First, I would like to thank the other lost souls who watch "Six Feet Under" with avid enthusiasm. I don't feel like such a freak any more. I have been paying attention to the writers and directors on the episodes, and find that those directed by Kathy Bates are my favorites. G and I are working our way through the second season now - and can it be true that we'll have to wait a year for the third season to be out in DVD? Oh, say it isn't so. We'll have to slow our pace down somewhat.
The past four weeks have been crazy, hectic - back to school, voter registration, interviewing for a second job in the afternoons (how poor must we be for me to even THINK of doing this?), etc. So my reading has been mainly fluffy junk. Or, Junky fluff. Either way. Finished The Burglar on the Prowl, by Lawrence Block, then read Shoot the Moon, by Billie Letts. If I'd gotten R is for Ricochet, I'd have read it too by now. But I'm number 28 on the library waiting list. So, I read a real book: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, by Dai Sijie. This one has been a real book for so long that soon it will be a movie. How I hope they can do it justice. It's a fantastically visual book, the impulse to put it on film is irresistable. I thought about many of the scenes filmically while I was reading it, there's no way not to. I read the book in one afternoon over the holiday weekend just past - G and I were both wiped out, so we spent the weekend as lazily as possible: reading, napping, going out to eat, avoiding all the tourists at the beaches.
Mara has a short piece on this book in her book journal, Ex Libris, that saves me the time of doing my own. I think we both enjoyed this story for the same reasons - how it illustrates the power of reading, the influence of literature, on the lives touched by its magic. Though Mao banishes intellectuals and literature from his China, sends young scholars to the countryside for "re-education" in an effort to rid their minds of all thoughts save how to survive their daily toil - contraband books surface, are read by lamplight, enjoyed, new worlds envisioned. This is a dear little book that I wanted not to end - alas, it did, all too soon. Give yourself a treat, meet these young men, and their friend, the little Chinese seamstress, as they make their way through an alien world, and a suitcase of banned books.
P.S. - Oh my, I just did some searching and discovered that the film WAS made, in 2002, but apparently never released in this country. It came out in China and France (where Dai Sijie now lives), it seems. I will have to see if it's available here somehow. Does anyone know this?
6 comments:
I as just thinking today that I needed some fluffy reading. I've finished up Mere Christianity, The Time Traveller's Wife and Wicked, and all were just so serious (even though The Time Traveller's Wife was really funny in some places) that I'm craving something light and delicious. The House of Sand and Fog is such a beautiful read, and I'm just getting into it, but there's such a depressing overtone to it that I think it's going to have to go on the wait list. I need cotton candy!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0291032/ is a page at the Internet Movie Database. Check out the forum discussion at the bottom of the page - someone give a link to a site in Canada that sells the DVD in a North American format viewable on your DVD player.
PS that info is re: Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise (2002)
Now you won't think I'm spamming you with internet porn or something ;)
Like you I didn't want BATLCS to end. Short and sweet, indeed.
I'm a big Kinsey Millhone fan and have read the series from letter A. Thanks for reminding me to reserve the book!
That book sounds wonderful.
That book sounds great! I'm currently reading Memoirs of a Geisha. It sounds like a great follow up book to read. Thanks for the heads up! :-) ---Robbie
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