GIRL IN ICE by Erica Ferencik

I read most of this novel over Memorial Day Weekend (Saturday and Sunday). I give it four out of five stars. Good characterizations and the author does a great job of keeping things tense at a science station in northern Greenland with small group of people. And I liked how she name-dropped The Thing — ya can't really set a story in the Arctic without recognizing that '80s flick.

Some things in the last third of the novel confused me:

• Why was Wyatt, the antagonist, so disbelieving that eels keep Sigrid alive?
• Why did Nora go underwater? To get some eels? She never went underwater before in the novel.
• When Jeane went to lock Val and Sigrid in the freezer, what were the cores? Other samples that Wyatt found?
• What did scientists synthesize eels' blood for?

Nonetheless, very good novel. Nice companion on holiday weekend.

Aliens

Since I bought Alien on DVD, I picked up the sequel, Aliens, off Amazon Prime. They didn't have just that movie on DVD, and buying the streaming version only cost one dollar more at $5 vs. renting it.

I watched it last Saturday and Sunday nights. It's held up pretty good. James Cameron sounds like a total asshole, but Terminator and Aliens are great films.

The one thing that struck me during this viewing is when Ripley torches the eggs in front of the queen. I dunno, seemed like a waste of time, since the colony was about to blow in less than 15 minutes.

Now that I own it, maybe I'll watch it 10 years or so.

TRUE STORY: WHAT REALITY TV SAYS ABOUT US by Danielle J. Lindemann

Well, that's two books that turned out to be duds after listening to interviews with the authors on the Majority Report podcast (at least with Looking for the Good War, it got me interested in George Washington, so I picked up Ron Chernow's biography last night at Barnes & Noble).

I give True Story two out of five stars. I'm not a fan of reality TV, so I was hoping the author would shit on that waste of entertainment, but she's actually a fan. Though the book isn't all bad. She brings up Karl Marx several times, which in my mind is always a plus. And she did bring up a few examples of how reality TV is a mirror of our society; for example, The Bachelor's contestants are mostly white and straight.

Like a lot of nonfiction, True Story would have made a better magazine article than a book.

Amy Sedaris' apartment advice

Caught this YouTube clip the other night, and it's fucking genius! Amy Sedaris and her friend said don't ever stress about getting your security deposit back, so might as well do what you want to your apartment. I've been living the wrong way for years!

Twitter zinger

"Though I find Twitter useful and amusing at various times, the world would be better off without it.”

Michael Tomasky, editor, The New Republic, email newsletter, 5/20/22

library reserve

Read about A House Between Earth and the Moon by Rebecca Scherm in the New York Times Book Review this morning. Tried to reserve it at the library, but I got too many holds, so I put it on my Barnes & Noble wish list. I dunno, it's got some pretty bad online reviews from regular readers.

Final iPod

Since Apple discontinued iPods, I bought one final one on Thursday, May 12 from Best Buy and picked it up on Saturday — cost me $370.99. Would've gotten it from Apple, except that they sold out in less than 48 hours. Hey, Steve Jobs, that might tell ya there's still demand of that product.

I didn't really need a new iPod because my 256 GB from 12/26/19 still works. Best Buy was all sold out of that size, so I had to get 128 GB. Kind of a blessing in a way because I've downloading stupid shit lately, like Rancid's Out Come the Wolves (my old cassette copy was fine, and I don't like any of the songs I had cut) and one-hit wonders from the '80s; right now I have about 100 GB of music. I synched the new iPod up with my Mac and will only put music on it, no podcasts or videos. I'll still synch my old iPod with my PC and use it to mainly listen to podcasts. FWIW: both iPods have same songs, playlists, etc.

Alien

The Ridley Scott kick continues! I bought the Alien DVD on Mother's Day. Watched it twice, the second time with the director's commentary on. Fascinating to rewatch it after at least 10 years. 1979 was a long time ago. Don't think many mainstream movies today could get away with such slow pacing (though the first two Conjuring films came close in creepy, leisurely pacing).

Pretty amazing how much they did with their budget of $11 million; I'm sure there wasn't much waste. And pretty cool how the cast was older, with Sigourney Weaver being the youngest (late 20's) and Tom Skerritt being the oldest (mid-40's) — would've been nice if Scott went into more detail how actor Yaphet Kotto argued that his character couldn't die.

SHINING GIRLS by Lauren Beukes

Read about half of this novel on Saturday and tore through the last 20 pages on Sunday morning. I gave it 3.5 stars over at LibraryThing, but it was OK. Reason for the high score is because of Beukes’ prose, Chicago's indie music (circa 1993) as a backdrop, and the time-traveling idea. Regarding the last point, I liked how she didn’t explain away how the house let the 1930’s serial killer travel to different times in the Windy City. Nice touch that he couldn't travel past 1993. On the minus side, it is a serial killer story — they’re so cliched. And I thought about 100 pages could've been edited out. Plus, it would've been a lot cooler if our heroine discovered the house about halfway or two-thirds of the way through the novel, instead of at the very end.

Even though think Elizabeth Moss is overrated, I'm still gonna check out the Apple+ TV series that's based on the book.

LOOKING FOR THE GOOD WAR by Elizabeth D. Samet

I finished Elizabeth D. Samet Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness over the weekend. Took me about a week to read its 350 pages. I heard about it thanks to review in The New York Times and The Washington Post; there was also an interview with the author on The Majority Report podcast (wow, can't believe it was all the way back in December).

Looking for the Good War was OK. I gave it two stars over at LibraryThing. The book doesn't really live up to its title. She talks a little bit how the movie Saving Private Ryan and Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation book mythologized World War II, but it's all scattershot, like a Chris Hedges book. Samet talks about Civil War times and the Vietnam War. I dunno, I had trouble following her mode of thought. Of course, her obfuscation may have been intentional — she is a professor at West Point after all.

One cool thing about the book is that it introduced me to the term “premature anti-fascist", which was what the government classified dissenters who were against countries, like Italy, when the U.S. was still friendly towards such fascist countries.

Another cool thing was that Samet said John Ford was a Confederate sympathizer. Makes sense considering all the westerns he made. Weird that movie buffs never talk about that fact of his legacy.

. . . premature anti-fascist, abbreviated PAF, became a code word for communist.

p.112, Chapter 2, “Dead-Shot American Cowboys”

. . . John Adam's recognition that no political beginning can entirely shed the innate corruptions of power and ambition.

p. 223, Chapter Four, "War, What Is It Good For?"

Prometheus

Since I bought the box set of Blade Runner recently, I thought I would rewatch another Ridley Scott flick, Prometheus, since it's on Amazon Prime. First time I caught the film since it came out on DVD about 10 years ago. I watched it on Thursday night all in one sitting — my hay fever started acting up, so reading my overdue library wasn't working.

Prometheus has held up pretty well. I still find it implausible in the the final third that Noomi Rapace's character would remove the alien from herself then be able to physically strain herself that would injure even a profession athlete. But I've stepped back on my criticism of the alien not being exactly like the ones in the Sigourney Weaver movies; I see now that the Engineers' creation is almost like open software where the alien is different depending on the hosts.

library reserves

Gonna have to reserve Chris Bohjalian’s The Lioness and Nghi Vo’s Siren Queen.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/89209-pw-picks-books-of-the-week-may-9-2022.html

Smoke Or Fire: THE SPEAKEASY

I've gotten into the habit of reading the lyric sheet, if available, of an album I purchased on the fifth listen. Finally got around to doing so for Smoke Or Fire's The Speakeasy.

Technically their third album (though they released some records previously under a different band name), it was nice to see they snapped out of the sophomore slump, This Sinking Ship. Where that album was uninteresting and self-involved, The Speakeasy is awesome and lyrically diverse with its comments on society at large. The album does seem to drag near the end, but I'm going to keep all 13 songs on my iPod. After all, it's probably their last album. As a band, they haven't released anything since 2010, the Year of the Speak Easy.

library reserve: THE PERFECT OTHER by Kyleigh Leddy

Tried reserving Kyleigh Leddy's The Perfect Other: A Memoir of My Sister, but my library won't let me because I got too many holds. Maybe I wouldn't have so many holds if it didn't take months to get ahold of a book. Hell, I got holds I placed back in February.