Monday, Monday

                                                                Kevin at 17.

 I'm Still Here was terrifying but very good. Brazil 1970 v  US 2024 not so different. It took Brazil 25 years to get rid of a dictatorship. Hope it's not that long for us. Phone your congress reps. Flood their phone lines.

Also enjoyed watching ANNIE HALL, probably for the tenth time. Sticking with SEVERANCE but not really keen on it. ASURA is very good on Netflix. All CREATURES might be over. Oh, no.

Still reading OUR EVENINGS by Alan Hollinghurst. So much like Brideshead Revisited to me.

My DIL just finished listening to every Agatha Christie on Audible. What a feat! The gang are on their way to Amsterdam and Bruges for Kevin's spring break. Trying to decide also where he will go to school next year. It looks like he's interested in Public and Environmental Policy. Of course, both of my kids changed their majors along the way. As did Phil and I.  The University of Michigan received a record 105,142 applications for the fall 2024 semester

Lots of cold, snowy temps here. Florida can't come soon enough.  

What about you?

FFB: WE WERE DREAMERS, James Lehrer

Ran across a journal listing the books I read from 1987-89. I read so much more then. No Internet to suck my time for one thing. I wasn't working full-time and my kids were pretty much grown. I read lots of story collections, lots of mysteries but also lots of more literary books-ones by Faulkner, Wharton, Morrison, Capote, etc. And a ton of books by writers I don't remember at all. Also a lot more non-fiction. Just a lot more everything. 

Has your reading material/interest changed over time? Book groups have changed mine too. 

Here's the first entry from January 4, 1987

We Were Dreamers, James Lehrer

The story of the attempts of the Lehrer family to run a small bus company in Kansas in 1946-47.  PW wrote: "The material is slim and repetitious, and Lehrer lacks the tragicomic touch to give it added dimension." Lehrer was a news anchor at the time. I wonder why I chose this to read? 

I had a rule for myself: One mystery, one literary writer, one collection of stories, one non-fiction. I doubt I much kept to it though from the books in here.

Short Story Wednesday: From THE NEW YORKER, "My Friend, Pinnochio" David Rabe

 

 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/02/10/my-friend-pinocchio-fiction-david-rabe

 

From the playwright and fiction writer, David Rabe, comes a story of the long relationship between two men, both with connections to LA and the film industry. They meet in college, and meet up again and various moments in their lives. David Rabe reads the story to great affect on the NEW YORKER site. Their lives have similarities but also great differences. But being of that same generation gives them a jumping off point for disease, marriage, career, friendship, the interests of men. the things that the sixties era wrought. Reads like a memoir more than a story. No precise explanation from me for the title. 

George Kelley

Jerry House 

Kevin Tipple

Monday, Monday

Do you ever wonder how twenty-somethings can afford a restaurant that makes me blanch at the prices? It was a wonderful sushi restaurant in a restored Victorian house down the street. I almost fell getting there (so icy) but it was worth it. Only a few people I know eat sushi so I am not that up on what to order. But it was outstanding--whatever it was I ate. We were the oldest people in there by fifty years. Do you like sushi?

Attending a series of lectures on the continent of Africa, also hearing the music, the food, seeing artwork from Africa. So lucky to have the senior center we have.

Watching All Creatures (PBS), High Potential (Hulu), Severance (Apple), Asura (Netflix), Mo. Would like to watch The Pitt on Max because everyone is raving about it, but I can't do hospital shows. Why do I feel more uneasy around medical procedures on hospital shows than around people getting shot on cop shows.

THE BRUTALIST was a great movie but I missed a lot of it. It needed closed captions.

Reading OUR EVENINGS by Alan Hollinghurst. It reads like a novel from sixty years ago and that's a good thing right now. Reminds me a bit of BRIDESHEAD REVISITED.

How are you holding up in Great America?