Monthly Archives: April 2012

Joy

At the end of each episode of Criminal Minds, one of the characters always quotes something and this was a recent one:

Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.

—Joseph Campbell

Project 366 – Week 17

113/366
a mid-grading lull
exams done, papers await
for a moment: pause.

114/366
runniversary!
10 years ago, a decade
I started to run

115/366
o. m. g. I just
want to be done already
so very boring

116/366
framing in the rain
fresh-cut lumber permeates
the damp nostalgia

117/366
they enter at back
“you’re not used to this?” he says
“you’re a bad-ass now.”

118/366
just one snafu and
you feel like an idiot
even though you’re not

119/366
walking down this street
so much has changed in 10 years
petals fall from trees

Project 366 – Week 16

106/366
my superpower
I am stronger than I look
just test me. you’ll see.

107/366
when I read the card
enclosed with Phoebe’s ashes
my tears flowed again

108/366
“it’s been too long,” we
say and it has. let’s not let
that happen again.

109/366
light slants from the west
across blackened sky, clouds sink
down the mountainside

110/366
sign: “we will close at
4 until further notice”
time: 4:02. argh.

111/366
off to a good start
satisfaction: reaching goal
before end of day

112/366
strawberry french toast
random delicious breakfast
to start grading day

Happy Runniversary to Me!

I had to interrupt my grading for this Very Special Post.

Today is my 10-year running anniversary. On April 23, 2002, I decided to start running. My first run according to my log: R1W1x5 (1 minute run, 1 minute walk, 5 times). Yes! A whole five minutes of running.

It wasn’t the first time I’d made that decision/resolution. There were several aborted attempts to start running post-cross-country-running-in-PE days. But this time, for whatever reason, it stuck. 10 years and 5 half-marathons (!!!!!) later, I’m still at it. So, yay me 🙂

And yes, I had to pause the grading for a few minutes and go for a short run to commemorate the day. It’s symbolic!

ok, back to grading.

4: High Fidelity

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

View all my reviews

I bought this at The Book Warehouse, when I thought it was going out of business. (But then it got saved!) Book Warehouse is mainly an overstock/remainder store. This was in the remainder bins at the front, and it had kind of a cool re-issue cover. I’d never read it, and I thought, hey, I really should read that, having seen the movie umpteen times.

I took it with me to Calgary and read it on the plane / while waiting at the airport.

And… well, it was pretty good. I gave it a solid 3 stars at Goodreads. But it felt a little, I don’t know, been there, done that? Top 5 lists! Obsessions with pop culture minutiae. Mixtapes! That’s the internet! (Well, playlists now. Not quite the investment of love a mixtape was, but still.)

I know, I know, the book came first. It was published in 1995. But I didn’t read it first. So even though I knew the book was the trendsetter, not the imitator, it was hard to shake that tired feeling. And yes, I know I’m being unreasonable.

Also, I couldn’t not picture Rob as John Cusack, and Barry as Jack Black. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

And then there’s The Weird Thing. In the book, Rob is Rob Fleming. In the movie, Rob is Rob Gordon. Why? Why would the movie producers change his name from one ubiquitous Irish/Scottish name to another? Specifically, why would they change it from Fleming to Gordon? Bizarre. If anyone knows the answer to this, I really want to know. I found this NYT review from 2000 and all it says is:

IN the transition from novel to film, Rob, the hero of ”High Fidelity” — Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel, Stephen Frears’s new film — undergoes some minor transformations: he ceases being British and becomes American, relocates from London to Chicago and sees his last name change from Fleming to Gordon. The first two changes were no doubt to accommodate the casting of the Chicago native John Cusack; the last you can speculate about on your own.

Yes, please. Speculate away.

In any case, in a movie vs. book death match, book wins because obviously!

So anyway, the book starts with Rob depressed because his girlfriend Laura has dumped him (she’s been hooking up with their former upstairs neighbor Ian aka Ray) and that I could roll with, but…

[spoiler after the jump] Continue reading →

“The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered”

I’ve been catching up on my neglected feeds and such, and yesterday I ran across this:

The one bit of verse that charmed me, when read on the iPad, was Clive James’s brilliant and witty “The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered.” This poem forces you to wonder: What will remainders look like in our digital future? Where’s the 99-cents bin going to be?

—Dwight Garner

Wait. There’s a remainder table poem? Naturally, I had to seek it out. I found a copy here, at The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor (he of my favorite writer’s quote ever: “Nothing bad ever happens to a writer; everything is material”).

Here’s the first stanza. Click through to read the rest or listen to Keillor read it.

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered.
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy’s much-praised effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.
Great, square stacks of rejected books and, between them, aisles
One passes down reflecting on life’s vanities,
Pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews
Lavished to no avail upon one’s enemy’s book—
For behold, here is that book
Among these ranks and the banks of duds,
These ponderous and seemingly irreducible cairns
Of complete stiffs.

Maybe this should be The Remainder Table’s mascot poem 😉