Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (2010)

I've got quite the backlog of posts to write!

I finished this book way after the Rumpus Book Club One-Off Franzen Group had it's chat with Franzen but I'm happy that I attended the chat anyway and that I took my time with the book. One, it's ginormous and, two, it's genius and deserves the time spent on it.


Franzen may well be the "Great American Author" of our time; chick lit authors be damned. Sorry, you can hate him all you like but the man is an incredible author from the most basic word choice and sentence structure to the larger picture of character development and plot to the much larger grasp of American society. I've not read a contemporary female author who does the same. Give me one and I'll read her because Franzen is one of the best authors to read and I wish there were more like him.

Freedom takes a look at politics, ecological concerns, the war, 9/11, family life, depression, rock music, drug use, racism, marriage, the arts, money, and on and on and on. But it's not an "issues" book. Franzen doesn't give an answer to any of these problems. He doesn't preach and he doesn't make examining these concerns easy. None of the characters are people you'd want to have over to dinner (unless you're a glutton for punishment) and you certainly don't want to be friends with any of them. But Franzen makes these characters real and relatable and incredibly readable.

This is one of those books where I breathed a sigh of relief that it was over but I immediately missed being in the throes of reading it.

Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

Perhaps the most amusing thing about this film is that there was a remake in 1989 that stars Loni Anderson in Barbara Stanwyck's role.Regardless, this is a quiet suspense thriller with a dark sense of humor. It's a little melodramatic but that goes with 1948 and the subject matter.

The Last Station (2009)

I don't know if I like this film. I liked the acting. I liked the settings. The plot was just fine. But smush 'em all together and *eh.* And I'm not sure what made it only *eh.*

All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost by Lan Samantha Chang (2010)

This was the Rumpus Book Club's September selection. I *tried* to finish it before the chat but didn't quite make it and didn't feel well once the chat rolled around. I did finish it in 2-3 sittings, though. It's an easy read in terms of actual sentence structure but a tad difficult in that I found none of the characters likable at all. Even the less outright obnoxious characters were not likable.

It's the story of a MFA poetry student and his life afterward. What is done well is the depiction of graduate school. I wasn't in a MFA program but I was in an English grad department that included an MFA. Sounded about right to me.But the main character annoyed me to no end and is definitely one of the more self-involved characters I've ever read.

That's not to say I didn't like the book. I did, very much, which is quite a feat by the author to make me like a book that contains no character I like.

Designing Woman (1957)

Lauren Bacall and Gregory Peck. Mmmhmmm.

Apparently this was the first movie Bacall did after Bogart died which makes it a little sad but Bacall and Peck are well-matched for humorous sparring and physical comedy in fun he-said/she-said confusion.

King Kong (1933)

J and I are being King Kong and Anne Darrow for Halloween and somehow I've missed this King Kong. I've seen Peter Jackson's version, though, so I'd really basically seen this one since the two are so similar. Anyway, I was paying attention for costume ideas more so than film-watching (esp. since the plot is exactly the same) but, interestingly, it holds up in a weird, outdated special effects way so that was fun.

The Town (2010)

I've got some catching up to do!

This film is very watchable. Ben Affleck works out just fine, I can ignore Don Draper's floppy hair, and Blake Lively can actually act! Jeremy Renner is, well, Jeremy Renner but that fits in here. But then the end gets a tad *ick* saccharine with a voiceover that needs to just be chopped.