Musings

Movie: I watched In Her Shoes sometime last week (or maybe the week before). I had heard that it wasn’t marketed right at the time of release, and I can believe it. My guess is that it was publicized as a light-hearted “chick flick” (I hate this phrase and its inherent sexism so much — not that I think people who use it are trying to be sexist, but it’s a phrase with a lot of baggage that I think inhibits real meaning from being conveyed) when it’s actually a drama with some funny elements about familial relationships, in particular, that of siblings.

I could see where there were shortcomings in the execution of the story: the younger sister was made flat and virtually unsympathizeable too soon such that when her other dimensions are revealed, it was probably too late for most people to care; the older sister also suffered from a slightly similar issue; the love interests were sketched out too quickly, etc.

However, despite all the shortcomings, I really connected to their portrayal of sibling relations. Their hurts and sorrows felt real, their inability to remove each other from their respective lives despite the hurts made vivid sense. The way they tried to protect each other reminded me of my own siblings.

I really liked it. I might read the book.

—

Books: Speaking of books, I just finished the audiobook of Outlander [note: get this on iTunes instead so you can save time ripping it] yesterday. A few days ago, I had finished reading Life of Pi. Right after that, I finished reading The Reader.

I found interesting parallels in the story structure of Outlander and Life of Pi. While, overall, I found both of them to be excellently written books with a gripping story and engaging characters, I was bored to tears by the first section of both of them. Actually, that’s not precisely true; they were not in fact boring. It’s more that they seemed to move around aimlessly without a sense of direction or tension. They also didn’t make me grow attached to the characters. That happened much later in the books for me. So my interest lagged. It took me something like five tries over 3 years to get past page 70 of Outlander. It took me three tries over countless months to get past part 1 (of 3) of Life of Pi.

There is a lot of setup going on in those parts for both books. When you get to the end, you see how the setup really pays off, that the story would be missing something if you did not have the kind of setup you had. How do you reconcile those two things? On one hand, too much set up could mean that you lose the reader due to impatience at what feels like a story that is going nowhere and at times feel like an indulgent exercise on that of the writer. On the other hand, by the time the reader gets to the end of the book, the beginning makes perfect sense in the big picture and the pays off in terms of providing a consistent character base to build the story on is vast.

When I read, I want at every step of the way, one or more of the following:

• Something that’s making me grow attached to a character
• Interesting dialogue and/or action
• A sense of direction/growth/tension (or resolution thereof)

You can’t, and you shouldn’t, have all of those things at the same time all the time. But if you can’t provide at least one of those things in most of your scenes or chapters, I think there is a real problem. There should be purpose to each and every scene. If there isn’t, if it doesn’t add anything to the greater whole, whether it is in terms of character development, insightful commentary, plot development, general entertainment, etc., then there is no reason to leave the scene in as-is. You have to edit as ruthlessly as an indie filmmaker on a desperate budget. Actually, I don’t have any info to lead me to believe indie filmmakers on a desperate budget are any better at editing than the bigwigs. 😀

The DaVinci Code had atrocious characters and dialogue, so much so I almost quit reading. But the movement of the plot was undeniably (to me, at least) engaging and was a page-turner. Both Outlander and Life of Pi kept me up until unreasonable hours of the night (er, morning) to finish them up because the stories had become so compelling and the characters so empathizable. Clearly, the beginning sections were not slow out of a lack of talent but by a conscious decision, perhaps to serve as a contrast. I’m not sure. But it bugged me.

The Reader was a very short, very sparse story and did not suffer from such an issue because the characters were instantly intriguing. It’s also worth reading.

—

Food: I’ve been obsessing about food lately. All I want to do is eat, cook, eat, read about cooking, read about eating. Luckily, in October, Seppo and I will be hitting up WD-50 and The French Laundry, so I’m all aglee. Is aglee even a word? Probably not.

On a completely unrelated note, it’s SANTOKU, people of Food Network and PBS, not santuko. I’m calling out Chris Kimball of America’s Test Kitchen and Rachel Ray on their consistent misuse (and even consistent misspelling!) of this word.

—

Work: I’ve mentioned this to a couple of people now, but I feel like now that I’m pretty busy at work, my brain is on fire. The vague sense of overall stress/looming deadline approaching has flipped some sort of trigger in my head and now I’m working like a dog, reading again like a maniac, sleeping a little less, playing sudoku obsessively, meeting with friends, calling people (ok, that’s like 1 call a week, which is a huge increase), watching tv, thinking about picking up another knitting project, and cooking up a storm.

When I’m not busy at work, I can barely motivate myself to go to work and eat whatever is in front of me. I think it’s like driving a manual: if you are driving around all day in second gear, you aren’t going to go anywhere fast and it’s gonna wear on your engine. If you gear up, you can go much faster and further with more efficiency. Something, work this time, kicked my brain into a hgher gear, so I’m all woo-hoo.

Now I just have to be careful to not burn out.