I have apparently been on a non-fiction kick; after I finished John Hope Franklin’s autobiography, I picked up Einstein: His Life and Universe.  Matthew had already read it.  Again, this is a work of (auto)biography that you find yourself reading aloud to whomever is in the room with you at the time.

This really is an engrossing book, a fascinating look at the ways that Einstein’s personal, professional, and political lives intertwined.  I didn’t quite realize how little he actually contributed to physics after the age of 35, or exactly what a major public figure he was during his lifetime (though perhaps I should have).

We watched Babel with Josh and Jacy last week.  It was interesting… pretty depressing and I don’t know… I just don’t see the deeper meaning in it.  It’s a bit like a Neal Stephenson novel in the interconnectedness of the plotlines, and the temporal sleight of hand at the end is interesting.

Worth watching.  Not going to change your life.

We actually saw this less than 48 hours after it came out – hooray!  It was really good. Really, really good. I still think Prisoner of Azkaban was better, but this was up there. Excellent performances from Jim Broadbent (Slughorn), Daniel Radcliffe (do I need to tell you who he plays?), Tom Felton (Draco), and Alan Rickman (Snape). Oh, and Helena Bonham Carter (Bellatrix), too, of course. Going through the movie you know they have edited it, but you don’t feel like things are horribly missing. I had some issues with some of the changes they made, though, which I have detailed in a post on LiveJournal.

M got me Corpse Bride for Mother’s Day.  (Appropriate?  Probably.)  It was vintage Burton, very cute and dark and macabre.  It clearly grows out of Nightmare Before Christmas but … I’m pretty sure I like Nightmare better.  It seems more subtle, more complex.  Maybe I will change my mind when I have watched Corpse Bride more than once.

A couple of years ago Dad asked for this book for Christmas.  And, in the way that books are handled in my family, it was re-gifted to me this past Christmas.

This book should be required reading for anyone trying to understand the history of race relations in the U.S.

Franklin gives us a fascinating view of the civil rights movement from the inside, but with the analytical bent of a professional academic. Stories like his make the history of race relations in the United States come to life in a way that a history textbook just cannot. It’s also interesting to learn about how race relations played out in academe; his stories of prejudice and discrimination even within the academic profession are shocking and illustrate just how pervasive racism was, even within the “ivory tower” of higher education.

Many reviewers have commented on the stilted quality of his writing, and it’s true that it is very dry. I don’t know if it’s a function of his generation or a reflection of his personality, but throughout the book I kept thinking that it read like a letter from my grandfather, who was about 5 years older than Franklin if my memory & math are correct.

My sister gave M this little bit of fluff for Christmas a couple of years ago.  It’s very much a product of its time and place (immediately post-WWII England), but rather entertaining and great for bedtime reading as it’s just little two or three-page commentaries on random things.

The day after we watched Murderball, The Princess Diaries was on Disney while the kiddo was napping.  I figured there was no way she was going to sleep for two hours, so I left it on, knowing that I would be able to walk away at any time.  But she did, so I saw the whole thing.

Having also recently watched The Devil Wears Prada, it was interesting to see the “young” Anne Hathaway.  Like all romantic comedies, and especially those aimed at the tween set, it’s formulaic and the premise is completely implausible, but it’s entertaining and charming.  I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to let the kiddo watch it in 5 years or so, as long as we discuss the fact that straightening unruly curly hair is NOT a prerequisite for being beautiful!

I had wanted to see The Devil Wears Prada for ages, and somebody (my sister, I think?) rented it over Christmas.  So one evening my mom, my 87 year old grandmother, and I piled onto the sofabed in the den (it didn’t even fold up on us, though it was a near thing once…) and watched it.  Well, two of us did – Mom and I maintain that Grandma slept through a good chunk of it, but she denies that.

Anyway.  Yeah, it’s totally formulaic, but it was CUTE and it was FUN and the performances were lovely. Meryl Streep?  Deliciously evil, though I would have liked for them to develop her vulnerabilities a little more.  (Asking too much, I know.)  Anne Hathaway?  Charming as always, and I can’t quite figure out what exactly makes her so stunningly beautiful.  Adrian Grenier?  More, please.

We watched Murderball via free HD On Demand (love that stuff!) a couple of weeks ago – we’d heard a lot about it when it came out and were very curious.

It’s a really, really interesting documentary.  ”Murderball” the sport really doesn’t bear that much resemblance to regular rugby, but DAMN those guys are tough.  I guess they pretty much have to be, and I noticed a pretty high correlation between risk-taking behaviors while able-bodied (is that a PC term anymore?) and risk-taking behaviors in the form of playing murderball post-injury.

Probably my favorite moment was when the newly-injured motocross racer got to start tooling around in Zupan’s chair and you could tell that he was just ITCHING to go run into someone, which was pretty awesome.  Once an adrenaline junkie, always an adrenaline junkie, I guess.

I also liked how human all of the guys came across – the movie wasn’t just about the sport, it was about their lives as they related to the sport.

So go watch it.

I am NOT a reader of the Civil War novel, not at all.  But we had a copy of Cold Mountain lying around the house and I picked it up.  and then I was completely unable to put it down.  It’s not so much a Civil War novel as it is a novel about two separate journeys.  Inman is trying to get home, Ada is trying to figure out how to be independent when all the odds are stacked against her.  And it’s not clear whether either of them will be successful.

I loved the way Frazier told the two stories along parallel tracks, and kept you wondering exactly how they were going to come together.  You knew they would, but exactly what would happen was, to me at least, a little mysterious.  The ending was so subtle… I held out hope that I might have leaped to the wrong conclusion until halfway through the epilogue, when I sat and counted on my fingers who was sitting down to dinner.  I held out hope in a way that I don’t think either Ada or Inman would have.  But then, I’m not on the same type of journey that they were on.