Nicole Krauss. It's mostly really good, and I love the premise, and for a woman in her 30s Krauss writes a really good old man. But certain things rattle me out of the book's world--when the clocks move forward and darkness falls before [he's] ready, when people refer to a Russian astronaut, shrimp at a bar mitzvah? I know the first is wrong; maybe there's a reason it's called that and not cosmonaut; and you don't have to be kosher to want a bar mitzvah but at a bar mitzvah wouldn't you make the least attempt to choose appropriate food? And "kosher cow's blood"? I asked Jessie about that, and she said no way no how; but it occurred to me later that maybe Krauss deliberately put such an error in a random person's mouth. In between the things I notice--some of which, in my ignorance, maybe aren't errors?--I love reading it.
Kal suggested it for bookclub and was to have hosted tomorrow night, but instead I am. I have to remember that contributions to the defunct Invisible Library are not a reason to like a book (The Remedy, How to Survive in the Wild, Words for Everything, Life as We Didn't Know It, and others). Instead I will suggest discussion of parallels between Leo's story and Alma's--e.g. Leo having words for everything while Alma's mother told her there's not a word for everything--and whether a kiss or laughter is a question to spend your whole life answering.
Good lines:
"If someone had told me then that Eve had eaten the apple just so that the Grodzenskis of the world could exist, I would have believed it" (83).
"His room was tiny, and every morning he had to squeeze around the truth just to get to the bathroom" (156).
"When spring arrived, he began to watch the bush obsessively, half expecting it to bloom with news of his secret" (187).
Unfortunately there were things like "you're" instead of a "your"--the reverse of the usual mistake; does that count for anything?--and "among the two," and these jarred me out of the story. Then there's "Through the window I saw her...planting flowers in what little light was left." Me, I plant flowers in dirt, but perhaps I lack sufficient imagination. Maybe I am being fussy, because there wasn't an article: "planting flowers in the little light" really would have been off.
And yet. I loved it.
My favorite dress: Meryl Streep's. Least favorite: Charlize Theron's. The latter's no surprise because she does nothing for me. She was no less attractive to me in "Monster"--where I admit she acted--than in "Cider House Rules," which I regret wasting my time on. That thing on her shoulder and just way too much black; without the bow the dress had a chance. Or Naomi Watts's--the thing on the waist was no good. Thank you, Meryl, for not wearing black, for showing just enough cleavage, and for wearing a train.
It's not just personal, whether I like someone's dress or not, because I liked Jennifer Aniston's filmy overskirted train. Salma Hayek is heat on two legs as ever. A rubenesque woman winning, I don't remember, art direction? succeeded with a one-shouldered dress; Kiera Knightley did not (and a ponytail? yii). Mm, Ziyi Zhang's dress is yummy too, stiff but flowy, sparkly. I shock myself by saying that Jennifer Lopez's dress has some excellent points--its flow as she walks, and the immobility of her breasts beneath it--despite its nauseous color and who is inside it. I am pleased that Michelle Williams is more attractive than Alma and it's probably just my conservatism that questions her dress's color but I am confident that the ruffle around the neckline is wrong.
I love Jennifer Garner's smile so it does not matter that I do not love her dress. I love how she recovered from her stumble.
Waiting for the Oscars to build up, I watched last Thursday's "ER." I saw Maria Bello and I thought it was cheesy of her to return to her old show in a different role just because her current series is being canceled. Then I bothered to look her up, and it turns out that there is someone named Mary McCormack and that she and Maria Bello are two different people. We just re-nth-watched "Harold and Maude." JGW had asked me what my favorite scene was, and it will always be when he says "I love you! I love you!" and she says "That's wonderful, Harold! Go and love some more!" But I do love as well when he says, "You sure have a way with people," and she replies, "They're my species!" Sometimes I wonder if they're mine, because so many of them look alike to me.
I haven't seen "Walk the Line" or "Hustle and Flow" and I am torn between Philip Seymour Hoffman, big love there, and David Strathrain. Oh Philip, yea. RDC said that "Walk the Line" was "Ray" with white people (and Jon Stewart said the same thing) except that he never believed Joaquim Phoenix was his character as thoroughly as he did Jamie Foxx. Hoffman's companion's dress was a poor choice.
Um, I will never see "Memoirs of a Geisha" but it had better have some unspeakable cinematography to have edged out "Brokeback Mountain." Oh, hooray, "Brokeback Mountain" got adapted screenplay and director. And wow, I have hardly heard of "Crash" but mostly confused it with the 1996 "Crash," and it beat the three others, all excellent, that I did see.
My favorite Oscar dress continues to be Halle Berry's the year she won for "Monster's Ball"--crisp taffeta skirt, mesh and embroidered top through which we could see skin, covered but exposed, and her waist, and especially that notch over her hip bone, zounds--and Oscar moment to be when Adrien Brody dipped and smooched her the next year when she presented his win for "The Pianist." Still this year, pretty dresses and good recognition for the bits of films I loved best.
