I think all I did last month was read. I know that isn't technically true. But still. Me and the couch logged a lot of quality time. I did finally finish the craft project, but since it'll be a Christmas gift, no picture posting. Sorry.
Movies:
I saw three movies in June (please note, it is July 7th as I type this and I've already seen 2 movies this month and I might see another this afternoon...clearly, good things are happening on screen).
Man of Steel was great! I love Henry Cavill as Superman. (I also love him as Sir Charles Brandon in the Tudors and Theseus in the Immortals...basically, if he's in it, I love him in it.) I'm a little bewildered at some of the story changes, but overall, I really enjoyed the movie and look forward to sequels. If you like superhero movies, you should see this...it's a nice addition to the genre.
I wasn't sure that I would enjoy it, but This Is the End was really funny. It was also really wrong. Like horribly, can't banish thoughts of it, wrong. Kind of like Hot Tub Time Machine wrong. Which means I enjoyed it enough that I'll probably check it out on DVD when it's released. James Franco still bothers me, but I like most of the other people in it...Emma Watson possibly being my favorite surprise character. If you don't know anything about this one, it's famous people playing themselves in a movie about the rapture/end of the world. The end scene was one of the funnier things I'd seen in a long time.
At the end of the month, I saw The Heat. That's the one with Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy. It was absolutely hysterical. I laughed over parts that I'm sure were also hilarious. I will definitely watch this more than once. One of my friends thought it was funnier than Bridesmaids and Ted...and she loved both of those! Go see this before it leaves the theater...it's definitely worth the time.
Books:
I read lots of really good books this month. Seems like every author I like has been cranking things out to keep me entertained. I reread a couple of old ones because I found out there is a third in the series that I never knew about and I did read some more of Catherine the Great...another 5% has been read...just 40% to go!
This month I read The Potty Mouth at the Table by Laurie Notaro; The Tao of Martha: My Year of LIVING; Or Why I'm Never Getting All That Glitter Off of the Dog by Jen Lancaster; Revenge Wears Prada: The Devil Returns by Lauren Weisberger; The Ashford Affair by Lauren Willig; The Engagements by J. Courtney Sullivan; The Bookman's Tale by Charlie Lovett; Inferno by Dan Brown; Stoker's Manuscript by Royce Prouty; and the two re-reads, Butterfly and Stars by Kathryn Harvey. PHEW!
Laurie Notaro's personal essays never fail to entertain and The Potty Mouth at the Table is no exception. This particular grouping does have one story that isn't intentionally funny, but shows you how Notaro uses laughter to get through even the darkest times in her laugh...something that I always try to do as well. I laughed out loud way too much and I think I texted or emailed complete paragraphs from the book to friends as it made me laugh. If you like laughing, you should probably read this.
And again with the laughter. I love Jen Lancaster's writing. I love that she does some of the same bonehead things that we all do and is willing to share it with the world. And I especially love that in this book, she decided to become a Martha Stewart minion...something that I occasionally aspire toward myself. So much of this book is funny...if you've ever tried to reorganize yourself or overextend yourself with party planning or having a crafts-only gift season, you'll really get this book. Over the year she has slip-ups, but given some of the things that happen to her family, it's totally ok. The point is that she didn't let things completely derail her quest and she had a lot of fun to help get her through the bad times. I would love for everyone to read this...unless you have pets...then there are a few chapters that you just can not read. It's a lot of sadness and a lot of happy...which, hey, is life.
I need to admit something...I didn't really like book The Devil Wears Prada. I read it a long time ago and when they announced it would be a movie, I was very skeptical. But, even though I disliked the book, I LOVED the movie. Keeping the movie in my mind, I read those characters into the sequel, Revenge Wears Prada. It made things better for me, but I probably could've skipped this one. It was entertaining to find out where all their lives had gone, but it seemed a little forced. Perhaps the pressure of a movie sequel or something? It was definitely easy to slip back into the story, I just don't know if I believed it, you know? It was a quick read if you're looking for something easy.
The Ashford Affair was a complete surprise. If you've read old posts of this blog, you know that I love Lauren Willig's spy series starting back with the Pink Carnation. This book has nothing to do with the spies at all. It's about two cousins and the resulting family issues through time. It takes place all over the world through many years and just as the time hopping in her spy books is planned out, so it is here. How the family comes in and out of contact with each other after marriages, divorces, deaths, and births is really well done. The family secret is well hidden from younger family members until the very end. It was a very interesting read and I really enjoyed it. As a bonus, she's got another spy book coming out later this year...woohoo!
J. Courtney Sullivan has been hit and miss with me. I really liked Commencement, but I didn't like Maine much at all. This one I liked, but I didn't love it. It's the story of engagements and people's marriages/relationships and how all of the characters' storylines end up entwined. The best part was the story of the ad campaign manager who came up with the De Beers slogan "A Diamond Is Forever." I kind of recommend this one, but I can't say it was one of the better reads of the month. I think it was a little too much...like maybe a couple of storylines could've been lost and it would've been fine. If you liked they other books, you will like this one though...definitely the same style.
The Bookman's Tale was really good. I read the synopsis on Amazon and was very intrigued. It's chasing down an original, lost Shakespeare play...one that includes proof that Shakespeare was a real person and that another copy is a fake. The bookman is very reserved and finds himself embroiled in international intrigue and murder just trying to find the truth. I'd never heard of the author before, but I would definitely read something else from him. This one was hard to put down.
Oh, Dan Brown. Why must you be so entertaining? I've been more than a little vocal of my dislike of The Da Vinci Code...but also vocal about my (shocked) enjoyment of Angels and Demons. But this time, I knew I would like the book from the get-go because the plot revolved around Dante's Inferno. For me, the best part of Brown's Inferno is the first part of the book, which takes place in Florence, Italy. To be able to relive my trip through his descriptions was really nice. I liked being able to picture exactly where the characters were and their path of travel through the city. I even have pictures of many of the spots he described. It was great. By the time they left Florence for Venice and beyond, I was hooked. Robert Langdon is up against bio-terrorism this time...the end result leaves you with some interesting questions and makes you think about population growth and human survival long after you've finished the book. I think, for me anyway, Brown finally hit it out of the park. I truly loved this book.
Stoker's Manuscript was another shot at an author I'd not read before. The notes and original manuscript of Bram Stoker's masterpiece are put up for auction. An old family wants to buy it through an agent who was an orphan originally from Romania. The old family has blood ties to the orphan and the journey to discover the truth of the book and of the orphan's heritage made the original Dracula seem tame. I really enjoyed this modern take on a classic. But then again, I tend to like vampire tales in general.
After reading all of those, I looked on the Kindle to see if anything I'd been wanting had dropped in price...and found that Kathryn Harvey had a third book in her Butterfly trilogy. I was very surprised, but I added it to my wishlist and decided I should re-read the first two books before I made my purchase. I found Butterfly at a used bookstore when I was just out of college. It's the story of a girl who ran away from an abusive home and ended up in the hands of a horrible man who craved only power and money, so he used her and set her up in a brothel to earn money for himself. When she became pregnant, he took care of it and had her kicked to the curb. She vowed revenge. Her story takes her from extreme poverty to the heights of power among California business...and give a new spin on brothels for a new era. It is an insane story and it's been a guilty pleasure of mine for years. Stars is the second book. It's another girl (the sister of the girl in Butterfly), who finds out she was adopted near the same time she finds out her adoptive father is in prison for murder. She flees boarding school using her best friend's name and birth certificate to reinvent herself. She proves to have just as much business acumen as her real sister. Her story takes her to Stars...an exclusive retreat for Hollywood types and all of the people staying there have backstories that make the book even better. Some of the stars are loosely based on real Hollywood people, so you can inset faces of stars onto the characters in the book, kind of making your own assumptions. Toward the end of the story, the two sisters have their lives start to intersect and it's a great ending. These guilty pleasure books (trashy novels really) have been re-read more than once and I've always thought they'd make a great mini-series. Now I'm excited to read the third book...according to some of the comments, it's not truly about the same women, but they are outlying characters in the third story, so it should be decent.
All right. That's it for June. Stay tuned for more books and movies :)
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