brainsplotch

I don't have another book to write about...yet, so allow me to discuss a movie I watched last night, Mile End Kicks . The year is 2011 and the setting is the hip Mile End area of Montreal, which I must admit I knew nothing about until recently. Nor did I know that, at this time, Montreal had a thriving indie rock scene. (And I call myself a music fan?). 22-year-old music critic Grace (played wonderfully by Barbie Ferrera, formerly of Euphoria ) leaves her  job at Toronto's fictional Merch magazine for Montreal, where she plans on writing a book about Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill in the 33 1/3 book series. Grace arrives at her rented room (acquired through Craigslist) only to hear her new housemates having loud sex in the other room. Shortly afterwards, a slightly embarrassed Madeleine and her decidedly less embarrassed boyfriend (and third housemate) Hugo introduce themselves. Both are native French speaking Quebecois. Madeleine is friendly, but Hugo...

Here is another "verbal vomit book review," this time for The Book of Mother by Violaine Huisman. Though I didn't LOVE The Monuments of Paris , I liked it enough that I thought I should definitely go back in time and read Huisman's first book in her series of books exploring her family (she has a second book, The Rose Desert , that I'm not sure has been translated to English. I can guarantee you my French is way way way too rusty and awful to read it in French). So let me dig right in. Violaine's mother Catherine Cremnitz was a complicated and mercurial woman. Born in humble circumstances, dealt with plenty of shit as a girl and young woman (I'll force you to read the book to find out), and had one brief and unsuccessful marriage before being almost literally swept off her feet by Violaine's father, (named "Antoine" in the book, but actually Denis Huisman).  The first third of the book is Violaine describing life with her mother....

I was a bit worried that my "hey, that book that crossed my desk looks interesting, I will read it" strategy would finally fail when I was about halfway through The Monuments of Paris by Violaine Huisman. Huisman's book is a semi-fictional exploration of her flamboyant father, Denis Huisman, and her grandfather, Georges Huisman. I wasn't finding her family nearly interesting enough to hold my attention despite all the book's Parisian references. But then the focus switched to Violaine's grandfather and I was all in. The narrative picked up speed, as Violaine told the story of Georges' exile and underground existence during World War II.  Georges Huisman came from humble background and rose to prominence in France's Department of Fine Arts prior to the war (and founder of the Cannes Film Festival). But as a Jew, he was forced to flee the country in a saga that could have come straight out of the movie Casablanca . But that's not all: he...

My strategy and/or streak (of reading books that pass my desk and look promising) continues to pay dividends. I have to admit that the striking cover shot of two long and shapely legs is what initially grabbed me. The cover of Gwendoline Riley's The Palm House would lead one to believe the novel is a steamy erotic potboiler. As it turns out, there is little sex in the book and what sex there is decidedly unglamorous. The Palm House is centered on 40-something Laura Miller, a magazine editor trying to make it in contemporary London. Along the way, we meet various people in her orbit, most notably: Edmund, a 50-something friend and co-worker; Laura's somewhat prickly mother; and Lawrence Wells, an eccentric stage actor with whom Laura has a brief fling, (though it doesn't seem she enjoys any of it).  In the most compelling section of the novel, we flash back to a teenage Laura living near Liverpool. She develops an infatuation with a laddish stand-up comedian f...

A beneficial aspect of my library job is that I see a lot of new items cross my desk before they are cataloged, processed, and sent out into circulation. When Sara Maurer's novel A Good Animal found its way into my work space, and I saw the setting was Sault Ste. Marie (MI), I knew I had to place a hold on it. Now, here is where the danger comes in. Sometimes library holds are fulfilled at inopportune times, or the initial enthusiasm you had for the book has dulled. When my turn came, I was already reading a book that I didn't want to put down ( Beeswing by Richard Thompson). I checked out A   Good Animal , a 7-day loan, and it languished on dining room table for a week. When the due date arrived, I seriously considering taking the loss and returning the book without even cracking it open. I hate doing that. Having finally finished Beeswing, I decided to ignore the overdue notice and give A   Good Animal a shot. If it didn't grab me after the first ten page...

In honor of the beginning of baseball season, and marking the 50th anniversary of my baseball fandom, it's time for me to finally write a post that I've been thinking of writing for a few years. I've avoided it all this time due to a level of embarrassment I've had about the subject. In 1976, when I was eight years old, I created an imaginary baseball team called the Deto Bobcats. (Deto pronounced "DEE-to"). I imagined Deto as an imaginary city, and it's name was inspired by Detroit, the city I lived in between 1973 and 1979. I probably don't need to explain that "Bobcats" was a feline spinoff of "Tigers." In the Bobcats' earliest incarnation, the "team" (i.e., ME, with a whiffle ball and plastic bat) played its games in my backyard. The way our backyard was configured, it loosely resembled a tiny baseball field. The "homeplate" area was a strip of lawn that was bordered on the left by a concrete walking path...