Saturday, October 07, 2006

Unemployment Means...

...Lots of Time for Reading (and Other Activities We're Always Too Busy or Too Tired to Really Engage In Every Day.)

In my case, it's been reading and movies. Here's a list:

BOOKS

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
Autobiography of a Face, Lucy Grealy
Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters, Mark Dunn
I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors, Bernice Eisenstein
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Robert C. O'Brien
In Plain Sight, C.J. Box
Freakanomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
The Women of the Washington Zoo, Marjorie Williams
Our Endangered Values, Jimmy Carter
An Hour Before Daylight, Jimmy Carter
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Tikki tikki tembo, Arlene Mosel
The Little House, Virginia Lee Burton
Civil War for Dummies, Keith D. Dickson
Night, Elie Wiesel
Life of Pi, Yann Martel
Leadership Through People Skills, Robert Lefton & Victor Buzzotta
The Plot Against America, Philip Roth
Daughter of Fortune, Isabel Allende
A History of God, Karen Armstrong
The Basilica: Building St. Peter's, R.A. Scotti

MOVIES

Talladega Nights
Little Miss Sunshine
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
The Inside Man
Transamerica
Capote
An Inconvenient Truth
X-Men III: The Last Stand
Munich

DVDs

Star Wars Trilogy (Episodes IV-VI)
Finding Nemo
Derailed
Rumor Has It
The Family Stone
V is for Vendetta
The Manchurian Candidate (1962 and 2002)
MI-5
Six Feet Under
Happy, Texas
Paragraph 175
Lost (Season 1)

And now I'm reading... nothing. Hm. Time for a trip to Borders, I suppose. Recommendations welcome!

6 comments:

Mary Ellen said...

I recommend:

A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
The Color of Water by James McBride
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. (LOVED this one).
In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver.

I've been catching a lot of movies on Showtime--200 Cigarettes, The Power of One, Stage Beauty, As Good As It Gets.

Mike got the DVD on Shackelton's ill-fated voyage to the Arctic on the Endurance. Let's say it was more pleasant to watch it with him than it was with Jing.

Yours in unemployment, ME

Janet Kincaid said...

I read The Color of Water and Prodigal Summer a few years ago and really liked both. Perhaps I'll dust them off again and save myself a few dollars. And I'll definitely check out the others.

While we're going with favorite books here, perhaps I'll dust off Corelli's Mandolin (my all time favoritest book ever), Like Water for Chocolate, and Charlotte's Web, too.

verniciousknids said...

I've recently finished "Fingersmith" - Sarah Waters, and "Five Quarters of the Orange" - Joanne Harris and enjoyed both. I have just started "The Feast of the Goat" - Mario Vargas Llosa, which is great so far.

Happy reading!

Swizzies said...

I always recommend that everyone re-read (because it's simply not possible that one has not already read it) Catcher in the Rye. It's the Great American Novel, don'tcha know. Even more so in these modern times of the Dumb Shrub.

Janet Kincaid said...

JA: I'll bet Jody has the most AMAZING collection of books, like her AMAZING collection of art that I always covet when I'm over there. Truthfully, though, I am neither a "lender nor a borrower be" of books. In my experience either a) I never get them back or b) when I do get them back, the borrower has trashed them (I take good care of my books. A lot of folks think I don't read them, because they look brand new. I'm not a spine breaking, dog earring, underlining, coffee spilling book reader.) And I don't borrow because I'm notorious for not returning books in what I consider a timely manner (two weeks or less). I don't like to feel pressured into reading something just for the sake of returning it and yet, it sits in my book pile and nags at me. I once borrowed Tales of the City from my friend Eric. It took me almost two years to return it to him. BAD, BAD, BAD.

I have Miss Henderson Presents in my Netflix queue (love Dame Judi) and saw MatchPoint in the theater (the only Woody Allen movie I've ever actually liked.) I'll check out the others.

VK: I read Five Quarters of an Orange last fall, I think. I also liked it. I've heard good things about Fingersmith and will check it out.

Di: I bought Catcher in the Rye on your recommendation several years ago. Of all the books in my library, I've been wanting to read that one, and damnit, I can't find the darn thing. I'm going to have to buy a new copy.

Janet Kincaid said...

VK: I take that back: I read Five Quarters of the Orange around the same time I read Ella Minnow Pea. Hmph. I'll add it to my list of books. I liked Chocolat a bit more than FQotO, but still enjoyed the imagery around food and family.