I Made It Through The Wilderness

What a month. Let's get down to it.

Resolution #1: Reach 65% fluency in French, Spanish, German, Italian, and Russian

I don't know what to tell you. I put in the work, but French and Italian did not budge. Spanish moved one measly percent up; I am now 42% fluent. I learned a full level of Russian, so I'm sitting at 4 out of the 78 levels. Somehow German dropped to 30% -- a whole percent. Oh, whatever.

Resolution #2: Raise guitar proficiency by at least 25% on six songs

Ditto.

Resolution #3: Clear my backlog of unwatched films and TV boxsets

I did stray, as per usual, and borrow some stuff to watch, like the fifth season of Girls, which I enjoyed. Shosh has gotten so professional and Jessa seems to be trying now, at least, putting her best foot forward and getting her act together, which is more than you can say for Marnie and Hannah. I honestly think Hannah is a total mess and Marnie is a manipulative pain in the backside. But they also pose most of the conflict because they are equal parts neuroses and diva behaviour.

I also went from watching the dark comedy Nurse Jackie to the situational comedy Mom. In other words, more addicts overcoming their disease. (And in some cases, succumbing to it.)

In the third season of Mom, Christy is studying law and making something of herself, which is awesome. However, I do miss the close-knit family she had back in season one. For a moment or two, I longed for Violet to be in the show more, to reemerge from the shadowy margins, mentioned but not seen. And then I got my wish. And then I remembered all the whining and petulant behaviour and screaming and entitlement and selfishness. That's Violet. Distance made my heart grow fonder, but then I got a rude reality check when she entered from stage right.

And I watched Arrival. I can see why some people don't like it. It's much more slowly paced than, say, Alien, E.T., Transformers, or Independence Day, which I imagine are the alien sci-fi flicks that most people base their attitudes upon. No, this is a thinky film. It's about linguistics. I sense I've lost half of you. Okay, for those who remain, the alien language that Amy Adams is trying to interpret actually leads to a heck of a lot of symbolism in Arrival. Wait! Guys, symbolism can be fun! It adds layers of meaning and complexity! Oh, fine. Well, I liked it.

Anyway, I got back to the task at hand. I needed to watch stuff in my collection. So, first off, I watched The Parent Trap, the remake with Lindsay Lohan, which I grew up watching about three times a day. I loved that movie. No, scratch that. I still love that movie. I was always more of an Annie James than a Hallie Parker. I would be more inclined to have a packing checklist and a secret handshake with my butler than pierced ears and painted fingernails. My hair was always long, too, which physically puts me more along the lines of Annie. And I have English heritage and the accompanying British accent. And I even wore my hair in a perpetual braid for about the first decade of my life. But that's beside the point. The point is, I loved The Parent Trap as a child. It even gave me a massive appreciation of Nat King Cole with that opening scene. But that's the great thing about the rewatch. Some of the jokes that flew over my head as a wee tot are actually quite hilarious. For example, Hallie calls her friends Lucy and Ethel when they start getting carried away with the chatter. I get that now. That's pretty funny, but again, probably lost on the audience who would be watching this film.

I also finished up Practical Magic, which I had started watching Halloween last year and then paused for something or other and never returned to it in months. Story of my life. Anyway, here's another film I just adored as a teeny tiny Chelsey.

I loved lots of witchy stuff as a kid, especially the TV series Charmed. So it's no surprise that a film with the Stockard Channing and the Diane Wiest playing witches made me quite happy in my young age. I mean, that's Rizzo and Edward Scissorhand's adoptive mother, for goodness sake. Have some respect! Anyway, the film isn't all that spectacular in terms of story or anything like that, but I do love the tone of it. Even though it's dealing with the dark arts, it has a happy, lighthearted mood that is infectious and makes me endlessly gleeful. And when we're filled with glee, don't we all want to dance for midnight margaritas. The answer is yes. Yes, we do.

And Matilda. I almost forgot that I watched Matilda. The film that taught little second-grade me to punish my parents when they were bad. Good times.

Resolution #4: The 2017 Super-Mega-Ultra-Neo-Maxi-Zoom-Dweebie Chelsey Cosh Reading Challenge™!

This month, I got down to business. I managed to finish five books.

There was no question which screenplay I was going to read.

Let me preface. I love Nora Ephron. I love her books of essays, especially those later in life, like I Feel Bad About My Neck and I Remember Nothing . And I love the classic boy-meets-girl flick, When Harry Met Sally . It's one of the most expertly written films in terms of dialogue. And so, I decided what better screenplay to read than one where it's all words, all talk, all conversations at restaurants and parties and apartments and walking in the park. I read a screenplay where there are no action scenes to speak of and it's virtually all dialogue. I mean, sure, I think Harry runs once, but we're not going to ask for a Nike sponsorship or Tom Cruise's body double. Honestly, I was in heaven, reading When Harry Met Sally .

It filled me with joy, swept up in the film running in my head. True, I could not detach the images of Meg and Billy from Sally and Harry, but still, the story just works. The words float off the page. Nora mentions how she and her partner in crime for this particular endeavour, Rob Reiner, each got their own character. Nora is Sally, an optimist who I believe she describes as "chirpy," while Rob is Harry, the prince of darkness who revels in his depression and seeks to bring others down to his level while he's at it. Two people who don't want to be trapped in a car together. Let the witty banter begin.

My one complaint? I wish I'd read the original, the first draft, the one marked up and scrapped and picked apart. I suspect what I have must have been a rewrite because of the inclusion of that famous ad libbed line, "I'll have what she's having." What a great line. But not Nora's.

Still, a good read. And a good watch.

Then I set in on a winner of an Edgar Award, of which I went with The Grown-Up .

Now, we all know how I feel about Gillian Flynn. I'm willing to forgive her, then, for The Grownup. I didn't like it. It was too short, which is not a format that works for the kinds of twisted complexity that Flynn typically weaves into her tales.

Flynn is like one of those women at a loom who makes a massive quilt and adds a fiber of this and that along the way, so subtle that you miss it until you realize that a third of the quilt is made up of that certain fiber, but in order to make that sort of realization, that gasp of disbelief, then there has to be a massive quilt. This book is small, very small, too small, a mere swatch. It's a campside read at best. And that is too small for my Gillian.

But I'm willing to forgive and forget.

Then, I decided to read a book based on a blog, of which there are surprisingly many. I ended up reading Hyperbole and a Half , by Allie Brosh. I had never heard of Allie Brosh. It was a whim, truly random. And my husband freaked out.

"Oh, my God, you're reading that?" he said. With excitement. With glee. With unadulterated delight in his eyes. "Can we read it together?"

So, we did. He apparently knew Allie's work from before, particularly an image that said, "Clean all the things!"

Again, I didn't know anything about Allie. While the latter half of her book seemed to be weaker content than the former half, I still enjoyed it all. I laughed most of the time. I even related on a deeper, more serious level to when she spoke about mental illness. I especially liked her diatribe on the cognitive dissonance and identity conflict she experiences from thinking she is a good person without evidence. Or worse, evidence to the contrary. It is a great little book, but I recommend taking it in small quantities in lieu of the rather larger gulp I took. I hope that she puts together another compilation from her blog posts, something equally visual and entertaining as this one.

Last month, I mentioned reading Middlesex , but I hadn't actually finished it yet. I had a handful of pages left. And a lot happens in this book. But I can proudly say I finished it! And what did I think?

Middlesex is a once-in-a-lifetime book, a novel that spans generations in the style of Fried Green Tomatoes in the Whistle Stop Café but for good reason for it tells the story of a gene abnormality that can be traced back to a tiny village generations ago. This novel is an immigrant story, a Depression survival tale, a love-triangle romance, a triumphant rags-to-riches success yarn, a coming-of-age YA chronicle, a Kerouac-esque road read, and a gender-bending foray into sexual politics and gender identity. But, above all, Middlesex is about family, specifically the Stephanides clan and their rollercoaster trek through life.

Listen, whatever your views are, everybody has a family and can relate to the ties that bind and sometimes the bonds that break. It's a beautiful story about living honestly; with that honesty comes laughter, deep sorrow, and tender moments.

It's one of the best novels I've ever read, five-star literature, profound without pretension. It feels like nonfiction in moments, so raw that a reader is compelled to believe it must stem from reality.

I will not delve into the details so as not to ruin what is a spectacular read. Without question, I highly recommend reading this one.

Only four of the five books I read were actually part of the challenge. I just wouldn't be me if I didn't read random stuff randomly to the detriment of productivity. I read The Bedwetter , by Sarah Silverman, the comedienne and actress. It was the story of her life, and yes, she was a bedwetter for a very long time. I appreciated her honesty, which I can almost always count on Sarah for, and the humour, too, of course. It told the story of her life from youth to the success story she is today. You know, a typical memoir, but with an extra heaping of harsh language.

It was also a month of beginnings. I started reading The Almost Nearly Perfect People (a book about Scandinavia); The End of Your Life Book Club (a book about a mother-son relationship); and Brokeback Mountain (a classic work of gay literature). I'm on my way.

So, what remains?

#1. A memoir published last year: The Princess Diarist, by Carrie Fisher

#2. A memoir published this year

#3. A book about or set in Scandinavia

#4. A book about or set in Australia

#5. A Black Quill Award winner

#6. A book about a mother-son relationship

#7. A Goodreads choice award winner

#8. A sequel to a book you loved

#9. A screenplay: When Harry Met Sally, by Nora Ephron

#10. A classic work of gay literature

#11. A winner of an Edgar Award: The Grown-Up, by Gillian Flynn

#12. A book most people read in high school but you did not

#13. A work of Gothic horror

#14. A play written by Shakespeare

#15. A play not written by Shakespeare

#16. A book of essays

#17. A book based on a blog: Hyperbole and a Half, by Allie Brosh

#18. A book written about the future, but that future is now our past

#19. A graphic novel

#20. A classic romance novel

#21. A book with a transgender protagonist: Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides

#22. A book written by a woman of colour

#23. A book about a murder

#24. A banned book

#25. A book about science

Oh, no. Maybe I'm not out of the wilderness yet.

Until next time, happy reading!