I’ve been thinking a lot about the connection between books, movies, and television this weekend.
I got started when I started watching the TV show Parenthood, which I just recently found on Netflix Instant. A couple of the early episodes of the first season have a small sub-plot connected to William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury – there’s a plagiarized essay about the story and a cute scene where one of the characters (Sarah, played by Lauren Graham [aka Lorelei Gilmore on Gilmore Girls]) starts dating an English teacher who also loves the book.
“The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin” debuted on American television in 1954. However, the real-life story of Rin Tin Tin was not as glamorous as the perfect pup he played on the small screen. The real dog’s story begins on a World War I battlefield and leads to Hollywood and, eventually, the history books.
Today has not been a great day for reading. I feel like that’s becoming a refrain around here!
This morning my friend Erin and I went biking for Ride the Drive, a twice-yearly event in Madison where many of the major streets get shut down to cars and opened for bikers. It was one of the things on my Day Zero project list, so blogged about it with photos more over there.
When I read Jennifer Pozner’s Reality Bites Back, a feminist critique of reality television, I finally felt like I was reading a book that got what I’ve been trying to say. And although the book is focused specifically on reality television, I think Posner’s methods of analysis and conclusions can apply equally well to other forms of popular entertainment.
Discover Magazine’s Not Exactly Rocket Science blog put together a long list of female science writers, many of whom have some interesting looking pop science nonfiction. Thanks to @BiblioEva for linking to this one.
NPR and ProPublica put together a powerful multimedia package on five soldiers who suffered traumatic brain injuries during the same explosion in Iraq. I haven’t gotten through the entire package yet, but the parts I’ve read and listened to are great journalism.
Since I did a couple of musings on reading posts already this week — asking about a perfect reading month and thinking about reading and remembering and forgetting — I think this post is going to be just a little bit random.
I haven’t done much reading this weekend because Boyfriend and I did a Lord of the Rings movie marathon. This was a big deal because I’ve been pretty adamant with him about how much I dislike those movies (don’t shun me!). The first time I watched them I thought they were too long and too confusing — I’ve never read the books, so I just got lost. But this time I actually focused, asked questions, and ended up enjoying them, even if we did stay up until 1:30 in the morning finishing the last one.
In my review of Emily White’s memoir Lonely, a story of her battle with chronic loneliness, I mentioned that the book made me think a lot about friendship. I thought it would be fun to follow the review up with some of my favorite books and other media on friendship to cheer things up a bit.
One blog I’ve been reading for about seven months now is MWF Seeking BFF, a blog about what it’s like to try and make friends as an adult. The blog is written by Rachel Bertsche, a Married White Female searching for a Best Friend Forever. Bertsche moved to Chicago to be with her boyfriend several years ago, then realized she didn’t really have a single girlfriend in the city.
Monday Tally is a weekly link round-up of some of my favorite posts discovered over the week. If you have suggestions for Monday Tally, please e-mail sophisticated [dot] dorkiness [at] gmail [dot] com. Enjoy!
BookClubSandwich: We’re Heading Into The Jungle
The book readers voted on for our next BookClubSandwich read is The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. I’m excited about this pick – it should be easy for everyone to find and, even though it’s a novel, is often cited as one of the big books in journalism history.
My reading has slowed pretty dramatically the last three weeks because, like always, I’ve gotten addicted to a new tv show. I love tv on DVD or from Netflix, but try not to start new shows because I have this personality where if I start one I cannot stop watching it even when I have more important things to do.
The last show this happened with was Damages. I basically stopped doing anything for three days and watched an entire season. It’s that good.
The current show is Avatar: The Last Airbender, an Americanized anime series that originally played on Nickelodeon and was just recently made into a (controversial) feature film.
I’m behind with this, but it was too funny not to post. Last week SNL did a digital short mocking something I dislike, Twilight, using something I do like, Frankenstein. Hilarious! My only quibble is that the big green guy isn’t actually Frankenstein; Frankenstein is the scientist, the green guy is The Monster. Can we [...]
