April 3rd, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink
1. 50 Shades of Oh My God, Enough Already
2. 50 Shades of Crimson Your Face Is Going To Turn Upon Reading These Other, Better Books
3. 50 Shades of GTFO My Twitter Feed
4. 50 Shades of Seriously, A Movie Adaptation?
5. 50 Shades of Go Ahead and Use the Term “Mommy Porn” One More Time, Jackass, I Dare You
For a response less consumed with irritation, please refer to this Dear Author post. Also see this comment by Sarah Frantz.
March 1st, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink
Now I’m excited about John Carter of Mars* all over again, thanks to this review in the Guradian:
John Carter is the kind of movie no studio bigwig in their right mind ought ever to have greenlit: a space fantasy based on a genre – “planetary romance” – that hasn’t been popular for well over half a century, populated by bizarre creatures from the mind of a writer apparently endowed with the ungrounded imagination of a small child. This is exactly why you should be checking it out.
This is going to be so balls-out awesome/insane. My excitement cannot be overstated.
*It’s FUCKING LAME that they renamed it, though. This is a complete reverse-Casablanca (originally named the much-clunkier “Everybody Comes to Rick’s” and retitled in the wake of the runaway success of Algiers, now remembered solely as the source of the line, “Take me to the casbah!!”).
February 13th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink
Shelf Awareness for Readers Review: Mr. and Mrs. Madison’s War: America’s First Couple and the Second War of Independence
As the title suggests, Mr. and Mrs. Madison’s War recounts the War of 1812 as President James Madison and his wife experienced it. Hugh Howard (The Painter’s Chair) toggles between battles and presidential politics; his depictions of skirmishes are presented as fairly standard military history, but whenever his detailed descriptions of troop movements threaten to devolve into tedium, he switches over to dispatches from the president and first lady.
This approach offers a thorough account of how the British forces managed to advance to Washington, D.C., but it also provides detailed character sketches–and Madison isn’t even the most interesting player. Dolley Madison gets plenty of screen time, too, as Howard explains the vital role her Washington soirees played in supporting her husband’s political goals. (Completists, take note: he also covers her famous rescue of Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington.) Then there are the feuding personalities in Madison’s cabinet, like Secretary of War John Armstrong–covetous of Madison’s position, he resisted preparing for the invasion of Washington, D.C., and displayed a generally insubordinate attitude. On the other hand, Secretary of State (and future president) James Monroe comes off very well in Howard’s account, riding out to scout British troop movements firsthand. In terms of sheer scene-stealing charm, however, the standout is Joshua Barney, whose ragtag flotilla couldn’t fully prevent the British advance, but nevertheless created major headaches for the fearsome Royal Navy.
Discover: A thorough account of the War of 1812 that’s both action-packed and intimate.
February 10th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink
This Q&A originally appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.
Elliot Perlman is a barrister in Melbourne, Australia, who has published two novels, Three Dollars and Seven Types of Ambiguity, and a story collection, The Reasons I Won’t Be Coming. In his sprawling new novel, The Street Sweeper (Riverhead, January 5, 2012), Perlman puts a deeply personal spin on two of the 20th century’s most fraught topics: the Holocaust and the American civil rights movement.
You’re Australian, though you spent several years in New York City. What inspired you to tackle the civil rights movement?
I grew up thinking of the movement as a very recent chapter in the history of the enlightenment, that being an attempt by our species to rid ourselves of irrational ideas and act in the service of rationality and justice. I was always fascinated by that. And it’s one of those rare examples, like the Holocaust, where it’s fairly unequivocal which side the good guys were on.
Did your years in New York change how you thought about this?
It was never put to me quite this way, but I was taught that what might be called the golden age of black-Jewish relations in the U.S. never faded. When I moved to New York, I learned there are all sorts of schisms, not just between the black community and the Jewish community, but you almost can’t talk about the “community” because each group is so riven with schisms. And this might sound incredibly naive, but I just didn’t know about black anti-Semitism, and I didn’t know that there was ongoing racism against blacks in New York, which I held to be the bastion of liberalism.
One of your characters is the first man to interview death camp survivors. Did you imagine yourself writing for people who didn’t know as much about these events?
I have some enormously loyal readers in the U.S. Many of them will know much of what I was writing about. But some of them don’t know quite as much as I put in there, even about U.S. history, let alone about European or Jewish history. Then there might be readers who know almost nothing about these. Growing up, it was often novels that alerted me to things which I would then learn about other ways. Novels are a form of entertainment, but they can also be a source of education and enlightenment. I’ve tried to tread a fine line.
How well-known are these events in your native Australia?
It’s definitely less well known. And I’m writing for British, French, German, Danish audiences as well. You never know what part of the story they don’t know.
I’ve had older Australians tell me that they lived through the civil rights movement from a distance, and they remember the turmoil and the turbulence, but not the detail. This reminded them. And I’m sure a similar thing could be said about the Holocaust.
Could you give us a bit of insight into your thinking about the relationship between history and memory?
It’s often largely by chance that certain things become the received view of an event.
When finally survivors were being interviewed, if you’d interviewed the person next to the person you spoke to, you’d've gotten a different story. People think that they know about the Holocaust, but what they really know are certain images. People think, ‘That’s awful, and I’ve seen it, so I’ve “done” the Holocaust.’ Most of that footage was taken by Western soldiers, and they didn’t get to a single death camp, which were liberated by the Soviet Union. That footage actually isn’t from the very worst places. What most people think of the Holocaust is frequently not quite right.
It’s just a quirk of geopolitics, if you like, that one group of camps is better known. On a more personal scale, as the late Primo Levi said, not only can words not adequately put the reader in the position of a victim, even the survivors give a minority version of the events. Most victims died within 48 hours of arriving in Auschwitz. You can’t hear that story because there’s no one around to tell it.
In that way, it’s quite random which memories become history. You get survivors who don’t really want to talk about what happened to them. so their stories don’t become history. Even in your own life, maybe something tragic occurred when you were nine and you remember that as characterizing the year or even your childhood. You become typecast in your mind as the person that experiences a tragic event. But the day before, a million kids were playing with you at your birthday party. –Kelly Faircloth, freelance writer
February 8th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink
Shelf Awareness for Readers Review: Carrie Goes Off the Map, by Phillipa Ashley
Sending two prickly strangers on a vacation together may be a terrible idea in reality, but it’s a delightful premise for a love story. Less than a day away from marrying Huw, her farmer-boy fiancé, Carrie finds herself unceremoniously jilted. Adding insult to injury, she learns he’s marrying someone else. In need of a diversion, she plans a tour of the Continent with her best friend, who then gets a last-minute job offer. Desperate to stop Carrie’s moping, she taps Dr. Matt Landor, who is idling in the U.K. on forced R&R from his do-gooding work in the tropics, to go in her stead.
Full-on rom-com insanity can wear thin fast and alienate the reader, but Phillipa Ashley (wish You Were Here) strikes just the right tone, and then maintains it through the shenanigans that follow. Carrie is by turns heartbroken and furious, but remains fundamentally likable and relatable. Crashing Huw’s wedding, she restrains herself from disrupting the ceremony (but does demolish a flashy flower arrangement). The good doctor, for his part, is hunky without being a stereotypical Prince Charming. For example, when rescuing Carrie from where she’s been abandoned on a beach, stoned out of her mind, he doesn’t panic, and just laughs. The bickering-but-attracted plot is nothing new, but it’s enjoyably executed. Anglophile readers will also enjoy across-the-pond references to rugby fandom and jokes about David Tennant’s hotness.
Discover: A romance between entertainingly cranky protagonists, madcap without lapsing into lunacy.
December 2nd, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
Shelf Awareness for Readers Review: The Odd Clauses: Understanding the Constitution Through Ten of its Most Curious Provisions, by Jay Wexler
Most American citizens know at least enough about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to namecheck their freedoms of speech, religion and privacy. Less well-known, however, are provisions allowing letters of marque and reprisal and forbidding bills of attainer. It’s their very unfamiliarity, though, that makes these clauses the perfect entry point for lessons about the founding document of the U.S. government, because while plenty of folks have strong feelings about gun control, no one much cares about privateering. That’s the thinking behind Odd Clauses, Boston University law professor and former Supreme Court clerk Jay Wexler’s follow-up to Holy Hullabaloos: A Road Trip to the Battlegrounds of the Church/State Wars.
Considering the seriousness of the subject matter, Odd Clauses is surprisingly goofy and quite funny. For example: he uses the (factual!) example of a Scottish penguin knighted by the Norwegian King’s Guard to illustrate the nobility clause. Another recurring joke involves Justice Scalia biting his gavel in half out of pure originalist rage. This is silly stuff, but Wexler’s jokes serve a purpose, keeping the reader engaged with even the most arcane topics. For example, he uses the weights and measures clause to illustrate legislative powers: Congress has passed the buck on the metric system for decades, even appointing a committee to make recommendations it ignored. But responsibility for our wacky system still lies with Congress. Wexler’s strong legal chops, combined with his experience writing humor pieces for places like McSweeney’s and Spy, qualify him to crack wise while shedding light on this and other examples of what he refers to as the Constitution’s “bat-eared foxes.”
Discover: An unconventional take on the U.S. Constitution that deftly balances humor with education.
November 30th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
Sunday’s mid-season finale was excellent. I was certain there was no way they could end that little-girl-lost plot that wasn’t anticlimactic, but damn if they didn’t surprise me. Jon Bernthal acted his bald head off, bringing home the Angry Shane arc in grand style. Norman Reedus continued to steal the show out from under everyone.
But an excellent doesn’t mean the show can get away with much more of this season’s lax plotting.
Spoilers after the jump!
November 30th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
So, Mirror, Mirror.
Let’s start with what’s good. That’s Julia Roberts. Oh my god, Julia Roberts. I will never stop enjoying watching that woman on the silver screen. Rather than going head-to-head with Charlize Theron’s virgin-killing, high-vamp performance, she’s playing things for laughs — and it’s wonderful. “She’s 18 years old and her skin has never seen the sun so of COURSE it’s good.” She should play the Queen Bitch more often.
Otherwise, this trailer doesn’t really set my hair on fire. The sets look flat, like they’re repurposed from a community production of the Nutcracker. Sometimes I like that look — in, for example, my favorite Disney classic, Sleeping Beauty — but it’s not really thrilling me here. I just don’t get what’s new or different or interesting about this version. Putting Snow White in charge of a bunch of bandits might have been something fresh 50 years ago, but they’re going to have to bring it a little harder in this day and age.
November 17th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
So, we’ve finally got a trailer for Snow White and the Huntsman, and it is freaking awesome:
I’ve been on the fence about this adaptation, thanks in large part to that early image of Kristen Stewart in plate armor. I’ll save the bulk of this rant for another post (or perhaps I will just link to this brilliant Hairpin post), but I think, post-Buffy, there’s been a tendency to paper over problematic depictions of women by handing them swords or equipping them with a sweet right hook. All these things are great, and I cheered at Eowyn’s “I AM NO MAN!” as hard as the next geek girl. But sick skills don’t fix the problems of a Suckerpunch.
Well, consider those concerns placated (for the moment, at least). I might be reaching but, based on the trailer, they seem to be making the rivalry between Snow White and her stepmother a question of succession. Snow White’s father is dead, leaving the Queen in charge — but facing a likely challenger in the form of Snow White herself. This is an interesting spin on the way the tale’s traditionally been told, laying claim to a plot that’s been the province of kings and their male heirs. Snow White has always had that element of a young woman’s star rising at the expense of a mother figure. But ultimately, Snow White leaves with her prince charming, presumably for the kingdom he’ll one day rule. She’s rarely portrayed as invested in the throne to which she ought to have some claim. My evidence is admittedly scanty, but based on the Queen’s ominous voice-over and the battle footage, it looks like they’ll be fighting over who gets to rule the kingdom in Snow White and the Huntsman. This would make the connection between desirability and power more explicit and therefore easier to explore and even invert.
That’s why — feel free to call me crazy, because all my friends already have — I also like the casting of sullen, sulky Kristen Stewart as Snow White. She’s not as gorgeous as Charlize Theron, and the idea she’d ever be “the fairest of them all” isn’t especially credible. But that’s at least partly because she refuses to play that game. Have you ever seen Kristen Stewart even attempt to be charming and charismatic? This is not a girl who concerns herself with wielding the erotic arts. (Take THAT, Catherine Hakim!) I like the idea of this achingly gorgeous all-powerful witch-Queen who uses her beauty like a knife, driven slightly mad by the idea that this brat is going to unseat her — and the brat won’t even sit up straight!
Most of the above is speculative, of course. There’s also the fact that the visuals are sick, and Charlize Theron was born to play an evil queen, and I want to find the enchanted forest and do unspeakable things to Chris Helmsworth.
November 15th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
I think he has this backwards?
From the beginning, I have said that the City had two principal goals: guaranteeing public health and safety, and guaranteeing the protestors’ First Amendment rights. But when those two goals clash, the health and safety of the public and our first responders must be the priority.
–Mike Bloomberg (from The Awl)