I read Brody’s article “Auteur Wars” in The New Yorker about the relationship between Godard and Truffaut and thought it excellent. I was pleased to see this biography was scheduled to be released soon after the article was published. While waiting for the book to be released, I got the idea to watch or re-watch (as the case may be) all of Godard’s films as I read the book and to blog about my thoughts. I don’t know if I will be able to find a copy of every film to view, or if I will even want to watch all of them or finish the book for that matter: It is 700 plus pages after all. But I’ll keep it up as long as the project’s interesting to me. Basically I want to know: What do the colors red and blue mean to Godard?

I read Brody’s article “Auteur Wars” in The New Yorker about the relationship between Godard and Truffaut and thought it excellent. I was pleased to see this biography was scheduled to be released soon after the article was published. While waiting for the book to be released, I got the idea to watch or re-watch (as the case may be) all of Godard’s films as I read the book and to blog about my thoughts. I don’t know if I will be able to find a copy of every film to view, or if I will even want to watch all of them or finish the book for that matter: It is 700 plus pages after all. But I’ll keep it up as long as the project’s interesting to me. Basically I want to know: What do the colors red and blue mean to Godard?

I read Brody’s article “Auteur Wars” in The New Yorker about the relationship between Godard and Truffaut and thought it excellent. I was pleased to see this biography was scheduled to be released soon after the article was published. While waiting for the book to be released, I got the idea to watch or re-watch (as the case may be) all of Godard’s films as I read the book and to blog about my thoughts. I don’t know if I will be able to find a copy of every film to view, or if I will even want to watch all of them or finish the book for that matter: It is 700 plus pages after all. But I’ll keep it up as long as the project’s interesting to me. Basically I want to know: What do the colors red and blue mean to Godard?

This is not a book that I would ever have purchased. I’m the girl that’s 50 lbs. overweight that STILL gets hit on at the gym after a sweaty session on the elliptical trainer, OK? I order two slices of the cheesiest, most blissful pizza on earth to eat alone in my car and I get hit on by the cashier. I don’t really need help in the sex appeal department (as shocking as that is to admit to myself—hey, I must be doing something right.) But when I learned I was going to be getting an advanced copy of the book, I thought humbly enough in the face of all evidence to the contrary,”Maybe my kung fu could use a tune-up.” THIS BOOK IS NOT THAT TUNE-UP. To be fair, maybe this would be helpful to people who walk through the mall without getting verbally assailed. Maybe their derrières could use a little love too. Mine certainly could do with a break!
Aside from the subject matter, I would like to say that the design of the book does absolutely nothing for me. Every page was ridiculously printed in a different color with a different background graphic. Whenever I see books with the funky-scroll-script font (wish I knew it’s name), it is such a turn off! It’s like the publishing world’s equivalent of “WHAT’S UP GIRLFRIEND! PLEASE LIKE ME BECAUSE I AM SO DESPERATELY TARGETING A FUN FEARLESS AND FEMALE AUDIENCE!” Additionally, the way that the material is presented (i.e. we are a fly on the wall in the Author’s office as she guides the unfortunately un-sexily named proxy for us all “Sally” through her training sessions) is totally annoying. Instead of just presenting the material to us and letting us glean from it what we will, the authors JUST KNOW that they have all our concerns covered. In reality they don’t even come close…like how do I turn this Sex Appeal OFF? When someone writes a book about how to get guys you aren’t attracted to to STOP hitting on you in the first place, I’ll be first in line.

The Dud Avocado is the first book I’ve read in a while that I kept imagining as a movie. Probably because I had just recently seen Bonjour, Tristesse and was always picturing Sally Jay Gorce (the protagonist) as Jean Seberg. Which is lovely, if only slightly regrettable for the fact that I lost the opportunity to imagine a Sally Jay of my own making, which is always a special prerogative of the reader.
I must recommend this book to anyone that needs an little of that ye-ye flavor in their lives. If we can’t be at a seaside villa near Biarritz right at this moment, we probably also aren’t prepared to deal with the career ramifications of sporting a pink hairdo at the office, or ignoring the stares while waltzing down the street at 2pm in evening wear. Or meeting an Italian diplomat for drinks at the bar in the Ritz. Sigh. You go, Sally Jay.

The day I never thought would come is finally here. Today I closed Anna Karenina FOREVER! The force-fed nightmare is over. While there were certainly beautifully written passges (helped by the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation, no doubt) I can’t ever imagine reading this book ever again. I will say the scene at the horse races was lyrical and sparked the imagination. And when Levin went on the hunting trip with Stiva, the natural descriptions made me feel as if I was there. But my brain was so choked by the extended description of Russian provincial politics at approximately page 600, I put the book down for a month and wouldn’t touch it. Way to throw a wrench into whatever plot momentum this thing had, Count Lev. At that point, knowing the fate of the heroine anyway, I couldn’t help wondering what could possibly be so important that we had to delay the climax for still another 200 pages. As I recall the upshot of those provincial elections was that….Levin was so confused by all the political doublespeak that he a) didn’t understand the voting process, and b) forgot who he was supposed to vote for anyway. So I made it through all that for absolutely no pay off whatsoever. Dear Tolstoy, allow me to quote Tim Gunn: I can’t want you to succeed more than you do! If the (secondary) main character can’t be bothered to understand it all—WHY SHOULD I? The only redeeming event in those final infernal pages were the descriptions of Anna’s internal emotional break down. I just kept thinking, “Yes, that’s just like a woman.” But that did not take up 200 pages. I persevered to say I had done it, but I would not recommend it.

Oh please, we all know this isn’t going to be an objective review. A lot would have had to go wrong with this CD for me to dislike it and honey, nothing did. It’s perfect new Kylie. It’s harder-edged than FEVER, the lush, dreamy dance disc that re-ignited our dormant passion for Kylie, but hey, she’s been through some stuff alright? The standout for me is “Like A Drug,” but I have a feeling with further listenings, I will find other faves. I only listened to the album 4 times all the way through today, so…Apparently it’s been out in America for a while and hasn’t done well at all. I get that. Sometimes we Americans are too cool for school. That’s ok. All I know is I have no more excuses not to go back to the gym now. I’ve got the trainer sessions, the shuffle, and the 2nd best (behind Fever) workout CD EVER!

I am really in a slump here people. I am apparently plagued with the ability to pick out books with great premises that are never brought to fruition. This is what, the third book in a row that I made 3/4 of the way through and didn’t finish? I’m starting to think it’s not them, it’s me…nah, it’s them. The plot has a great set up in the beginning: cadet Edgar allen poe is brought in to help solve a twisted murder at the US naval academy crica 1830. What gets in the way is that for the rest of the book, nothing happens. There is no trail of clues to follow, and only one vilain to consider (well, maybe two). Instead we are treated to authorial excercises in character voice. Edgar Allan Poe as written couldn’t be more of a show-off blabber mouth.

This book started out promisingly. It’s abundantly clear that the author has a profound knowledge of Turkish history and culture and a light comic touch when it comes to characterization. Unfortunately, the plot, although interesting enough at first, was hampered by the choice (and I don’t know if it was authorial or editorial) of using very short chapters that always ended with a dramatic cliffhanger, but were followed by a new chapter that involved different settings and characters. A little of this is usually alright, but used with such consistency here it had the effect of confusing me and making me forget where the action had left off once returned to a scene. It reminded me of reading the Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, which was first serialized in a magazine before being published in book form. There Collins had to use cliffhangers so readers would buy the next issue. Here, the technique just made me feel manipulated. With with 80 pages to go, I realized that I really didn’t care whodunnit or why, which abruptly put an end to this visit to Istanbul.

Tina Modotti is a fascinating 20th century character whose life was stranger than fiction. Elena Poniatowska, journalist and author, allegedly spent 10 years researching Modotti, and this novel is the fruit of that labor. It’s difficult to understand why she chose to write a novel instead of a biography. Her training as a journalist is evident throughout this book, much to its detriment. Modotti’s life is intricately plotted: first she did this, then she did that. We get a well-researched timeline of events that would be laudable in biographical form, but we never quite come to understand Modotti.

Why would such a vibrantly voluptuous spirit, the center of bohemian Mexico in the 1920s, who tried so hard to create beautiful forms in both art and life consciously subsume and excise all remnants of her unique personality from her life to become a drab gray Comintern agent, abandoning her appearance and her art? Why would she go from a sybaritic plethora of male admirers to obsessing over a pro-Stalinist assassin that just couldn’t be bothered to pay her attention? How was her automatic love of mankind and the idealism it engendered tricked and blinded by the evils committed in the name of Communism? If there were no answers to these questions to be found in all Poniatowska’s biographical research, than certainly a novel might be the ground for examining these questions. It would allow the author to venture with imagination to answer what is left unknown. But Poniatowska creates a Modotti so opaque that psychological understanding becomes impossible.

Modotti crosses paths with hundreds of people in this book. The work is peppered with names of people that are just randomly inserted, possibly to give events context but without context of their own, making it impossible to tell to the reader if a) the person is fictional or b) the person really existed. I get the feeling that most of the people named were real, however Poniatowska gives next to no information about them, so their addition becomes blather. Additionally, as there is no internal examination of Modotti herself, there is no examination of her interaction with these people that would help us understand anything about them. Weston did this, Mella did that, Rivera said this, Vidali went here…we don’t know why, they just did, and we stop caring. I couldn’t be bothered to finish the book with 50 pages to go.

I’m sure Modotti’s life would make a fascinating biography. That’s what I should have read instead of this.