Feel Good Hit of the Summer

I've decided to write down a definitive reading list for the summer. Perhaps I am being too ambitious. My hope is that I am not ambitious enough. Some of these will take me longer than others... So here it is, more or less in order:

This Side of Paradise - F. Scott Fitzgerald: I am almost done with this one.

Into The Wild - Jon Krakauer

The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac

Huis clos - Jean-Paul Sartre

Nouvelles - Guy de Maupassant

Franny and Zooey - J. D. Salinger: This is a re-read.

Saga - Tonino Benacquista: Also a re-read. This is a French book about screenplay writers.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky: I saw this one in a bookstore at Heathrow and it looks interesting.

Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh

Middlemarch - George Eliot

The Diviners - Margaret Laurence: This was suggested to me by theoreo

Equus - Peter Shaffer

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers: I want to buy this one.

White Teeth - Zadie Smith: I want to buy this one too.

Les Yeux Au Ciel

The first time I saw Les Chansons d'Amour I liked the music, but I hated the story. The fact that I first watched it on a sucky TV probably contributed to my initial dismissal of the movie. However, rewatching it was quite delightful. The music was as beautiful as the first time, and I paid more attention to the story, which lead me to appreciate it more. 

Les Chansons d'Amour can be translated as "Love Songs". It is a foreign movie, and it is a musical. This might send some people running for their lives, but they would perhaps be missing out on a nice experience. I like the style of this movie very much. If I were more familiar with old French movies, I could perhaps liken Les Chansons d'Amour to one of them. One of the things I like the most about Les Chansons d'Amour, however, is probably that it is first and foremost a way for me to revisit my beloved Paris, a city that holds a very dear place in my heart. 

This movie deals with how people react to the death of a loved one. Throughout the movie, many memorable musical moments can be enjoyed. The music is very simple, but it does not lack modernity. In fact, some of the more tragic moments remind me of Placebo, in all their Frenchness and anger. One of my favorite scenes is a duet between Louis Garrel and Clotilde Hesme (who I find very pretty and whose French accent is simply hilarious :P), where they are very intimate but never actually kiss, for they are too busy singing. Another great moment would be the musical duel that takes place between two of the main protagonists. One revels in amorous flings, and the other claims that such a lack of commitment can be tiresome. If you are interested in France at all, you should get your hands on this movie. :)

Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3

I have just finished reading Songbook by Nick Hornby. Nick Hornby is a rather successful English writer. You know how High Fidelity and About a Boy are movies? Well, they were books before that, and they were written by Nick Hornby. I have seen High Fidelity and I adore About a Boy, but I have yet to read those two books. Songbook is the first Nick Hornby book I have read. 

If you have seen or read High Fidelity, you know how important music is to this author. Songbook is a collection of essays about Nick Hornby's favorite songs. I know very few of the songs he speaks of, but this didn't keep me from enjoying the book. This is because Nick Hornby does not talk about the songs he loves only as pieces of music. What he does instead is he uses these songs to express his point of view on certain issues of life. He does not talk like a musical elitist and succeeds in remaining accessible. As I have said previously, this was my first encounter with Nick Hornby and I rather like his style of writing. Because he is a successful author, I expected his book to be an easy read. Songbook is not a difficult read, but Nick Hornby has a pretty extensive vocabulary and is a really precise writer. I will soon be reading his other books.

Shame and Fortune

I went to an Indian restaurant last night. It is, I believe, the signature Indian restaurant in my town. It is right next to the mall, so everybody knows about it. It is called Le Tandoor, and it is a really good restaurant. We got samosas, chicken and beef vindaloo, tikka lamb, butter chicken, shrimp with spinach and naan (garlic and regular). I might be mistaken on some of the names. My personal favorite is the tikka lamb, which is barbecued lamb served with very tasty rice. The butter chicken is great too. However, we had to wait nearly an hour for our food...

Where The Wild Things Are

 The hype surrounding Patrick Watson has always kept me far away from him. However, the recent release of his second album Wooden Arms prompted me to give him a listen. I'm not all for the utterly unmanly voice, but this is, after all, some pretty cool music, with lots of crazy instruments. "Fireweed", which opens the album, builds up slowly and offers us a small climax. It was the second song of the album to be released as a single. At first, I wasn't convinced by the first single, "Tracy's Waters", but it has now won me over. "Beijing" is a pretty great song. "Wooden Arms" and "Big Bird In A Small Cage" are very beautiful. "Hommage" is an instrumental piece, and I am certainly incapable of telling you to whom is Patrick Watson making a hommage. I don't like "Traveling Salesman" so much. There isn't any singing in "Down At The Beach", but it is still very interesting. "Man Like You", "Where The Wild Things Are" and "Machinery Of The Heavens" are pretty...

Eleanor Rigby

I read Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and found it extremely sad. It was released in 2005. There are three narrators in this book. One is Oskar Schell, a nine-year-old boy. The two others are his grand-parents. I will start with the grand-parents, and move on with Oskar afterwards. 

The three narrators are very different. Thomas Schell and his wife both grew up in Dresden, which is a German city that was bombed by the Allied forces in 1945. Thomas was in fact in love with Anna, his wife's sister, who was killed in the bombings. Because of this, Thomas Schell cannot speak. However, in the passages he narrates, his sentences seem to have no end. Oskar's grandmother's style is different: she likes to put spaces between her sentences. 

Oskar is a pretty special boy. He only wears white, he writes letters to famous people, and he invents things to keep himself from getting sad. Oskar's dad died in the September 11 attacks. Oskar is looking for something he believes will help him get through his grief, and we follow his journey through the city of New York. The city of New York is very important in the book. Oskar has to meet a lot of people on his quest, and he chooses to meet them in alphabetical order instead of doing it geographically, and so his journey seems endless. Plus, he walks everywhere. As I said, Oskar meets a lot of people, and at one point of the story, he thinks of the song "Eleanor Rigby": "All the lonely people. Where do they all come from? And where do they all belong?"

This book made me realize how traumatizing 9/11 must have been for the United States. Apparently, I had never thought about it enough. I was pretty young when it happened, and at that time, all I could think of was that perhaps Americans were exaggerating a bit with their patriotism. I had to read a fiction book to understand that they had really been hurt.

The book is also interesting visually: there are pictures of doorknobs, pages with lots of words written in differents colors as in a stationery store, and pages corrected in red.

Quote

Steven Wright is a really great comedian. His comedy album I Have a Pony came out in 1985 and its follow-up I Still Have a Pony was released in 2007. He talks very slowly and has a characteristic deadpan humor. Here is the first part of an interview with him and Craig Ferguson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEqcn-n6-oU