Gigi's Company discussion

For once that's easy: The Diary of Anne Frank by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett newly adapted by Wendy Kesselman .


I just got it in the mail today. This version is from 2009, the earlier play that I read a week or ten days ago is from 1956. I also picked up Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck from the library, because my RL book group read Cannery Row.

Any plans for the weekend you are willing to share?

May go see a movie. There are four current movies out that I would enjoy:

Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again!
Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation
Ant-Man and the Wasp
Mission: Impossible - Fallout

There is also an excellent exhibit at the Joslyn Art Museum here in Omaha that my husband and I would like to see.

Any plans for the weekend you are willing to share?

We're having a house & garden yard party this Sunday to celebrate my husband's retirement, the paying off of our mortgage, summer, a friend who passed last month, but whose celebration of life is the day before. So I've got a lot of cleaning & gardening to do!

Also the day before the party I'm going to see Barber of Seville at a nearby-ish opera festival.

We'll go see "Oceans 8," tomorrow, though I might like to see two of the four you list.


What's your favorite movie you've seen lately, either on tv or in a movie theater?

Of the movies we've seen so far this summer, either on Netflix or in the theater, I loved all of the following in no particular order:

Logan Lucky
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Incredibles 2
Downsizing
The Zookeeper's Wife

What's your favorite movie you've seen lately, either on tv or in a movie theater?

Battleship Potemkin 1925
Her Highness and the Bellboy 1945
The Incredibles 2
Shenandoah 1965
The Book Club

What's a tv show (or five) you are looking forward to binging?

I've watched all of the following on Netflix:

How to Train Your Dragon: Race to the Edge
Crossing Lines
Gotham
Travelers
Sense8
Death in Paradise
Republic of Doyle . . . among others.

What's a tv show (or five) you are looking forward to bingeing?

"Outlander" I know I've seen season 1 & possibly 2. I'm looking forward to season 3.

Catching up on "Frankie & Grace."

Dave Letterman's show.

It's been canceled already, but I hope I can see Michelle Wolf's show, somewhere.

"Black Mirror"

Is there a show, or five, recently or not, that you wish hadn't been cancelled?

Big Bang (2018-19 is the last season)
Limitless
Timeless
Dark Matter
Star Trek Enterprise
Firefly
. . . among others

Are there any others that were canceled that you enjoyed?

Um yeah, on Firefly
Timeless was cancelled again? I thought they brought it back on another network?!
Wonderfalls
Pushing Daisies -was a delight, that too few people saw
Dead Like Me


Are you paying for All- Access CBS so you can see the newest incarnation of Star Trek? Are you thinking about it more with Patrick Stewart announcing he will return to playing Jean- Luc Picard in the Star Trek universe on that platform?

Not paying for All-Access CBS. I already pay for Netflix and eventually everything is on Netflix (the series will end and then I will be able to see it on Netflix). Also, no, Jean-Luc isn't enough to get me to pay for anything.

Best new fall show.

God Friended Me, is one I like because of it's optimistic and cheery characters and unusual situation.


Do you have a favorite new series so far?

My favorite new series is "The Good Cop" on Netflix. It is about a very straight arrow, to the point of being obsessive, cop and his ex-criminal/ex-cop father. Actually a very warm family dramedy.

Worst new fall show.

I don't know about worst, but I like Nathan Fillion a lot and I could only watch about ten minutes of the pilot of "The Rookie."


What series are you still looking forward to beginning again?

Tonight I saw an ad for the new season of Legends of Tomorrow. I also can hardly wait for the last season of Game of Thrones.

Which spring/summer series are you looking forward to returning?

I'm looking forward to "Legends of Tomorrow." I don't watch "Game of Thrones." I am anxious for the next episode of "The Walking Dead, if it follows the graphic novel many will die. There are just a few episodes of "The Big Bang Theory" left. I am curious about where that will go.

Last night I watched the first episode of Idris Elba's comedy* on Netflix, can't tell you the name, but it's fun!

Having watched the whole season now, it's "Turn Up Charlie."

Are there spring/ summer shows you are looking forward to?

A Game of Thrones series by George R.R. Martin or The Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien ?

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Do you prefer to read/ hear plays or poetry?

Plays definitely

Historical Fiction of Historical Non-Fiction? Or neither?

Both, with a slight preference for historical novels.

Do you prefer alternate history or apocalyptic sf or neither?

Me too!
So I prefer Alternate history. I’ll read the other genre occasionally but usually depresses the heck out of me. :-/

Hot weather or cold weather?

It's 10 degrees where I live this morning, so I long for the heat. Really, I like both, but not extremes of either.

Do you prefer superhero or reality tv shows, or something else?

I don’t watch much TV but I will stream shows like Buzz Feed True Crime or Ruining History or Genealogy shows. I will also admit to downloading Psychic Medium shows and some ghost hunting if they don’t go way out there with all the demonology stuff. I like it when they also find leaky water pipes and not always a growling demon pretending to be a little girl that is actually an alien.
But right now after everyone is in bed, I sneak and get a cup of sleepy time tea and watch Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries That I’ve downloaded. ( Smile)
Do you prefer hard boiled detectives or cozy mysteries or neither?

I prefer the more hard- boiled the better. I like Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett. I don't get the mysteries in which someone stole a calf-shaped creamer?* I mean, who cares? Give me anti-heroes played by actors like Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyk, and James Garfield, where you're not sure there is a good guy or gal.

* That's a real plotline in a mystery my book group read. Maybe it's a Jeeves & Wooster book? Last January I read what I'm calling a cozy mystery with retired Joe Biden solving a mystery. I found him endearing solving mysteries. My friend loves the "Miss Fisher..." series. And I like the ones set in Harare, Zimbabwe by a Scottish writer, about the typing & detective school?... (Sorry that last sentence is so vague.)

Do you prefer to read about contemporary problems or historical ones, or neither. Do you think they can be separated?

I read Hope Never Dies . I thought it was hilarious! Poor Biden! So lonely without his buddy! Lol
I think you mean the series set in Botswana by Alexander McCall Smith?
I love those! His other series I don’t get as much but I met the author in person and he’s a hoot!

I read about both, and over time I have come to learn that you cannot separate them, History DOES repeat itself, we continuously pay for the sins of generations past and continue the legacy by forgetting about what happened before and how today’s problems are pretty much a variation of things that happened before. I can read books written during the Civil, The Depression and WWII and think it could easily have been written this year.

Would you say you are generous in giving stars for ratings or are you very discriminating?

Yes, I am perhaps too generous in giving out stars for books I love. But maybe, I am too sparing for books I don't love. But I always (OK, nearly always) write a review to explain why I like or don't like a book. But there's something else: by the time I read a book, I usually have heard or read a lot about the book, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to like it.

I'll ask you the same question. How fair do you think you are at awarding stars, or not, to books you review?

Now somehow when I got back to playing, I had overlooked your question, Julia. Sorry about that!

I’m usually pretty generous. In fact I rarely go into the 2 or 3 star category. For one thing, I’m envious that the author could even tell and get published at all and admire the hard work it takes.
My rule of thumb is;
5 star - I liked it a lot and would recommend it
4 star - I liked the story but something might have been a bit off, like a historical novel that has something in it that didn’t exist in that time period or some other niggling thing. But most often I seem to give 4 stars to books in a series and I think it’s because Im holding it up too much to the original book in the series, or I find the books are getting repetitive.
1-star if I didn’t like it at all. And sometimes I wish I could give negative stars. Those are mostly books I feel were written with way too much graphic gratuitous sex scenes or violence which adds nothing to the story but just seems to be there to fill up space and to appeal to a certain type of reader. I also don’t like books that have special code words they think everyone should already know like acronyms. And books that seem to give a message that something that is wrong is perfectly acceptable. Like a woman gets raped by a man and it turns out he his her true love.
3 stars are rare but that’s the ones I give the benefit of the doubt to, like at lot of stream-of-conscious books, I don’t “get” a lot of times. Although there might be beautiful prose or a profound thought, if I end up thinking “huh”? Then I give it three stars because it might not be the book that has a problem but this reader. (Smile)

I rarely give reviews because I feel like I don’t have the criteria to be a reviewer. I see reviews in which syntax, character development, plot devices, the symbolism in the book etc.. are critiqued and I’m not even sure what they mean. I just know I enjoyed it or didn’t. Some characters I wish I could give a good shake to or really hope they fall off a cliff, that whole symbolism stuff, unless it is actually an allegory, I don’t try to get. I know my kids English teachers have them do home work with things like “what does the color blue stand for in various articles of clothing?” Or “what was the author saying when Peggy noticed the tree’s leaves turned brown?” Or “this family was very religious and it is expressed often. Why is that?”
My answers would be
1. The author likes blue
2. That it’s autumn since the story says it takes place in the fall of 1988
3. Because the book is about a boy whose father happens to be a minister
But they would come home and tell me “ my teacher said that’s not it”
I remember in English once, a teacher going on about the significance of names that the author gives to characters, that there is always a hidden meaning like with Dickens using names like Scrooge to sound miserly or James’ Daisy Miller as innocent.
So an author was speaking to my mother’s book club and she was telling us about the next book she was developing. She said “This is about the Vine family that live in a rural area of Alabama. One of the sons falls in love with the town’s belle, Jasmine Wallace. Later on they are married and ......” I forgot the rest of it but afterwards I asked her about her naming one of the main characters Jasmine Vine. Was that a significant clue to the character’s traits or was it signifying someone sweet but clingy? She thought about it and then it dawned on her. “Oh right! After they’re married, that would be her name, wouldn’t it?! I never even thought of that! Wow! I guess I should change her name!”
Then I kind of felt bad for making her have to rethink so much.
Anyway the point is, I don’t think authors even put that much thought into hidden meanings and symbols but in English class nothing is what it says it is, really.

Sorry about the essay.
So my question what are some books you did give 1 star to?

I really have to actively hate the book for it to get a 1 star. I don't actively hate many books that I read. Like I said above, I have often heard quite a bit about a book before I read it.
Another thing: I give up on books I hate. Life is too short to read books one hates*, is my thought. I usually give three stars to books I don't finish. (Maybe it's one of those rare books that gets better. And because I didn't stick around, I can't know that.)

1. The author may be referring to Jesus' Mom's favorite color, blue, to signify innocence, or an Indian god, Ganesh maybe, I forget, whose favorite color is also blue. Or the purple in The Color Purple, say.
2. I grew up in southern California, where we had no seasons, so it always confused me when my elementary teachers wanted us to color leaves brown, red, orange and yellow. Flowers were in those colors, not trees.
3. If your kid's teacher is teaching a unit on religion in America and teaching The Chosen, &/ or The Scarlet Letter, how those characters express their religions is important to the storytelling.
*If one is past the age of being assigned books.

I reread The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger ten or so years ago for a library book discussion. I hated that whiny kid Holden, with a firey passion, as an adult. I wanted him medicated and in talk therapy in a sanitarium, where he couldn't hurt himself or anyone else. When I read it when I was 16 or whatever, I loved it.

I went to the grave yard in Edinburgh, Scotland where the real Ebenezer Scrooge is buried. He was a famously philanthropic man, but Dickens didn't know that about him. Dickens also didn't know that he sold oatmeal, barley and flour. His gravestone read: "He was a meal man." Dickens read: "He was a mean man."

Have you read The Call of the Wild by Jack London? Do you think you will read it/ reread it before the movie "Call of the Wild" comes out in early March? Will you see the movie?

Good answers! I’m going to get you to help my kids with their English homework! ( smile)
I give up on most hated books too and they are rare for me too. But sometimes carry on. Most of the Thomas Hardy books have me yelling at the characters but I love the prose.
When someone says something about a hated book, I automatically think of The Executioner's Song. I did finish it because I had set a task for myself to read all the Pulitzer Prize Winners for Fiction, but it made me disgusted.

Answer to your question. I did read both books by Jack London books about dogs, and loved them. I probably won’t re-read them because like you said, life is short and my TBR list is in the high thousands! I used to re-read favorites a lot when I was a teen and early 20’s but it ruined one book for me to read again as an adult, kind of like your changed opinion of The Catcher in the Rye. So because of my long list and not wanting to ruin another warm memory, I rarely re-read. Now I will say I always read to my children at bedtime so in that case, I did read some again like Heidi, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Misty of Chincoteague. I meant to read The Call of the Wild to them but we somehow ended up reading Where the Red Fern Grows instead and that one book that got ruined for me.
Overall if I see a movie based on a book, I like to read it first. I usually don’t read it after seeing the movie because I don’t want to know the end before I read it.
That being said, I rarely see movies, even on Netflix. I’m thinking the last movie I saw in a theater was The Polar Express. The last 30 years of my life have so much revolves around children that going to movies usually involves being a treat for them and therefore mostly g-rated. Now that my babies are about to graduate high school, they go to movies often but they don’t want me to go! (Smile). But maybe I can take my grandson to see Call of the Wild. So thanks for telling me about it!

So how about you? Do you have a preference about reading a book before or after a movie?

Absolutely before.

There are rare movies that are better, or even as good as the books. "To Kill a Mockingbird," is on that very short list. Maybe the most recent "Little Women." (I've only seen it once, in the theater, and maybe I read Little Women as a child.) I will say only see the musical play "Little Women" if very good friends/ family are in it.)
I see a lot of movies. In theaters, on cable & subscription services, sometimes from the library.

Do you prefer urban fantasy or high fantasy? Or no fantasy at all?

Well I had to look up the meanings! I guess it depends on the book. I loved The Hobbit, or There and Back Again and The Lord of the Rings trilogy which seems to fit the high fantasy definition but I also love the Thursday Next series, the series that started with The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. I guess that is urban fantasy. It is set in real places although an alternative history type of world where Wales is a separate country from the U.K. and the Crimean War is still continuing. Wikipedia gave an example Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury which I also liked. Two more high fantasy series I like are the Beka Cooper series by Tamora Pierce and the Landover series by Terry Brooks.
Would magical realism be considered the same like Practical Magic as urban fantasy? Would The Hunger Games be high fantasy because I liked those as well. One type of fantasy I’m not overly fond of is paranormal romance although there have been a couple I liked.

Do you like to read paranormal?
Do you prefer the fantasy type with vampires and werewolves and more in the fictional style or do you like to read about actually Aran or male events considered non- fiction like books written by ghost hunters, books like The Amityville Horror and personal accounts of strange phenomenon? Or not at all?

I don't believe I've ever read a non-fiction book about ghost hunters or a medium, or The Amityville Horror.

I like reading about fictional ghosts, or fictional werewolves, fictional magic, but wanting me to believe it's true? That's a step too far. I think. Mostly.

I don't seek out paranormal Romance. I don't seek out any Romance with a capital "R." I've read it, I've even liked some of it, but Romance novels and the genre's rule about always having a happy ending, that's too constraining, usually. Do I love the Outlander series-- and am I eagerly awaiting book #9? I am. And the tv series, yes, that too. That's time travel, with romance and other stuff.

But PNR more often, at least to me, means say werewolf/ coyote like Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews a werewolf with a call-in radio show Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn, or even Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Tales by Joss Whedon. (Twilight is in this category, too.)

I don't know what I'd call Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman, but Hoffman is a NYT bestseller who is usually in the running for Pulitzers and National Book Awards, instead of Hugos and Nebulas. Maybe contemporary witchy women's fiction?

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is dystopian, with a bit of Romance, imo. And it won genre awards as well as mainstream success, so it's a rule- breaker.

Some excellent examples of urban fantasy are Someplace to Be Flying by Charles de Lint, War for the Oaks by Emma Bull and Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.

Magical realism often involves colonialism like Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia set in 1925 Mexico, or Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, which sometimes feels like it's set in Africa's future and sometimes it's past.

Question I'll finally get to: do you seek out 'own- voices' authors? (It's a thing I first experienced on last years Read Harder Challenge.) If you're going to read a novel set in Australia, do you seek out indigenous Australians? Or when you are looking for a book about the autistic experience, so you look for an author who has autism?

Thanks for the definitions. I know there are so many sub genres and sub-sub genres and I often can’t find what the distinction is supposed to be when I look up definitions!

To your present question, I think I usually do that but not always consciously. There are exceptions like Memoirs of a Geisha. But I seem to more drawn if the author has some of the same personal experiences as the main character.
I do that a lot with audio books. I usually like the ones read by the author but even more so I think English novels read by English people, Irish novels by Irish people, Southern novels read by authentic Southerners etc..so that the accent would match the accents of the actual characters.

Do you listen to audiobooks and do you have a preference for a certain type of reader?

I almost never listen to audiobooks.

That said I own and relisten to World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. When it was first published it was cut severely. When the movie came out, which we don't need to speak of, the author insisted that the moviemakers pay for an audiobook of the whole book. Because he's Max Brooks and he's Mel Brooks & Anne Bancroft's son, he has some truly astounding actors --aka many of them are comedians, but here they are actors-- who invariably make me weep.

For instance: Alan Alda, Common, Denise Crosby, Nathan Fillion, Maz Jobrani, Kal Penn, Carl Reiner, Jeri Ryan, Martin Scorsese, just to name a few, are on this recording.

Do you have some audiobook recommendations?

I just found a podcast I love!

It's all audio short stories, for adults, called Levar Burton Reads.

I think it's on Stitcher. Or something.

You know I still haven’t figured out podcast. Crazy, I know!

As far as recommendations, I kind of like Bill Bryson reading his own books and Pres. Jimmy Carter.but my favorites are with the proper accents. The Help was good, when looking for British classics, my two favorite readers are Nadia May and Simon Vance. This is for like Austen, Bronte, du Maurer, and Dickens. Mark Twain books on audio are great when you get right accent.

So which podcasts do you listen to?

I mostly don't listen to podcasts, that's what's so out there with "LeVar Burton Reads." I love it!!! Do you use You Tube? You may be able to access it through You Tube. It's like "Selected Shorts" on npr, except all the stories are read and chosen by LeVar Burton.
Just Google it and start listening.
Y'know Geordie LaForge on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," Kunta Kinte on the original "Roots" tv series, and the host of "Reading Rainbow."

I do watch videos on YouTube. I’ll try it.

When is your favorite time of day (or night) to read?

When I'm awake! Best times, I guess are late at night or in the morning.

Do you watch tv at a particular time (s), even though you may not need to?

No, I don’t watch it all and spend half of my time at our cabin on the River where there is no television set.

Do you read the book after seeing the movie or before seeing the movie?

I usually intend to read the book first, but it doesn't always happen that way.

Related question: have you put off watching classic films because you have not yet read the book?

No, If you mean classic films like before 1965. It's actually introduced me to a number of books I didn't know about.

Do you prefer fiction or non-fiction?

I prefer fiction, but I read non-fiction, too.

Do you read poetry or self-help books?