I follow many blogs, as most of you do, and will pick up a recommendation from just about anyone. But there are a few people who, when they love something, make it virtually impossible to ignore the plea. Marie at Boston Bibliophile is one of them. She reads smart books, and she is discerning, so her rave reviews cause me to take notice. "The Dinner" was one such review. It took a good solid three months for me to get it on audio from my library, so obviously Marie wasn't the only one in love with it.
Synopsis: Two couples meet for an extravagant dinner one evening in Amsterdam. One of the couples is Paul Lohman, our narrator and a retired school teacher, and his wife Claire. The other couple is Paul's brother Serge, the next Prime Minister of the Netherlands, and his wife Babette. Paul feels a great amount of disdain for his brother and sister-in-law, primarily for their success and the public flaunting of such, in a restaurant like this where it takes three months to obtain a reservation...unless you are Serge, that is. But annoyance aside, the couples are there for a reason: to discuss the issue of their 15 year-old sons.
As the two couples make their way through the excruciating courses of the meal, we receive the back story of each couple and their kids, as well as experience the explosive dynamics between the members of the group. The facts are hesitantly and slowly revealed by Paul, who, as time passes, becomes more and more unreliable.
All in the time it takes to eat a four-course meal, we are subjected to a mosh pit of envy...envy between siblings, envy between spouses, envy of youth, envy of wealth and power. What lengths would a parent go to protect their child? How much will you sacrifice for a career? What are our biases and secret prejudices?
My thoughts: Consider me gobsmacked. I love it when I read a book and never know what the HELL is going to come around the corner. This is probably why "The Dinner" is being compared to "Gone Girl". Our narrator is not to be trusted, and with every chapter, he lets a thing or two slip that causes you to do a double-take. But really that is where the similarities end.
Beyond the twisty-turny psychotic blow-by-blow of this dinner, there is a depth that causes you to stop and think. When I first started the story, I was drawn into the dark, satiric commentary on the pretentious lives of the rich. It made me laugh. It was clever. But then Paul got his freak on, and we went a little deeper. Racial prejudice. Parental competition. Violence. Politics. Mental illness. Genetic disposition. I could go on and on. Book clubs will have a hay day with this one. I was disturbed, I was entertained, I couldn't stop listening.
A few words about the audio production: This audio was narrated by Clive Mantle, a new voice for me. It appears he narrates children's books, which caused me to chuckle. Well, Mr. Mantle certainly has a darker side! He was an absolute delight to listen to. He has a pleasant, melodic British accent but it is laced with snark and sarcasm and duplicity. Fabulous. I'd love to hear him again.
Listening length: 8 hours, 55 minutes (304 pages)
5 out of 5 stars
As I sit here thinking back on this movie, I am clueless about how to describe it. But there is one thing for sure...I HAVE to tell you about it. As a strong recommendation? A dire warning? Maybe both. All I know is that a couple days have passed and we are still quoting the movie and breaking out into stupid maniacal laughing over it.
First of all, this core group of actors who are at the center of the story are real-life friends and have worked together on multiple projects...think Pineapple Express, Hot Tub Time Machine, Superbad, Tropic Thunder. In fact the entire movie is like a giant game of Six Degrees of Separation. Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg, who wrote and directed this film, have pulled in anyone and everyone they know for a gigantic party.
The basic premise is that childhood friends Seth Rogan and Jay Baruchel, playing themselves, have gotten together at Seth's place in LA for a weekend of debauchery and bonding. After smoking weed, eating junk food and playing video games all day, they decide to go to James Franco's housewarming party at his new mansion. The party is a coke-snorting, ass-grabbing mosh pit of Hollywood actors. In the middle of all the fun, the apocalypse occurs. Casualties abound (Michael Cera gets speared by a street light and Rihanna falls into a hellpit). A core group of guys barricade themselves in Franco's house and try to survive the end of days. But the gang has baggage. There is a history of bad blood, jealousy and hurt feelings that go way back. Just the thing you need when a demon is trying to eat you.
I read in an interview that at least once during the filming of this movie, every actor protested against something they were asked to do. Except James Franco (which makes me love him even more). Whether it is playing soccer with a disembodied head, being raped by the devil, peeing in one's own mouth because of a water shortage, being a cannibal, or things even more unspeakable...this film is so full of outlandish, over-the-top tastelessness, it is guaranteed to offend you at some point. (My husband and I are pretty teflon-coated, but I snuck a peak at him at one stage, and his face was a total twisted mask of revulsion but was laughing at the same time.)
All of the actors play themselves, but as part of the fun, their characters are a combination of their true selves and something completely OPPOSITE of their true selves. Michael Cera, who is apparently the quietest, more diminutive guy, plays a complete obnoxious drugged-out chauvinist. Emma Watson becomes an ax-wielding booze-thief. Channing Tatum is an S&M sex slave!
And that is just the thing. IF (big if) you are not easily offended, this movie could possibly be something that you will be quoting for the next 20 years. Like The Big Lebowski or Caddyshack. It is that damn funny. My stomach hurt when I walked out of the theater. It isn't like most comedies where the funniest parts are spoiled in the trailer. There are so many moments of pure hilarity here, there are too many to count.
Or you could totally hate it. I don't think it is possible to fall somewhere in between.
You have been warned. Just...leave your proprieties at the door, and don't judge me for loving it!
5 out of 5 stars
I'm flipping through the mental sticky notes of my week, and I can't say that I have much to talk about. But you know me, if I start typing, I'm sure I'll come up with something. I'm feeling the need for bullet points.
* It was my first full week with my son at home all day with me. Certainly changes the structure of my schedule, but I do like having him around. Of course, I could let him sleep until noon and life would be grand but I cannot abide by this. I got him up to work out with me at Andre's, we knocked out some doctor appointments, and watched some movies that he deemed "excellent but disturbing". (Good Lord, I'm not even going to admit what these were.) He had some time with friends. It was all good.
* My daughter's first half of summer school is done. She's been running with her cross country team for summer training, but has caught the summer crud. She really needs her vacation to start soon, poor thing. She suffered through a full day of volunteering at the animal shelter yesterday though. She is determined to accumulate 500 volunteer hours before she starts applying for colleges in a couple of years. Girlfriend has got her goals, that is for sure.
* I just have to say that Skull Candy headphones are the way to go. My son, daughter and I all use them, and we consistently break them. Without fail, with a minimum of fuss, they replace them over and over again. I am and will be a life-long customer. (Random gush.)
* Back to my running regime. I'm still not running a lot of miles but man does it feel good. I feel like I've sprouted some new wings.
* After a miscreant upstairs toilet blew up and screwed up the ceiling in my kitchen, we finally got it all fixed. The final step was the drywall people on Friday. I hate having to fix things. This particular nightmare cost me into the four figures. I'm seeing the wisdom of renting down the road.
* Still reading "Metro 2033" in print. I believe I should be a few days away from finishing if I stay vigilant. I don't know how long I've actually been reading it, but it is an amazing book.
* On audio I'm still making my way through "And the Mountains Echoed" and still loving it. I do love Hosseini, but he does have a vague formula for his books. I'm just trying to figure out exactly how this one is all going to come together. I was temporarily waylaid when my Mongo iPod crashed on me, and had to make do with my old dinosaur iPod Mini. Once I let my regular iPod run out of charge, and recharge it, I was fine though. Every possible kind of reading is moving slow these days. Hey, if I run out of reviews, then I will just have to go away for awhile. I'm not worried.
* Saw "This is the End" last night at the movies. EW totally loved this movie, and it had a high Rotten Tomatoes rating. And I did laugh the entire way through it, and I WILL write it up when I get a chance, but I'm going to need to be very careful about how I recommend it. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen. Hilarious, but TOTALLY over the top and often in the worst taste one could possibly imagine. Which of course is right up my alley.
* I'd like to wrap up today by offering a toast to all the dads out there. They often get pushed aside and rarely get pampered, but today is the day. We are going to be attending church, then escorting my husband to Tommy Bahama's for a little shopping spree and a tasty lunch. At that point, I'm thinking that he will want to crash in his man-cave and watch the end of the US Open, and doggone it, we will let him.
Everybody have a wonderful Sunday!
We generally try to avoid eating much red meat, but once in awhile YOU HAVE TO HAVE A BURGER!!! It is a law of the universe.
A few years ago, I was over at my friend's house and they served me one of the best burgers I'd ever had. The secret, my friend told me, was that you imagine everything that you would want to put ON the burger, and you put it IN the burger...ketchup, mustard, onions, relish, etc. Whoa!!! From that point on, whenever I threw together burgers, I used this philosophy.
This recipe has the same idea. I quickly ripped it out of the recent June 2013 Food and Wine and made these, and they are so good. And that soy-spiked ketchup! Wooo! I saved it and was dipped everything in it for a week.
Ingredients:
1/2 cup plus 2 TBL ketchup
1 1/2 TBL soy sauce
1 TBL hoisin sauce
1 TBL fresh lime juice
1 1/2 tsp ancho chili powder
1 1/2 pounds ground beef chuck, preferably 80 to 85 percent
1/2 cup shredded Colby cheese
1/4 cup minced red onion
2 TBL minced kosher pickles
2 TBL dry bread crumbs
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 tsp Tabasco
Canola oil for brushing
Kosher salt and black pepper
6 potato hamburger buns, split and toasted
Mayonnaise lettuce and sliced red onion for serving
1. In a medium bowl, whisk 1/2 cup of ketchup with soy sauce, hoisin, lime juice and ancho chili powder.
2. In a large bowl, combine the ground beef with the cheese, minced red onion, pickles, bread crumbs, garlic, Tabasco and remaining 2 TBL of ketchup. Knead gently until thoroughly mixed. Form the meat into six 4-inch patties, about 1/2 inch thick.
3. Light a grill or preheat grill pan. Brush the burgers with oil and season with salt and pepper. Grill over moderately high heat, turning once, until lightly charred outside and medium-rare within, about 3 minutes.
They pair these burgers with a peppery, fruit-forward California Zinfandel.
FYI I love a bloody steak, but I prefer my burgers cooked more medium so we left these on the grill a bit longer than 3 minutes. We also passed on the mayo.
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Let's all be honest. How many pitches do we receive each week asking that we read and review a book? Dozens at least, right? I can't even manage to read the books I have, so I have become immune to these pitches, and will barely scan the e-mails. But when I saw the e-mail talking about THIS book, I stopped in my tracks.
I saw the words "National Parks" and "Pop-Up Book" and "proceeds". That hooked me.
First of all, my family loves the National Parks. We've not been to all of them, but we DO make a point to visit them whenever possible. In my lifetime I've been to Yosemite, Rocky Mountain, Grand Teton, Saguaro, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Mammoth Cave, Smokey Mountains and Everglades. I think the best family vacation we ever had was a few years ago when we went to Grand Canyon and Yosemite. Each park is unique and so exquisitely preserved and cared for. We find it awesome that we have such treasures right here in our own country.
And what about a pop-up book? Who doesn't love them? We have a small collection of them from when my kids were small. I think I enjoy them as much or more than they do. My favorite is the Wizard of Oz!
But the best part of this deal is that the proceeds from the sale of every one of these books goes towards the National Parks Conservation Association. That makes my heart warm and fuzzy.
In a project that took over three years, this book features 18 of the most popular parks, with stunning pop-up pages for six of them (The Everglades, The Great Smokey Mountains, The Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Glacier, and Yosemite). Like they say in the introduction, "just like a visit to a national park, when you turn the pages of a pop-up book, you're never quite sure what awaits around the bend".
All of the artwork is in a 1930's retro style, similar to old promotional posters for the parks, designed by the award-winning illustrator Dave Ember.
To the left here is the page for Yellowstone, the world's first National Park. The first thing you notice when you open the page is how Old Faithful explodes upwards, almost into your face. Then you notice the walkway through the hot springs, and various forms of wildlife. In the right corner, as in all the other pages, there is a small booklet about the park, and on the left, there is a small mini pop-up of gray wolves chasing a Pronghorn Antelope and a photo of the Old Faithful Inn.
In the display for The Grand Canyon, I was overwhelmed by the layers and depth of the canyons, and all that orange. There is a small mini pop-up of a couple rafting through the canyon, and there is a slide that you pull down to see the layers and ages of the limestone...almost 2 billion years worth.
Probably the nearest and dearest to my heart is the Everglades. The page is full of things to look at...canoers, a chomping alligator, manatees, a snake in a cypress tree, a panther peeking through the grass.
This is the perfect book for young children to learn about places they might want to visit, or about a destination for a summer vacation. But I was delighted with it, even as an adult. That is the beauty of a well-designed pop-up book...you can look at them over and over again, and see something new each time.
You can order this book at the official website www.nationalparkspopup.com. They have two hand-assembled editions...the regular is $34.95 (of which $8 is donated to the NPCA) and the Deluxe Limited Edition is $105 (of which $80 is donated to the NPCA. Only 1,200 copies of the Limited Edition are being produced, each are numbered and autographed by the paper engineer, illustrator and author, and is enclosed in a black cloth slipcase.
The good news is I'm starting to slow down with my audio-loading...unless I receive little parcels of love from my library next week, I've only got two more books to add (the iPod isn't at full capacity yet but is as full as it has ever been). Here are this week's additions:
The Good House by Ann Leary (received from the Orange County Library)
Synopsis: Hildy is a moderately successful real estate broker living in a small town on Boston's North Shore. Her family recently staged an intervention and shipped her off to rehab for her alcoholism, and now is lonely, in a bit of denial, and needs a friend. She reaches out to a wealthy newcomer, and soon becomes embroiled in the underbelly of her small town...scandal, desire, mysticism and gossip. At turns hilarious and chilling.
Narrator: Mary Beth Hurt
Listening length: 10 hours and 12 minutes
Frozen in Time by Mitchell Zuckoff (received from the Orange County Library)
Synopsis: This is a gripping true story of survival, bravery and honor in the vast Arctic wilderness during WWII. After a US cargo plane slammed into the Greenland Ice Cap, a B-17 search and rescue plane also got lost and crashed there too. This is the story of those crashes and the fates of the survivors.
Narrator: Mitchell Zuckoff
Listening length: 8 hours and 57 minutes
Lowcountry Summer by Dorothea Benton Frank (received from the Orange County Library)
Synopsis: After the loss of the family matriarch, opinionated Caroline Levine is less concerned with her middle age than all of her family problems...her son shacking up with an older single mom, a drunk and disorderly sister-in-law, four nieces from hell, a grieving brother, a pig-farmer boyfriend with a weak heart, and a crush on the local sheriff. Attitude and theatrics are combined with the saga of loss and acceptance.
Narrator: Robin Miles
Listening length: 12 hours and 12 minutes
So this listen was a bit on the impulsive side. But as soon as it released, and the bloggers got their hands on the ARCs (and in my case the audio), the Internet positively exploded with chatter. It was twisty. It was psychological. There was speculation on the protagonist...was she unreliable?
Plus the book is an Amy Einhorn imprint. Just saying. You never go wrong in that department.
Synopsis: Rose Baker efficiently lives her life as a typist for a police precinct in prohibition-era New York City. (Shades of Gatsby anyone?) She isn't a ninny, mind you...she can handle the deposition of the most grievous crime...but she is plain, having been raised in an orphanage by nuns, and is a rule-follower.
That is, until the attractive, stylish and elusive Odalie whisks into her life as another typist at the precinct. Soon the women become friends and Rose is pulled into Odalie's whirlwind life of beaded dresses, speakeasies and loosened morals. But something isn't quite right. Rose keeps hearing different stories about Odalie's past, but is never concerned enough to leave the lifestyle or forego Odalie's friendship. Rose loves the way Odalie makes her feel pretty, and has always longed to have a best friend with which to do each other's hair and giggle at secret jokes.
Then things start to fall apart. Odalie makes a few moves that upset Rose, then someone shows up from Odalie's past, and a sense of foreboding begins to overshadow the world surrounding them.
My thoughts: I realize that is a bit of a crappy description, but as you may have heard a thousand times at this point, it has to stay vague because...who really knows what the hell is going on in this book? It is mind-bending and twisty to the point where, at the end? I've no clue to the truth of it all. This would be the perfect book club selection, because this is a novel that needs to be discussed and debated.
I will admit that Rose annoyed me from the very start of the book. She has a holier-than-thou attitude towards everyone, and is very proud of herself (how many times can someone use the word "intuit"? Did the author do that on purpose?). She tells you over and over how awesome and righteous she is, and quickly my "unreliable narrator radar" went off with a loud wail. If nothing else, she has a needy, obsessive, creeper mentality towards attractive women. But as the book progressed, however, I wasn't sure I'd even want eye contact with the woman.
At the same time, Odalie was feeling kinda slimy and sleezy too. Since the book is narrated completely by Rose, though, how much of that is trustworthy?
Since we have all been awash with the glitz of this era due to Gatsby-itis, it was fun to read another book where you can experience the decadence, the alcohol, the corruption and the fashions of that time.
Overall this was a fun ride, but I had one niggling issue that is hard to explain. It feels like this type of story has been done before, in movies and in books. The conclusion is so ambiguous that I'm not sure. The essence is there anyway, of a weary device. And if you like everything explained and wrapped up at the end, you won't get it here.
A few words about the audio production: The narrator for this book was Gretchen Mol, who is a movie and TV actress but new to audio narration. Never fear, she did an excellent job, although she sounded almost too innocent for the women in this story. She was very pleasant to listen to, and I hope we see more of her.
Listening length: 10 hours and 6 minutes (368 pages)
4 out of 5 stars
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