Lovely Books and Things
My Weekly Books and Films Update
Linking up with:
Stacking the Shelves (
details)
Sunday Post (
details)
Mailbox Monday (
details)
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HAPPY THINGS:
1. Finding summer dinner recipes online: Chicken Burger with Avocado Corn Salsa (
here)
2. Enjoying the pianos scattered at the Flower Piano event in the San Francisco Botanical Garden (
here) - loved the Quinta Tango performance
3. Late night drinking: Double Chocolate Boba Tea from Purple Kow
fyi: gotta finish reading
Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan before the film release next month
~*~
Library:
When Dimple Met Rishi
by Sandhya Menon
-YA, Romance, India American
Amazon | Goodreads
ADDING this to my World Reads challenge - India (
here)
Providence
by Caroline Kepnes
-Mystery, Thriller
Release date: June 19, 2018
Amazon | Goodreads
PART of the BookSparks Summer Reading Challenge 2018 (
here).
FREEBIE:
The Tenth Island
Finding Joy, Beauty, and Unexpected Love in the Azores
by Diana Marcum
-Memoir, Travel, Spain
courtesy of Amazon Kindle First -Thanks!
Amazon | Goodreads
LOOKS like a good one for summertime.
Author event:
GREEN Apple Books on the Park hosted a reading and Q&A with Ottessa Moshfegh to present her latest,
My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Ottessa shared some experiences on living in New York and China.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
by Ottessa Moshfegh
-Literary, Mental Illness
Release date: July 10, 2018
Amazon | Goodreads
From one of our boldest, most celebrated new literary voices, a novel about a young woman's efforts to duck the ills of the world by embarking on an extended hibernation with the help of one of the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature and the battery of medicines she prescribes
Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?
My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.
OTHER things (kinda book-related):
Dewey's
Reverse Summer Readathon
July 28-29, 2018
11pm to 11pm PST (details)
GOING to try the new timing for this one.
RECENT fascination with miniatures has prompted me to create the first of a few Miniatures posts (
here).
AND watched: in theatre
That Summer (2017)
Director: Göran Olsson (as Göran Hugo Olsson)
Stars: Peter Beard, Lee Radziwill, Edith Bouvier Beale
-Documentary | imdb | my rating: 5
Montauk, East Hampton, New York, 2016. Peter Beard discusses his work as a photographer, artist and diarist before reminiscing about his attempt to make a documentary in the summer of 1972 with his friend Lee Radziwill (younger sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis), focusing on their childhood and the 20th- century history of East Hampton.
BEING a fan of the documentary
Grey Gardens, this was special treat to see. More of the same kind of footage but most especially scenes of the gals interacting with Lee Radziwill.
Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side or The Bottom? (2017)
Uchiage hanabi, shita kara miru ka? Yoko kara miru ka? (original title)
Directors: Akiyuki Shimbô, Nobuyuki Takeuchi
Writers: Shunji Iwai, Hitoshi Ône
Stars: Suzu Hirose, Masaki Suda, Mamoru Miyano
-Animation, Drama, Family, Japan | imdb | my rating: 4
Schoolchildren Norimichi, Yûsuke and Jun'ichi want to know if fireworks look round or flat from the side. They make a plan to find the answer at a fireworks display, while Nazuna schemes to run away with Norimichi or Yûsuke, whoever wins at the pool.
This film tells the story of a schoolgirl who finds a pretty transparent ball by the sea, on the day of a fireworks display of a religious festival in a seaside town in Japan. She plans to run away from home to escape from her unhappy home, as her mother is about to remarry for the third time. However, her escape fails until her male classmate finds out the supernatural power that the transparent ball has.
GROUNDHOG day kind of experience but unique in its own way. Certainly sparked fun conversation with the people I went to see this with.
Blindspotting (2018)
Director: Carlos López Estrada
Writers: Rafael Casal, Daveed Diggs
Stars: Daveed Diggs, Rafael Casal, Janina Gavankar
-Comedy, Drama | imdb | my rating: 5
Lifelong friends Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal co-wrote and star in this timely and wildly entertaining story about the intersection of race and class, set against the backdrop of a rapidly gentrifying Oakland.
THIS screening included a Q&A with director, Carlos, and David, Rafael, Janina and Utkarsh Ambudkar. A lively conversation with lots of laughs described the process and origination of the story and some people involved with the production.
Loved the innovative style and presentation of the main character in this story, Oakland.
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* comment and TELL me what you have acquired for your shelves recently
Thanks for stopping by :-)
