Meredith Sue Willis's Blog, page 5
April 25, 2022
My Comments on DON'T LOOK UP
We watched Don't Look Up, the Netflix original with a ton of excellent acting (DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep. Jonah Hill, Cate Blanchett, Tyler Perry, Ron Perlman, Mark Ryland as a tech king, slightly autistic, totally megalomaniacal–all excellent and tiny parts for Annette Miller and Allyn Burrows. Apparently Tamara Hickey was in there somewhere too). Anyhow, the acting was excellent, the so-called production values fine, and the wit and sarcasm and jokes all really really funny. And then, with Hollywood abandon that I always resent, they just blew up the world. There was an afterward with the wealthy survivors arriving on a perfect planet 22,000 years later, and a funny ending for the totally obnoxious president, Streep. Apparently a nice bit after the credits too, said Andy, but I didn't wait around.
Anyway, the point is, I appreciated and enjoyed and giggled as I watched, but it left me with a bad taste. When I first saw Dr. Strangelove all those years ago I was terrified, and this one was more obviously hokey-jokey (or I'm just more mature) but I am still critical of Hollywood's arrogance in just ending the world when they don't have any better ideas. I get it, point well taken: Look, you jerks, it's real, we truly can see disaster coming at us and we're doing nothing. But it's going to come much slower, and they totally ignore, of course, Hollywood style, the people who are painstakingly, step by step, working on change. I think the people who make it in Hollywood no longer or never even saw it: the people in organizations, medium level government jobs, in hospitals, labs, installing solar panels, switching to more sustainable farming practices– so many of us out here doing more than going on media tours.
Maybe that's what I didn't like most: that the only way to fight the Powers That Be, says Hollywood, is to lean out a window and said I'm mad and I'm not going to take it anymore, or, as in this one, just shout on a live t.v. show or go viral on social media, etc. Etc. We're all going to die. And then we all die.
There's actually so much more going on in the world. I think Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower etc. gets it much better. Or Cormac McCarthy's The Road. If the world ends with a bang, it's over. Far more likely will be the little struggles, as in Ukraine today, day by day, small decisions.
So, just to repeat, it was well done, it was funny, I'm glad the folks from Shakespeare & Company are getting some outside work. Performances were hilarious. Meryl Street and her movie son Jonah Hill as a Trumpish family were really fun to watch. But the message I don't like is not so much It's hopeless, as the only people with any juice are the ones with media wattage– like us clear-headed movie makers.
March 7, 2022
March 7 Issue of Meredith Sue Willis's BOOKS FOR READERS #220
Latest issue of Meredith Sue Willis's Books for Readers # 220 is now up at https://www.meredithsuewillis.com/bfrarchive219-221.html#issue220 ! Reviews by Joe Chuman, Ed Davis, and Eli Asbury. Books Reviewed by Sister Souljah, Margaret Atwood, Attica Locke, Jill LePore, Belinda Anderson, Claire Oshetsky, Barbara Pym and more!
January 23, 2022
BOOKS FOR READERS ISSUE #219!
Just Up! A New Issue of Books for Readers # 219 ! Ideas for Writers, Announcements, Good Online Reading--and lots of book recommendations: Carolina De Robertis, Charles Dickens, Thomas Fleming, Kendra James, Ashley Hope Perez, Terry Pratchett, Martha Wells and reviews by Joe Chuman and Danny Williams--and more!
December 4, 2021
A New Issue of Books for Readers #218 Is Now Online !
October 23, 2021
Books for Readers # 217 now available!
New Issue of Meredith Sue Willis's
Books for Readers # 217 now online!
September 15, 2021
An Article in The Atlantic about E-Books
An article in the Atlantic called "Why Are E-Books So Terrible?" caught my attention, and might interest you too. The writer is Ian Bogost, a contributing writing there and director of a program in film & media at Washington University in St. Louis. As a big fan of e-books, I was ready to be offended, and I was, mildly, particularly by his neologism "bookiness." What an unpleasant word. I was also annoyed by several of his unsupported statements--that no self-published books are ever laid out "in a manner that conforms with received standards" and for his insistence that the technology of books has barely changed over the centuries. He barely mentions moveable type, and skips over cheap paper backs entirely.
On the other hand, he supports my idea that e-books work best with strong narrative-- " fiction in general and genre fiction—such as mysteries, sci-fi, young-adult fiction, and romance." I'd add to that list biography and a lot of history as well. In other words, stories are great in the endless flow of the digital screen. What is much harder in an e-book, I agree, is to have what he calls random access, " the ur-feature of the codex.... for skimming back and forth....For [readers who like to move back and forth], ideas are attached to the physical memory of the book's width and depth—a specific notion residing at the top of a recto halfway in, for example, like a friend lives around the block and halfway down."
This is a very fair critique of e-book technology and something I'd really like to see the engineers work on. It's hard even to find your place again in an e-book. I agree that e-books support the reading habits of people who like to carry a large number of books at once (my Kindle has all of Jane Austen, George Eliot, Dickens, as well as a slew of my other out-of-copyright favorites). It also supports those who love a direct flow, endless story, and don't care so much about annotating. He's a little snarky about genre fiction (although he insists he's not), and reveals that he reads mostly scholarly and trade nonfiction. He doesn't like it when books all look the same.
Bogost, like a lot of my friends, values books as objects along with what they communicate to us in their text. He says, " I also can't quite wrap my spleen [my spleen???] around every book looking and feeling the same, like they do on an e-book reader. For me, bookiness partly entails the uniqueness of each volume—its cover, shape, typography, and layout."
I read codex books too, of course. Right now, I'm reading on my Kindle, Le Rouge et le Noir, in English (either free or almost free–I can' remember if I got it from the Gutenberg Project or on sale from Amazon) and a Michael Connelly crime novel that I borrowed from the public library. I am also reading a huge and gorgeously illustrated physical art book from the Metropolitan Museum that is the catalog of their recent exhibition of Medici portraiture, and I also just ordered a physical copy of a fantasy novel through the used book site Bookfinder.com . It wasn't available at the library, and I avoid paying Amazon's high e-book prices.
In other words, why bother to hate e-books when they are one of a variety of ways to do your reading? And how can a person not love the wonder and security of carrying Jane Austen's entire oeuvre around in your shoulder bag?
September 1, 2021
Latest Issue of Meredith Sue Willis's Books for Readers #216
Reviews of books by Rajia Hassib; Joel Pechkam; Robin Hobb; Anne Hutchinson; James Shapiro; reviews by Joe Chuman and Marc Harshman; Tolkien & more
July 29, 2021
A New Issue of Books for Readers Newsletter #214!
July 19, 2021
Back in the US, Back in the US, Back in New York City!!!
Today was my big treat: I went back to the Metropolitan Museum after a year and a half away. There was a problem with New Jersey Transit, so I had to take the train plus the PATH plus a walk across Greenwich VIllage and a subway and then a walk across the Upper East Side--all pure pleasure, my tour of New York--to get to the Metropolitan Museum in New York City.
THis kind of day represents one of the main reasons I left the satisfactions of my home in Harrison County, West Virginia for the Northeast. I wanted to be able to experience major art whenever I felt like it. It’s not that I go to Broadway plays every week or do clubbing or even music or ever have--I’m not actually a huge fan of Broadway musicals for example, and I do a lot of reading, but you can do that anywhere.
But I love New York City, where I lived from 1967 to 1987, and I love being able to walk into a building for free or very little and seeing what people made to show their cultures and their beliefs and their personalities for five thousand years and more. Romans, Egyptians, Africans, European white guys, Chinese vase makers. All of it.
You need to be in a city to see lots and lots of visual and architectural and sculptural art, and you need to be in a city to see the full panoply of human activity displayed all day everyday and all night as well.
So today I saw a splendid exhibit of portraiture from Florence under the Medici and next to it, the wonderful ALice Neel exhibit of her 20th century poor people and pregnant women. I was just so happy to be back.
July 14, 2021
The Wages of Aging....
The wages of aging is dealing with condescending younger people.
When I asked my colonoscopy doctor why I had to have another one in five years, he said, "Because we want to have you around for a long time!" With a jolly wink.
Oh my sinking heart! I can't say the number of times I've heard medical people and family (including, I confess, myself) say that to my mother when she was 85, 90, 95, and then 100.
Please come up with something new, people!
I'd prefer, "Because taking the test improves your chances of surviving" or even "Because sstatistically speaking you might die sooner if you don't."
