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drive-by update
Jun. 24th, 2014 06:39 pm1) My internet has gone away again. It's been gone for two days; all the usual caveats (it could come back at any time or it could stay gone) apply. So if I don't seem to be reading, posting, or commenting in a timely manner, that's why. (Right now I'm at Starbucks, enjoying both the wi-fi and the air conditioning.)
2) It turns out that the novel I thought didn't exist--the novel about WWII-era POWs that focuses on homoeroticism/homosexuality/love between men in POW camps--actually does. It's called Bitter Eden and was published in the UK in 2002 by the South African writer and activist Tatamkhulu Africa, who was a POW in Italy and Germany during the war. It's just now been republished by a US publisher. I'm about halfway through it; it's not an easy read for several reasons, which I'll post about once I've finished it, but I'd say it's a good novel as well as, by virtue of its subject matter, an important one.
3) I recently watched The Devil's Knot, an Atom Egoyan-directed drama very closely based (as in, they're using the real names and everything) on the case of the West Memphis Three, who were convicted of the 1993 murder of three young boys on extraordinarily unreliable evidence, plus the fact that they listened to heavy metal music and were interested in "the occult." Colin Firth plays an investigator working pro bono for the defense who begins to uncover how compromised and in some cases perjured the prosecution's evidence was, while Reese Witherspoon plays the mother of one of the victims, who begins to have doubts about the defendants' guilt. It's a decent movie, not great but powerful because the subject matter is powerful, and worth seeing for that if, like me, you're not sure you want to watch the series of three documentaries that have been made about the case. (Trigger warning for disturbing images, though--since even now no one knows exactly what happened--there's no onscreen violence.)
4) Today at work I received some unsolicited diet advice from a customer. That was awesome! (No it wasn't.) It's never happened to me before, and I'd like it to never happen again. (She recommended the paleo diet, by the way. Surprise surprise.)
2) It turns out that the novel I thought didn't exist--the novel about WWII-era POWs that focuses on homoeroticism/homosexuality/love between men in POW camps--actually does. It's called Bitter Eden and was published in the UK in 2002 by the South African writer and activist Tatamkhulu Africa, who was a POW in Italy and Germany during the war. It's just now been republished by a US publisher. I'm about halfway through it; it's not an easy read for several reasons, which I'll post about once I've finished it, but I'd say it's a good novel as well as, by virtue of its subject matter, an important one.
3) I recently watched The Devil's Knot, an Atom Egoyan-directed drama very closely based (as in, they're using the real names and everything) on the case of the West Memphis Three, who were convicted of the 1993 murder of three young boys on extraordinarily unreliable evidence, plus the fact that they listened to heavy metal music and were interested in "the occult." Colin Firth plays an investigator working pro bono for the defense who begins to uncover how compromised and in some cases perjured the prosecution's evidence was, while Reese Witherspoon plays the mother of one of the victims, who begins to have doubts about the defendants' guilt. It's a decent movie, not great but powerful because the subject matter is powerful, and worth seeing for that if, like me, you're not sure you want to watch the series of three documentaries that have been made about the case. (Trigger warning for disturbing images, though--since even now no one knows exactly what happened--there's no onscreen violence.)
4) Today at work I received some unsolicited diet advice from a customer. That was awesome! (No it wasn't.) It's never happened to me before, and I'd like it to never happen again. (She recommended the paleo diet, by the way. Surprise surprise.)
