Stuff I've Been Reading...

In a change of pace from my overly syllabic reviews and rants let me bend your ear to books I've been reading or at least trying to read between all the game playing, website building and movie watching. These past couple of months have bore the fruit of quite the interesting couple of books and dvds. Some of the literature are education-oriented and books most of you have probably read in the sixth grade, but others really surprised me given the medium of being graphic novels.

After The Jump [Awesome Reads, Watches and Team Coco's most expensive sketch is certainly not in this posting]

Most recently was Allison Bechdel's "Fun Home", a 'tragicomic' biographic tale dealing with her dad's death. It is very odd and in some ways completely relatible. A very quick and easy read. It is super-rare that I am emotionally moved reading anything, let alone a graphic novel. After reading "Fun Home" I couldn't possibly imagine this story being anywhere near this poignant in 'plain-ole text'. True its used for women studies' classes in college, but I'd be interesting to see how text like this would be adapted to a high school curiculum.

Though I have absorbed very little from style books and more often then not exhibit any of the basics covered within their pages. I write with the passive voice and use confusing wordy sentences, accompanied with some of the worst punctuation this side of a Christopher Walken book. Bill Walsh, of the Washington Post, is funny and makes writing and reading a taxing joy. I am sure many English majors and journalists will get a ton of pleasure seeing his many nitpicks and gripes with the "AP Stylebook" and Strunk's "Elements of Style". If you like writing and if you love ripping your own writing apart I whole heartedly suggest picking this one up. On Deck: Walsh's "Elephants of Style".

A friend loaned the original Wolverine graphic novel to me a few months back and I had a review longer than any taskbar ever created [maybe one day I'll dig it up]. Since then I have had a second look at Claremont and Miller classic and it really sunk in this time. Sometimes with movies, books and just about any form of art it takes me a while to see 'why it's good'. There is something so simple and straight-forward in Miller's epic that it saddens me to see the crap the man has produced in the last ten years. I love the Sin City series, but here with Wolverine is where you see a graphic novel [mind you this was printed in the 80's] become more than the medium it has been broadly painted. On Deck: Locke & Key, The Killing Joke, Preacher and Casanova. Note: I would have said Walking Dead, but I face a serious dilemma seeing as no more trades are being released [I know...I'm part of the problem].

If you haven't seen a little movie called, Nothing But The Truth I could not recommend it more. Though I am not that huge a fan of Kate Beckinsale; I do have a sparked interest in political thrillers as a result of this movie. Of course Vera Farmiga is great, she can do anything, but Alan Alda and Matt Dillion do such a convincing job that I am sad I didn't see this in the theater. Check this out if you liked: Breach, Michael Clayton and Kramer vs. Kramer.

My friend told me to 'not' recommend this, but I am doing it anyway. When the news came out that Brittany Murphy died it was days after I had watched Ramen Girl. Like most of Murphy's most recent movies, they were a means to an end. It looked like Murphy wanted to go one way and Hollywood wanted her to go another. As a compromise Murphy co-produced and took on the role of Abby, a girl who just broke up with her boyfriend and recently moved to Japan with open options. She trained to be a master ramen chef, which is a difficult task in real-life to attain. The movie has its faults, two being the laughable direction and love story. But its really charming and worth a watch to see this 'Karate Kid of Ramen' flick. Though Murphy is great, the scene stealer is the man standing next her in the image above, Toshiyuki Nishida.

Last, but not least, its been really great seeing Conan go out in a blaze of glory over at NBC. When I heard that there was a sketch in which Conan intentionally spent 1.5 million dollars just so NBC would have to pay it, I immediately went to NBC.com...then subsequently Hulu, but alas it turns out it really is crazy expensive to reair this sketch. So I have no idea how you will be able to see it. Nope, no idea whatsoever and even if I did know I certainly would not put it as a link in a blog posting.

Comments

[john]

if i had the amount of money conan blew on that sketch, i would buy vera farmiga. greatest living thing ever invented.