Rachel Dratch’s memoir, Girl Walks into a Bar . . ., follows its subtitle exactly: she splits her book into the three sections of Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle. Comedy Calamities: most of us probably know Dratch from Saturday Night Live, and the occasional “ugly girl” role in a movie. She starts with a hyperbolized call from her agent, in which she’s asked to audition for someone monstrously ugly (and likely a lesbian). She explains that she’s pretty much offered only these roles post-SNL (with a hat […]
I’d change my title, too, if I got Judi Dench for my movie
Like Caitlin_D noted when she reviewed Philomena last year, the book should really have been called Michael Hess, as Philomena only has about 10% of the work devoted to her. Still, it’s easy to see how Steve Coogan changed his focus when adapting the book for his movie, and the publisher’s decided to cash in on that by rereleasing the book (which was originally titled, Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search) In Ireland in 1952, Philomena Lee’s family forced her into a convent to have her illegitimate. […]
Fear the Bareword
I somehow have been reading two books simultaneously that both deal with the concept of words that force action. The other, Snow Crash, I’ve been enjoying as an audiobook for the last two weeks and should finish soon. It’s very focused on computer language, making it a bit more inaccessible (though still enjoyable) than Max Barry’s Lexicon, which I just flew through. Both novels reference the Tower of Babel story, as well as the god Enki (remember him from the Epic of Gilgamesh?) and the idea that words have […]
Bad Ass Ladies
Ah, another Ken Follett book. Let’s see how this one adds up: Historical background? Check = the last days of WWII, just before D-Day Great bad guy? Check = Dieter Franck, Nazi tortuer extraordinaire (and his beautiful Jewish sidekick, Stephanie) Feisty chick? Check, check, check = our heroine, Felicity “Flick” Clairet, the beautiful British leader of a French resistance group and all around bad ass; plus a bonus feisty chick: a Gypsy murderess named Ruby, plus a collection of crazy women willing to go along on the mission (all of […]