2019-12-26 07:47
Xmas was a nice quiet day. Spent the morning and breakfast with Lianne's family, lunch and the afternoon with my family, then just us in the evening for dinner. Just sitting around a table playing a card game with some of my family made me wish we could all get together more often.
We watched Boots Riley's Sorry to Bother You last night. I noticed it on a lot of best of year lists last year, and it did not disappoint. It was funny and weird and engaging and just a bit science fiction-y. The latter doesn't come in until late in the movie and is a bit jarring both experientially (it's a surprise to the protagonist and the viewer) and narratively (while it makes sense in context it also feels unexpected and a bit of a left turn).
I forget to mention last week that I borrowed Chris Ware's Rusty Brown from the library and then ended up not finishing it. While I appreciate Ware's mastery of the form, the combination of the story he is telling it and the too controlled artwork just bored me. It's almost a comfort to know there is a "mainstream" of comics now that is not superheroes but is also just not for me at all. That gets reiterated even more when I look at the recently relaunched New York Times Book Review graphic novels list. I forget the exact count but Raina Telgemeier has like half (or more) of the top 10 books. She is just insanely popular and neither superheroes nor "literary" comics. Comics really are just another... genre is not the word... category of publishing now.
After Bovary I browsed the dining room shelves (the fiction) and pulled Gilbert Sorrentino's Mulligan Stew off the shelf to reread, a large baggy monster of a metafictional novel. It's been awhile since I reread it, though already some of the aspects and scenes are ones that were stuck in my head all these years.
I'm back to work today, though most everyone I know has the day off.