It's Monday, What Are You Reading? #5

FYI I'm hosting a giveaway for Elin Hilderbrand's The Castaway, a summer beach read.

I didn't finish any books since last Monday as I started prepping for the Bloggiesta as soon as I learned of it in the wee hours of Wednesday and have been focused on P. E. D. R. O. ever since. Thats Plan. Edit. Develop. Review. Organize.

Thus my goals for this week are much the same as last week. Thank goodness I still have over a week with the books i started last week before the must go back to the library.

I'd hoped to get some reviews ready to go as part of Bloggiesta but didn't get to that project. So...

I'm Targeting Two reviews to get ready to post:

The Girl With Glass Feet by Ali Shaw

Shadowtag by Louise Erdrich (which I read for Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-Thon April 10)

Both books have gone back to the library and I used to think that meant I had to wait until I could get them back but my experience recently with posting about The Kite Runner more than a year after I held it in my hand has me reconsidering that limitation.

Two Books I've Targeted to Finish:

The girls [text (large print)] / Lori Lansens (a novel by the author of rush home road which I reviewed here) the life story is of a pair of conjoined twins so this was a very strange choice of cover for the large print edition. You can see the regular print editions for Canada and US on Lori Lansens site which I've linked the title too. I've just ordered her latest The Wife's tale from the library but there is a queue.

I was well over a hundred pages in by Tuesday evening last week when I made the wrenching choice to set it aside to work on Bloggiesta projects. When I had spare moments or needed a brief break I picked up Lobdell's book because I knew it would be easier to lay aside again. Not that his story isn't also riveting. Just not quite in the same grab your heart and squeeze way of Lansens' The Girls.





Losing my religion : how I lost my faith reporting on religion in America--and found unexpected peace / William Lobdell

Emergence : labeled autistic and The way I see it : a personal look at autism & Asperger's both memoirs by Temple Grandin. Both had queues since the airing of the HBO drama based on her life a few months ago. But why or why did they both come for me the same week?






I also hope to make significant headway in this 1121 page chunkster which I've had checked out three times in the last year: The hour I first believed [text (large print)] : a novel / Wally Lamb.

Be sure and watch this if you love as I do stories about how writer's work and how they translate the story in their mind to the page or screen.

Then there is a whole slew of books due five days after those five. They are mostly novels so I won't talk about them until next week. But I hope to start spending time with the two NF:

Thank God for evolution! : how the marriage of science and religion will transform your life and our world by Michael Dowd

Come home, America : the rise and fall (and redeeming promise) of our country / William Greider.


And DVDs (as I explained last week):

Since I'm spending at least as much time watching DVD as reading lately and because whether I'm reading or watching a story I'm doing so with the eyes of a writer and story aficionado I'm going to start listing the stories I'm watching as well as the ones I'm reading in these posts. I hope I'm not stepping out of line.

Since last Monday I have watched:

The Changeling A lovely film. And I mean that in the literal sense. Not only was the story enthralling but the visual experience was breathtaking. Clint Eastwood was the director. Who knew. I had no idea he directed let alone he was so artistic. The story was set in the early 20's and the colors on the screen were faded and sepia tinged. It's based on the true story of a woman whose 6 year old son disappears and a corrupt LAPD bungles the search for him then brings her an impostor and makes her out to be a bad mother for refusing to recognize this boy as her own. I highly recommend this one.

The Beach Not so much. A very disturbing story about an unmapped island near Thailand which only a very few know of and know how to get there. Two different groups with different agendas occupy it keeping separate from each other and under an uneasy truce. The group which is the focus of the story is an idealistic commune whose members are unable to come to grips with the evidence that they are not in paradise. They continually refuse to look at the dark side of nature and of human nature and that refusal leaves them wide open for succumbing to their own dark sides in defense of their 'paradise'. The theme was powerful and profound but I've seen it dealt with in more satisfying ways.

Monster-in-law Very very funny! A bride-to-be is harassed by her beaus self-involved, controlling mother who is trying to stop the wedding by gas-lighting her future daughter-in-law. When the bride catches on to what's going on things go from funny to ROFLOL as the tables are turned and the mother can't let on or defend herself without revealing to her son what monstrous things she has done to his love. I had one issue with this: I thought the son was an empty jar. Nothing there. The character wasn't just flat it was insubstantial. He was as ditzy as a valley girl, as clueless as Darren in Bewitched but much less interesting.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin another must see. Set on a Greek island occupied by Italy during WWII it is the story of a love that develops between the Italian Captain and the Doctor's daughter. This was another of those rare times when I chose to watch the movie before reading the book. I try to avoid that but at the time I sent for the DVD I'd just seen a trailer on another DVD and briefly forgot it was also a book.


I must watch by 9AM Tuesday (that's overnight):


Don Juan Demarco

Adam

Push

I must watch by next Monday dawn:

The last five hours of the John Adams HBO mini-series (tho this has a slim chance of renewing for me)

Bones 2 discs 1 & 2

Will be bringing home from the Library tomorrow:

West Wing 2 & 3

Up in the Air (sent for this during the Academy Awards)

I suppose I should start doing reviews of the movies eh? Well, once I get on track with the book reviews I'll consider it.