Reading and Eating
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these! I’m just now getting back on a good reading schedule, and dinners have been… well, you’ll see shortly. I also have a bonus movie review! First up- I finished this: Huh. I think… I didn’t really like it? The premise is, an aspiring writer sees the chance to steal another writer’s manuscript, and publishes it as her own. It wasn’t that I couldn’t get behind this, exactly. I kept wanting to root for the main character, but then she would do something else just slightly too icky for me. It was interesting that I wanted to like her, but couldn’t quite bring myself to. As a matter of fact, the whole book was interesting. Diversity, racism, the evils of social media were some of the topics explored. I enjoyed parts of it, but overall I didn’t have a good feeling while reading this book. A while ago I read Babel by this same author, and I enjoyed that more- but I probably won’t read any more books by R.F. Kuang. Now I’ve started… I love it!!! I want to launch into a whole discussion about it, but I’ll save it for book club. Dinners. Oh God. I’m really hitting the wall here. Several nights last week were so busy that I ended up eating a peanut butter sandwich in the car for dinner, and I wish I could just do that every night instead of having to cook. But, Sunday I rallied and made chili! I doubled this recipe from Nora Cooks. We ate it during the Chiefs/Bills game. Then I announced that we’re eating chili for dinner every night this week unless someone else wants to cook. Things are starting to get dark around our house- so dark that I think my husband might actually cook dinner tomorrow. But let’s bring things back up. I saw a movie!!! I rarely go to movies, but it was my husband’s birthday and he wanted to see A Complete Unknown, which is the story of Bob Dylan. I LOVED IT! The acting was incredible. Timothee Chalamet played Bob Dylan and did all his own singing (side note- whoa. Total dreamboat.) The other actors were amazing as well. So much music, and it all takes place in the 1960’s, which is a decade that fascinates me and somehow keeps coming up in my reading (Stephen King’s 11/22/63 and Ken Follett’s The Century Trilogy.) It was interesting seeing Dylan’s rise to fame, and then the conflict between an artist wanting to evolve and the fans who resist that. I grew up in the 1970s and we still listened to Bob Dylan, and I used to play his songs on my guitar. I haven’t listened to him in a long time, but I’ve pulled up a Bob Dylan playlist on Spotify, and “The Times They Are A-Changin’” has been going through my mind all day. Have you see A Complete Unknown? Did you like Yellowface? Top photo by Blaz Photo on Unsplash