The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book is excellent — possibly one of my favorite books I’ve ever read. A rich, deep story about a Chinese farmer rising from a simple man of the land to the head of a great house.
Last week I started reading A Walk In The Woods by Bill Bryson, a travel book that he wrote after hiking (most of) the Appalachain Trail. Bryson’s novel is funny and educational, full of factoids about the natural environment of the Appalachian mountains and human impact in the past few centuries. On page 83 of my edition, he arrives in Franklin, a small town in southwestern North Carolina that was my home for the first 18 years of my life. Closest reference points are Asheville (1.5 hours northwest) and Atlanta (2 1/2 hours south). I thought Bryson’s observations of the town were hilarious, so I’ve quoted him here:
And so we had a little holiday in Franklin, which was small, dull and cautiously unattractive, but mostly dull — the sort of place where you find yourself, for want of anything better to do, strolling out to the lumberyard to watch guys on forklifts shunting wood about. There wasn’t a thing in the way of diversions, nowhere to buy a book or even a magazine that didn’t involve speedboats, customized cars, or guns and ammo. The town was full of hikers like us who had been driven down from the hills and had nothing to do but hang out listlessly in the diner or launderette and two or three times a day make a pilgrimage to the far end of Main Street to stare forlornly at the distant, snow-draped, patently impassable peaks.
There’s only one place in town I can think of where a diner and a laundromat are in the same shopping plaza, so I wonder if the diner is the B&D, an old staple for my family on Sunday mornings after church. I think Bryson’s observations are funny, but to do it justice, I must say that though Franklin is not the most bustling place on earth, it does have some great qualities that include a beautiful landscape and kind people.
It’s so funny to come across mention of a place no one who isn’t from the area has ever heard in such a well-known novel. I guess I will have to start reading more trail books to find out what others think!
Photos from a recent friendvisit.
If you’re wondering what’s been up as of late, I’d direct you to my del.icio.us links, which is where all my fun internet finds have been been saved. My user i.d. is katdowns.
Right now I’m listening to: Hot Hot Heat, Andrew Bird, and Metric.
Movies I liked: Jesus Camp, Blood Diamond. A movie I didn’t like: Because I Said So.
I also really liked the book “I Am Charlotte Simmons” by Tom Wolfe.
I realize that this is not the best picture of the D. But it is worth noting that the bright sunset makes the city seem like a much happier place! - and it gives an idea of the magnitude of my view from the hotel, which is at General Motors.
Detroit has done right by me thus far, and sometime soon I plan on riding the People Mover to Greektown. Until then, an update on the reading situation.
Between Friday and today I finished Running with Scissors, finally finishing A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which took me a ridiculous amount of time to read because… it was horrible.
I guess it’s one of those love it or hate it things, and I knew after 25 pages that I didn’t love it and was determined to finish it anyway. And I did, and there were a couple of bright spots (like a quote I was going to include in this post, but alas, my book is in DC), but mostly it was a twisty, turny, plotless rant by Eggers. Which, oddly enough, was exactly what it was supposed to be, and no doubt what attracts many of its fans. Unfortunately, I’m not one. Inquire further if you’re interested.
And after Friday’s post I went out and bought Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs and I thought it was fascinating. Not the best book I’ve ever read, but a quick read because it’s honest, if a little disturbing. Both of these books are memoirs of types, and both take a candid look at the author’s past. But Running With Scissors maintains a much more understandable storyline and better anecdotes and self-analysis.
And now I’ve moved on to Marie Antoinette, which I want to read because the movie is coming out and after I saw a preview I started reading Wikipedia about her and spent most of Friday morning doing that. So we’ll see how long that one takes me.
Really cool multimedia site built for the upcoming film Running with Scissors.
I love the design, interactivity, and use of text, video, and photos. It’s engaging and easy to use, and it gives the user a lot of information. The scrapbook idea has been done before, but here it is done very, very well- and the interactivity adds an extra element to it that makes you feel like the story is alive, and fun. It’s kooky, like the story.
I was interested in this movie and the book because I was listening to an NPR interview with Margaret Robison, aka Deirdre Burroughs, Augusten Burroughs’ mother. Augusten renamed himself from Chris Robison to Augusten Burroughs at 18. Augusten wrote the book about his life and portrayed his mother as a bi-polar fame-obsessed poet (I haven’t read the book yet, I’m just repeating what I’ve heard). Her friends were upset by the way she was portrayed. Her last quote in the interview was, “This book, it is part of [Chris's] life. It’s not a part of my life.”
A pretty good attitude, I think.
Imagine a bunch of guys sitting around in a circle thinking of the best ways to bring down the biggest cities in the U.S.
Writer Brad Meltzer was invited to be one of those guys.. a guy who brainstorms “out of the box” ideas for the government so they can get prepared for it before the terrorists can even come up with it. Meltzer’s newest creation, “The Book of Fate”, was featured on All Things Considered. The book was inspired by George Bush and follows the life of a former president. I haven’t read it (yet), but apparently it is filled with hundreds of tiny, detailed references. Meltzer also wrote the Millionaires, a book about money laundering. This guy is a creative genius. So, the gov called him up to asked him to be in a focus group. In the interview, he talks about how he sat in a room cooking up ideas with chemists and engineers. It’s absolutely wild. Then at the end he talks about how it’s kind of creepy, but that he’s slightly comforted by the fact that the US government is using all its resources to fight terrorism. I’d like to see a movie about one of these focus groups.. maybe it could have some flash forwards or inset sequences with imagery of what they’re planning. It could be really scary/creepy/inappropriate. But maybe in 50 years when, we hope, terrorism is no longer the threat it is today.
Today Random House and James Frey, the author of A Million Little Pieces, reached a settlement in the suit that was brought against them by readers who claimed they were “defrauded” because Frey’s book was labeled as a memoir, and it turns out that not everything in the book was true. Apparently, Frey was so cracked out he doesn’t remember huge chunks of what happened and dramatized a lot of things that weren’t that exciting. The most interesting part of the story is that the publisher is going to give a refund to everyone who wants their money back for the book.
An excerpt from an article by the Washington Post:
To receive refunds _ $23.95 for the hardcover, $14.95 for paperback _ consumers will have to submit a receipt or some other proof of purchase: for the hardcover, page 163; for the paperback, the front cover. They will also need to sign a sworn statement that they bought the book because they believed it was a memoir.
You actually have to rip out the pages/cover to send in for your refund.
I’ve come to a crossroads in life that I think most people hit right about this time. Being 22, jobless, and working for free is a very humbling experience that makes you wonder just how much your college education was worth. Thirty resumes later I’m thinking it must be something in my cover letter. But really, life doesn’t get as bad as when you’re working at the mall and a customer tells you that there is poop in the dressing room. Yes, someone wiped their butt on the cloth curtain, and there are two giant smears of brown poop stinking up the stall. My boss thinks it’s chocolate, but my co-workers have taken my side. They, who have seen customers with blue shorts and orange shoes pull down their pants and pee indiscriminately on the floor of the stall, and when confronted, simply laugh. But I do have some sweet things going on, which act to counterbalance if not outweigh all the craziness. I have a sweet internship for which I get paid a generous $5 a day, the people are great and my brain has swelled to four times its normal size due to excessive information influx. I live in a bug-free apartment near a metro stop that brings me closer to my big-city dreams. And, on Saturday, I found $100. That’s 20 days of work at USA TODAY, and two days of folding t-shirts. I think I’m going to quit both jobs and start just looking around for money-I might make more.
Just Finished: The Birth of Venus, by Sarah Dunant (Loved it!*****)
Currently Reading: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers