Postcard from Oakland

Zoe sent me this postcard from Oakland, where she and Nick have recently moved. It’s not far from their place in Berkeley, but has a nicer landlord (and, according to her, a backyard with very aggressive squirrels).

She also included her return address on the card, but the post office barcode obliterated everything but the city and the zip code. I had to text her for the rest.

Books Read in August 2023

Middle Grade

Squished: A Graphic Novel
Megan Wagner Lloyd and Michelle Mee Nutter
Read for Librarian Book Group

There are still families with many children and I’m always happy to see them depicted in print. This graphic novel showed off sibling dynamics and individuality.

World Made of Glass
Ami Polonsky
Read for Librarian Book Group

I’ve been calling for more novels that discuss AIDS in the 80s and Polonsky has provided. Iris’s dad has AIDS and it’s not a thing she has shared with her friends (for good reason.)

Young Adult

A Scatter of Light
Malinda Lo

A summer spent with her grandmother before college changes Aria’s life. I really enjoyed Aria’s poor but inevitable choices rendered in sparkling prose.

NerdCrush
Alisha Emrich

This was a nice little romance set among cosplaying teenagers.

Luck of the Titanic
Stacy Lee

It took two attempts to finish this book, mostly because I wasn’t up with a sinking that is much too familiar. But most of the book is Valora and her brother rebuilding their relationship plus the conditions for people of Chinese descent and how they were treated on the Titanic and in their lives. The sinking is a small part of the story. I found the ending rather brave. This book is filled with the historical fiction details that Stacy Lee is known for.

Grownup Fiction

Crying in H Mart
Michelle Zauner

A solid memoir with a lot of talk about Korean food. It’s a mom-has-cancer book, though, so be aware.

Legends and Lattes
Travis Baldree

It’s “Let’s put on a play!” but with an Orc. And the “play” is starting a coffee shop in a town where no one has heard of coffee. Given that coffee is an acquired taste for nearly everyone, I didn’t buy that everyone loved it on first sip, but this was an entertaining book.

Grownup Fiction

The Glass Hotel
Emily St. John Mandel

It took a long while for me to figure out where this story was going, but I didn’t mind as the writing and the characters were enough.

(August vacation Little Free Library contribution No. 1)

Memorial
Bryan Washington

A good own-voices perspective with a two person narrative that didn’t bounce back and forth chapter by chapter. (Win!) The writing was spare, enough that there were no quotation marks.

(August vacation Little Free Library contribution No. 2)

Bittersweet
Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

I’m likely to enjoy a summer-at-the-lake book and this one had a mystery baked in. It got rather dramatic in an unsatisfying way at the end, but overall it was a good vacation read.

(August vacation Little Free Library contribution No. 3)

The Making of Another Motion Picture Masterpiece
Tom Hanks and illustrator Robert Sikoryak

This goes deep into the lives of the people who come together to make movies. While not the most succinct read (one of the people is the kid who grows up to write the underground comic the movie is based on) it was probably the kindest book I’ve read this year. The narrator is someone who loves people and finds their lives worth talking about.

I have a feeling this is a fantasy movie set though. Or the platonic ideal.

Grownup Nonfiction

Alright, Alright, Alright
Melissa Maerz

I loved this book! For fans of Dazed and Confused (all of whom could guess the topic from the book title) this book weaves together interviews from seemingly all the people involved in the making of Dazed and Confused, plus some people who worked with Richard Linklater before and after the movie, including people who went to high school with him.

It’s packed with a ton of interesting facts (Jason Lee was also there for filming; he was dating Marissa Ribisi at the time and went as her chaperone. Ben Affleck was tired of being cast as a bully. Filming was like summer camp for the actors and was hell for Linklater.) I especially appreciated the chapter that focused on the women in the film both how they interacted with each other and how the film shifted focus from them as filming went on. This is essential reading for Linklater fans, people interested in how movies get made, and people who still have crushes on many actors of early 90s cinema.

Personal story: In college my roommates were trying to decide which VHS tape to watch. “Let’s watch alright, alright, alright,” said one. We all knew immediately what she was talking about. And I’ve thought of that as the title every since.

Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctor’s Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life
Jordan Grumet

FIRE-esque financial book from the viewpoint of a hospice doctor. Grumet suggests three different paths to follow in a way that FIRE advocates usually don’t.

SKS: Protest Postcard

Sara writes that she and Shawn visited the Humboldt County Fair for the first time since 2019, and had a good time, though it was a hard shift from the Minnesota State Fair. I can attest to that being true, as I’ve been to both the HCF and the MSF.

I note that the copyright on this postcard is from 2017. I wonder what the genesis of this card was…. 😉

Summer Songs, 2023

I drove around town a lot this summer, and that meant a lot of time with commercial radio, which remains a hellscape of too many of the same songs (some of which are more than 30 years old—I’m looking at your Red Hot Chili Peppers “Under the Bridge”) played too often.

Still, there were highlights, and here they are:

Taylor Swift “Anti-Hero.”

My favorite lyric:
Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby
And I’m a monster on the hill
Too big to hang out, slowly lurching toward your favorite city
Pierced through the heart, but never killed

Olivia Rodrigo “Vampire”

And now I know that I was listening to the clean version of that song!

Aside from the raw anger, something Rodrigo does so well, I like the backup singers who follow the line “How do you lie without flinching?”

Noah Kahn “Dial Drunk”

There are two versions of this song, the first is Noah Kahn solo, the second with Post Malone


I’ve really enjoyed Stick Season both with and without guest artists. It brings back all the New England feelings, most of which aren’t great, but contains those feelings in a good way.

Independent of listening to it, I was about the song, especially this part:
I don’t like that when they threw me in the car
I gave your name as my emergency phone call
Honey, it rang and rang, even the cops thought you were wrong for hangin’ up

I remarked to Matt that it probably doesn’t matter if the cops thought he was wrong because they probably were just saying that. Matt commented that its super common for police to agree with people if it means they will get in the police car.

I don’t love Post Malone’s verse, but I do like the harmony that comes with his appearance.

Rema and Selena Gomez “Calm Down”

This was also the summer I watched Only Murders in the Building, so it was a big Selena Gomez summer because this song played Every. Single. Time. I was in the car.

The underlying rhythm is the thing that works in this song for me. I suspect if I knew the lyrics better I might not be so hot on the message.

The Fanta callout is fun, though.

Happy Days by NWCTC

Matt and I went to see the NWCTC perform Happy Days in the Lloyd Center Mall. It took place in the former Victoria’s Secret as it did last year, when I saw The Fever.

It’s not quite as easy to see the layout of VS because of the curtains, but you can see the iconic black and white stripes on the walls.

While I deeply loved last year’s production, I found Samuel Beckett’s play to be tedious. I’m not so much into absurdist plays. Neither was the guy next to me who looked at his Apple watch more than four times.

The program says about the play, “It is considered a ‘summit role’ for female actors, presenting a unique opportunity of intense theatricality.”

Diane Kondrat (Winnie) and Chris Porter (Willie) were very good in their roles.