Monday Malarkey

Recent arrivals (top to bottom):

• How to Read Poetry Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster
• The Braindead Megaphone by George Saunders
• All Over Creation by Ruth Ozeki
• Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Beach by Alex Garland
• Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead
• Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country by Louise Erdrich
• The New Policeman by Kate Thompson
• The First of July by Elizabeth Speller
• An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim
• The Assault on Intelligence by Michael V. Hayden
• As Bright as Heaven by Susan Meissner
• The Book of V. by Anna Solomon

Told you that last stack was a big one. Not pictured is a slim book called Color Theory (I think from the Walter Foster art series) and I can't remember whether the book and kit I bought on air dry clay projects came with this batch or the other. If I didn't mention them, now I have. 

I almost forgot that I had this one last stack and was on the verge of posting a cat photo because it has now been something like 38 days since I made my final book purchase. Seems likely that random photos will end up at the top of my Malarkey posts, soon, although one of my pre-orders has shipped so that should be here by the next Malarkey. 

Books finished since last Malarkey: 

• The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
• The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
• Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy

Ugh, only 3 books in 2 weeks. But, they were all so good and two were (modern) classics, so . . . that's cool. I particularly enjoyed The Outsiders and feel a little shocked that it took me so long to get around to reading it. I tried to find the movie for free streaming online with no luck. I've got kind of a personal limit to paying for streaming a movie and if the cost goes over that limit and the DVD is reasonable, I just buy a copy. If not, I wait till it streams at a reasonable price or for free. The DVD was available at a reasonable price and has already arrived. I'm hoping to watch it soon. I got to view bits and pieces of The Outsiders on YouTube (don't let them fool you; a bunch of videos say they're the complete movie but none of them actually are) and I was excited to find that what little I saw was pretty faithful to the novel.

Currently reading:

• Milkman by Anna Burns
• A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler

As expected, I ended up finishing the second book of short stories (Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It) rather than the one I've had in progress for nearly a month, but after closing it I decided I need to focus on A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain rather than adding another short story collection to the mix. So, hopefully, I'll have A Good Scent finished by my next Malarkey post. Milkman is dense, so it's going to take me a while to finish. It's fascinating, mesmerizing, humorous, shocking, and exhausting: a stream-of-consciousness from the mind of a teenager during the time of "The Troubles" in Ireland.  The man known as "The Milkman" is a sinister presence and not knowing what he's up to makes the pages fly . . . for a while, and then I have to take a break. I think the lack of chapter breaks and pages that sometimes have no paragraph break at all is what wears me out a little, but there's also an intensity to the story that makes me feel like I need to stop to breathe. 

Posts since last Malarkey:

• CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders (book review)
• Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries #3) by Martha Wells (book review)
• Fiona Friday - Waking up slowly (cat photo)
• Bobcat and Other Stories by Rebecca Lee (book review)
• Shockwave (Pick Your Fate #2) by Jack Heath (book review)
• Fiona Friday (cat photo)

In other news:

I finished watching Stargirl, Season 1! I've still got a week till Eldest son's HBOMax disappears so I'm trying to watch The Flight Attendant but it is not Husband's thing (he's OK with superhero action but not violence or bloody scenes, in general) so I keep having to turn it off when he enters the room. 

We watched Soul, this weekend, and wow . . . what an interesting movie. I don't even know how I feel about it. I liked the general weirdness and the visuals but it was so unexpected! And, I watched a favorite from the Hallmark Channel, The Edge of the Garden. I've probably mentioned it here, before. It's about a man who buys a cottage in Maine that's been uninhabited for decades and hears voices and keeps seeing flashes of someone walking behind him or an image in the window. The, he discovers that he can talk to a woman who is living in 1960 when she shows up in the garden. But, can he save her from her deadly fate? I love movies with a "communicating across time" aspect. 

I also watched Crazy Rich Asians. Husband watched Soul with me, but nothing else I watched interested him. He only sporadically viewed an episode of Stargirl. 

In non-TV news, my friend Susan told me about the 100 Day Project, in which one attempts to do something artistic every day for 100 days in a row. My reading has already suffered a little because I'd rather do art than just about anything else, at this moment in time, but I immediately printed out a 100-day tracker and got started. I only manage to do a tiny bit per day (painting one side of a pinch pot, for example) some days, but it has buried me even more deeply in thoughts about All Things Art and I am loving the challenge. 

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