I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Micro Reviews

Movies

Foreverland (** – found interesting)
Brave (**** – liked)
Safety Not Guaranteed (**** – liked)

Books

YA/MG fiction:
Monster (***** – loved)
Anna Dressed in Blood (***** – loved)

Adult fiction:
The Angel of Darkness (***-enjoyed)
The Eyre Affair (**** – liked)
Moon Over Soho (***** – loved)
The Third Rumpole Omnibus (***** – loved)

Adult non-fiction:
Imagine: How Creativity Works (**** – liked)

TV

The Wire season 1 (**** – liked)
The Wire season 2 (**** – liked)

Foreverland by Max McGuire (film, 2011) – Thanks for seeing this with me, Anita, even though my choice of films wasn’t the best :( Its plot sounds interesting: a young man with cystic fibrosis embarks on a road trip to take his deceased friend’s ashes to a Mexican healing shrine. It was inoffensive with one or two interesting moments, but the dialogue felt stilted and clichéd. I often found myself thinking, “So… if the main characters had taken sensible precautions that any normal person would think of like, I dunno, going online for two seconds, they could have avoided this major obstacle.”

Brave by Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman, and Steve Purcell (film, 2012) – Thanks for seeing this with me, Ryan! I realized that while I in theory think Pixar is one of the most reliable animation production companies out there in terms of quality, I seldom find their movies as affecting as I think I should. I liked this story of a young princess who wants to change the mother whom she thinks is forcing her into a “proper” marriage, but it didn’t move me deep down. Maybe I also don’t do well with stories where the plot is driven by the protagonist doing something that any fairy tale could’ve told her or him is a mistake — I still have the same problem with Disney’s The Little Mermaid.

Safety Not Guaranteed by Colin Trevorrow (film, 2012) – Thanks for also seeing this with me, Ryan! I enjoyed this gentle comedy about a trio of journalists who track down a guy who’s placed an ad searching for a time-travel partner. The film does a good job of communicating exactly what kind of time-travel movie this is going to be — the problems its protagonists face are more about the emotional difficulties of time travel rather than the logical ones. The characters are quirky and funny without being obnoxious, and the dialogue is sharp.

Monster by Walter Dean Myers (YA novel, 1999) – Our protagonist, teenaged Steve, tells the story of his incarceration and trial for involvement in felony murder through a mix of diary entries and the mental screenplay he’s writing to keep himself sane in prison. This book is gripping and builds up a strong well of sympathy for Steve even though the reader remains unsure whether he’s guilty of acting as a look-out for the homicidal gang of robbers from his neighbourhood as the State has accused. The tension just keeps building until the last pages, when we learn the verdict but are left with the same moral questions and uneasy feelings as Steve himself.

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake (YA fantasy novel, 2011) – This is the most deliciously gruesome YA I’ve read in a long time, and I’ve been looking forward to getting my hands on it since I learned about the premise. Teenaged Cas is a ghost hunter, dispatching violent spirits in the hope of facing the one that killed his father, but he bites off more than he can chew when he becomes obsessed  with the powerful spirit of a murdered girl known as “Anna Dressed in Blood.” Full of modern references and dry humour, Cas’s voice can get a bit annoyingly cynical at times, but overall the story and characters are so cool that, who cares?

The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr (historical mystery novel, 1997) – Thanks for lending this to me, Liz! The adventures of Dr. Kreizler and the misfit band of detectives from the novel The Alienist continue. This outing, in which errand boy and former street urchin Stevie narrates his and his friends’ attempts to catch a sociopathic child-killing woman in nineteenth-century New York City, doesn’t match up to the first installment: the voice is more uneven, and the plot seems to spin wildly out of control at times. Still, who can’t enjoy Teddy Roosevelt name-dropping?

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (speculative fiction novel, 2001) – Thanks for lending this to me too, Liz! And sorry it’s taken me forever to get it back to you! I loved the whimsy of the crazy world in which LiteraTec Thursday Next battles absurd villain Acheron Hades to save a kidnapped Jane Eyre. Unfortunately, the chunks in which I read this were too sporadic (mea culpa) to get a good handle on any characters but the protagonist, her family, and the bad guy, but overall the most exciting part of this book was that the universe feels built to handle dozens of imaginative new plots in future (and existing) sequels. Looking forward to picking up this tongue-in-cheek series when I have more time!

Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch (fantasy mystery novel, 2011) – Love the voice in this sequel to 2011’s Midnight Riot, and the mystery drew me along too. Our hero Peter Grant, apprentice magician and London copper, must confront a bunch of supernatural puzzles coming at him from all directions — including one that seems to be directly linked to his jazz musician dad — as well as cope with the aftermath of his last case. Compared to the first book, less happens, but it’s still an action-packed and satisfying read.

The Third Rumpole Omnibus by John Mortimer (mystery anthology, 1998) – I mean, it’s Rumpole, and you either like him or you don’t. Personally, I think that despite his misogyny, misandry, and general misanthropy, he’s got a warm and humorous voice that skewers his own peccadilloes as often of those of the people around him. And everyone generally ends happy, despite their own silliness and Rumpole’s complaints about She Who Must Be Obeyed.

Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer (non-fiction book, 2012) – I love reading Lehrer’s work because he has an unparalleled gift for linking broad concepts from different fields in a way that feels refreshing. That said, based on other reading I’ve been doing online, I’m sceptical about his characterizations of what some scientific studies mean — and, dangerously, he’s such a good writer that it’s easy to forget to challenge his assumptions. This book on creative problem-solving was quite interesting and readable, but its conclusions seem vague or dubious.

The Wire, season 1 by David Simon (TV series, 2002) – It’s difficult for me to put my finger on how I feel about this series delving into the attempts of a bunch of Baltimore cops to bring down a local drug gang, with the story told from both sides. On one hand, the writing and characterization are brilliant — we get insight into the lives of all these people, bad and good, white and black, old and young. On the other… I guess I was just expecting more from all the accolades I heard, and while this is the first TV series I’ve seen that’s as good as a novel, it wasn’t particularly spectacular for a novel, if you see what I mean.

The Wire, season 2 by David Simon (TV series, 2003) – In the fallout from the previous season, both heroes and villains are scattered across different police departments, penal institutions, and city areas, but it doesn’t take long for the old gang to start banding together to investigate a smuggling operation made possible by the dockworkers’ union and its ramifications, which  ripple through the lives of both cops and civilians. It was fun to watch McNulty and Daniels and Kima and the rest slowly put their detail back together, but I didn’t care as much about the characters this season as I did last season. The plot seemed more scattered as it tried to continue the stories of last season’s drug dealers while introducing new criminals and keeping up with the cops’ personal lives.