Monday, March 26, 2007

Quiet days

I don't have much to say to the world lately. Did you want to know I went to the dentist, or that the cherry tree in our backyard is blooming? That it's raining and I got to stay home this afternoon? I didn't think so.

Almost as uninteresting is what I'm reading: "Catch-22," and "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay." Most people probably assume someone like me read the Chabon book long ago. Sorry, didn't get to it til now. I am so behind. I did manage to read Darcey Steinke's "Suicide Blonde" and most of her latest book "Milk," which is really beautifully written but which is, for some reason, hard for me to stick with.

And I wasted a lot of time over the last couple of months reading bits of stuff I didn't stick with and wasn't that interested in in the first place, including Harold Robbins' "79 Park Avenue," which I picked up mainly for the cover. I just donated it to Community Thrift, though, so if you want to see the cover (very early-60s Pocket Book) you'll have to go down there and snag it.

Finally, in literary news, they're shooting a movie of Richard Yates' fantastic early 60s book "Revolutionary Road," about the co-optation of a high-minded middle-brow young couple who decide to chuck their middle-class life and follow their dream and move to Paris -- but get waylaid along the way. It's a great book and now it is being made into a move with Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, their first pairing since "Titanic."

I don't know why that book isn't as famous as other anti-establishment youth-anthem books of the 60s -- "Little Big Man," "Catch-22," "The Graduate."

1 comment:

Jym said...

=v= I'm always reading books well after they're reviewed (generally when they come out in paperback, but often later). I also usually wait for a movie to get to the Red Vic (which seems to be a week or two before they go to DVD). Always fun to read "late" reviews on them.

My apologies for the lateness of this comment. :-)