perpetual memory loss

And now for the worst of 2011:

Worst Novel: Kurt Vonnegut’s Slapstick or Lonesome No More! takes the cake here. I feel like Vonnegut jumped the shark on this one but I did find his introduction to be interesting–much more so than the actual book.

Worst Movie: Sucker Punch was godawful. I couldn’t even make it through this movie and ended up turning it off after about 15 minutes.

Worst Actor: Sam Worthington by a mile, which should be blatantly obvious since he wasn’t even in a major movie this year. However, I find him insufferable especially since he is always trying to hide his accent but doesn’t have the skills to pull it off. He ruins everything he’s in, even commercials for video games.

Worst Actress:  January Jones (Wtf kind of name is that anyways? Did her parents aspire for her to be a porn star?) is the absolutely the worst thing to be inflicted on entertainment in quite some time. Besides the fact she always looks like she’s smelling shit, she is also the worst actress I’ve seen in a long, long time. I often wonder how she ever became famous (sucking dick and spreading her legs probably). She delivers her lines like she’s being held hostage. Stop using her please.

Worst TV Show: Mad Men of course. I didn’t watch this show this season but I’m pretty sure I know what happened. There was some drinking on the job, lots of smoking, infidelity and general sexual harassment by the manly men. Weaved through a boring, blase story-line, where absolutely nothing happens, is a ham-fisted attempt at social commentary. I’ll never understand people’s (and the critics) love affair with this show. I think they all like to think how great they are because only they get how good Mad Men is. Mad Men isn’t even the best show on AMC let alone Cable or TV in general.

Worst TV Show (that was supposed to be good): The Walking Dead, seriously what is wrong with you. This half season there were three good episodes and the rest ranged from unnecessary to complete garbage. Added to that, this is a zombie show with a serious dearth of zombies, and way too much babbling betwixt the characters about meaningless topics i.e. god. Also Plan B is not an abortion pill for chissakes. Get with the times. One can only hope that the next half season is better otherwise TWD is entering into Mad Men territory. There’s too many good shows to be stuck watching garbage.

This list is a bit late because I have been migrating the site to a newer, cheaper server. Hopefully this new server will be able to handle the crush of 12 people accessing my blog. This list also may includes books, movies, games, etc that didn’t actually come out in 2011. That is because I’m old and it takes me awhile to get around to things so just deal with it.

Best Novel: Easily East of Eden, Steinbeck’s grand tale spanning three generations. Absolutely loved the book and can’t recommend it enough to others.

Best History (or otherwise scholarly) book: Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, this massive tome delves deeply into the politics, military, and social history of the Civil War. A great starting place for anyone who wants to learn more. McPherson’s prose never bores but keeps you engaged through 800+ pages.

Best Comic: I read a lot of comics this year and enjoyed the majority of them. The ones I have been looking forward to the most though have been X-Men schism/regenesis storyline particularly Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine and the X-Men, and Uncanny X-Force.

Best Movie: Winter’s Bone. Yep I was about 8 months late on this one but still it was one of the best movies I saw this year, much better than The King’s Speech.

Best Movie (that I expected absolutely nothing from): Hall Pass. Hah! Seriously, I got this movie on Netflix and expected one or two funny jokes but it was hilarious and had one of the funniest/grossest laugh out loud moments of any movie I’ve seen for a long time.

Best TV Show: Damn there was a lot of good TV this year: Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Board Walk Empire, Louie, Modern Family, and I could go on and on. However, I think the show that I enjoy the most, can’t wait to watch every week, and am disappointed when the season ends is Justified. It’s easily one of the best/funnest shows on TV that literally no one watches or knows about.

Best Game: I slacked on the game playing this year but the most enjoyable game I played was Batman: Arkham City. GTA style Batman fun with tons of side missions and plenty of bad guy skulls to crush. Plus Mark Hamill reprises his role as the Joker. What’s not to like.

Best Album: This may be because I have been listening to it constantly for the last couple weeks but by far (and I admittedly didn’t listen to a ton of new music this year) my favorite album of the year is The Black Keys’ El Camino. The quality of their albums doesn’t seem to diminish with time or listens and it never seems like they release a lazy album. Pick it up.

Best Gadget: This is a tough one because I have picked up quite a few gadgets this year but I’m sticking with the latest one, my Kindle Fire. I absolutely love it. Full review coming soon but so far it’s fast becoming my go to gadget.

Next up my worst of list, because the only thing better than things you like are things you hate and get to trash.

A few weeks ago I was looking for a new book to read when I happened to see the trailer for the movie Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy with Gary Oldman, and I was struck by a number of thoughts: Gary Oldman is badass, that movie looks good, and I want to read the book first. A couple of minutes later I had bought the book, beamed it to my kindle, and I was sitting back reading the first chapter. TTSS is an old school spy story set in England during the Cold War. The protagonist, George Smiley, gets brought back into the Circus (MI6) at the beginning of the book to search for a mole inside the agency. Almost the entirety of the rest of the novel takes place via flashbacks that occur as Smiley is researching various agency files, that were stolen, to try to uncover who the mole is. As a quick aside Smiley is a thoroughly enjoyable character. With none of the panache or derring-do of a James Bond, but instead a frumpy, crotchety Englishman with a sharp mind, phenomenal memory, and the ability to  deduce what others can’t. It may sound boring but I found him to be a delightful character for a spy novel, in part, because I think it’s more realistic than the guns blazing, philandering James Bond (although that’s fun too). A lot of the work that is done in these agencies in done by analysts sifting through information looking for clues. It also may sound like a boring book because it is all flashbacks and it is mostly a book about Smiley reading records and looking for clues as to who the mole is. However, John Le Carre (a pseudonym according to Wikipedia) used to work for MI5 and MI6 so he is able to infuse the characters and the story with realism. Although I personally have no idea what the life of a spy is like there are some books/movies that just feel fake, and Carre’s prose, terminology, and characters feel more real than other spy books. I found myself jumping back and forth throughout the book picking one person and then another for who I thought the mole was. Then I would re-read whole passages and chapters trying  and end up coming up with a new person or theory as to who the mole was. I was thoroughly engrossed in the chase. 

This book is well worth the read and I was a bit bummed out when I finished it, but I perked right back up when I found out that it’s the first book in a trilogy. I look forward to reading the next two in the series and spending some more time with George Smiley. (Also Netflix get on with making the British miniseries with Alec Guinness available via streaming.)

(photo via: screenrant)

Here’s example of why places like Barnes & Noble and Borders are going out of business or losing out to Amazon. I ordered two books on the same day. One book from Amazon and the other from B & N because it was a few bucks cheaper. My book from Amazon came two days later, and my book from B & N, well…

So it’s been almost a week and my package seems to be stuck in Jersey for no apparent reason other than B & N wants to make sure that I never use their services again. That isn’t a problem considering that I can get pretty much any book from Amazon, my local library, or my local used book store.I guess I learned my lesson you get what you pay for. Fuck you Barnes & Noble. You’re brick and mortar’s blow also.

And btw who uses DHL?

I found Washington’s Crossing an extremely enjoyable read. It’s a fairly short book but well written and captivating. While the focus of the book is on the crossing and the ensuing battles, Fischer starts the book describing the various parts of both armies. I have to admit before I read this book I didn’t know much about the Hessians or all the various divisions and specialties within the British Army. After getting the reader acquainted with all the major players Fischer delves into the beginning of the revolution. Specifically he highlights the New York campaign which was a disaster for Washington and the Americans. Afterwards you see how precarious the situation was and how close the revolution came to dying out. This context helps the reader understand why the crossing is important in our history and also why Washington is a big deal.

This book isn’t a hagiography of Washington. What it does is turn Washington into a real person. All too often the founders are looked at, spoke of, and written about like they are these mythical beings that came down from on high to bestow their wisdom on us. Their greatness is in the fact that they were flawed people who were thrust into a situation where they overcame their flaws and achieved greatness. Washington may not have been the best tactician, but what Fischer makes clear is that Washington knew how to be a leader. After some missteps and apprehension in the New York campaign, Washington begins to trust in himself and his generals, especially when contrasted with the British and Hessian style of leadership. He learns how to lead all the various sub groups of Americans effectively. That’s what is really at the heart of this book. If you don’t like military history you can skip some of the descriptions of the battles and still find the book worthwhile.

One of the strongest, most resonant parts of the book for me were the parts that described how Washington enforced the ideals of the American Revolution and put them into practice. Throughout the war Americans were often not given quarter by British or Hessians. Many Americans died a brutal death after surrendering, and many more died on prison ships off the coast of New York. However, Washington and other leaders stressed that captured British and Hessian soldiers should be treated as humanely. While I’m sure there were retribution killings, the vast majority of British and Hessians were treated humanely by the Americans. This was something that was just not done at the time, but it exemplified the ideals of the revolution. It was theory put into practice. The treatment was so good that almost a quarter of all the Hessians that were captured either remained in the US after the war or emigrated shortly thereafter. (This has been seen time and time again in American history, where our noble treatment of POWs has left an indelible mark on those people. In particular during WWII many Germans wanted to be captured by Americans or British soldiers as opposed to the Russians because they knew they would be treated fairly. Many who were brought to the US remained here after the war. Sadly, I don’t think anyone in Guantanamo will wish to remain. IMHO our magnanimity in war and as victors was one of our greatest assets and we seem to have forgotten that.) Anyways the book is well worth the read and I highly recommend it.

I’ll leave you with a quote from a closing comment from Fischer:

“Too many writers have told us that we are captives of our darker selves and helpless victims of our history. It isn’t so, and never was. The story of Washington’s Crossing tells us that Americans in an earlier generation were capable of acting in a higher spirit–and so are we.”

This is the first real history book I’ve read with my Kindle and it wasn’t a short one. Clocking in at around 860 pages this is a long, thorough study of the Civil War. How thorough? I didn’t get to Fort Sumter until around 250+ pages in. Despite its length it was a quick, breezy read on the Kindle. The book is totally worth reading even if you are only marginally interested in the Civil War. I took a graduate class on the Civil War and didn’t learn half of what I learned from this $10 book. It’s easy to see why this book was the Pulitzer Prize winning book in 1989, and I bet it wasn’t even close.

McPherson starts this book with the Mexican-American War and slowly works his way towards the Civil War. He weaves through the political, military, and social factors that confronted the country leading up to the war. He does a fine job weaving all the different themes together into a nice narrative that sweeps you up and makes it hard to put the book down. His prose smart and engaging whether he is describing a battle or the intricacies of the various political movements. He goes into so much detail without being overwhelming and he describes aspects of the war that I never knew about i.e. the river boat battles in the west. At it’s heart this book is a military history (as it should be it’s the Civil fucking War (if only some of my history teachers would remember that)), with a large portion of the book devoted to politics, and a smaller but substantial portion dedicated to social history.

There’s not much else to say except go pick it up and read it. It’s worth your time and it will help you, even if you know a good deal about the Civil War, gain a greater understanding of the times and how the effects of this war still echo through our society today. Plus if you think the war was about states rights you definitely need to pick it up, you know who you are.

Up next Washington’s Crossing the second Pulitzer Prize winning book of three on my list.

A couple days ago I finished Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and over the last few days I have been letting it digest in my brain. I decided to read this book because while I’ve always wanted to watch Apocalypse Now I’ve just never been able to make it through the movie. I figured I’d read the book that inspired it instead. Heart of Darkness is a short, easy read that I found extremely enjoyable. The book is narrated by Charles Marlow, a sailor, as he recounts his journey down an African river into the Congo as a Captain of a steamboat. The entire book is basically Marlow describing this journey to some other men one night. There are only a handful of times where Marlow stops telling his story to make a comment or to interact with one of the listeners. Otherwise the book is basically one giant quote. Now I consider myself fairly well-read but I can’t remember another book that I have read that relies this much on straight narration by the main character. (Now you might say well any book that has a narrator is relying on the narrator. But HoD is different, I think, because almost the entirety of the book is a quote and it feels like listening to a ghost story next to a camp fire, which is much different than a book like The Great Gatsby. That’s just my opinion though.)

The symbolism in HoD is pretty straight up and hard to miss. The book centers on Marlow’s mission to go find Mr. Kurtz deep in the Congo. The further down the river he travels the darker it gets, much like Dante but in a more literal sense. Along the way Conrad alludes to the darkness of the continent, the Native Africans, the Colonial enterprise, and humanity in general. Throughout the book I kept waiting for some dramatic reveal about Mr. Kurtz or Africa or something but there isn’t anything like that. The journey down the river is the point. The end is incidental to tue journey-which makes sense when you finish the book.

The book is definitely worth picking up and reading, if only to get a sense at some of the practices and attitudes that were prevalent during the colonization of Africa. So if you’re looking for a good book to occupy your time for a day at the beach or a car ride you could do much worse than picking Heart of Darkness.

Next up Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James McPherson. I’m about 150 pages into and so far I’m extremely impressed with it.

After reading this book I can now say that I finally get this song.  I really don’t know why it took me so long to get around and read this book.  Unfortunately, I think I let some idiot’s opinion–dry, long, boring–influence me waaay back in high school.  The sad thing is that if I would have read this in high school I would have enjoyed it, but I don’t think I would have appreciated it as much as I do now.

So what’s the book about, you’re saying, what are these grapes and why are they so wrathful.  First, however, I’d like to say that I think that this book and Oil! should be companion pieces as they are two sides of the same coin.  One dealing with the greed and corruption of corporations and the other deal with the consequences, for the normal have-nots, of said greed and corruption.  What make it even more compelling is that even though it is a work of fiction it is describing real events and could easily be used in a history class to give events a more personal feeling without losing sense of the scope of what was happening during this period.

Steinbeck accomplishes this duality by splitting up the book into alternating chapters that shift from a macro to a micro perspective.  One part deals with the nameless, faceless everyman who is moving west in an attempt to scratch out an existence.  These chapters are short (5-6 pages) and they serve a couple purpose.  One is to remind the reader that there are literally hundreds of thousands of people in the same situation as the Joads.  It also serves to help progress the story as he uses these chapters to introduce the next stage in their journey and heighten the conflict in the story.  These chapters although short are masterfully done, and are some of the best chapters in the entire book.  It’s in these chapters where Steinbeck’s descriptive prose is nothing short of amazing.  There are a lot of great writers and a lot of great books, but then there are those–books and authors–that are just on a higher echelon than the others.  This is one of those books and is easily the best Steinbeck novel I’ve read.  Steinbeck really knows how to transport you into the story.  His descriptions of the land is so earthy and real that it gets into your pores, you can almost feel the dust and the dirt on you.  In his descriptions of these nameless people you can see the worry in their eyes and feel the pain and desperation in their hearts.  It is in these chapters where I realized just how good Steinbeck is.

Continue reading

Today I went to Barnes & Noble to buy some books to read over the break.  Fortunately I received a gift card from the history department for my exemplary work this semester, so I was able to buy more books than I was planning on.  So here is what I am going to be attempt to read over the break:

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Oil! by Upton Sinclair

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

I almost got Dostoevsky’s House of the Dead, but instead decided on Oil!.  If I somehow manage to finish all of these I will probably pick it up or I may re-read Don Quixote.  Anyways look out for reviews for these books as I finish them, and feel free to recommend other books that you think I may like (not Twilight though).  Now I just have to figure out which book I am going to start with.