Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Yesterday I finished reading "Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell. It's an unusual novel that's composed of six separate novellas, each wildly different than the next. Each story is told in a different fashion and is set in wildly varied times and locales (the West Indies of the 1800's, Korea in the the far future, 1931 Europe, etc). Most feature characters that for the most part don't exist outside of the individual tale. Yet all six are connected by a thread of rebellion and struggle that wind through them all, and there are hints that these individuals are the same struggling souls born time and again.

This is not a book I recommend to a casual reader, or someone looking to make the jump from pulp novels to something meatier; I initially found the format confusing and even intimidating, and I'm not exactly a casual reader.

I came to love the book, although a nagging part of me feels that the novel failed to make the final leap and accomplish what it set out to do - the problem is, I'm not 100% sure what that goal was to start.

Grade: A Book# 89 of the year

100 Years Ago Today

100 years ago today the bodies of Robert Scott and his men were discovered in Antarctica, where they had died that March.

YaYa's 11th Birthday Party!

Sunday October 21^st was the date of YaYa’s 11th birthday party.  Before the festivities began we let her open her gifts from us, a Hunger Games nylon back sack and a Katniss Everdeen/Hunger Games Barbie Doll.

Are you sensing a theme yet?  No? Then how about looking at the magnificent Hunger Games cupcakes, complete with fully wearable Mockingjay ring

Or the “May the Odds Be Ever In Your Favor” signs we posted at the venue

Or the personalized Hunger Games invites we sent out, or the Hunger Games quotes we put on every straw

Then there’s the gift bags, which featured homemade HG bookmarks, HG necklaces assembled from craft items Lisa bought on Ebay, and a candy assortment of red hots and hot tamales (“Girl on Fire” candy) and the incredibly hard to find candy raspberries, used to represent the poison berries of the first novel.

A Hunger Games party it was, although it was first and foremost a Laser Tag party, held at the same venue where Smiley had his party in March.

(When YaYa broke her wrist we were worried we might have to cancel the party, as the use of the lazer rifle requires one hand to fire and another to activate the sensor, but thankfully when we took her to check the venue showed us rifles modified for just such eventualities, and the party was on!)

YaYa invited a dozen kids from her class, and all twelve showed. I paid for unlimited laser tag, so the kids spent the majority of the time in the arena, safe from our sight except when they showed up on the low-light monitors displayed in the lobby. 

We couldn’t really distinguish anyone on the monitor, with the exception of her friend Romy. Romy was wearing a fedora, and looked like a Capone era gangster on the screen . . .

Dinner was cold-cut sandwiches, chips, and soda. We forgot a candle for the cupcakes (!) so YaYa bluffed her way through that. Then it was time to open her presents.

Georgia gave her a while “I love Finnick” t-shirt

Romy gave her an owl necklace, a hair clip-in, and a gorgeous home-made card

Maura gave her a roll of decorative duct tape and a binder generously decorated with it

Meadow gave her a homemade jewelry tree

XXX gave her a One Direction charm bracelet

Karina gave her Owl knee-highs

Anna gave her a Barnes and Noble gift card

Jayden gave her a Target gift card

Rebecca gave her a Barnes and Noble gift card

Ivan gave her a card and cash

Sofia gave her a Target gift card

Here’s a picture you’ll never see taken at a boys birthday party – the partygoers competing to see how many of them could sit on each other’s laps.

The party was scheduled to end at 5 but ran late when the girls went in for another laser tag adventure. I’d have been ticked off if I was one of the parent’s stuck waiting, but everyone seemed to take it in stride!

I think it was a great party, and I know my girl had a lot of fun! Happy 11^th Birthday YaYa and may you have a hundred more!

P.S. – isn’t she stunning in this picture? My word!

note: the party was the same day there was a mass shooting at a spa in Brookfield (a Milwaukee suburb) and the news of the tragedy dominated the conversation among the kids for the first fifteen minutes or so, a sad testament of our times.

The Raven

Yesterday we watched The Raven, a thriller starring John Cusak as Edgar Allen Poe. A serial killer is terrorizing 1849 Baltimore using ideas culled from Poe’s stories, and the famous writer is enlisted to help bring him to justice. The movie was fine, marred perhaps by a few gratuitous scenes of gore, but Cusak all but killed the film. He plays Poe as a dullard; while we hear that the man is troubled and plagued by drink, there is precious little to see of it – or any personality at all – from Cusak. I grade this a C.

Skyfall

Last night I found myself unexpectedly, wonderfully . . . alone.  Lisa and Lu were at a sleepover ‘spa’ party, and the other kids were scattered among the grandparents. I still had to go to work at ten, but what to do with the four hours before that?

How about the rare treat: seeing a movie in an actual first-run theater. Gasp! For this delicious bit of wasteful spending I chose to see the brand new James Bond movie, Skyfall, which opened that very day.

[Yes, I saw it alone. Lisa has, to date, never once so much as entertained the notion of going to a movie alone, citing the ‘loser’ factor, but it’s never bothered me.  Heck, I was able to get up and go pee twice without getting heckled about my bladder.  Loser? In my book that makes we a WINNER!]

Anyhow, about the movie . . .

Skyfall is the 23^rd installment in the franchise and marks the 50^th anniversary of the same.  A rogue cyber terrorist named Silva, played brilliantly by Javier Bardem, launches a one-man war against MI6 with the intent of taking down M.  Bond and M, both slightly off their game and on the outs with the establishment, must once again rely on each other to stop Silva and end the threat to Queen and Country.

There’s an odd duality at work in this film. It resonates, time and again, with nods to the past and a sense of ending, and of a certain finality to it all; yet at the same time it exudes a feeling of renewal and energy, a certainty, not of finality, but of relevance and necessity.

50 years ago JFK was in the White House, few people in the heartland had heard of a place called Vietnam, and the good guys were easily distinguishable from the bad. Flash forward to 2012; it seems ridiculous to even ask if a Cold War icon like James Bond has a place in our world. But bit by bit the film flips that notion on its head, leaving us to think that maybe, just maybe, Bond was born for this world of murky alliances and obscure enemies, and merely struggled (albeit successfully) to fit in in the world of the Berlin Wall and Aston Martins.  

Too deep for a Bond film? With respect, you haven’t seen Skyfall.

Not to worry though, it’s still a James Bond film, with everything you expect from the series. Action? The pre-title chase scene had more action than a lot of action films I’ve seen. Women?  Berenice Marlohe is so stunning that I literally gasped at one point, leading me to believe she deserves the sobriquet “breathtaking”.

Villains? Silva is a memorable one, full of creepiness and humor, intelligence and violence.  Humor? This isn’t a Roger Moore-era Bond, but there are a fair amount of jokes sprinkled throughout.  An exploration of Bond’s past? Sure, including his parent’s cenotaph and his childhood abode. Oh, wait – we’ve never explored Bond’s past. Until now.

[Which settles a question I’ve had for years. It went something like this: Is 007/James Bond simply a title, a nom de plume adopted over the years by various applicants? It would be a rational way to explain away the different actors and the series longevity; think of it as a poor man’s version of Doctor Who’s regeneration. Nifty to think about , but now disproved.]

Skyfall is a great movie. I give it a grade of an A