Category Archive for ‘Read Things’ at Mochimochi Blog

Archive for the 'Read Things' Category

2009 “Best of”s

How about some “best-of” lists for 2009? I don’t keep up with all the latest in any media, but here’s what I enjoyed this year anyway.

Best new movies
In the Loop
Up in the Air

Best new-to-me movies
Paris, Texas (1984)
Notes on a Scandal (2006)

Best new album
Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion

Best new-to-me albums
The Fiery Furnaces’ Blueberry Boat (2004)
Parenthetical Girls’ Entanglements (2008)
John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme (1964)

Best new TV
Mad Men
Friday Night Lights
Parks and Recreation
Community
Curb Your Enthusiasm

Best new-to-me TV
Friday Night Lights (The first 3 seasons)

Best new book
Turns out I didn’t read any 2009 books this year! But I read a lot of new short fiction, particularly from Tin House.
Oh, I forgot The Believers by Zoe Heller!

Best new-to-me book
Beloved by Toni Morrison (1998)

Best new game
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure

Best new-to-me games
LEGO Batman (2008)
Rock Band 2 (2008)

Best new cats
Soupy and Nipsey!

soupynipsey_bestcats

Published

Anna

on December 22, 2009

. 5 Comments

Robot Dreams

My friend Calista, who works at First Second, a publisher of graphic novels, was nice enough to recently give me a copy of Robot Dreams, the wordless book by Sara Varon. I loved it!

Apparently Robot Dreams is meant for younger readers, but it was perfect for me. Reading it felt kind of like watching a silent movie. The story is about a dog and his robot friend who get separated—it’s sad in parts, but very touching, and the artwork is great.

Reading this made me want to pick up more graphic novels, which seem just right for weekend reading. Thanks Calista!

Published

Anna

on October 23, 2008

in Read Things

. 9 Comments

Knitted Toilet Paper is Catching on

My free pattern for Toilet Paper from October last year has recently enjoyed a little surge of attention, thanks, perhaps, to its inclusion in Whipup’s recent Ultimate Guide to Knitting (and Crochet) for Halloween post. How nice of them!

The funny thing to me is how so many people like to take the intentions of this pattern very literally. It was originally meant to be a silly gag, or perhaps a scarf, but I suppose if you knit it, you can do whatever you want with it…

As a Halloween pattern, I suggest hanging it in your tree, or using it to dress up as said toilet-papered tree.

Published

Anna

on October 22, 2008

in Read Things

. 8 Comments

Why This Book Is Giving Me the Creeps

I’m currently reading Ian McEwan’s Atonement, and it’s seriously freaking me out. Here’s why.

I picked up Atonement at Borders a couple of weeks ago because I’d been meaning to read it for a while and because it was on their “3 for 2″ table, which I have a hard time resisting. (But it’s always that third book that’s trouble, isn’t it? After finding two you know you want, mysteriously, all the rest seem to turn into middling food-themed chick lit.)

Halfway through the second chapter, I get this odd feeling of deja vu, as if I’ve read this part of the book before. It occurs to me that it was probably published as an excerpt in The New Yorker some time ago, and that’s why it seems vaguely familiar. Anyway, it’s enjoyable.

Then I reach the third or forth chapter, and I get the same feeling about another scene in the novel, as if I read it a long time ago, but didn’t really read it. It’s more like I dreamed it. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but once it happens, I’m thinking “oh yeah, that’s what was going to happen.”

Once I approached the middle of the book, it really started to get to me. I tried to explain the mystifying feeling to my husband, and he suggested that I probably read the book before and then forgot about it. I often read a book and then forget what it was about, and sometimes I start reading a book, and then realize that I had already read it a long time ago. But I’ve never had a such a hazy half-recognition that lasted throughout an entire book. And there’s no way that I could have read it a long time ago, because it was only published five years ago.

So I must conclude that I’m losing it. I must have read the book at some point within the past five years, and then it was zapped from my memory when I hit my head on something. Either that or Mr. McEwan somehow plagiarized my dreams.

Published

Anna

on September 6, 2007

in Not-So-Cute Things and Read Things

. 8 Comments

Book Review: The Undercover Economist

Lately, I’m finding economics endlessly fascinating. No, really.

Maybe it’s because I never took a course on it in college, and so never had to memorize index funds and complicated formulas, but “The Financial Page” is quickly becoming one of my favorite sections in the New Yorker magazine. (Here’s a puzzle for them: why do they publish every week when they know that everyone has at least two unread New Yorkers sitting in a pile somewhere at any given time?)

On Slate, I head straight for Tim Harford’s pieces on finding economics in action outside of Wall Street, in which he calls himself “The Undercover Economist.” So I was excited to find that he’s recently written a book with the same title, made just for mathematically-disinterested econ amateurs like me!

I just finished reading it, and I must recommend it to pretty much anyone, except maybe for econ people who already know what they’re talking about when they discuss free trade or why coffee at Starbucks costs so much while coffee growers are paid so little. Harford even almost makes a convincing case of letting economists run the world—maybe this wouldn’t be such a bad idea if people were inherently rational beings.

In any case, Harford is great at explaining the economics behind everyday human interactions, as well as basic questions about the world: why are some poor countries getting much richer than others, why is traffic so terrible in some cities, and why do I buy the most expensive drink on the menu at Starbucks? (He spends a lot of time on Starbucks, and I spend a lot of time in Starbucks.)

So kudos to Tim Harford. Thanks to him, pop economics is quickly becoming the new pop science!

Published

Anna

on August 3, 2007

in Read Things

. 5 Comments

Sarah Vowell’s Radio On - A Review of the First 45 Pages

This week I’m reading Radio On, a “listener’s diary” by Sarah Vowell. Normally, I try to avoid books with the words “memoir” or “diary” in the subtitle - I think it’s because I kept a diary once, so I’ve been there, and it wasn’t particularly insightful or compelling.

But I was willing to make an exception for Sarah Vowell because she’s cute - her voice is a squirrelly cross between a five-year-old and a kindly ancient grandmother - and her little pop-history stories on This American Life are usually entertaining. Plus, Radio On appealed to me because I’m interested in most anything about media.

I’m actually becoming less keen on Sarah the further I get into Radio On. It’s largely about Kurt Cobain (Sarah admits this herself - the book was written in 1995), but even more about how no one really understood Kurt except for Sarah, and how anyone who even dared allude to Kurt in 1995 was a first-class imbecile. Also, how much NPR sucks. This is a little ironic, since most of Sarah Vowell’s fans know her from listening to NPR, but she’s just so cool and non-elitist that she can disdain the (completely harmless) daily news program All Things Considered at the same time that her stories receive airtime on it every once in a while.

In the end, I’m probably less disappointed in Sarah than I am embarrassed for her. I think I was hoping for something in a tone closer to her “This American Life” segments - a clever, somewhat distanced narrative take on a historical and cultural tool. Instead, she sounds like a wordy high schooler who is into progressive politics and music you’ve probably never heard of before.

But that’s just the first 45 pages. Fingers are crossed that it gets better!!

Published

Anna

on March 19, 2007

in Read Things

. Closed