There’s only one viable time management approach left (and even that’s only really an option for the better-off). Step one: identify what seem to be, right now, the most meaningful ways to spend your life. Step two: schedule time for those things. There is no step three.
The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (review)
“One dominant, overarching, nearly definitive principle for reading: Read at Whim.”
Somewhere around Christmastime I fell into a massive reading rut. What I was reading was no fun, and there was nothing better out there, and there never would be. Everything was in ruins. Then I read this book. And for the past couple months, I've been on one of those glorious hot streaks where just about everything I've read has been fun, and the stuff that wasn't I dropped without second thought. Coincidence? I have to give some credit to leaving behind the cold, dark, depressing winter, and stepping into the golden light of springtime... but Alan Jacobs' The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction definitely deserves some credit, too. I like the tone of this one. It's like your at a smart friend's house, and he's reclining in a chair and talking at length. Some favorite parts... In an awesome footnote, relating to the "gateway drug" theory of lowbrow reading eventually leading to "better" books, an excerpt from Alex Rose:
“The only conceivable value of trashy books is the dubious but not unthinkable possibility that they might go some of the way towards engendering in young people a love of reading as an end in-itself, which in turn might whet the appetite for better books. For many, that’s the only way in. They’ll read Sweet Valley High or Twilight at thirteen, lose their taste for it by fourteen and demand something richer and more challenging at sixteen. Or so the thinking goes. If the argument applies to one form of entertainment, though, it should apply to all. Why is it that when kids become enraptured by some idiotic program, no one says, “well, at least they’re watching TV?””
In hindsight, this is obvious, but it's a really good, liberating reminder:
“If I set a book aside today I am not thereby forbidding myself to return to it later—nor am I promising to do so. To everything there is a season, and, by corollary, everything is sometimes *out* of season.”
Timing is everything. And along the same lines of releasing the pressure on yourself, we're reminded that "Many books become more boring the faster you read them" and that "All books want our attention, but not all of them want the same kind of attention." I also liked this excerpt from Auden about thinking about how we evaluate the stuff we read:
““For an adult reader, the possible verdicts are five: I can see this is good and I like it; I can see this is good but I don’t like it; I can see this is good, and, though at present I don’t like it, I believe with perserverance I shall come to like it; I can see that this is trash but I like it; I can see that this is trash and I don’t like it.””
If you find yourself in a reading rut, maybe this one will help you get out, too. Recommended.
Third Class Superhero (review)
This is a pretty fun collection. Charles Yu's Third Class Superhero has some good light scifi/speculative influences, along with a George Saunders-ian blend of dark but sympathetic takes on modern everyday life (cf. "the Capitalized Phrases, offering entry into an Exclusive Club for People Who Get It"). It's fatalistic, but still curious. Goofiness pops up in the title story (read an extended excerpt):
“Every morning, when I open my eyes, I think the same four thoughts: 1) I am not a superhero. 2) I have to go to work. 3) If I didn’t have to work, I could be a superhero. 4) If I were a superhero, I wouldn’t have to work.”
Ladies and gentlemen, Moisture Man. One of my favorite stories was "401(k)", which has a tongue-in-cheek exploration of the treadmill of consumer society and life's template.
“The Realtor is showing us our dreams. “Private, affordable, midrange,” he says. I never thought I’d have midrange dreams.”
And later in the same story, a sequence on aging:
“The thirties and forties. The long run. The lifelong conversation. Somewhere in here we’ll get incredibly lost, wander around in the desert, and get spit out on the other side of fifty-nine and a half, into the land of penalty-free-IRA-withdrawal, looking around like we just popped out of a quarter-century fun-park water slide tube, thinking, Where am I, how did I get here, can I do it again?”
Maybe my favorite bit in the whole book, a poke at how we think about travel:
“We plan a vacation. We want to see the Other. The travel agent sends us literature, glossies, video brochures. We choose a package deal with Authentic ExperiencesTM****. According to the brochure, there are five kinds of Experience: Urban, Rural, Semirural, Ethnic, and Ethnic with Danger. Standard Endangerment is Mild or Implied, but those in the know understand they may inquire discreetly about Actual Hazard—e.g., I’ve heard there might be something more?...”
This kind of writing – where skills of observation meet clever exaggeration – is just so fun:
“Five-year-olds are playing soccer nearby. More specifically, they are viciously kicking one another in the shins while a soccer ball sits unharmed in the vicinity.”
My other favorite story is probably "32.05864991%", which explores "why men are such terrible emotional statisticians", and the existing of two different Englishes – "the language of the wanted and the language of the one doing the wanting.", and what exactly "maybe" means. I love this bit that touches on nervousness and superstition:
“He has two shirts left in the current dry-cleaning cycle and a pile of shirts on the floor and a pair of brand-new slacks with the tag still on that he doesn’t want to touch for fear that any deviations from his normal routine will affect something that happens during the day and turn “maybe” into “no.” In order to avoid disturbing whatever tension lines of cause and effect may be between him and Janine, he has to minimize perturbations in the system and allow chance to take him where it will.”
Good stuff.
It’s okay to not like things
In Defense of the Expert Review | Balder and Dash | Roger Ebert
When scientific experts criticize “Gravity” for failing to display an academic-level understanding of the laws of nature, they are missing the point. Nobody goes to “Gravity” for a physics lesson; they go to be entertained. But there are times when a fact-check of a film can provide necessary context and, especially if the film is based on true events, illuminate not just how a narrative deviates from the truth but why it does. At their best, expert reviews can even illuminate deeper truths, like how reality is an often unintended casualty of pop culture. Since mainstream movies only show us what we want to be true—almost by definition, a film that sells tens of millions of tickets does not challenge any widely-held perspectives—movie fact-checkers can show why a certain film felt the need to diverge from reality to tell a satisfying story.
In Defense of the Expert Review | Balder and Dash | Roger Ebert
Just How Bad Were the ‘Bad Boys’?
The Avengers
The Avengers. The basic plot mechanics are a bit tired, but I am not ashamed to admit how satisfying it is to see the whole gang together after seeing others in the Marvel series. A couple neat camera moments (Cap in the rearview and a POV shot that flips along with the car it’s inside of). Nothing quite like the joy/terror of Hulk being Hulk. I really wish Renner had more to work with.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I had so much fun. Good action movies make you want to do the things you see on screen. Iron Man is fun to watch, but I don’t feel like I want to fly around and shoot beams out of my hands. But this? Yeah, I want to hold up a shield and run through locked doors. The First Avenger is still my favorite of the Marvel movies, but this is a nice elaboration and keeps the good drama/humor balance. Such a great character, becoming more suspicious, more wary of what he’s asked to do.
Michael Clayton
Michael Clayton. I love this movie. (Previously.) Clooney has the lead role, but Wilkinson (incredible) and Swinton bring in the color and the contrast - each of the three responding to the ongoing toll of their work. Other good slow-burning corporate conspiracy mood movies? Gotta check out Arbitrage and The Conversation.
아저씨 (The Man from Nowhere)
아저씨 (The Man from Nowhere). Another abduction/rescue movie in the spirit of Taken or Commando, but it plays with the pace quite a bit more. Surprised both by how dark/graphic it was, and by its melodrama (colorful, sunny flashbacks). I like the use of first-person POV in some of the action scenes. Oldboy has some similar driven/relentless/remorseless violence. I also liked Won Bin in Mother.