Index of Names and Titles

A few things to know about using this Index:

• Locators in bold indicate it's a post focusing on that title/name in particular.
• A locator with parentheses, such as (Rec. #1), means that the entry is mentioned in the post, but is not part of the main recommendation.
• Character names are generally listed if the post in which they're mentioned includes both first and last name.
• Titles that begin with numbers are alphabetized under the spelled-out number (e.g., the documentary 35 Up is under "T").
• Inclusion in the Index does not necessarily imply approval.

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Exciting* Developments!

*Possibly not really "exciting" in the traditional sense of the word.

I've developed an Index of Names and Titles for this blog! The index is getting its own post today, but soon I will also have it available as an ever-present link in the blog's sidebar (not now, though; I'm tired right now).



[Image taken from the "1,000 Frames of Hitchcock" section of the Alfred Hitchcock Wiki. It is fantastic; do check it out.]

Rec. #240: Cheerfulness Breaks In

What: Angela Thirkell's Cheerfulness Breaks In joins some familiar characters from previous Barsetshire novels as they face the early days of World War II. The seriousness of the situation is not lost on them, but, as happens, life creeps in anyway.

Comparable to: Angela Thirkell's world is Austen-esque nuanced social comedy for the 1930s and '40s.

Opening lines: "To all those who had admired and disliked the lovely Rose Birkett it appeared (with the greatest respect for the Royal Navy) quite inevitable that she should marry a naval man."

Representative quote: "It was just as well that Rose announced lunch at that moment, or Mr. Needham, who was not accustomed to Mr. Miller's manner of speech, might have gone mad."

You might not like it if: You feel you're being dumped in the deep end and will be flailing about with Mertons and Keiths and Birketts and Needhams and Brandons and Carters and Morlands. (My advice? Just close your eyes and leap. You'll be fine.)

How to get it: Buy it used or borrow it from the library.

Connection to previous Wreckage: If you want a little bit of backstory, Summer Half (Rec. #40) takes place a few years earlier and involves several of the same characters.

Friday Flashback: Rec. #129: The Lady Eve

I decided to start doing Friday Flashbacks in case you missed some earlier posts the first time around. You're busy; I understand.

What: The Lady Eve, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda, is actually two films in one. First, we have the story of two con artists, father and daughter, who set out to swindle a gullible millionaire. Then the daughter falls for the mark. This doesn't end well . . . which leads us to the second half --- revenge! Con artist Jean reinvents herself as Lady Eve Sidwich and, quite simply, brings the hapless Charles Pike to his knees.

Comparable to: It's written and directed by Preston Sturges, so it's a fast, sexy, witty romp like The Miracle of Morgan's Creek and The Palm Beach Story.

Representative quote: "I need him like the ax needs the turkey."

You might not like it if: You're unnerved by the stop-a-clock scowl of Muggsy, Charles Pike's suspicious valet.

How to get it: Watch it instantly, or borrow it from your library, or buy it and watch it over and over until you have the best speeches memorized.

Connections to previous Wreckage: I've already recommended The Palm Beach Story (Rec. #17) and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (Rec. #65). Yes, I'm a bit of a Sturges fan.

[Originally posted 5/19/11.]

Rec. #239: The Deeper Meaning of Liff

What: The subtitle is: "A Dictionary of Things There Aren't Any Words for Yet." This pretty neatly sums up the concept, which is quite good fun.

Comparable to: The book is co-authored by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, both British comedy writers, so it's rather British-comedy-writer-esque, in an Adams and Lloyd kind of way.

Representative entries:

Abalemma: "The agonizing situation in which there is only one possible decision but you still can't make it."

Ahenny: "The way people stand when examining other people’s bookshelves."

Alcoy: "Wanting to be bullied into having another drink."

Alltami: "The ancient art of being able to balance the hot and cold shower taps."

Aubusson: "The hairstyle a girl adopts for a special occasion which suddenly gives you a sense of what she will look like in twenty years' time."

You might not like it if: Adams and Lloyd assign existing place names to their definitions, and you sort of wish they had invented completely new words. You don't know why, but you just think it might have been better that way, somehow.

How to get it: Buyable, borrowable, Kindle-able.

Connections to previous Wreckage: Douglas Adams is represented elsewhere on this blog by The Salmon of Doubt (Rec. #4), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Rec. #42), Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (Rec. #162), The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Rec. #198), and Life, the Universe and Everything (Rec. #230).

Rec. #238 (abbrev.): Monsoon Wedding

What: Preparations for an arranged marriage in New Delhi, directed by Mira Nair, fathers, mothers, dancing, brothers, cousins, event planner, uncles, aunties, exactly and approximately, affair, eating, tv producer, secrets, housemaid, marigolds

Representative quote: "Computer engineers are India's biggest export."

Bonus representative quote: "These are my children, and I will protect them from myself even if I have to."

Also: The actual wedding isn't shown until a few brief clips during the end credits.

Rec. #237: Dorothy Parker --- What Fresh Hell Is This?

What: Some people go through a Sylvia Plath phase or a Jack Kerouac phase. I went through a Dorothy Parker phase and, frankly, it's ongoing. Parker was the brittle soul of the Algonquin Round Table in 1920s New York, and this biography by Marion Meade fully explores every damaged relationship, every jaded poem, every stripped-bare story, every failed suicide attempt, and every biting quip.

Some of Parker's famous biting quips:

"Wasn't the Yale prom wonderful? If all the girls in attendance were laid end to end, I wouldn't be at all surprised."

"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."

"That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say No in any of them."

"Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common."

"I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true."


You might not like it if: You get weighed down by the tales of depression and alcoholism, and the bright flashes of dry genius aren't enough to lift you back up.

How to get it: Buyable, borrowable, Kindle-able.

Connections to previous Wreckage: I recommended The Portable Dorothy Parker for Personal Wreck #3. Also, Fran Lebowitz, with such works as Metropolitan Life (Rec. #188), is often compared to Dorothy Parker.

Friday Flashback: Rec. #137: Human Croquet

I decided to start doing Friday Flashbacks in case you missed some earlier posts the first time around. You're busy; I understand. 

What: Kate Atkinson's second novel, Human Croquet, is told from the point of view of Isobel Fairfax. She has just turned sixteen, and she lives with her bad-tempered aunt, her stunted brother, her sporadically present father, her father's very dim new wife, and the inescapable loss of her missing mother. Coming-of-age is one thing, but Isobel also occasionally gets caught in time pockets to the late 16th century, where parallel events are occurring.

Comparable to: In some ways quite similar to Jostein Gaarder's The Solitaire Mystery.

Representative quote: "I awake from an unpleasant dream in which I found myself walking up a hill, a Jack-less Jill, to fill a bucket of water from a well at the top. As we know, trips to the well are fraught with the danger of alien kidnapping, so my dreaming self was quite relieved to find it still existed when it got to the top."

You might not like it if: You get muddled by the switches from reality to surreality and you don't think the muddled feeling is at all pleasant.

How to get it: Buy it or borrow it from your library.

Connections to previous Wreckage: Kate Atkinson went on to write, among other things, four (so far) novels featuring Jackson Brodie. The first two are Case Histories (Rec. #3) and One Good Turn (Rec. #69).

[Originally posted 5/30/11.]

[P.S. The third Jackson Brodie book --- When Will There Be Good News? (Rec. #192) --- is my favorite so far.]

Rec. #236: Sports Night, season 1

What: Between the barely restrained anticipatory enthusiasm for Aaron Sorkin's new show and the completely unrestrained joyful nostalgia for The West Wing, it seems like a good time to remember and appreciate Sports Night.

As anyone who's ever tried to describe the show has said, it's a sports show that's not really about sports. It's about networks and ratings and ethics and coworkers and divorce and hunting and not hunting and ambition and publicity and younger brothers and flies and intellectual copyright laws and hate mail and writer's block and missing shirts and Mount Everest and lamps and dating and snorkeling and New York City.

Comparable to: It's the comedic version of what Sorkin is so notoriously good at: a well-written examination of the behind-the-scenes lives of articulate, flawed, likable people.

Representative quote: "It's taken me a lot of years, but I've come around to this: If you're dumb, surround yourself with smart people. If you're smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you."

You might not like it if: All that smart talking tempts you into trying some snappy dialogue with your coworkers, and it ends badly.

How to get it: You can watch it instantly on Netflix or, if you want something more lasting, you can buy the eight-disc 10th anniversary edition of the complete series.

Rec. #235: I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes

What: Author Jaclyn Moriarty wryly and thoughtfully follows members of the Zing family into illicit swimming pool visits, through fake letters to the editor, past aeronautical engineers, over a beach umbrella, across some state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, and --- most of all --- beyond a family secret that necessitates clandestine weekly meetings. In a garden shed. As you do.

Comparable to: Imagine William Goldman (author of The Princess Bride) writing about Lisa Lutz's Spellman family, but cunningly threading out a channel of story for each character.

Opening lines: "Once upon a time there was a watercolour painter who thought he could invent a parachute. This was in the early days of parachutes."

Representative quote: "A year ago she didn't even know the Zings. Today, she gets a spasm in her right eye when she sees one. (The letter V has the same effect.) Also, she has lost her personality. She lost the personality a few weeks back. To be specific, it was burned to cinders in the Zing Garden Shed."

You might not like it if: All the story threads get tangled in your brain before you get to the wow at the end.

How to get it: Honestly, I'm going to go ahead and recommend buying it online, at least for those in the U.S. Otherwise, the Australian-published book could be tricky to find.

Connection to previous Wreckage: Jaclyn Moriarty is also the author of Feeling Sorry for Celia (Rec. #48).

Friday Flashback: Rec. #135: In Bruges

I decided to start doing Friday Flashbacks in case you missed some earlier posts the first time around. You're busy; I understand.

What: Two London-based hitmen are in Belgium, awaiting further instructions after a job. Ken (Brendan Gleesan), the old pro, is starting to rethink his life. Ray (Colin Farrell), the newbie, is a loose cannon and really, really hates Bruges. Ralph Fiennes plays Harry, their boss, and proves that he can be a scary bad guy even when he's not noseless. Much shooting, much swearing, much exquisitely crafted dialogue from writer/director Martin McDonagh.

Comparable to: It's the kind of movie Guy Ritchie wishes he made, but with a definite Princess and the Warrior-esque vibe about it.

Representative quote: "Maybe that's what hell is, the entire rest of eternity spent in fucking Bruges." [Sorry, Mom. There really aren't any lines that don't include some variation of the word "fuck."]

You might not like it if: You're my mom. I don't think my mom would like this.

How to get it: Hmm, wow. It is actually quite cheap on Amazon right now. Also, if you like this, you should try to see one of Martin McDonagh's acclaimed plays.

Connection to previous Wreckage: The Princess and the Warrior was Rec. #71.

[Originally posted 5/28/11.]

Rec. #234: The Thin Man

What: It's rare that a marriage is improved simply by the presence of hardboiled dialogue, lots and lots of booze, and some light gunplay on Christmas morning. Welcome to the world of Nick and Nora Charles.

Comparable to: You've surely seen the movies, right?

Opening lines: "I was leaning against the bar in a speakeasy on Fifty-second Street, waiting for Nora to finish her Christmas shopping, when a girl got up from the table where she had been sitting with three other people and came over to me. She was small and blonde, and whether you looked at her face or at her body in powder-blue sports clothes, the result was satisfactory."

Representative quote: "He remembered then that he had seen something in the newspapers about my having been shot. He was pretty vague about it and paid very little attention to my assurances that I was all right. 'I suppose that means no ping-pong for a couple of days,' he said with what seemed genuine regret."

You might not like it if: You try to keep track of number of drinks being served and start to worry that at some point the city of New York will simply run out of alcohol, and then what will the speakeasies do?

How to get it: After you buy or borrow or Kindle the book by Dashiell Hammett, go ahead and watch the movies, too. Then start a debate with someone about who should be cast in the impending remake.

Rec. #233: Pushing Daisies, season 1

What: It's so easy to get sucked into the candy-colored production design, right? And Kristin Chenoweth's chirpy voice. And Anna Friel's amazing wardrobe. And Lee Pace's general aura of dreaminess. And Chi McBride's sardonic eye rolls. And the mere presence of Swoosie Kurtz and Ellen Greene in all their glory. And Jim Dooley's bright, fresh, sweeping music.

It's no wonder you sometimes have to squint a bit before you remember that Pushing Daisies is really quite a dark show. The female lead is, after all, routinely referred to as "Dead Girl." The most frequently recurring character is "Coroner." People die by stabbing, suffocation, trampling, poison, explosions, hit-and-runs, and drowning. The show floats on a constant threat of death, bobbing along on Bryan Fuller's delicious, chewy, ripe dialogue. And pies.

Comparable to: It is recognizably part of Bryan Fuller's universe, in which the dead stick around (Dead Like Me) and the living snark-talk their way through situations they're trying to ignore (Wonderfalls).

Representative quote: "I hate to be a bad host, but I'm sort of exhausted from chasing your coffin."

Representative use of narrator Jim Dale:

Narrator: At that moment, the Pie Maker felt a mixture of happiness and trepidation.

Ned: Why is it always a mixture?

You might not like it if: You can't get through the candy coating to the bite underneath. Or: maybe you get squeamish about, for example, a sequence in which a frozen body ("corpsicle") gets dropped and breaks into a lot of meat pieces on the sidewalk.

How to get it: Buy it, borrow it, stream it on Amazon. (Buy it. Maybe if you re-watch it enough you'll finally catch every word of the speedy dialogue.)

Connections to previous Wreckage: Wonderfalls was Rec. #2. And check out the bulimic dandelion from episode 2, Riki Lindhome, in her musical act, Garfunkel and Oates (Rec. #155).

Friday Flashback: Rec. #122: Come Up and See Me Sometime

I decided to start doing Friday Flashbacks in case you missed some earlier posts the first time around. You're busy; I understand.

What: Erika Krouse's collection of stories reveals a fondness for Mae West, a preference for sharp wit, and a deep heart of cynicism. Each of the thirteen stories in Come Up and See Me Sometime begins with a quote from Mae West, and proceeds to slide through some complicated lives with remarkable ease.

Comparable to: Many reviewers compare Erika Krouse to Lorrie Moore.

Representative quote: "Shiny clothes help. Men are like crows --- they like to pick up bright things, take them back to their nests, and poke at them with their beaks."

You might not like it if: You need more sugar for the bitterness to go down. Krouse offers a fair amount of spice, but very little sweetness.

How to get it: Used bookseller or library.

[Originally posted 5/9/11.]