Book Review: "The Debut," by Anita Brookner

Not sure where I heard about this one, but I must've heard about it somewhere. I should keep notes on who recommends what that I end up reading.
"The Debut" is about this woman who knows "that her life had been ruined by literature." It had promised that Cinderella would go to the ball, but "The ball had never materialized." Instead she ended up old-fashioned, "scrupulous, passionate, thoughtful, and given to self-analysis," and of course, pale. A good start.
And then it flashes back to when she was in her early twenties, showing how her life unfolded and how she ended up where she was. It was okay, and I was figuring it was leading somewhere.
And then came the end, and you find out it wasn't leading anywhere, and you feel like while it wasn't terrible and it was fine while you were reading it, it was really just taking time away from other books you could've been reading. It was only 192 pages, though, and didn't take that long to read, so whatever. My overall impression was, 'ih.'

heavenly days

i forgot to celebrate my blogiversary again this year! august 18th made it 8 years. 8 years!?! seriously!?! yowzah. you all rock. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiRu_W9tzM8

Melilot Classic: Thursday, July 5, 2007

Why Andrew Murray is one of my favorite authors

things like this (from 'Absolute Surrender'):
One day I was talking with a missionary and he said to me, "Brother, remember that when GOD puts a desire into your heart, He will fulfill it."
That helped me; I thought of it a hundred times. I want to say the same to you who are plunging about and struggling in the quagmire of helplessness and doubt. The desire that GOD puts into your heart, HE will fulfill.
If any are saying that GOD has no place for them, let them trust GOD and wait, and HE will help them and show them their place. I have learnt to place myself before GOD every day, as a vessel to be filled with HIS HOLY SPIRIT. HE has filled me with the blessed assurance that HE, as the everlasting GOD, has guaranteed HIS work in me. If there is one lesson that I am learning day by day, it is this: that it is GOD who worketh all in all. Oh, that I could help any brother or sister to realize this!

new favorite quote

"There are a lot of us cray-crays in the world." - my mother

on a related note

i realized today that i'm more comfortable at a funeral than a wedding. i think because i'm better at being somber than at having extroverted fun.

if you think i'm a terrible person for not liking weddings,

clearly you don't know me well enough. there are lots of worse ways i'm a terrible person.

one more thing i learned

 

while when we think of bruce lee we think of 'enter the dragon' with his bad 70's hair, he was actually woo-woo

My Alphabetical Biography List: Lee, Bruce, martial artist and actor

"The Bruce Lee Stoy," by Linda Lee

It took me a long time to get around to 'L.' I could not decide who to do. I knew I had too many white Americans and Europeans on my list, so Bruce Lee crossed my mind, but I also had too many recent people, and I wanted to expand my horizons. In scoping out the library website I found Li Ao, a Chinese philosopher from around 800AD, so I got his biography out of the library. Oh goodness. Maybe if I knew some of his philosophy it would've made sense, but this book assumed you already knew about him, so it was just confusing and boring. So I started looking at other Li's. Unfortunately for everyone else the books were either so-an-so's poetry (not a biography) or in Chinese (which doesn't work so well for me). Still resisting Bruce Lee, every couple months I would look at the library website again and get nowhere. After over a year, though, I finally decided I needed to get on with this, so I settled on him (because apparently, didder, we had books on him after all).
Bruce Lee was born Lee Jun Fan in San Francisco in 1940. His parents were there as his father was touring with the Cantonese Opera Company. They returned to Hong Kong in 1941, which then is where Bruce grew up. He started learning Kung Fu in his early teens to help him out in fights with other boys. Later he would take various components from other types of martial arts, as well as boxing and fencing, to create his own version, which he called Jeet Kune Do.
This was a man extremely dedicated to his art. It consumed every aspect of his life; his physical regimen, his work,  his reading and writing (both of which he did a lot of), his thought process. He was crazy intense and it was exhausting just reading about him. His wife said, however, that while it may have seemed to everyone else that martial arts came before everything else, family did actually come first. It was hard to see that, though, even in a book that she herself had written. I did get a sense, however, that he loved her and depended on her, and that he loved his children as well. Just don't ask me to marry someone like that.

captain awesome with glasses looks like clark kent

disappointment of the day

someone mentioned a book, 'what i was doing while you were breeding: a memoir,' on twitter. it's about a woman who, during her 20's and 30's, when all her friends were getting married and having kids, decided to travel on her own and enjoy her freedom. and so i put myself on the waiting list at the library, cuz i like the sound of both the title and the subject. it came today. apparently her traveling and freedom meant a man in every port. so much for that book.

Movie Review: "The Fall"

It's been awhile since I've done a movie review, but this one was worth reviewing.
Alexandria is a little girl - oh. no. sorry. she says she's not little. she's 5. - in the hospital sometime in the 1920's. 
Ugh - I'm having trouble summing it up. Here's what the library website says, "1920's, Los Angeles. In a hospital on the outskirts of town, Roy Walker, an injured stuntman, begins to tell young Alexandria, a fellow patient with a broken arm, a fantastical story about 5 mythical heroes. Thanks to his fractured state of mind and her vivid imagination, the line between fiction and reality starts to blur as the tale advances."
That's not quite right either, but I'm not sure what would be better without a spoiler.

I enjoyed this movie. I liked the relationship between Alexandria and Roy, and the story he was telling kind of had a "Big Fish" feel - a little different, grandiose, and colorful. The opening credits were a bit long (I fast-forwarded a bit, to be honest) and I'm not sure about the ending, but overall it was quite good.

The girl, Catinca Untaru, is adorable. I decided then and there that I'm going to adopt a little girl someday. She's so precious. And such a good actress. I don't know how you can possibly get a performance that believable out of a child. The only time I've seen one comparable was Victoire Thivisol in "Ponette"  (another good movie, though in French). This girl nails it. Also, she was only 6 when they filmed this and English wasn't her first language. Very impressive. There were times it was a little hard to understand her, but it was mostly because she was little kid quiet and/or upset, not because of her accent.

Then there's Lee Pace. I've only ever seen him in this and "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day," but goodness that man can make me fall in love with him in about three seconds. And it's not that he's woo-woo. He's very average looking and has heavy eyebrows. But he's charming. (Actually, Amy Adams found him so dashing in "Miss Pettigrew" that the director had to ask him to leave the set at times because he was too distracting.) He was quite good in this role.

The movie's rated R for "Some violence," but it's really not bad. "Slumdog Millionaire" was rated R for that, too. It's probably about the same intensity as far as that goes.

I recommend it. I'm hoping the library will let me renew it so I can watch it again this week before returning it. And that's my review of that.