Last night, Kyle, Amy, Leo and I watched the first half of Scorcese's Bob Dylan documentary, No Direction Home.
It was definitely not for the casual Dylan fan, as it had basically no information whatsoever on Dylan's family, friends, or rise to fame. It is about as inscrutable as Dylan himself- further helped by the fact that Dylan is completely incoherent as a speaker.
I mean, the guy cannot tell a story to save his life, which is ironic because I think he's one of the most amazing narrative singer/songwriters of all time.
At one point, Amy and I imagined what happened if Owen fell down a well (like Timmy in the old show Lassie) and Bob Dylan had to go for help. I said I'd rather take my chances with Lassie- she's a far better communicator.
The best part of the whole first two hours was when a radio host asked Dylan about the meaning of his song A Hard Rain. "It's about atomic rain, right?" the radio host asked.
"No, no it's not about atomic rain. It's a hard rain."
We all started laughing hysterically. A couple other great Dylan quotes:
"I had to sing that song. That's why I wrote it. I had to sing it."
"Time took care of the things people were doing then. Time. And progress. You know."
Gold.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Recently Read
The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler
A quick, easy read, nothing too life-changing. I enjoyed it because I am a Jane Austen fan and I find that not only can I read Jane Austen's six novels over and over again, but I also enjoy reading anything written about these same six novels. What is it about Jane Austen? It's also kind of fun to find all the different parallels between characters in Fowler's book and in Austen's novels. Two of the characters, who finally get together at the end, actually play out famous Austen courtship scenes in almost every chapter, which is fun to watch for.
False Memory by Dean Koontz
Entertaining- interesting premise. If you're a Koontz fan, though, you'll recognize the story's villain, Dr. Mark Ahriman, because he's basically the same cold-blooded, power hungry serial killer by night/upstanding citizen by day character who has terrorized the pages of many other Koontz books such as Intensity, Hideaway, and Whispers, to name just a few. It was an interesting and viscerally frightening character at first, but now it's just getting old.
The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Banks
This was a nice little piece of chick lit. There's good chick lit and then there's chick lit so awful I can't even get through it. This was good, although the narrator was of course a size 10 brunette, raised in the suburbs by loving parents, who loves literature, is quirky and "funny" and always messes up her love life. GAG! The chick lit genre has spawned so many of these characters that it'd almost be refreshing to pick up an old Sweet Valley High paperback. All the Jones clones make me long for those leggy twins, Elizabeth and Jessica with their identical cascades of California blond hair, cute dimples, and matching gold lavaliers- and who could forget their Fiat convertible.
Where was I? Lost in seventh grade memories.
Anyhow, Girls Guide is all right, much better than most of the chick lit out there, but there were these random chapters thrown in that didn't go with the rest of the story. The entire story is about a plain Jane named Jane and her journey from adolescence to adulthood. Cool. But there's one chapter toward the middle told from the point of view of a mother who lives downstairs from Jane and it's all about her family and how her son got two girls pregnant at once. So I thought maybe the son would work his way into the story eventually, maybe even enter into Jane's love life, but no. Nothing like that happened and the chapter is never mentioned again.
Another chapter, told in the first person, is about a young woman who meets a young man, develops and relationship with him, and then dumps him when she gets cancer because she doesn't believe he knows who she is. It's well-written but totally random and has nothing to do with the story.
What am I missing here? What did these vignettes add to Jane's story? I sure didn't get it.
A quick, easy read, nothing too life-changing. I enjoyed it because I am a Jane Austen fan and I find that not only can I read Jane Austen's six novels over and over again, but I also enjoy reading anything written about these same six novels. What is it about Jane Austen? It's also kind of fun to find all the different parallels between characters in Fowler's book and in Austen's novels. Two of the characters, who finally get together at the end, actually play out famous Austen courtship scenes in almost every chapter, which is fun to watch for.
False Memory by Dean Koontz
Entertaining- interesting premise. If you're a Koontz fan, though, you'll recognize the story's villain, Dr. Mark Ahriman, because he's basically the same cold-blooded, power hungry serial killer by night/upstanding citizen by day character who has terrorized the pages of many other Koontz books such as Intensity, Hideaway, and Whispers, to name just a few. It was an interesting and viscerally frightening character at first, but now it's just getting old.
The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Banks
This was a nice little piece of chick lit. There's good chick lit and then there's chick lit so awful I can't even get through it. This was good, although the narrator was of course a size 10 brunette, raised in the suburbs by loving parents, who loves literature, is quirky and "funny" and always messes up her love life. GAG! The chick lit genre has spawned so many of these characters that it'd almost be refreshing to pick up an old Sweet Valley High paperback. All the Jones clones make me long for those leggy twins, Elizabeth and Jessica with their identical cascades of California blond hair, cute dimples, and matching gold lavaliers- and who could forget their Fiat convertible.
Where was I? Lost in seventh grade memories.
Anyhow, Girls Guide is all right, much better than most of the chick lit out there, but there were these random chapters thrown in that didn't go with the rest of the story. The entire story is about a plain Jane named Jane and her journey from adolescence to adulthood. Cool. But there's one chapter toward the middle told from the point of view of a mother who lives downstairs from Jane and it's all about her family and how her son got two girls pregnant at once. So I thought maybe the son would work his way into the story eventually, maybe even enter into Jane's love life, but no. Nothing like that happened and the chapter is never mentioned again.
Another chapter, told in the first person, is about a young woman who meets a young man, develops and relationship with him, and then dumps him when she gets cancer because she doesn't believe he knows who she is. It's well-written but totally random and has nothing to do with the story.
What am I missing here? What did these vignettes add to Jane's story? I sure didn't get it.
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