Wednesday, January 23, 2013

The Double Life of Pi

My blog has moved to www.satisfyingmycuriosity.com.  If you've enjoyed this blog, please check my new site out for other interesting comments on culture, book reviews, and music.


The wonderful novel, Life of Pi, by Yann Martel is once again in the spotlight.  The novel won the 2001 Mann Booker Prize for best fiction written in English by a citizen of  the Commonwealth of Nations.  Now it is a fabulous movie by Ang Lee.  As you might surmise from the above comments, I am a big fan of Life of Pi.  I led my book club discussion on the book and have defended it against many of its detractors.  It seems you either really love this book or really hate it.  I asked the usher at the theater how people were reacting to the movie and he said about 50/50.  So, I guess if you didn't like the book, you're not going to like the movie.  I went with someone who didn't have a clue about the plot and she loved the movie.  Even if you don't like or "get" the movie, it is visually stunning.  I saw it in 3D and it was spectacular.  So, after 12 years I'm once again thinking about the double Life of Pi.  I think that what confuses people the most is:  WHAT IS THE TRUTH?! Which story told by Pi is the real story? In the movie the stories are being told by Pi to a writer  many years after the shipwreck.  Which to believe...  Read more...

Saturday, January 19, 2013

New Books on the Horizon

Product Details
Here's a short list of some popular authors that will have books coming out, mostly in May. I guess they figured just in time for the beach season.  If you're like me, I pre order from Amazon and am always delighted to see a new book pop up on my Kindle. If you go to Amazon to the link for upcoming releases, there are over 50,000. A bunch of those, though, are coming out in paperback. Read more...

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Two Book Reviews: Route 66 Still Kicks and The Lifeboat:A Novel

I at first thought I'd write this as a book review aimed at men and then another one at women.  And then I asked myself, " why?"  I thoroughly enjoyed the "man's" book, Route 66 Still Kicks by Rick Antonson.  I don't believe The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan is chick lit.  Far from it. So  here goes, two book reviews.  Let's start with Route 66 Still Kicks.  The reason I loved it was because I love trivial history about America.  And Route gives you plenty of that.  Let me set the map for you.  Rick talks one of his buddies, Peter, into taking a drive along as much of the now defunct Route 66 that they can find.  He wants to rent a convertible and travel down memory lane.  The road begins in Chicago and ends in LA.  Of course the book is riddled with references to how Nat King Cole came upon the song named after the road as well as tales about the TV show. But I'm jumping ahead.  I looked on Amazon and when I typed in Route 66 in books, 3,551 references were made regarding Route 66.  3,551.  Now that means somebody is interested.  Once Rick and Peter get underway, it's like opening an American history book.  We learn that FDR used Al Capone's car to make his speech regarding Pearl Harbor.  Why?  While Capone was in the slammer, it was the only armored vehicle the secret service could find on short notice.  We learn all about how the hotel industry started with the Harvey Houses and how hotels sprung up along the continental railroad.  We learn that much of the Route is along old cattle trails as well as parts of the Cherokee Trail of Tears.  As they visit Oklahoma, Antonson talks about the wonderful humor of Will Rogers and his tragic death and about the scouting and hiring of Mickey Mantle by the New York Yankees.  He tells the tale of a notorious double murder in Oklahoma that still permeates the psyche of the town of Depew. So as they follow Route 66, we get a great history lesson. Read more...

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Gray Eyes...Oh My...

My blog has moved to www.satisfyingmycuriosity.com.  If you've enjoyed this blog, please check my new site out for other interesting comments on culture, book reviews, and music.


In a humdrum moment of pure laziness, my mind wandered and began to contemplate the eyes of both Christian Grey and Gideon Cross.  Not an unpleasant way to laze away the time.  Authors these days, particularly the hot sex, rom/dom/sub types, have their protagonists with unusual hair and eye color combinations.  In Fifty Shades of Grey, Christian has copper colored hair with gray eyes whilst Ana has auburn hair with blue eyes.  In the Crossfire series, Gideon has black hair with blue eyes and Eva has blond hair with gray eyes.  I agree that black hair and blue eyes as well as auburn hair with blues eyes may not be that unusual.  But what's with the gray eye thing?  So I let my mind go all stream of consciousness a la James Joyce. (OMG, in college I took one whole course on his writings.  Other than the penis floating in the water like a flower, that's about all I remember.) What is so important about the eyes, other than for seeing? Well, according to a Yiddish proverb, "the eyes are the mirror to the soul".   I found some interesting useless info but hey, I'm satisfying my curiosity, right? Read more...