Karen Cries On the Bus

When did they make a movie of me & my entire life, and how did I not know about this until now? Karen Cries On the Bus (2011). Loved it. It's kind of like how I wished Eat Pray Love ended when I watched it the first time (and the second time).

Also a bunch of picture books, but I'll be skipping those in this list.

1. As Boas Maneiras/Good Manners (2017)
• Soooo... I feel like this was a lot longer than it needed to be, one. Two: I'm not sure why the movie had to be cut into two parts (the love story/before and the after) - I wish the director would've just picked one and stuck with it. It did remind me of another movie I watched a little while back, Son of Sofia, but really just in terms of the boys becoming literal animals.
2. Lady Macbeth (2016)
• I have a confession to make: I've never actually read Macbeth. That being said, after a really really quick glance through Wikipedia's plot summary, I don't know that Lady Macbeth, who felt guilt for her crimes, descended into madness as a result & in the end took her own life, is a good reference point for Katherine, although I understand why the reference was made in that she & Sebastian (but mostly her, fueling the delusion and really taking the reins, almost dragging him along for the ride) had to kill and kill and kill again in an attempt to get the outcome they were hoping for. There were constantly things she had overlooked, whether it was that the husband would find out or that he had an illegitimate child he made master of the house in the event of his death.
• Although Katherine is definitely guilty for all her crimes, there's a part of me that also wants to shout out: but if it wasn't for the oppressive patriarchal situation she was thrust into (e.g. bought, along with a piece of land, as a bride for a husband she neither loves nor respects and who also won't touch her; then blamed for not fulfilling her wifely duties (i.e. bearing an heir) despite the fact that the husband is making that impossible, as she levels against him to the father-in-law when he accuses her of failing to fulfill her duties and bringing shame upon the household).
• Makes me think of how Sun Tzu cautioned to never hem in your adversary (always let an outlet free), for you never know what someone who has nothing left to lose can muster their strength to do.
3. This one's an article, but Is Sunscreen the New Margarine?
• Some very interesting information. I'd been trying to be better at slathering on sunscreen these past couple of years, but maybe I should be looking more into the literature...
• Some quotes:
• "Originally, he was studying blood clots, which he found occurred less frequently in women who spent more time in the sun—and less frequently during the summer. Lindqvist looked at diabetes next. Sure enough, the sun worshippers had much lower rates. Melanoma? True, the sun worshippers had a higher incidence of it—but they were eight times less likely to die from it." (emphasis added)
• I'm assuming because frequent sun exposure had generated health benefits for them that bolstered their systems even as they developed melanoma.
• "Over the 20 years of the study, sun avoiders were twice as likely to die as sun worshippers. There are not many daily lifestyle choices that double your risk of dying."
• Apparently it's just as bad as smoking (though it's not noted how many cigarettes a day). Twice as likely. Twice!
• I'm interested to know whether there was a difference between what these two groups died of though, whether sun avoiders tended to die of health issues that sun worshippers didn't, or whether it was a different class of thing killing them altogether.
• "And the current U.S. sun-exposure guidelines were written for the whitest people on earth."
• Oooooh! Race factors into the promotion of sunscreen usage, too! (Surprise, surprise.) Of course people with different types of skin process sunlight differently. And of course broad guidelines that don't take that into consideration are used officially.
4. In Praise of Wasting Time by Alan Lightman
• Another TED book, Lightman argues that it is to our advantage to take at least half an hour of each day to "waste time" and do nothing (productive). In a culture that is so driven by productivity, and where idleness is seen as sinful or - as much of society has also moved away from the religious - a bad character trait (i.e. "think of all that you could do during that time!"), this seems counterintuitive to living a good life. That being said, I feel like it's catching on that we need to focus less on productivity at the cost of our own well-being, both in terms of physical & mental health, and instead focus on self-care, whether that be through meditation, walks in nature, or other such activities that don't, strictly speaking, produce anything in and of themselves. However, these instances spent "wasting" time are actually to our benefit, even if we think in terms of productivity, for it is when we are well-rested and have given our minds room to roam and think outside the box that we are able to arrive at insights previously unreachable just by thinking about and working at a problem during all your waking hours.
• I enjoyed this one, and I think it goes well with Beyond Measure in complementing what Heffernan says in her book (and I'm assuming talk) as well.
5. La Mujer Sin Cabeza/The Headless Woman (2008)
• This was... very slow. I feel like it must have been a commentary on class & gender within Argentina, but I also don't know anything about the cultural context in which it's placed, so it's difficult for me to say much about it. I thought that Vero would be haunted more literally by the ghost of a headless woman, but it only came to me towards the end that it is she herself that is the headless woman in the film, in that she allows the men in her life to overwrite what she knows to be true (i.e. that she ran someone over, and it is the boy that was later found in the canal).
6. Our First Caribou Hunt by Jennifer Noah & Chris Giroux, illustrated by Hwei Lim
• First off, I love Lim's illustrations, and I remember they did the illustrations for The Spirit of the Sea as well. I love that Lim works with writers who are immersed in Inuit culture for stories that portray and reflect Inuit life and legend!
• This was very wordy for a picture book, personally, and would probably serve better for slightly older kids (i.e. not for a read aloud storytime program), but I love that the children are multidimensional, experiencing jealousy and complicated emotions throughout the story.
7. Before Midnight (2013)
• It's the first time any of the simmering disagreements were dealt with on such a grand scale - there were times when Celine & Jesse's ideologies clashed in the previous two movies, and sometimes I'd see just how American Jesse's character is (in all three movies), but I actually really enjoyed watching them fight like an actual couple, with lowballs and emotional appeals and the "always" and the "never"s, because it means that Linklater allowed these two to develop through those 10 years that weren't caught on film. While the first two kind of told a magical fairytale story of True Love (even in some of its complexities), I feel like we need to see Before Midnight to really get the picture of what forms that love can take, and how it might look even when it doesn't resemble at all what is produced for mass consumption.
8. Paddington (2014)
• This was so cute & wholesome and made me want to cry during two or three scenes. Amazing. I'm really looking forward to watching Paddington 2!
9. The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes
• The ending had me wondering whether that forgiveness actually happened, and almost wrapped up too neatly, though it was still ambiguous enough that readers could understand that even if Wanda had forgiven Peggy & Maddie, Maddie had learned a valuable lesson about how to treat people from then on.
10. Paddington 2 (2017)
• The sequel did not disappoint!! I LOVE IT. And I loved Hugh Grant in this - he was kind of channeling Jeff Goldblum vibes, imo, and killing it.
11. How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide by Crystal Marie Fleming
• I ran out of bookdarts, so I'll just go through what I marked and quote/comment:
• I love that Fleming's introduction is so thorough as she goes through the terms she uses throughout the book as well as debunks myths about white supremacy in succinct sections.
• On any excuses made for the founders of the U.S. (i.e. for those who say "gotta see both sides...") & note that it's unfair to judge the actions of the founding fathers by the standards we hold today: "But this narrative - long dominant (and typically invoked by white men) - deliberately ignores the fact that people spoke out against and opposed white supremacist genocide and chattel slavery while these things were happening... The histories of indigenous resistance against European aggression, slave rebellions, and abolitionism clearly demonstrate that there were people who knew it was wrong to treat other human beings as if they were disposable" (p.47). Fleming also makes mention that there were European white people who also stood up against slavery, all in all making a very clear point that these actions cannot be said to have been excusable just for being a product of their times because the immorality of oppressing groups that weren't European white men was clear even at the time.
• "Wouldn't a more perfect union be a society in which white supremacists, enslavers, and rapists are no longer honored? A society in which indigenous people, black people, people of color, and white antiracists who fought against oppression are held in higher esteem than those who defended the indefensible?" (p.47-48)
• In "Listen to Black Women", Fleming talks about how black men & women are equally likely to be racially profiled, harassed, and arrested by police in NYC - yet the only images & discussions to be had focus almost entirely on black men.
• Racism works together with sexism so that feminist movements are not immune to racism: "Whatever the white women's movement of the 1960s and '70s was, it was not a movement to confront or dismantle racism" (p.67).
• Likewise, black men are not magically free of sexism. Nor are black cisgender feminists necessarily trans friendly.
• I vaguely knew about Paris being considered African American-friendly, but this is the first I've heard of the "African American Privilege... In the French case, [it] means benefitting from friendly relations, access, and resources denied to French people of color. Though it's easy to get caught up in the rapture of being treated like a human being... the sad reality is that African Americans are typically used by the French to minimize or outright deny their own racism" (p.82-83).
• But how do the French tell who's African American and who's a French racial minority? (I guess language and demeanor?)
• It does remind me of something else Fleming talks about in maybe another chapter or this one, where she relays a study where white people who had interacted with a black friend (or... I believe in this case, voted for Obama) acted in more racist ways after the interaction, as though they felt justified in doing so (because look! They have black friends! They voted for Obama! They can't be racist!).
• This is scary because it's true: "Trump is not some kind of alien creature... his brand of crude white supremacy resonates with tens of millions of US citizens (as well as white nationalists and neo-Nazis across the globe) because his views align with many of the foundational principles upon which Western colonial expansion broadly, and the United States specifically, were established. And the issue here is not just that our nation's founding principles were explicitly white supremacist, xenophobic, and imperialist. It's that these principles have been actively maintained, institutionalized, and normalized for generations" (p.114).
• The racist state of society as they stand right now strikes people as the status quo, just the way things are, and it's this very notion that needs to be fought against.
• WOW SLAVERY IS STILL LEGAL IN PARTS OF THE U.S. (p.178)
• There's a lot more that I didn't mark down because, as I said, I ran out of bookdarts, but this was definitely an informative read! I loved it, and would recommend it to anyone interested in the topic of racism.
12. Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom
• This paired so well with How to Be Less Stupid About Race, though these essays were so much more personal. One of them, Dying to be Competent, was absolutely heartbreaking.
• I'm not writing much about Thick only because I couldn't take notes as I was reading it.
13. Kiss Me Someone by Karen Shepard
• Collection of short stories. They were almost a hit for me, but I can't really say what was missing from them that made them a miss.
14. El pastor (2016)
• PILLO!!!
• I loved it, from the buildup of tension (I thought for sure the slaughterhouse scene was going to take a different turn - why would you agree to talk about something with someone you know doesn't mean well to you, AT A SLAUGHTERHOUSE???) to the ambiguity of some of the details, like how you don't really know what exactly Julian is involved in, or what Paco is signing (or at least I couldn't really figure it out) and why he's compelled to do so. At some points Paco was almost too much of a trope, but then his wife Manilo has a change of heart and you finally see Paco as a person rather than a character. I wasn't completely sure how it was all going to be resolved - though I was pretty certain someone had to die - and I thought for sure the sheep would be killed or taken away from Anselmo.
• The scenes of Anselmo being a shepherd and living his life were beautiful, and honestly I could probably have watched an entire movie with just that.
15. Good Morning, Viet Mom (Cahoots Theatre)
• Funny, and very on point about various aspects of being part of a first-gen Asian family (or I guess zero-gen? The next one would be the first generation, I think?). I'm really glad I went to this one!
16. Blackkklansman (2018)
• Wow. True events can be stranger than fiction, for sure! How did no one ever get patted down for listening devices?? I loved the movie and the dynamic between the actors. I literally did a little celebration with the Landers scene at the end!
• Was not expecting the live footage of the Charlottesville car attack at the end, but the way they ended it by giving Ron & Patrice a look through the window into the "future" (i.e. the present) is great, because it's not just a problem of the past.
• An article on Lithub about the movie.
17. Lizzie (2018)
• I... almost didn't finish the movie. To be honest, I was very distracted and couldn't keep focused on what was happening. It could've been shorter? But it's already kind of a short movie at 90 minutes. Or maybe just have more going on?
18. Papillon (2017)
• Reading the back of the case, it reminded me a lot of Shawshank Redemption.
• I enjoyed watching the movie, and it was kind of inspiring to see the lengths Papillon went to in order to get himself out of his wrongful imprisonment.
19. Karen Cries On the Bus (2011)
• Yes.
20. Love for Imperfect Things: How to Accept Yourself in a World Striving for Perfection by Haemin Sunim
• Such a lovely little volume filled with gentle advice - came into my life at a good time. Onto You are Here by Thich Nhat Hanh next.
• I really enjoyed the illustrations interspersed throughout as well.
• Can we take a moment to appreciate this beauty?
• Sushi tastes better with a cup of green tea,
  But if you eat it with Coca-Cola,
  it doesn't taste as good.
  The right combination is a key to success. (p.131)
21. Searching (2018)
• Interesting concept, doing the entire movie through screens, as though the viewer were following along with the investigation (and/or creeping about with a hidden camera inside the Kim residence). I don't know enough about film history to know whether this is novel or not, but I appreciated how the way the story was presented matched so well with the story itself.
• That took a turn that I wasn't entirely anticipating, but I love that it did. I'm not too sure how I feel about the ending, but I also know I wouldn't have been happy with the alternative, sooo....
22. Lilting (2014)
23. If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo
• Yay for trans representation written by a trans author featuring a trans model on the cover!!!!
24. Zama (2017)
• I'm... confused.
• That one scene with the llama.
25. Oblivion Verses (2017)
• How did he survive getting shot? Or did they just let him go?
• I don't know if this was a magical odyssey... it was interesting, and I feel like there are messages I'm not getting because I'm not aware of the social and political environment of Chile (or... Iran? The director is Iranian.) Obviously there's the disappearing of people, but it seems like it's more than just a straightforward critique of that (and how little bureaucrats do to help prevent these disappearings or to help their loved ones find them again), and the whales beaching plays an interesting parallel to the story.

Working on

1. Nodding Off: The Science of Sleep from Cradle to Grave by Alice Gregory
2. Love & Lies: An Essay on Truthfulness, Deceit, and the Growth and Care of Erotic Love by Clancy Martin
• There's more than I thought would be in here that are personal recollections from throughout Martin's life, and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it.
3. Unraveling Oliver by Liz Nugent
4. You are Here by Thich Nhat Hanh