Category Archives: small screen

Weekend

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My image of Gertrude Abercrombie’s “Doors (3 Demolition)” (1957).

Over the weekend we saw the Court’s excellent production of A Raisin in the Sun (review here), having visited our favorite noodle stop and the Smart Museum of Art beforehand. (The Smart is still celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, so if you’re in the area and have never visited this tiny treasure, get there.)

After a week of single-digit temperatures, the weather has granted us a return to more comfortable walking weather. (Recurring public service announcement: Wear sunscreen.) In addition to logging more miles, I’ve gotten back to music practice, preparing to resume lessons in mid-March. (The doctor advised against playing for at least two weeks post-surgery; it was only a few days the first time. May there be no third time.)

Generally, very little can prevent me from reading, so that has continued uninterrupted. Not long after announcing I had begun The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, though, I read this article and became absorbed by Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead (2022). Come for the social commentary; stay for one of the most beguiling narrators since perhaps his narrative brother, David Copperfield. (Speaking of the Dickens novel, I will reread it for a UChicago course later this year.) I’ve since returned to the McBride, a delight, and will likely finish it today or tomorrow. Late last week, I attended a virtual talk with Amy Tan; naturally her book about backyard birding made its way from my shelves to the table beside my favorite reading chair. And as I’ve mentioned, with my youngest, I’ve been reading books by Brazilian writers, most recently, Captains of the Sands (Jorge Amado; 1937). Since some have likened it to Lord of the Flies (William Golding; 1954), we have decided to reread that when we finish Captains. (In a neat intersection of interests, I discovered Yellowjackets this month, which most assuredly owes a debt to Golding — and to Lost, a small-screen family favorite.)

All that remains is to get back to my Latin studies, which, now that I feel more myself, seems probable this week.

I typed and erased at least three sentences to conclude this entry and then remembered that Jeanne at Necromancy Never Pays had already pointed me to the right words:

How to Be Eaten did turn out to be the right book at the right time. It fit in with something I read by Amanda Marcotte, author of Troll Nation and writer for Salon, who advises that resistance can consist of simply “continuing to exist, by thriving as the person you were born to be, and by holding one another for strength and comfort in adversity.”

Until next time, then, continue to exist. Thrive as the person you were born to be. Hold one another for strength and comfort in adversity.

Falling

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According to the forecast, daytime temperatures will reach the low eighties tomorrow and Wednesday. That’s all right; I’ll rise early to walk, and throughout the day, I’ll remind myself that the cooler weather will return on Thursday.

In my last post, I somehow neglected to mention Monk, which opened my recent “small screen as succor” season. My older daughter suggested that I try a few episodes of the television series, one that my son adored. I came for sentimental reasons and remained for Tony Shalhoub’s performance.

Of course, I have been reading, too. Since my last annotated list I finished Henry IV, Part II, Henry V, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado about Nothing, and Pericles, Prince of Tyre for my “Shakespeare in a Year” project (Pericles out of order in anticipation of seeing this); and for my Willa Cather project, Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) and Shadows on the Rock (1931). For a seminar led by translator Stephanie McCarter, I tackled her 2022 translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and for a seminar led by W.H. Auden scholar Edward Mendelson, The Shield of Achilles. I read John Leland’s Happiness Is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year Among the Oldest Old for a talk he was giving at the University of Chicago but missed the event. Similarly, I read SciFri Book Club’s September selection, Forest Walking: Discovering the Trees and Woodlands of North America (Jane Billinghurst and Peter Wohlleben; 2022) but did not participate in the online discussion.

Revisiting some books I shared with my children has been a source of comfort and delight: Freddy Goes to Florida (Walter Brooks; 1927), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (J.K. Rowling; 1997 and 1998).

Other fiction read during this period included Bury This (Andrea Portes; 2014), The Gate to Women’s Country (Sheri S. Tepper; 1988), The Devil and Webster (Jean Hanff Korelitz; 2017), Sipsworth (Simon Van Booy; 2024), The Sea (John Banville; 2005), and A Haunting on the Hill (Elizabeth Hand; 2023). Other non-fiction works included Notes on a Silencing: A Memoir (Lacey Crawford; 2020), The Limits of My Language: Meditations on Depression (Eva Meijer; 2019/2021), and A Wolf Called Romeo (Nick Jans; 2014).

With a small discussion group, I’m rereading George Eliot’s Middlemarch and with 100 Days of Dante, The Divine Comedy. Beside my favorite chair is George Orwell’s 1984, which I picked up to celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of its publication and to mark Banned Books Week. (Yes, I’m a wee bit behind but catching up.)

A couple more

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Slowly, surely, I’m regaining my reliable daily rhythm of walking, reading, practicing, studying. While things were a bit rough, though, the small screen distracted me well: the latest season of Only Murders in the Building, Law & Order, and Abbott Elementary, the uneven but charming English Teacher, the sordid Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, and the first season of the dated but dear Murder, She Wrote. Kenneth Branagh never fails to delight me, so after rewatching his Henry V and Much Ado Nothing, I enjoyed Death on the Nile.

I tried to watch the film based on Banville’s The Sea, but despite a luminous Charlotte Rampal, it proved tedious. Perhaps it was too soon after reading the book? Speaking of which, it’s just about time for the discussion.

This, that

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So many books; not quite enough time.

Since Tuesday evening, we have been fighting some sort of bug, the chief characteristics of which were congestion and lethargy. We have nearly snapped out of it, though, and look forward to resuming our regular walks.

During my sick days, I rediscovered NYPD Blue (Hulu). A fan during its long run, I appreciated returning to this engaging show when I was too weary to read but not enough to sleep. Had I been well, I would have finished Gissing’s The Odd Women, now a task for this weekend.

Next weekend, we will play at the graduation concert. We did manage some quality practice this week and look forward to more this weekend.

Recent acquisitions

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Last night, my goals for the evening included writing about Don Quixote, reading about Pompeii, outlining Chapter Five of SPQR, and reviewing my Latin vocabulary. What did I actually accomplish? I watched The Lego Movie (because it came up in a discussion with my younger daughter yesterday), shelved new arrivals (pictured above), spent some time gazing at the night sky, outlined Chapter Five of SPQR, and marked up two academic articles on the topic of narrative structure in Don Quixote. Meh; not bad.

A reading life review

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In June, we removed the television from the living room. It’s as if it were never there.

While I typically read between 120 and 150 books each year, I knew that serving as move coordinator for my daughters and spending nearly the entire summer away from home would likely cut into my reading time. I settled on a more realistic goal of 104 books in 2019, and at ninety-five books read and a little more than two months remaining to read at least another nine, I think I chose well. Although I have read fewer books than usual, I did discover some terrific television, some of which I watched in my daughters’ new living room and some of which I watched in the former “girl cave” when I returned home:

Season 3 of The Handmaid’s Tale
Seasons 1 – 3 of Harlots
Season 4 of Veronica Mars
Seasons 1 – 3 of GLOW
Season 3 of Stranger Things
Seasons 1 – 7 of Orange Is the New Black
Seasons 1 and 2 of Mindhunters

Great stuff, but this is a reading life review, so… about a year ago, I crafted a bold reading challenge for myself: Read one hundred books from my shelves (i.e., books in my collection before the end of 2018), including at least twenty-four non-fiction titles and at least one book from each of the following “special collections”: Shakespeare, poetry, NYRB, Vonnegut, Joyce Carol Oates, philosophy, art, and children’s / YA. I also planned to make short work of 2018’s unfinished business and to closely (re)read Moby Dick.

So, how am I doing so far?

Total number of books read to date: 95
Read from shelves (RFS): 42
Non-fiction RFS: 15
Shakespeare RFS: Hamlet
Poetry RFS: Lunch Poems (Frank O’Hara)
NYRB RFS: The Summer Book (Tove Jansson)
Vonnegut RFS: Player Piano
Joyce Carol Oates RFS: The Rise of Life on Earth
Art RFS: But is it art? (Cynthia Freeland)
Children’s / YA RFS: Milkweed (Jerry Spinelli)

I finished the seven books I carried over from 2018, and the Melville project is slated to begin next weekend. I selected Letters from a Stoic as my philosophy RFS. By completing it and the three other non-fiction titles on my nighstand, I would reach nineteen non-fiction works RFS. It remains to be seen whether I can read another five non-fiction titles from the shelves before the end of the year. (Although it was not a goal specific to this year, it is worth noting that I have already read thirty non-fiction works this year, even before the four on the nightstand, so I am poised to outpace previous years’ goals in that area.)

Clearly, though, I will not meet the goal of one hundred books read from the shelves. The fact that so many of the books I had been reading in recent years were newly published and / or acquired in the year they were read had largely informed my “Read from the shelves” challenge (that and the embarrassment of riches that is my home library). It was never my intent to cease acquiring new books, only to acquire more thoughtfully and to make better use of the library. That said, of the ninety-five books I’ve read so far this year, only twenty-four were published this year. Twenty-three books on my 2019 list were acquired this year, ten of which were published in 2019. Twenty-three of this year’s books were borrowed from the library.

Genuine interest in art

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Detail of Leonardo Drew’s “Number 185” (2016).

Earlier this month, we visited the Smart Museum of Art before seeing Photograph 51 at the Court. From a distance, the piece pictured above looked to me as if it had been blackened in a fire.

Other notes: Once I finished Parks and Recreation, I moved on to The Good Place and now must wait until fall for new episodes. Related: We had breakfast-for-lunch at the Ron Swanson-inspired Whisk last weekend. It was so awesome that it has effectively ruined our local breakfast nooks for us. And speaking of ruining things for us, William Hootkins ((Moby Dick) and Nick Offerman (Lincoln in the Bardo) set the bar for audiobook narration so high that nearly every other narrator is a disappointment. (And, yes, we loved learning that Offerman is an Illini, too.)

To bring this post home, Ron Swanson on art:

Okay, everyone! SHUT UP and LOOK AT ME! Welcome to Visions of Nature. This room has several paintings in it. Some are big; some are small. People did them, and they are here now. I believe that after this is over, they’ll be hung in government buildings. Why the government is involved in an art show is beyond me. I also think it’s pointless for a human to paint scenes of nature when they can just go outside and stand in it. Anyway, please do not misinterpret the fact that I am talking right now as genuine interest in art and attempt to discuss it with me further. End of speech.

From the shelves

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c753c096-14ec-4b0d-b45f-a9268a1ded27Over the winter break, my younger daughter borrowed my copy of the Halperin translation of Michael Bernanos’ wonderfully creepy and unforgettable The Other Side of the Mountain.* Mischa Berlinski’s Fieldwork caught my eye when I refiled it. What a perfect “Read from the shelves” selection: I received the review copy nearly twelve years ago! The book was good as Stephen King’s EW editorial promised, and it fits neatly onto the mental shelf where I recently placed two other novels about anthropology: Euphoria by Lily King (one of the best books I read last year) and The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara (disturbing content but excellently written).

Since my last post, I also finished Upgrade Soul (Ezra Claytan Daniels; 2016), which I borrowed from the library. For those of you who are still resisting graphic works, especially those who enjoy speculative, dystopian, and/or science fiction, this would be a fabulous introduction to the form: deceptively simple art enriches a compelling and original story. Bonus: The protagonists are a vibrant, intelligent couple who have been married forty-five years.

It has been a slow reading month, but many of my bookmarks are in the last quarter of their books, so I hope to add a few more to my list before month’s end. Sure, it would be easy to blame my discovery of Parks and Recreation on Prime Video for the paucity of books read, but I have also been walking more; and my winter break concluded a few days after my last post, so I have returned to work and to music lessons and practice. ASL studies and snow removal have also nibbled on my reading time. Okay, okay. Yeah. I’ve been gleefully enjoying Parks and Recreation episodes — not binge-ing but definitely choosing the series over a book. If you’re a fan, you probably understand. Color me chagrined.

* I recently learned about another translation by Gio Clairval and have added it to my “Want to read” list.

Two weeks

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Before they struck out on their own…

How the time passed:

■ two fledged robins and numerous other juveniles, including cardinals, sparrows, red-bellied woodpeckers, blue jays, and goldfinches;
■ one play (Buried Child at Writers Theatre);
■ two museum adventures: the Field and the Shedd;
■ one documentary (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?);
■ fifteen hours of music practice;
■ one music lesson;
■ one American Red Cross course (Adult and Pediatric First Aid/CPR/AED);
■ four “dates” with the lawnmower, edger, and trimmer;
■ three trips to the car dealership (Bleah!);
■ two hours of volunteer work;
■ two episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale;
■ the first week of my current MOOC (music theory); and
■ six books:

— Macbeth (William Shakespeare; 1606. Drama.)
— Royal City, Vol. 2: Sonic Youth (Jeff Lemire; 2017. Graphic non-fiction.)
— Sorry to Disrupt the Peace (Patty Yumi Cottrell; 2017. Fiction.)
— Macbeth (Hogarth Shakespeare) (Jo Nesbø; 2018. Fiction.)
— Hamlet (William Shakespeare; 1602. Drama.)
— The Lying Game (Ruth Ware; 2017. Fiction.)

As well as all of the even more commonplace activities (e.g., errands, chores, walks, games) that this parttime educator’s summer months comprise. Apart from car shopping and the excessive heat warnings, the season has been quite kind to me, so far. How has your summer been?

Next up: mid-year reading review.