January 18, 2011

  • Currently

    Reading:

    • Reason For God, Timothy Keller
    • The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins
    • Things I've Learned from Women Who Dumped Me, edited by Ben Karlin
    • American on Purpose, Craig Ferguson
    • Faith of Scientists, edited by Nancy Frankenberry
    • Songbook, Nick Hornby
    • Proust was a Neuroscientist, Jonah Lehrer

    One of the best things about not working is the massive amounts of reading I get to do.  This is the current crop of books from the library.  I recently finished reading some terrible books but the best of the last crop of books was How We Decide. Absolutely LOVED it.  Just my favorite type of book of late -- non fiction that reads quickly but gives me interesting nuggets of information.  I love the library.

    Listening to:

    • Sara Watkins, Sara Watkins
    • Why Should the Fire Die, Nickel Creek
    • B-sides and Rarities, Cake
    • Best of Patsy Cline, Patsy Cline
    • First Impressions of the Earth, the Strokes
    • The Best of Elvis Costello, Elvis Costello

    Music makes me happy. I forgot how much I love the Strokes until this past week.  There's something about the throaty quality of the lead singer's voice that just gets me.  love it. 

     

    Watching:

    • Community
    • True Grit
    • Say Yes to the Dress

    Lately caught up via DVD and internet Community. I am mad at myself for not sticking through the terrible pilot to watch the awesomeness that is Community. There's a character on the show that relates the world he sees through tv tropes and sometimes I feel like people in the real world also try to reduce life to tidy motivations and problems. I'm so glad I watched True Grit, I can't decide what other movies I should watch. I bought 4 discount passes before I quit, so I get 4 movies in the theater.  What should I watch?  Something light on substance but heavy on visual effects? Something that will move me?  Green Lantern? Kings Speech?  The Fighter? what needs to be watched in the theater?  And finally my guilty pleasure, Say Yes to the Dress.  It's this horrible embodiment of materialism and marketing and I can't turn away.  It's so utterly fascinating watching these unattractive dresses being bought into as part of the "dream" and the jealousies and drama that are part of that.  Someone pass the popcorn.

     

     

Comments (2)

  • The Fighter is a good movie.

  • I LOVE Community. I feel like they were really hurt by their advertising, because I had originally perceived it to be about some crazy-cool ex-lawyer that goes back to Community College, like Ferris Buehler or something. I guess it's hard to sell the quirky, nerdy humor of the show in a sound byte, but it's almost the exact opposite of what I expected (in a wonderful way).

    I was recently bemoaning the end of the Office (at least as we know it), with Steve Carell's leaving. But recently I found that I look more forward to Community than the Office when I'm digging through my Thursday night DVR hits (I pretty much have cable only for Thursday night DVR).

    I'm curious to hear what you think about Songbook. I just love the idea of it. For a few months I was participating in a writing group with a couple of our mutual friends from law school. One of my writing assignments was to do what was essentially a Songbook essay. It was really neat hearing everyone's different perspectives, particularly because we each seemed to value different things about music. As an added surprise West, who's always a superstar in everything he does, actually stitched together printed copies of the various essays into a cute CD-book, complete with a burnt CD of all of the songs. I really hate that I've misplaced my copy, now that I think of it. . .

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