reading wednesday

[boxofdelights]

• What are you reading?

Listening to La Belle Sauvage, by Philip Pullman, read by Michael Sheen. So good!

• What did you recently finish reading?

Becoming, by Michelle Obama. She is awesome and so is her husband, but I like him less after reading about his marriage proposal. He takes her out to a nice restaurant, provokes her to argue with him about whether they should get married, then, at dessert, has the waiter bring the ring. Also he has already asked her mother and brother's consent. What a way to say, "You can talk all you want, but it doesn't make any difference; I decide what you get and when you get it."

But some people think that sort of thing is romantic. Maybe I'm misinterpreting? No.

He was smiling. He'd completely surprised me. In a way, we'd both won. "Well," he said lightly, "that should shut you up."

• What do you think you’ll read next?

Milkman, by Anna Burnsm for library book group, and Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, for classics book group.

• What are you watching?

Us, which was beautiful to watch, but doesn't hold together to think about.
The Man in the White Suit, on Kanopy. Sovay talks about it here: https://sovay.dreamwidth.org/334669.html
A Simple Plan, also on Kanopy.

Comments

[malkingrey]

Other people's marriage proposals, like other people's weddings and other people's funerals, always have a tendency to appear deeply weird and/or off-putting to outside observers. (The closed-versus-open casket arguments, the reception-with-a-dj-and-an-open-bar people versus the cake-and-punch-in-the-church-hall people, and so on.)

[boxofdelights]

That is a good way to think about it.

[scioscribe]

I loved Us until it started raising worldbuilding questions that I had trouble ignoring--it was great as horror, but its science-fictional turn (when it gets into things like actual underground housing, etc.) left me cold too.

And hey, A Simple Plan! That's one of my all-time favorite crime movies.

[boxofdelights]

Yes, that -- if they were just imitating actions, without responding to their actual environment, how could they actually get enough to eat?

I am reluctant to watch tragedies, but A Simple Plan was worth it.

[hobbitbabe]

My father loved A Man in a White Suit, but all I remember from the time I watched it with him was the background music that sounded like things boiling in flasks.

[bibliofile]

I loved Invisible Man when I read it in high school.

re: Barack Obama
Well, clearly I'm not Michelle Obama, because that would've been a fail. It seems to have worked out okay for them, though.