Bookstore Books 9/26/10

I've decided to add a new feature to my blog: books that I've brought home from the bookstore where I volunteer.

Maybe if I add enough features, I'll finally persuade myself to update my blog more than once a month, hahaha.

Due to the stacks and stacks of books that now sit around the house, accumulating faster than I can read them, I've tried to limit the amount of books that I bring home. But when books are both free and interesting, I have a hard time resisting. Nonetheless, I brought home just two last weekend:

Life in a Medieval Village by Frances and Joseph Gies. The title is self-explanatory. It's a non-fiction work describing what life was like in medieval English villages. So far, I have read the prologue and first chapter of this book. I have to admit that they were a little dry. However, I'm hoping the book gets a bit more engaging now that I'm past the anthropological "how villages arose" part and getting into the "what life was like" part.

Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History by Giles Milton. This is one of those maddening books where it gives you absolutely no synopsis of what it's about anywhere on the jacket. Seriously, why do publishers do this? I don't want to read critics' praises on the jacket; I want to know what the damn book is about!

At any rate, judging by the cover (!) and a glimpse at the first few pages, I gather that this book is NOT about the man who invented the soccer move of kicking the ball between an opponent's legs and instead about the European (possibly Englishman?) who discovered the spice nutmeg being used by foreigners in some distant land and brought it back to Europe. It is a non-fiction book. I have not yet started this book and probably will not for some time.

Found Items: Hotel Lanai postcard

After a month-long hiatus from the bookstore, I returned last weekend and came home with this find:

The caption on the back says: "Located in the heart of tranquil Lana'i City is the 11-room Hotel Lanai, with all its quaint and rustic charm from the plantation era."

Ha, traquil is right. Coming in at just 3,124 people at the 2000 census (nearly the whole population of the island), it's the only town on Lanai. A friend once told me that when he was staying there one night, he saw a herd of deer run right down the main street of town. If you want to get away from it all, Lanai might just be the place for you. When he got married to Melinda, Bill Gates rented the whole island for the weekend.

The postcard is not filled out to anyone. It was being used as a bookmark.

Movie Project: 1933 & 1934

1933: Cavalcade

Sadly, this is another movie that's not available to me to watch. Too bad - it sounds kind of interesting. A little bit like Cimarron in that it follows the story of one family over about 40 years, although this family is British and high-class. A little research shows that it's only available on VHS, so even if I could find a copy, I don't have anything to play it on (no VCR).

Stars: a bunch of people I've never heard of

1934: It Happened One Night

I've seen this movie multiple times. It's one of those movies that probably should offend my modern sensibilities but is enjoyable enough to transcend all that.

It Happened One Night is the story of a poor little rich girl who gets fed up with her controlling father and runs away. A newspaper reporter looking to get a scoop on the story finds her and steers her back towards her family, but along the way, they fall in love.

This is a classic romantic comedy - Hollywood has continued to do romantic comedies like this over and over throughout the years. The two leads have great chemistry, and there's a lot of humor. 4 out of 5 stars.

Stars: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert

Movie Project: 1931 & 1932

1931: Cimarron

**spoiler**

I just watched this one a few days ago. I'm not sure if this is one of those movies where my modern sensibilities are getting in the way of my enjoyment, or if this movie wasn't very good.

Cimarron (the film adaptation of a popular book) is the story of Yancey and Sabra Cravat, a young couple who move to one of the wild new "boomtowns" in Oklahoma after the territory opens to settlers. Yancey starts a newspaper, runs the bad guys out of town, protects the downtrodden (including Jews, Native Americans, and harlots), and essentially becomes the town hero while Sabra mostly simpers. That is, until he gets itchy feet and abandons his family for five years. Sabra runs the paper in his stead (although she never takes his name as editor off the front page) and raises their children single-handed. Then he comes back for a couple of years, where he proceeds to lecture Sabra about how wrong-headed she is about pretty much everything, before disappearing for another 20-odd years. He comes back one last time, only to die immediately in Sabra's arms. A statue honoring him is unveiled. The End.

Of course, the message of this film annoyed the heck out of me. The guy abandons his family, but everybody talks about how awesome he is and Sabra remains devoted to him always. Even though, at the end of the film, she is elected to Congress, he's still the hero, not her? Puh-lease.

Also, the racist caricature of the only black person in the film was seriously cringe-inducing. However, he did get perhaps the most epic death scene of any movie character I've ever seen, so there's that. The treatment of other minorities is done very sympathetically, especially for a 1930s movie, so I was impressed by that. And once I realized that the opening scene of the movie (men on horses, carriages, and bikes racing for a plot of land when the Oklahoma territory opens up) was essentially a 1930s car chase, I was highly amused by it. 2.5 out of 5 stars.

Stars: Irene Dunn, Richard Dix

1932: Grand Hotel

This is another one that I saw probably 15 years ago, and I don't remember a whole lot about it. It's about a bunch of people staying in a fancy hotel and all the drama that goes on in their lives. I really only clearly remember the last scene, which I won't spoil, because it's pretty epic. I hardly remember enough to rate it, so I shouldn't, but I'm going to give it 3.5 out of 5 stars. I remember liking it. I'd watch it again except I have too much other stuff to watch.

Stars: Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford

Movie Project: 1929 & 1930

I forgot to say in my first movie post that some of my reviews will contain spoilers. I will mark said reviews with a spoiler warning.

1929: The Broadway Melody

**spoiler**

Two sisters with a popular song-and-dance act in the West head to the Big Apple to make it big, with help from the elder sister's fiancee. They get into an act, but the younger sister's star shines brighter. At the same time, she begins to fall in love with her sister's fiancee. After much screaming and yelling, the elder sister eventually realizes that her sister and fiancee are in love and lets her fiancee go in order to make her sister happy. While they get married, she goes off on a traveling act with a woman she hates. The End.

I give this movie 2.5 out of 5 stars. The arguments between the sisters over the younger one's pursuit of an unwise romance (which she is pursuing in an attempt to forget her sister's fiancee) seemed to make up the bulk of the movie and they were interminable. And the overall message left this modern woman a little cold: young, beautiful woman with talent leaves her career behind for a man while the older, less pretty (not in my opinion; I thought she was prettier) and less talented one is left man-less and unhappy in her career. Yuck.

However, I was touched by the older sister's sacrifice and I loved the song and dance routines.

Stars: Bessie Love, Anita Page, and Charles King

1930: All Quiet on the Western Front

Honestly, it's probably been a good 15 years since I saw this movie. It is, of course, an adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's classic novel of World War I - one of my favorite books of all time. I remember not like it as much as the book, although I by no means think of it as a bad movie. In all honesty, I would do well to both read the book and watch the movie again, but I have time for neither.

One thing I do remember from this movie is the beautiful, gripping ending. 3 out of 5 stars.

Stars: Lew Ayres, John Wray, and Louis Wolheim

Movie Project

I recently decided to watch all of the Academy Award winners, or, at least, all the ones that I hadn't previously seen. It's not the most original of ideas. I'm sure I'm not the first to have ever done so, and I'm sure I won't be the last.

But I thought it would be fun to watch them and write brief reviews. Because these reviews will be relatively brief, I'll probably list a few at a time. Today I was thinking that after watching the Best Movie winners, I might watch the Best Foreign Films. That will probably be way more interesting.

So, away we go!

1928: Wings

Sadly, I have not been able to watch the first Academy Award winner. All of the movie rental places in my town have gone out of business, and Netflix doesn't have this one. Neither does my local library.

I did find a copy on Amazon for $15.00. However, I'm not dedicated enough to the Awards quest to shell out extra money for it. So I "saved" it on Netflix. Hopefully it will come in some day. But I'm a little sad that I couldn't start out My Quest with the actual first winner.

Found Items: Physics Equations

This weekend at the bookstore, a family brought in six large plastic bins full of science books. The books had belonged to the wife/mother's brother. He had recently passed away.

As we went through the books, it became increasingly more clear what a rare gift we'd been given. Science and math books don't find their way to the bookstore very often. When they do, they're usually very, very outdated. But these books were absolutely beautiful and new. He had obviously loved his books well, and, judging by the little pieces of paper with notes on them that we found in each book, he must have read every single one of them.

The variety was mind-boggling: microbiology, neuroscience, astronomy, quantum theory. And those are just the ones that I can remember (and pronounce). One of our fellow volunteers is a science buff. We had to consult with him to even figure out what some of these books were about!

I have to say that watching his face light up when he realized what all the books were about was priceless. It's a good lesson to keep in mind, folks. I used to hold on to all of my books, but now I think I'll always give all but the ones I like the most away. If you're also a reader, then you can probably imagine how much joy you feel when you find a book that you've always wanted for cheap.

At any rate, this man was obviously a genius and a modern-day Renaissance Man. I thank his family from the bottom of my heart for sharing this gift. Here is a page of some of his physics equations that I found in one of the books: