May

Wisdom tooth extraction makes for a lot of time for watching movies & reading.

1. The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis
• This had me in tears by the end and tearing through the pages throughout the entire novel.
• I feel like it deserves a re-read, just to consider all the different messages you could get reading this novel. Incredibly well done, especially the switching between different POVs, with each character being fully fleshed out and developing throughout the story.
2. The Goat by Anne Fleming
• The Goat gambols along as Fleming plays with words (e.g. Kid the kid, but not a goat kid, Cat the dog, short for Catherine the Great) and drives the search for the goat into a journey to overcome each person's weakness.
3. The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
• That was intense! I thought for a while Steven was going to kill Anna.
• I have questions:
• But why were both families so stilted and awkward?
• General anaesthesia (at beginning of movie) & numbing? There's definitely a connection there - I thought they might turn it into something later in the movie, but it never hit Anna - but I'm not entirely sure what? Unless it's meant to represent the affective numbness displayed by the family in general?
4. Et au pire, on se mariera (2017)
• Oh my. That was not where I thought it was going. At all.
• I was just reading the other day about the rise in popularity of the unreliable narrator, and now this comes my way. (See this article on the unreliable narrator in YA lit. I don't remember where I saw the other one.) You come away from this wondering whether this will finally shake Aicha from acting out in anger without thinking through the consequences first, but it didn't strike me as particularly optimistic. You kind of question throughout why Baz lets Aicha into his life the way he did, whether there was anything that could have been done differently on everyone's parts, not knowing exactly which parts are true and free of Aicha's bias.
• I'm reminded of the sentiment that if you're not going to keep it, don't be kind to a stray because it only fuels their hopes. Just as Baz fed the stray cat, it was as though he didn't know where to draw the line with Aicha.
5. La Chasse au Collet (2016)
• I'd argue that just because those in the company don't necessarily agree with the product they're selling (i.e. the site for unfaithful partners, something akin to Ashley Madison except launched in Quebec (?) for the French-speaking population), doesn't mean they can't be held to some kind of moral integrity for what they choose to stand for, in the sense that they could in theory have chosen to simply shut down rather than swallow this bullet: it's a a matter of what they deem acceptable or not, so I don't believe they're as free from culpability as they try to claim they are.That being said... perhaps it's a bit strong to condemn them as strongly as though they were staunch supporters of infidelity rather than unfortunate messengers.
• I wonder if the red rope is also a symbol for marriage/relationships?
6. Yuri on Ice (2016)
• BEAUTIFUL.
7. The Little Book of Lykke: The Danish Search for the World's Happiest People by Meik Wiking
• I'm not sure how many of these suggestions I'd be able to implement in my neighbourhood, but they certainly sound inspiring!
• I love the design of the book - ditto for the hygge book - from the size to the graphics and the colour scheme to the text. The content is also a lot more substantial than you might at first imagine, considering it's such a little book.
• I think Wiking is onto something when he says that maybe we complain or are negative because it makes us look smarter: I certainly err in this regard whenever I review basically anything. I always look for some kind of flaw before gushing about it, as though to make a point that I'm looking at this critically and not superficially.
8. Squid Empire: The Rise and Fall of the Cephalopods by Danna Staaf
• So excited to see this! Especially after that little stint reading as much as I could get my hands on about (modern) cephalopods. I love the way Staaf writes, and I appreciate the (albeit small) list of recommended reads at the beginning, though I realized quite soon that I'd already read most of them and given up on one of the octopus books on that list. I would definitely add this onto any list of books for the cephalopodophile, along with Kraken and I believe one or two other octopus and squid books that I don't remember off the top of my head.
9. Lying by Sam Harris
• I was hoping it'd be a bit meatier, kind of like Frankfurt's On Bullshit, except on lying instead. I agree with the position Harris takes that we're treating others like children by withholding information from them by lying (because we have then already made a decision on their behalf), but I think he could've fleshed out the bit about when lying is permissible more. There's also some amount of hate against religions (as doctrines) that makes me uncomfortable even though I don't subscribe to a specific set of religious beliefs.
10. Kedi (2016)
• OMG CATS. CATS EVERYWHERE.
• It's amazing how the people in Istanbul coexist with the cats, and also how incredibly healthy all of the cats look (though of course, the less healthy ones might simply not have made it onto the film).
11. Cat People (1942)
• Do you see a theme?
• That blasted psychiatrist! He totally orchestrated that entire thing to try to get Irena! He 100% deserved what he got, film-wise. And whatever happened to patient confidentiality?
12. Ma' Rosa (2016)
• I'm not sure whether the main point in the film is the showcase the corruption within the police force or the ways in which playing a small part in the drug trade can snowball into hell, but it was quite powerful.
13. Hiroshima, mon amour (1959)
• I feel as though I'm missing the point slightly if I take this as a film about love and the inevitable forgetting of even the most powerful of loves.
14. This Gun for Hire (1942)
• "He's dynamite with a gun or a girl" is the tagline on the DVD case I've got and I'm dying.
• That turned into a political message real quick. It's definitely because of the publication date, but there was definitely a shift in the tone of the entire movie when Ellen tells Raven it's his duty to uncover the information Mr. Brewster is selling off and to protect his country.
15. The Lady in Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale of Sex, Scandal, and Divorce by Hallie Rubenhold
• Well that's certainly an interesting way to offer up your own defense, especially when you're physically absent from the room and thus incapable of defending yourself: defame yourself utterly in order to protect your lover.
• That last sentence had me crying. Good for Seymour!
• Overall, not as captivating a read as I expected it to be (though I'm not sure what I did expect: gossip column x 100 in page length? Besides which, I don't even peruse the regular gossip columns!), but an enjoyable read nonetheless. Some chapters galloped along a little more than others, which were somewhat a bore to get through, but character development was fun to watch.
16. Law of the Border (1966)
• I knew it! There's so much foreshadowing going on here throughout and hints dropped fairly obviously as to what's going to happen. I'm completely ignorant regarding the state of affairs (economical, political, historical - everything) as they were in the 60s in Turkey, but I'm quite sure this film arose as a statement about social issues plaguing the times.
17. Silence by Shusaku Endo
• Quite a sensitive work, with Father Rodriguez portrayed as being distinctly human with the complexities of human foibles. It's more than obvious the parallel between what Rodriguez undergoes and the Passion of Christ, but the similarities become more and more farcical the more he is exposed to others and, more importantly, to himself.
18. Ten Cents a Pound by Nhung N. Tran-Davies, illustrated by Josée Bisaillon
• Incredibly moving.
19. Tim's Goodbye by Steven Salerno
• ... I had a tiny turtle, his name was Tiny Tim. I put him in the bathtub, to see if he could swim.
20. Moon by Alison Oliver
• Don't ever let that little bit of wilderness die out in you!
21. Unicorn (and Horse) by David Miles illustrated by Hollie Mengert
• What an adorably sweet book about making friends with your perceived enemies!
22. Albert's Tree by Jenni Desmond
23. Square by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen
• But was he a genius?
24. Alma and How She Got Her Name by Juana Martinez-Neal
• Lovely reminder that a name is more than just a word, and that sometimes it may have both a history to tell you and a story for you to fill.
25. Evermore Dragon by Barbara Joosse, illustrated by Randy Cecil
26. Princess (2014)
• Creepy AF but also really well done, I think! The vague ending suggests a sort of new beginning and hope, that Adar has begun to see that she can take control of her own life and protect herself, and yet they are still together as a family unit.
• I do find the categorization of Michael as a dysfunctional human being stemming from his sterility problematic though. The film almost makes this the cause of his problems, rather than addressing his pedophilia as something on its own - I'm not sure why sterility should factor into this?? Or if it's also because of his sexuality (as separate from the pedophilia)? This conflation of everything rather confuses me, and I'm not sure why the director chose to infuse Michael with all these traits.
27. The Missing by Melanie Florence
• This was a very powerful book about the epidemic of missing indigenous girls and women whose disappearances are ignored and remain uninvestigated. Jake being the red herring that he is, I'm not sure it was also necessary to make him as violent and homophobic as he was - though it does also raise awareness of homophobia as something that shouldn't be simply be treated with disdain so much as something that needs to be worked through (just as, for example, arachnophobia would have to be worked through). There's also a part where it's pretty clear that Florence intended to be the informative part of the novel in terms of putting the stats and figures into Feather's mouth (as well as her mom's), which came on a bit strong, though it does blend in a bit, I guess. I'm not sure whether this is something YA authors exploring certain issues tend to do, because I also noticed this in Golden Boy, where the author inserted a bunch of information about intersexed individuals into the novel through the doctor.
28. Ocean Meets Sky by Terry Fan
29. Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel García Márquez
• García Márquez might just be one of my favourite authors right now. I remember reading the Sleeping Beauty one in another book at some point, I think a textbook talking about fairytales. There's something magical but also very mundane about his stories, almost wry.

Working on:

1. The Matter of Images: Essays on Representations by Richard Dyer
2. Thomas Murphy (audiobook) by Roger Rosenblatt
• I'm really liking the narrator's Irish accent! I don't listen to audiobooks often, so it's always a nice surprise when the experience is far from boring and makes for a much richer encounter with the novel than I otherwise might have gotten from reading the print version.