Reading Diary
a) Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son by Michael Chabon
I got this as a gift a while back, and having never read Chabon's fiction didn't really know whether I was super interested in reading it. But pretty much as soon as I cracked the spine I got pretty well sucked in; this guy is good. Beyond that, the topics he's autobiographically reflecting on in these essays inevitably resonate with me big time, since I'm still settling into the whole reality of having a son and being married, and he approaches those subjects with creativity and warmth; to be honest some of this stuff really makes me misty and/or feel some deep shit. I guess I should check out one of his novels (although definitely not Wonder Boys, having seen the movie recently and having a hard time imagining finding a book version at all interesting -- it seems like the Kids In The Hall "Second Novel" sketch come to life).
b) Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, as Told By Its Stars, Writers and Guests by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller
I'd always heard this weighty tome was good, and it is; so many hilarious stories and weird revelations. Sometimes the format gets a little exhausting, one big block quote after another, and there are some people that are just so weirdly humorless or bitter or dull talking about their experiences with SNL that I wish they'd just cut out their parts instead of publishing bits of everyone they interviewed.
c) The Door by Mary Roberts Rinehart
One day at my old job, a co-worker came in with a box of old books they were cleaning out of I think a relative's house that were up for grabs. So one of the books I impulsively decided to take was a volume containing a few mysteries by Mary Roberts Rinehart, who was popular way back in the '20s and '30s, since, as I said last year after reading The Maltese Falcon, I'm kind of interested in old mystery fiction since it seems like such a basic building block of so much genre TV and cinema these days. It's neat to go to the source of a lot of the tropes and cliches that are now being deconstructed and parodied and modernized, and in this case The Door turned out to be the point of origin of the "the butler did it" cliche. Of course, I made the mistake of coming across that fact online before finishing the book, and I'm hoping nobody reads this blog in the middle of reading the book someday, but there it is. It really didn't spoil the story, though, so it was kind of more enjoyable as a journey than a destination, all the odd little accumulated details eventually unravelling and adding up, and there's an odd charm and dry humor to her somewhat antiquated writing style.
I got this as a gift a while back, and having never read Chabon's fiction didn't really know whether I was super interested in reading it. But pretty much as soon as I cracked the spine I got pretty well sucked in; this guy is good. Beyond that, the topics he's autobiographically reflecting on in these essays inevitably resonate with me big time, since I'm still settling into the whole reality of having a son and being married, and he approaches those subjects with creativity and warmth; to be honest some of this stuff really makes me misty and/or feel some deep shit. I guess I should check out one of his novels (although definitely not Wonder Boys, having seen the movie recently and having a hard time imagining finding a book version at all interesting -- it seems like the Kids In The Hall "Second Novel" sketch come to life).
b) Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, as Told By Its Stars, Writers and Guests by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller
I'd always heard this weighty tome was good, and it is; so many hilarious stories and weird revelations. Sometimes the format gets a little exhausting, one big block quote after another, and there are some people that are just so weirdly humorless or bitter or dull talking about their experiences with SNL that I wish they'd just cut out their parts instead of publishing bits of everyone they interviewed.
c) The Door by Mary Roberts Rinehart
One day at my old job, a co-worker came in with a box of old books they were cleaning out of I think a relative's house that were up for grabs. So one of the books I impulsively decided to take was a volume containing a few mysteries by Mary Roberts Rinehart, who was popular way back in the '20s and '30s, since, as I said last year after reading The Maltese Falcon, I'm kind of interested in old mystery fiction since it seems like such a basic building block of so much genre TV and cinema these days. It's neat to go to the source of a lot of the tropes and cliches that are now being deconstructed and parodied and modernized, and in this case The Door turned out to be the point of origin of the "the butler did it" cliche. Of course, I made the mistake of coming across that fact online before finishing the book, and I'm hoping nobody reads this blog in the middle of reading the book someday, but there it is. It really didn't spoil the story, though, so it was kind of more enjoyable as a journey than a destination, all the odd little accumulated details eventually unravelling and adding up, and there's an odd charm and dry humor to her somewhat antiquated writing style.
This entry was posted
on Friday, April 09, 2010 at 3:00 PM.
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Zac : 9:42 AM