A Single Man

5 out of 5

I love how the concept of fear in media and current events has such a relevant impact on each decade and generation. It reminds me that whatever the situation, whatever the threat, it is only the current one that is the worst.

I was watching this movie and thinking to myself that the air of sadness was too strong for me to love it, truly. I had the thought that sad things are sometimes perfect in their sadness and moments later the line 'Sometimes awful things have their own kind of beauty' came up on the screen.

I am a sucker for this kind of British-influenced look at the late 50s and early 60s where a spotlight is shined on the unhappy housewife and overlooked homosexual. A Single Man is intriguing visually, not only in light of my propensity toward the genre, but the hue changes from dull to vivid each time the main character sees something he finds beautiful. I find the meaning to be that he couldn't see the beauty until the day he decided to kill himself and leave the world that is of equal parts beauty and pain.

Julianne Moore's eyeliner, college students smoking in class, chronic cocktail hour, and my least favorite era of architecture.

'I realize that everything is exactly the way it is meant to be.'

I loved it and I'll never watch it again.

Under the Dome, Stephen King

3.5 out of 5

Under the Dome is a harsh book, to say the least. It wasn't the imagery that was startling so much as the increasingly downtrodden theme of the story itself. It shouldn't have surprised me like it did, it is, after all, an apocalyptic tale. There was just such little peace to be found.

My interest lies in the recreating of society after massive catastrophe. Under the Dome described a thousand pages of societal collapse without any justification at the end. It felt like a downward slide into devastation.

I'm not usually a big Stephen King fan; I grow impatient with his slow, deliberate, descriptive pacing at times, but how could I resist such a stylized story in my particular genre of interest?

It wasn't all gloom and doom. If you avoid the rape scenes completely (yuck), the characters had wonderful depth and many aspects of a modern-day community ostensibly cut off from society caught me off guard. Shocking to see how a small town could decay is such a short period of time: political manipulation, mass hysteria, environmental impacts all piled up on the expected questions of fuel, food and water resources.

~~~

I'm sure I say this after ever book, but certain portions spoke to me. You find what you look for.

There was a character struggling with chronic back pain, dependent on medication. In one paragraph she mused over the mind-body connection of addiction: 'I think that when it comes to drugs, the body and the mind are co-conspirators. If the brain wants drugs, the body helps out. It says, "Don't worry, don't feel guilty, it's okay, I really hurt."'

In the months since I've read Under the Dome, that idea has really resonated with me.

SIERRA CLUB Guide to Close Up Photography in Nature, Tim Fitzharris

3 out of 5


This book is hard to review because it is way over my head in terms of photography knowledge.

The pictures are beautiful. The information on nature was harsh, being from the point of view of The Sierra Club, after all.

I am concerned with the environment, but sometimes it's nice to just enjoy nature without considering all the travesty that goes with it.

I will have to pick this book up again after educating myself on my camera. :)

20th Century Ghosts, Joe Hill.

3.5 out of 5

Contrary to the title of this book, it's very light on ghost stories. Out of the 16 stories, including the hidden one in the Acknowledgments, only three were about ghosts.

The book was interesting and although I struggle to find contentment with short stories, as I've mentioned before, I enjoyed them and wanted to know more. Joe Hill is particularly good at adding insult to injury for me by ending some of the tales rather abruptly and in an odd manner.

Also, his writing style reminded me a lot of Neil Gamon; main characters of young boys, frightening father figures, sexual honesty that I can't relate to, and an air of creepiness that leaves me grateful that I am only reading about such situations.

I really enjoyed the story Pop Art even though it had such a strong vein of sadness. As with many of the titles, Pop Art is a sneaky, misleading title. At least three of the stories involved baseball. which I always enjoy. There were tales of supposition of Bram Stoker's sons, the manager of a major league baseball team, and even the filming of a George Romero movie. The mention of Lovecraft caught my attention early on in the book and easy comparisons could be made.

My favorites where Pop Art, 20th Century Ghost, The Cape, Voluntary Committal, and Scheherazade's Typewriter. All in all, the book had interesting characters with intelligent writing squeezed into brief packets of ghastliness.

I'm not sure I can give this book the rating it deserves since I find myself so irritated with short stories. :(

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

3.5 out of 5

This is a cute young adult fantasy story. I was familiar with the tale, but hadn't ever read it, so I was surprised to find that A Wrinkle in Time is just the first book in L'Engle's time quintet.

The book introduced the idea of time travel via the fifth dimension of tesseract. Familiar with the string theory and the concept of time and space as a big sheet that can you simply bring two points together (a straight line between two points not being the quickest route), this was the first I had heard of a geometric explanation for it.

Beyond the theme of light versus dark, there was also the subject of global (and in this case galaxial) responsibility. In addition to the scientific concepts and ominous tasks, the story had a lot of levity. Silly and flamboyant characters who spoke only in quotes, mythical creatures, and two dimensional worlds.

The only reason I have scored this book so low is that the review is based on how I felt, not necessarily the merits of the work. I found myself getting impatient, like I do with young adult works and fantasy.

~~~

Isn't it funny how you find just what you're looking for, no matter where you look? I'm highly interested in quantum mechanics as an explanation of faith. This book reminded me of conversations I have had in my own life with topics like existence and limited human understanding; accepting that things exist without understanding them.

'...there's very little difference in the size of the tiniest microbe and the greatest galaxy.'
- Mrs. Whatsit, the comforter.