New record set again! Twenty-six movies this month. I love vacation time. And having awesome libraries around. And art-house theatres. After the jump, reactions to No Country for Old Men, Cars, Rushmore, Flags of Our Fathers, Slacker, The Squid and the Whale, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Underworld: Evolution, The Black Dahlia, MirrorMask, Juno, Notes on a Scandal, Interiors, The Illusionist, Mass Effect, Gears of War, and others.
Category: Books and Reading
Heavy Reading
So I just checked out the reading list for my Victorian Novel class in the Spring. The list of books follows, along with the page number count for each one (taken from the Modern Library paperbacks, accounting for the notes and commentary, so the number given is the text itself only):
Jane Eyre – 682 pages
Bleak House – 861 pages
Mill on the Floss – 656 pages
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – 453 pages
Portrait of a Lady – 450 pages (guesstimated)
Vanity Fair – 810 (guesstimated)
Dracula – 366
Picture of Dorian Gray – 200 (guesstimated)
For a total of ….. 4,478 pages.
Wow. I knew Victorian novelists were long-winded coming in, but I think the professor picked the longest work from every single author! Okay, I know that’s not really true. Mill on the Floss is shorter than Middlemarch, and Bleak House, though REALLY LONG, is, I think, shorter than Pickwick Papers. Don’t know about the others. Why Bleak House, I wonder? Because he assumes we’ll already have read Great Expectations and David Copperfield? (I haven’t, because I hate me some Dickens.) At least I’ve already read three of them, though I could use a refresher. Taking contemporary lit classes has spoiled me; 20th century writers don’t usually write so much, like, maxing at 400 pages or so.
So far the other class I’m in (Literary Theory) only has one book listed, but I somehow doubt it’ll stay that way. Or else he’s got a heap bunch of articles we’ll need to read. Even so, I think the list above and the amount of mental effort I’ll need to put into the theory class (I’ve never had theory before at any level) will guarantee that the semester I’m about to finish will remain the easiest of my graduate career. Especially once you add in oral exam prep…
November 2007 Reading/Watching/Playing Recap
Very little in the way of media consumption last month. I’d like to say that was because I was studying so hard, but really, it’s because of the new Xbox360. So I decided to include video games in the recap, too, since they’re currently taking up such a large chunk of my life. After the jump, reactions to The Darjeeling Limited, Pierrot le fou, The Sportswriter, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Call of Duty 2, and Guitar Hero II. I also haven’t forgotten that I owe Mark some original Xbox reviews/recommendations, if he still wants them–I’m having trouble figuring out what I should consider family friendly for your kids, Mark. What do you let them play?
October 2007 Reading/Watching Recap
My movie-viewing stats have gone way down this month, due to school (to a small degree), but mostly television and becoming addicted to Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Guitar Hero II. But this means I’m all caught up on posting these! Yay. After the jump, reactions to Black Book, L’Avventura, Blood Diamond, Across the Universe, Gone Baby Gone, Away from Her, The Road, and others.
September 2007 Reading/Watching Recap
And I have a new record for most movies seen in a month. Since I’ve been keeping track, that is. But no more, for school, television, and Xbox360 have stolen my movie-watching time, and October’s recap is going to be fairly thin. Which is good, because then I can get caught up on writing and posting them. After the jump, reactions to Death at a Funeral, Celine and Julie Go Boating, 3:10 to Yuma, Butterfield 8, Breakfast on Pluto, The Double Life of Veronique, Starter for 10, Alphaville, The Color Purple (book and film), The Brave One, Knocked Up, Talladega Nights, Eastern Promises, Two for the Road, A Mighty Wind, The Optimist’s Daughter, Atonement, and more.