brainsplotch

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...

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...

Way back on December 22, 2022, I wrote a nostalgic post about becoming a full-blown Jimi Hendrix convert via the 1984 compilation, Kiss the Sky . I lamented jettisoning my cassette of the album decades ago. Well, guess what? I found the comp on CD at my local record shop and, after some wavering and hemming and hawing, I bought it. The icing on the cake is that it's what is known in CD collector geekitude as a "target CD," as in the design of the CD surface resembles a target. I can't tell you how exciting it was to pop that CD in my car's disc player and hear that Hendrix collection for the first time in at least 24 years (probably longer than that). It's not as if Kiss the Sky is that earth-shattering--with the exception of the live "I Don't Live Today," I have all of these songs on other albums--but listening to those songs in that order was like taking the Wayback Machine to 1987, when I was playing the hell out of t...

Brace yourselves for another "word vomit" book review. Don't say I didn't warn you. Wolverine Tracks : On the Trail of Memory and Meaning in the Wild is yet another book that crossed my desk at work and looked intriguing enough that I placed a hold for it. My 2026 winning percentage for these "on a whim" books remains perfect. I will cut right to the chase and say I loved this book. At its most basic level, Wolverine Tracks is a chronicle of Dag O. Hessen's quest for a face-to-face encounter with a wolverine. Hessen, a Norwegian biologist, writes about his lifelong relationship with nature and the wild. In 1972, as teenager, he found wolverine tracks while out on a nature expedition with his father. About a decade later, he had a brief face-to-face with an actual wolverine. So, the premise of the book is Hessen trying for one more wolverine sighting. But Wolverine Tracks is so much more than that. While the book reads as a jour...

Berlin Shuffle (Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz). This is another book that passed across my desk at the library and piqued my curiosity. Since I've been interested in German history more in the last five years than any time in my life, I placed a hold on it. This promises to be another of my "word vomit"-type book reviews. I want to get my thoughts down before I forget. Since Berlin Shuffle is a novel, I will avoid spoilers.  Allow me to cut to the chase and declare my enjoyment of this book. Berlin Shuffle , written in 1937, takes place in approximately 1929. At this time, Germany is a country reeling from World War I and the Treaty of Versailles, buried by draconian reparations it can't hope to repay, struggling with inflation and unemployment. So in this setting, we have several characters who for various reasons are beaten down by life in post-Great War Germany. These characters are as follows:  Fundholz is an older man (between 65-70) who is possibly/pr...

Amidst all the horrors taking place in Minneapolis right now--I swear that every week and almost every day the terribleness changes location--I managed to finish reading a book. It was just the sort of book I needed right now. When Winning the Earthquake: How Jeannette Rankin Defied All Odds to Become the First Woman in Congress (by Lorissa Rinehart) crossed my desk at work last month, I was quickly intrigued. I had never heard of Jeannette Rankin. In all the American history classes I took at an undergraduate, I don't recall ever hearing her name. This probably speaks to the way history was taught in the 1980s, and how women's stories were relegated to Women's Studies courses. It's a shame, because Jeannette Rankin was an incredible and inspiring person. I want to share my impressions of the book and of Rankin's life right here on this blog because for one, it's fresh in my mind and secondly, I want anyone reading this blog to seek out this book ei...

Oof, sorry about the buzzkill that was my last blog post. I was not feeling good that day, not that I'm that more upbeat today. I mean, we're still living under the Trump regime. How much happier could I get? I hope there's a day in the future where we can just say, "Wow, what a relief we survived THAT! What the heck was THAT about?! We lost our minds for [??] years." Do we have to live through some of the darkest years in American history in order to emerge into the light and a better future? Or am I delusional. All I know is I can't cave in to despair, particularly when our president is such a buffoon. (On the other hand, his buffoonery could get us into trouble if there aren't any adults in the room to reign in his worst implulses. For example, need I reiterate how batshit crazy this "take over Greenland" nonsense is?). After my lowpoint on Thursday morning, spending far too much time doomscrolling, I had a nice late afternoon and ...

I am sitting on the living room couch after work on Friday evening and I can feel the chill from outside. It's allegedly 19 degrees outside ("feels like 10" according to the weather app on my phone. All I know is it feels frigid, even in the house. I wrote that first paragraph almost two weeks ago and never got back to it. I'm still cold. Looking at social media news posts this morning, I found myself spiraling worse than I have in months. I had to look away for my own sanity. The depression and despair was overwhelming. Never in my life did I, in my wildest imagination, picture the United States lowered to such depths as we watch fascism and authoritarianism envelop us, while also making enemies all over the world. For example, the threats to invade Greenland are insane. We have elected--make that RE-elected, a madman. He is completely out of his mind and nobody in a position of power has the bravery to do anything about it.