction to the book.

The comments section is yielding plenty of examples of terrible movies most people lionize: The Green Mile (awkwardly obvious Christian allegory), Sideways (although it does have a better depiction of explosive female violence than either volume of Kill Bill), and Shakespeare in Love (sorry, cd, but Joseph Fiennes has a gerbil's face and I can't stand Fishstick Paltrow as a romantic lead). SiL has some great supporting players, though, and I admit grudgingly that Springtime for Hitler can be a funny song.

Can Garner Save Us?

Death in the Afternoon finds legal writing frustrating. (h/t Mansfield Fox) I'm not much for the stuff myself. The legal writing class at HLS only required a couple of memos and one brief (and a collage). My summer firm job didn't demand much in the way of writing either. I've done more writing in the last two months than three years of HLS classes required, if you leave out the 3L paper, which was more of the academic writing genre than the legal writing one. I need to break out the Garner and buckle down.

Unrelatedly: JMPP notes that Amazon is selling everything Star Trek for $2,499.99.

Weekend Text-Only Cat Blog

I spent the greater part of this weekend in an epic battle with the Headache from the Black Lagoon, and what little remains of it will almost certainly be consumed by some work I brought home, but there's always time for cat torture.

Snape and Lily are remarkably hydrophilic felines; Lily practically tries to get in the shower with you (she likes to lick the water off the tiles) and Snape has been getting regular baths since I brought him home, since he has puffy fur and a penchant for getting messier than a conventional tongue bath can handle. All the same, they seem to feel like baths require some token effort at escape, lest they lose some kitty pride. Fortunately, they seem to draw the line at using claws and don't hold a grudge for long: thus the slightly damp but purring tom currently impeding my memo writing.

On another note entirely: The Time Traveler's Wife bites. I should have known when I saw the "Today Show Book Club" logo that I'd be underwhelmed. On to Philip Roth.

Remember, remember

It's Guy Fawkes Day. This movie was supposed to have been released today, but it was shelved. Alas.

Unrelated poem with the title "Remember." A better C. Rossetti sonnet. Art by Dante G. Rossetti.

Swearing

I am not entirely certain about how this swearing-in thing for the bar will work (assuming that I passed, which I won't find out for another 13 days). The bar provides a list of people who can swear you in, but no other information. It says "officials in the state of California"; does this mean I will have to make a second trip to Cali (since I am going there next week for an interview) to take the oath? Is there any way I can avoid this expense?

Unrelatedly, all you haters of Texas-style BBQ should read this.

I hadn't imagined that barbecue this good existed. Have you been to southern France, trying obscure Michelin two-fork restaurants? The simplest dishes, such as roast chicken, or cassoulet, blow you away and you swear never to eat again in the outrageously priced starred restaurants? This was a comparable experience. ...

All other barbecue will now taste worse.

50 Book Challenge #60: Inside Job

Connie Willis treads a fine line between the cooler prose style of a LeGuin or an Atwood and the wackier and more rollicking style of an Ellison. Her books often deal with time travel (see, e.g., Doomsday Book, an excellent bit of historical fiction with time travel that omits silly boinking interludes).

Inside Job has only a slight element of the fantastic. Set in modern Los Angeles, it centers around Rob, a professional skeptic and his former-starlet assistant, who typically spend their days debunking charlatans in the name of science and truth. They are faced with what appears to be the ghost of H.L. Mencken and the choice between acknowledging a real spirit manifestation or furthering the broader goal of discrediting irrational nonsense. Willis's solution to the dilemma was neat but to my mind ultimately unsatisfying. For a scientific type, Rob was remarkably incurious about the implications of a real spirit, beyond its effect on his mission as a skeptic.

Estrogen = Hot?

I confess to being a bit embarrassed not to be able to figure this out, but if female attractiveness varies along a spectrum in tandem with estrogen levels, what's the effect of artificial hormones from birth control pills? Do pill takers have the same face all month, and if so is it the sexy fertile face or the unsexy infertile face? Of course, according to the article you could just wear makeup and have the cyclical differences disappear.

More here.

50 Book Challenge #59: Outlander

First of all, anyone who tells you this is historical fiction or SF/fantasy is lying. I read this book because I heard it was a borderline case, and because historical fiction with a hint of romance can be quite delightful (have I mentioned yet that I have a crush on Richard III?). But there's a lot of boinking in Outlander, enough to put it firmly in romance novel territory, although to be fair it's decorously written.

My quibble (aside from the one-time use of "least common denominator" by an 18th C. highlander, which may or may not be anachronistic but was at least awkward) was the sudden, unbelievable decision by Claire to abandon attempts at return to her own time and stay with her new husband. I'm sure furry Scots are quite appealing to some, but after waiting for her own husband's return from war for years, her choice seemed abrupt and even out of character.