Art and shiny things…
An hour later she stretched out a bare arm and tickled my ear and said: “Would you consider marrying me?”
“It wouldn’t last six months.”
“Well, for God’s sake,” she said, “suppose it didn’t. Wouldn’t it be worth it? What do you expect from life – full coverage against all possible risks?”
–The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler
The Atlantic posts its list of The Best Television Episodes of 2013, and it is chockfull of brilliant pop culture analysis. “To kill the very people avenging the similarly ignoble, unforeseen, and earned-by-impracticality death of the figure who had initially seemed like the hero of the show? To do it with a raft of perfectly anguished performances—a hopeless scream, a resigned goodbye to a parent, a callous kiss-off to a sacrificed hostage? That’s a landmark feat of storytelling, an example of how to illuminate the human condition by shocking the conscience.” RT
Almost as if in companion, the AV Club picks the worst films of 2015. On the chopping block: A Good Day to Die Hard, Man of Steel, The Big Wedding, and more. I couldn’t agree more about Gangster Squad, though I did think they missed the point of Austenland a little. RT
The Latino Review has an extensive guide to the convoluted world of Terminator time travel RT
And, The New York Times takes a Literary Look Back at 2013. “The best literary news of 2013 is that, as Evan Hughes reported in The New Republic, books have not succumbed to the downward-spiraling revenue trend: Sales of books in all formats actually grew by almost $2 billion in the last five years, and e-books have turned out to complement printed books without replacing them. It’s easy to see why writers should be happy — they can continue to get paid for their work — but this is equally good news for readers, who still need publishers to find, foster and distribute good writing.” RT
Full disclosure: I only read about a third of this so this is really more my impressions than any full, impressive book review. Rhys Bowen is an award-winning mystery writer with dozens of books, and this is the 11th in her Molly Murphy series – and also my introduction to her writing.
But look – this just wasn’t very good. Molly, an Irish private detective in a world in which lady detectives are an anomaly, has just married a New York City senior detective and the two are off on their honeymoon to an acquaintance’s estate on Rhode Island. Shortly after arriving, their host turns up dead, and the two are naturally pulled into the mystery of solving his murder.
Molly (just so you know, the book is written in the first-person) is an endearing protagonist, as is her husband Daniel – both brave, fairly clever, possessed of senses of humor. But the good characterization is buried in overly long prose and a trite mystery setup. If you’re read even one or two gothic novels, much less a great many murder mysteries, you will start to check out the moment Molly arrives at an old mansion and sees the ghostly head of a mysterious child in a window – a child who was killed years before. From there, it only gets worse – a houseful of wealthy relatives any one of whom could have wanted the victim dead and who are sketched with the barest of details and personality, a suspicious housekeeper who pops out of mysterious corridors, a decanter of whisky conveniently left in a secluded spot…
The Millions’ Year in Reading, one of the my favorite events in the online world, has begun! Sample this hilarious bit from a Gary Shteyngart review –
“I always had difficulty with the relative lack of emotion in English lit. I developed several strategies to make my reading easier. First, I would insert some hot Russian emotion into the chilly scenes by hand. So if a character is carrying on some abstruse conversation about standing for parliament or whatever, I would interrupt it in my mind with: “And then Casaubon Casaubonovich threw himself around her neck and cried violently.” Problem solved. Then I decided to Yiddishize some of the writing to make it more haimish. Take for example the first line of David Copperstein: “Whether I shall turn out to be the mensch of my own life, or whether that station will be held by some other putz, this spiel must show.” RT
Veronica Mars release date. MARCH 14th y’all. Mark your calendars for us to see the fruit of our fan labors. Also, a new clip. RT
NPR released their clickable, delicious, addicting list of Great Books of 2013 RT
Gal Gadot is the choice to play Wonder Woman in the Batman vs. Superman film. YES. She was the one I was hoping for – she brought so much screen presence and cool confidence to her role in the Fast and Furious films. RT
Matt Smith’s final episode, ‘The Time of the Doctor,’ will premiere December 25 at 9/8c on BBC America
BBC Christmas Trailer including Doctor Who!
Goodreads Best Books of 2013 are out! RT
10 Secrets You Should Know about Marriage – “Communication is the lifeline between two people. There’s no way around it. It will cause you to take responsibility for not just what you say, but how you say it—tone, body language, sarcasm and all.” RT
Amazon is already my favorite place to shop for very nearly everything, and this handy guide from Lifehacker on how to save even more money shopping on Amazon is fantastic. RT
The Civil Wars released their Bare Bones EP today on iTunes, featuring alternate & acoustic versions of songs from ‘The Civil Wars’ RT
Check out the December Seasonal Shopping List from the Free People blog RT
Julian Peters’ illustrations of T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock are among the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. RT
This “book covers come to life” – animated book covers – series is not just breathtaking, but also the way of the future – one day very soon we’ll walk into bookstores and the book covers will be animated. RT
Millenials in American aren’t the only ones desperate for jobs – it’s the same in Europe, according the New York Times writing about a generation “Young and Educated in Europe, but Desperate for Jobs”
100 Notable Books from 2013, RT
Ruth Engel reviews the Inside Llewyn Davis soundtrack – “The album itself is lovely – Oscar Isaac’s voice is so compelling that I’m sure his performance in the movie will be beyond reproach even if he doesn’t act at all. It includes a number of instantly recognizable folk standards, including one of my all-time favorites,” 500 Miles.” Marcus Mumford collaborates on an aching version of “Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song)” that contains no frenetic banjo strumming, and Chris Thile and the Punch Brothers bring warmth and a fiddle into the mix.” RT
Coffee and Irony 