Even the Giants, by Jesse Jacobs

I loved this little graphic novel. There are some really funny moments in it and the drawings are beautiful. It reminded me of another tiny favorite of mine: Tales of Woodsman Pete, by Lilli Carré. Enjoy!

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell

Not as good as Cloud Atlas, but good. It took me a little while to warm up to the story, mainly because you don't get a solid sense of where it is going until the end of the first book, but after that I was hooked. I think the James Wood review in the New Yorker complained that there doesn't seem to be a real "reason" for this book, other than just to write a masterpiece of historical fiction. That seems like an okay enough reason to me, but I can see the point Wood was making: why write a work of historical fiction if not to prove some point about what we can learn from some era or way of thinking that persisted in the past? Mitchell does pay a little homage to the idea that slavery is wrong, which is pretty much what all historical fiction is about, since that is the only thing we have ever learned from the past—but he doesn't get bogged down in it and manages to turn out a pretty compelling story. Good work!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, 2011

I thought this movie was great. I was a little uncomfortable about the scene with all the Jew bankers, but it was still a good scene.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

This book takes place at a small liberal arts college in Vermont. The protagonist/narrator is a self-hating suburban Californian who falls in with an exclusive and privileged group of ancient Greek scholars. The story (made clear in the two-page prologue) is about how five of the scholars (narrator included) come to murder the sixth.

It's definitely a page-turner, there's a lot of sordid stuff to suck you in, but it peaked around the midpoint and then the ending sort of petered out (the action of the ending, I felt, being sort of a cop-out). In many ways it's a fascinating study of how one powerful person can stealthily control a bunch of weaker people, but it never quite overcomes the inherent coldness of a study -- even though I suppose I did care about some of the characters. (Can a story ever be truly satisfying when the characters you care about most will always be fundamentally powerless?)

It's a good depiction of a middle-class outsider's relationship to old-money privilege, and it's very New England. I especially enjoyed the fantasy-fodder of weekends spent at one of the character's Gothic ancestral mansion. Worth reading, since it's a quickie.

Brave New World (1932)

I don't recommend reading this after high school. What seemed eerie and cautionary at 16 reads like completely anachronistic farce at 32. They say "Oh Ford" instead of "Oh God."

Although this book gets lumped in with 1984, Orwell's future is much bleaker. Brave New World is somewhat ambivalent about its future vision, as everyone ends up pretty happy and society is stable. Things don't turn out well for the one sorry dude who likes Shakespeare and hates bliss. And they even ship off the independently-minded, cool kids to island communes. That sounds like magnet schooling.

Young Lonigan (1932)

Young Lonigan is the first book in James T. Farrell's "Studs Lonigan Trilogy" — a relatively minor work that is clinging to its bottom half place in the "Best American Novels" canon.

The first volume is only about 140 pages and follows a teenage Studs graduating from Catholic school and spending his summer going increasingly juvie as a reaction against his well-meaning parenting and a masked rage against falling in love with a girl.

Young Lonigan kinda works as a scrappy tale of Chicago in the 20s, with nice slang like "everything's jake." It feels like it must have established this "genre" of juvie kids out on the Chicago sidewalks. (I would be convinced Harmony Korine took his inspiration for KIDS from Farrell if I thought for a second that Korine was really into reading the Modern Library's 100 Greatest Novels and not vomiting into the Modern Library's 100 Greatest Novels.)

But the first book alone doesn't feel substantial enough to warrant your attention. I suspect that the shit gets good in the 2nd or 3rd installments, and if you buy a modern version of this book, all three are included in one volume. I will read on and let you know.

One additional note: There is a brutal chapter towards the end of the Irish no-goods bullying the hood's Jewish kids. Farrell clearly felt bad about this, though and suddenly invents a Jewish protagonist for the next chapter who calls the Irish idiots and waxes poetically about the genius of Jews.

Bad Teacher, 2011

Bad Teacher was good for some laughs, but I am here to weblog about my moviegoing experience.

I saw Bad Teacher at the Los Feliz 3. If you haven't been to the Los Feliz 3, its defining feature is an upward-sloping floor (basically the opposite of stadium seating). At the Los Feliz 3, trends get bucked. Anyway, I'm alone in the mostly empty theater (Carrie has gone to the bathroom) when a 70ish-year-old man approaches. "Best seat in the house," he says, easing himself into the chair next to mine. "Is that yours?" (He is pointing at Carrie's purse.) I tell him no, pretty curtly, because a) the guy is shattering all kinds of personal-space rules and b) he has one of those smells that isn't all that bad, but it's so strong, you know it must be masking something truly heinous. Unfazed, the old man takes out his cell phone and starts telling someone, in excruciating detail, about his recent difficulties with uncontrollable foot bleeding. By now Carrie has returned and is very much enjoying my predicament. Just before the lights go down, a not unattractive middle-aged woman slides into the theater's only remaining seat, on the other side of the old man. "I have to go," he says. "A blonde just sat down next to me." He proceeds to hit on this woman for the entirety of the previews and most of the movie itself. Finally, during the closing credits (Carrie and I remain glued to our seats), he requests -- and is given -- her phone number.

Bad Teacher: B

Moviegoing Experience: A+