brainsplotch

I haven't written anything here since late August, right after the Brandi Carlile show, and that's pretty bad.  A. and L. arrived here from Germany in the beginning of September, so that has been where most of my attention has been. They will be heading back in a few days, so life will return to mundane normality. I finished reading Flowers For Algernon on September 15. It was a book I'd wanted to read for decades--having read the original Daniel Keyes short story (or maybe an edited version of the short story?) in 9th or 10th grade. It was much more "PG-13" rated than the rather anodyne version we read in school. When the experimental procedure finally shows results and Charlie Gordon gets smart, he spends a lot of time thinking about sex, eventually having sex, and binge drinking. (Though, in fairness, he also does plenty of "smart person" stuff, like composing a symphony on piano and researching how long his super-intelligence will last). The novel...

It's been three days since we saw Brandi Carlile at Meadow Brook Amphitheater and I had better get my thoughts down before I forget. This was our 11th Brandi show. (I mistakenly gave us credit for seeing her for the first time in 2009, when in fact it was 2010). So we've now seen her in three different states (Michigan, Illinois, and Colorado) and two different countries (the U.S, of course, and the U.K.). In January, L. will see her in THREE countries, when she attends the Girls Just Wanna festival in Mexico with a friend. She'll also be one up on me in total Brandi shows. That's a hard pill to swallow, but I'll survive. At this point, need I say that Brandi was amazing yet again? I have never seen her put on a show that was anything less than jaw-dropping. To think that I was at best skeptically curious when L. said in 2010, "I like this singer Brandi Carlile and want to see her in concert." From the moment Brandi opened her mouth and sang her first note...

[I wrote this on Facebook and Instagram. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I publish it here in slightly edited form]. Book # 20 of 2026 is a wrap:  Waiting on a Friend by Natalie Adler. First off, this has been the most fruitful reading year I have had in an extremely long time. I don't have a great explanation for it, other than I've tried to be more open and adventurous in my book choices, and this strategy has paid off. Waiting on a Friend is another book that crossed my desk at work and it looked intriguing enough to   take a chance on it and place a hold. However, as it sometimes goes with this, when it was my turn, I was already knee-deep in another book. I didn't get to Waiting on a Friend until three days before the due date. Thanfully, the novel grabbed me right away and I returned it "only" three days late. The book takes place in NYC in 1984. Our narrator is Renata, a (self-described) queer 29-year-old vintage clothing store employee who,...

Superstars is yet another, "Hey, that looks interesting--let me put a hold on it!" book. It came across my desk at work and I can only assume the description on the back grabbed me right away: "First published in 2000, Superstars is a cult classic: a blistering but tender, sexed-up, drugged-out fictionalization of lesbian life in the '90s Paris techno scene." I mean, how is that NOT gonna pique my curiosity? Superstars , as the blurb indicates, was originally published in French back in the year 2000. It was not translated into English until this year. I had never heard of it until it hit my desk waiting to be catalogued. The author, Ann Scott (a pen name) has had quite an interesting life. Born in 1965,  her father was Russian and her mother was French. As a young teenager, she lived for a while in England, where she became interested in the burgeoning punk scene. She played drums in a band, and she also modeled for a spell. Then she became a write...

After reading Gwendoline Riley's The Palm House and finishing it on May 6, I returned to Riley in the final week of last month and finished her book My Phantoms on June 30. As much as I enjoyed The Palm House , I liked My Phantoms even more. It's hard to neatly describe why I find Riley's books so enjoyable and compulsively readable. There is very little action or plot twists--not that any of that matters much to me. It comes down to the sharply drawn characters and Riley's ability to notice and artfully describe the small details of ordinary life. My Phantoms is narrated by Bridget "Bridge" Grant, a 40-something academic living in London with her partner, John. Bridget's parents, Lee and Helen (aka "Hen") divorced when Bridget was two years old. Bridget has an older sister, Michelle. Early in the book, Bridget describes her and Michelle's awkward court-mandated visits with her father. Lee frequently picks on and bullies the gir...

We just got back to our motel after watching a mid-week matinee of the movie Disclosure Day at the Harbor Springs Lyric Theater. It felt fun to be the youngest people at the theater, though the ticket seller/concession woman asked us if we wanted adult OR senior tickets, so maybe we don't look as young and vivacious as I may have felt. We went to the movie--while on vacation--because the weather forecast called for lousy weather, so I felt vindicated with our decision when we stepped out of the theater at 7 PM to see it slate grey and pouring. As for our motel, the OTIS. I can't decide if referring to it as merely a "motel" is selling it short. It's arranged like a motel in that it's all on one level and the doors of the units open to the outside. However, it has a stylishly decorated common area with a bar, restaurant, cafe offering various espresso drinks, and mid-century modern decor. Jenna Bush-Hager stayed here on a book tour, so that has to lend it som...