The Graveyard Book

You may be familiar with Neil Gaiman as the author of Coraline but I never read that - or saw the movie. I came across this title when I was reading some reviews and it sounded like something I might like. It's weird - a boy living in a graveyard - but fun and very believable (as long as you enjoy fantasy).

Where People Like Us Live

I lived in Racine for over 20 years and had never heard of Rubberville until I read this book. And yet, there are plans to make it a landmark! (just google Rubberville)

However, even though I was unfamiliar with the name Rubberville, this book certainly made Racine come alive. It was fun to read about North Beach, Elmwood Plaza, the Golden Rondelle and know exactly what the author was talking about. The book was worth reading for that alone...but it also had a well-written story with believable and likable characters.

Howl's Moving Castle

In earlier days I felt that detectable changes from one frame to the next were a hallmark of cheap animation. This was especially true in animations produced for television: Hanna-Barbera may have been the most commercially successful animation studio ever, but for Heaven's sake! Do they HAVE to keep lowering the bar so @#$%#@$ far?

Once they had lowered the standard, they were copied and things only got worse. Watch an episode of Pokemon, for example, and the technique is--well, I'll just say that the cutting of corners to make the animation process cost-effective is plainly evident.

The previous result for me has been a knee-jerk dismissive reaction anytime the animation wasn't perfectly smooth. If they were putting fewer than 24 fps on the screen, somebody didn't care enough.

But then I started watching Miyazaki films. Quite often--maybe always--the transition from one frame to the next is evident. But if the drawings are beautifully executed with great care, does it matter so much? In this case, since so many of the drawings are executed by only one person--and since the result is soulful and thoughtful and magnificent in so many other pleasantly surprising ways--I'm finding a new ability to ignore frame counts.

This film, in particular, is beautiful. I found the story rather convoluted and a little disappointing in its complexity, but that's my only complaint. It's definitely on my to-own list.

what have I done to deserve this?

Picked this up from the World Cinema section at the public library. Any description I write wouldn't do this film justice, so I'll just copy the notes from the DVD jacket:

"Gloria is a cleaning woman and housewife who is addicted to amphetamines. She lives in a crowded apartment with her miserable taxi driving husband (who once forged Hitler's diaries), her two teen sons--one who is selling drugs, the other sleeps with older men--and her crazy mother-in-law who keeps a pet lizard. Driven by despair, Gloria sells off one of her sons, accidentally kills her husband and sets into motion a nightmarish chain of events in Pedro Almodovar's absurdist black comedy."

Excellent synopsis. Excellent movie. You have to be in the right frame of mind for this sort of absurdist black comedy, but if you are, this is hilarious. I've heard of some of Almodovar's other films (Talk to Her, All About My Mother), but this is the first thing of his I've seen. Can't wait to see the others.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid - The Last Straw

I've been hearing a lot about this "Wimpy Kid" series so I thought I'd give it a look. I reserved a copy at the library and rather than set me up with the first one "Diary of a Wimpy Kid", they gave me "The Last Straw". But it really didn't matter as you don't have to have read the first one before you read this one. For me, it was a fun book to read when I needed a break from something more serious (such as "Cutting for Stone" which I am currently reading).

I'll probably get the others from the library (over time...) and fall back on them when I need something light.

One of my favorite scenes in this book occurs on the first page when Greg is coming up with New Year's resolutions for his family. He tells his mom "I think you should work on chewing your potato chips more quietly." That struck home for me as I hate to hear crunching, probably something I learned from Ma.

Kiki's Delivery Service

Kiki's Delivery Service was the first Miyazaki film I ever saw, and we just got it from the library again. It's been a couple of years since we first saw it--the twins didn't remember it at all--and I found it even better the second time around.

The film begins as Kiki, a young witch, decides that it's time for her to leave home and try to make her way in the world. The rest of the film is about her trying to get settled in her new life, and the adventures that happen to her along the way.

One of my favorite things about Miyazaki is the way that he will stir together disparate elements from past history and, because the story is already dreamlike, the elements seem to fit effortlessly, as if they always belonged together. The cars in Kiki's new town all seem to be from about the mid-1930s, and there is a dirigible in the story, but there are also transistor radios, and television. The locals regard Kiki as more of a remarkable surprise than a fright; nobody is horrified to see her flying around on a broom. And the message behind the film is a powerful favorite of mine.

The only downside to this movie is that Kiki's cat, Jiji, was voiced by Phil Hartman. I never heard of Phil Hartman until he became famous for the wrong reason, and I can't listen to his work here without being saddened by that. Sigh.

Ellen Tebbits

I have been a huge fan of Beverly Cleary for about 25 years. And before that, I knew of her stuff because of the one book of hers we owned at home growing up, which was Ellen Tebbits.

I must have read that book at least half a dozen times, just because it was there. It wasn't until much later, when I began to improve as a writer, that I really came to appreciate Ms. Cleary's amazing talent.

I've read most of her books to the twins--everything in the Henry Huggins series, everything in the Ramona series, everything in the Ralph S. Mouse series, and a couple of her other books as well (including her book Otis Spofford, which also features Ellen Tebbits in a supporting role). But this book never found its way to our shelf until last week when Charlotte brought it home from school.

And so I re-read it today. Wonderful, again. (Coincidentally, Charlotte brought home this edition, which has the Alan Tiegreen illustration on the cover, but the same drawings inside as the 1951 original that we had when I was a kid.)