Rams

March reading/watching

1. 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.
• While I haven't formulated any arguments against what Martin talks about, and I ultimately agree that deception to some degree is healthy in relationships (even if it is simply withholding certain aspects of the truth that don't need to be known and have no bearing), there's just something about this entire book that made me want to put it down the entire time.
2. Rams (2015)
• Finally! I watched half of this on the plane - I forget where to - and couldn't finish it because I wasn't feeling well, so when we finally got this on DVD at my local library, I grabbed it right away.
• I wasn't exactly expecting it to go there and it's kind of really sad and touching, the intertwining of the lives of man and sheep, the ties that bring people together. We never find out what exactly the source of disagreement was between Kiddi & Gummi, but the journey their brotherhood takes on when presented with a common goal is quite touching.
3. The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang
• I don't usually read graphic novels in print, but this was so good! I loved it and devoured it through my breaks within 2 days, I think? I also love the fact that Wang used pattern blocks on each of the chapter pages.
4. Unraveling Oliver by Liz Nugent
• Started off well, but the characters became caricatures towards the end (despite what was supposed to function as their fleshing out).
5. We the Animals (2018)
6. Assassination Nation (2018)
• YES.
7. Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse (2018)
• Well worth the hype, and lived up to every expectation & then some!
• The only quibble I have is that when Uncle Aaron was shot, there was nothing to indicate where he got shot - including a noticeable lack of blood or even Uncle Aaron grabbing the shot wound area - though I get that it's a family movie. And I think they did an amazing job catering to basically everyone from children to adults!
8. My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
• I devoured this novel in a day - it's darkly comic, it kind of takes you by surprise, but also explores how a deeply dysfunctional family relies on its blood ties even as those ties continue to bind them each to their arguably unhealthy positions in their lives.
9. Almost Brothers/Quase Dois Irmãos (2004)
• I put off watching this for the longest time and I have no idea why, because it was very thought provoking and unafraid to voice questions about how to solve social issues to do with race and class given that they already exist and are so embedded into society (in this case in Brazil). All in all, pretty brutal, but also I imagine quite necessary.
10. The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli
• Got this from Dewey Divas... last year. So by now the actual book has been published, and I hope no major changes have been made because I'm basing my comments off the ARC.
• I've read Rovelli's Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and this book on time approaches the readability of that one. Rovelli has a knack for making difficult-to-understand concepts approachable for the lay person coming to the book without prior knowledge of physics, and this can be seen in both Seven Brief Lessons as well as here in The Order of Time, but then something happens halfway through this book that takes a turn as far as writing is concerned: we take a step way away from physics and into our personal experience of time, and cultural references to time are used to supplement the text - I would appreciate all of this a bit more, I think, had the book been a more in-depth exploration of time rather than the pithy journey it is. And oddly, there are two chapters (one and a half, I guess?) that are incredibly dense that come between the physics part and the sociocultural part, that even Rovelli says you can skip if you find too much (or something to that extent).
• I wanted so much to love the entirety of it, but because of the weird transitions (at least in the ARC - perhaps this has been fixed in the published edition) and almost overly poetic third part, I'm having a hard time doing so. I will be re-reading the first two parts to gain a better understanding of the concepts Rovelli touches upon, as there were several points I wasn't entirely sure I understood, but I'll be skipping the last chapter or two.
11. Plight of the Living Dead by Matt Simon
• Could've been better. A bit too sensational in tone, or not delving deep enough? I suppose that should be expected from a popular science book, but I still feel like it could've done a much more thorough job. As it is, my appetite for learning about parasites has been whetted, so I would like to give credit where it's due and say that Simon did a good job of making the subject interesting, but to me personally, the topic of parasites is already interesting, so I feel like he could definitely have gotten a bit more technical and detailed without fear of losing the audience (or at least me).
12. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Did I... miss a chapter or maybe an entire section? I feel like this ended way too early without giving me enough. I also feel like I should like it because the general sentiment whenever deGrasse Tyson is brought up is that he's amazing, but I'm not amazed and I don't know if that's on me or not - I feel like I should have enjoyed this entire book more than I did overall, is what I meant to say.
13. Us (2019)
• I loved it!
• A couple of the plot points/twists were pretty predictable, or at least the possibility of them hovered over my head throughout, but I don't think that detracted much from the movie at all. I do agree with what one of my friends said about the text at the beginning about the underground tunnel network being slightly unnecessary since it primes you to think about what that would mean for the tethered.
• A couple of the trailers before the movie looked really good too, including Pet Sematery and Ma (terrifying).
14. Isitwendam (B2C Theatre, at Native Earth Performing Arts Inc.)
• So glad I caught it before it finished this run!
15. There were a number of picture books as well, but I don't remember them all.
16. Puzzle (2018)

1. Nodding Off: The Science of Sleep from Cradle to Grave by Alice Gregory