Thursday, August 11, 2011

Personal Wreck Week: List #5

***For the Friend Who Finishes Everything, No Matter What***

(Dear friend --- I located my copy of the earlier list I already gave you. It was a list of 100 things! Why do you need a new list? Regardless, here it is. None of these items are repeats from the previous list.)

Reminder: Click on Rec. #s (where available) for more information. The other recommendations will eventually get their own posts, as well.

To Read


1. Crewe Train, by Rose Macaulay (Rec. #84): This society satire is a lot like Cold Comfort Farm, but in reverse. Starring a rebel.

2. Day for Night, by Frederick Reiken (Rec. #128): A dazzling web of interconnected characters. Try not to get dizzy.

3. The Box Garden, by Carol Shields (Rec. #146): It's about how people are basically jerks, especially when they're trying to "find themselves."

4. The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye, by A.S. Byatt: A collection of some grown-up fables.

5. The Cabal and Other Stories, by Ellen Gilchrist: In the opening novella, a group of wealthy and influential people all go to the same psychiatrist. Then the psychiatrist goes a little nuts. Town-wide paranoia ensues.


6. Ant Farm: And Other Desperate Situations, by Simon Rich: This collection of comic vignettes was written by a 22-year-old. This is only forgivable because the book is very funny.

7. The Heir, by Vita Sackville-West: An insurance salesman inherits a manor in this novel by a Bloomsbury author.

8. Short Stories and the Unbearable Bassington, by Saki: In these satires, Edwardian society does battle with nature. Nature wins.

9. Aiding and Abetting, by Muriel Spark: A fraudulent psychiatrist has two patients claiming to be the missing Lord Lucan.

10. Blackout/All Clear, by Connie Willis: I fell in love with this two-volume World War II story as soon as characters from The Importance of Being Earnest started blowing up tanks. I stayed in love with it until the end, even though it often made me so anxious I felt like vomiting.



To Watch

1. Kamikaze Girls (Rec. #52): A story of an unlikely friendship, for whenever you miss living in Japan.

2. Tristram Shandy (Rec. #112): Because I know how much you enjoy Steve Coogan.

3. In Bruges (Rec. #135): It's exactly your flavor of dark humor.

4. Trust (Rec. #165): A movie about oddball misfits that doesn't drift into quirk.

5. In July: Two young Germans embark on a European road trip, en route to Turkey.



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