movie night

It Happened to Jane (1959)

with Doris Day and Jack Lemmon







I'm reading Brisingr (Book 3) by Christopher Paolini and having a hard time getting in to it. Even though it's passed the 50 page test, I may have to set it aside in favor of something else.

Movie night:

My Dream Is Yours (1949) with Doris Day

King Kong (1933)

We're still working our way through the complete X-Files and currently on season 3

The First Horseman

The First Horseman by John Case was originally published in 1998. My hardcover copy has 325 pages. "John Case" is a pseudonym for the husband and wife writing team of Jim Hougan and Carolyn Hougan. The First Horseman is a fast paced novel of suspense, but it's also a medical thriller tied into investigative reporting. The one chilling detail that makes this novel so good is that using the flu as a weapon in bioterrorism is a clear and realistic threat. The plot is a little predictable and not all the characters are finely developed, but this was an enjoyable book and I highly recommend it. Rating: 4.

Synopsis from the Publisher:

In the Book of Revelations, the Four Horsemen herald the arrival of the Apocalypse. When the First Horseman thunders forth, pestilence will spread throughout the land. For the First Horseman is Plague...

The Spanish Flu killed thirty million people worldwide in 1918. Now with history threatening to repeat itself, a scientific expedition speeds toward a remote island in the Arctic Sea to recover strains of the lethal virus preserved under layers of ice. For Washington Post reporter Frank Daly, it is the story of a lifetime. But his plan to join the expedition is ruined by a ferocious storm that delays him. And when he meets up with the ship upon its return to port in Norway, it is clear something has gone wrong.

Fear haunts the faces of the crew. No one will talk. And someone wants Daly to stop asking questions.

Quotes:

"Tommy was nervous. Susannah could tell, because she knew he liked to talk, and yet, he hadn't said a word for fifty miles." opening sentences

"Killing someone was dead wrong -

Unless...

Unless you were a soldier. And that's exactly what they were..." pg. 5

"Daunting from the outside, the building's interior was terrifying - a makeshift morgue paved with the cadavers of men, women, and children whose blistered limbs had turned a startling blue in the days before their deaths." pg. 14

"And though he knew what the pictures represented - a massacre - he also knew that because he was the first to notice it, he'd get a lot of credit." pg. 26

"But the plague took twenty years to do what it did. The Spanish flu killed twenty or thirty million people in twelve months." pg. 37

"Now, almost sixty years later, Annie and Doctor K were after a different kind of buried treasure: a virus so virulent and contagious that it might serve as a standard against which all others should be measured." pg. 57

"Listening was an art, and Frank was a genius at it. People told him things because he was totally simpatico - whatever they had to say, he understood. He got the text, and the subtext." pg. 92

"And the palm trees - what good were they, anyway? They were skinny and straight and they didn't really give you any shade. They just stood there, next to the street, like a row of disappointments." pg. 110

Pretty Greasy

Pretty in Pink happened to be on last night and I sort of half watched it again while reading. What I want to know is why on earth did Andie (Molly Ringwald) think that Blaine (Andrew McCarthy) was a better choice, over her friend, Duckie (Jon Cryer)? Even when the movie was released I was too old for it's demographics, however, I don't remember questioning why Andie chose Blaine over Duckie. But now... What was up with that? The lame line of Blaine's that was something like, "I always believed in you, I just didn't believe in myself" was totally a come-on line and any street savvy girl would have known that. And, please, Blaine declaring he loves her and will always love her... based on what? I didn't see any depth in their brief relationship that would merit that declaration. I would have told her to stick with Duckie. Actually, I would have told her that pinning all her hopes, dreams, and wishes on something as inconsequential as a prom is stupid and senseless. I also would have advised her to not wear that dress she fashioned out of the two dresses. She could have put something better together from the two dresses.

I do have a soft spot in my heart for Molly Ringwald, though. My sister, the high powered executive, who once wrote this diary entry, actually looked like Molly Ringwald with brown hair when this movie came out. Really. She looked more related to Molly than me. She could have been her older sister. When I watch Molly Ringwald in her movies, I see my sister.

As long as I'm at it, let's talk Grease. Again, I was already out of high school when Grease was released (just barely) but I clearly remember wondering at the time, when watching it, why on earth Sandy (Olivia Newton-John) had to change in order to get Danny (John Travolta) who, really, wasn't that great of a catch. I mean I get that it's just a movie and a rockin' musical, etc., but the actual message of Sandy changing herself in order to get Danny is... stupid and silly and sends a bad message to girls.

The Last King of Scotland

The Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden was originally published in 1998. My trade paperback copy is 335 pages. Foden's historical fiction novel is written as if a memoir from Nicholas Garrigan, a physician and the only son of a Presbyterian minister. Garrigan finds himself far away from Scotland when he accepts a post with the Ministry of Health in Uganda in the 1970s and eventually becomes Idi Amin's personal physician. This is a chilling extrapolation of what could happen when an average person is taken into the confidence of a charismatic sociopath. While fearing Amin almost from the start, Garrigan, representing an average man, actually became annoying to me as he continued to display moral ambivalence and inertia even while learning more about Amin's brutalities. I have not watched the movie of the same name. Rating: 4

Synopsis from cover:

Shortly after his arrival in Uganda, Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan is called to the scene of a bizarre accident: Idi Amin, careening down a dirt road in his red Maserati, has run over a cow. When Garrigan tends to Amin, the dictator, in his obsession for all things Scottish, appoints him as his personal physician. As flattered as he is surprised, Garrigan accepts - and so begins a fateful dalliance with the central African leader whose Emperor Jones-style autocracy would evolve into a reign of terror.

The Last King of Scotland blazes a new trail in the heart of darkness. Foden's Amin is as ridiculous as he is abhorrent: a grown man who must be burped like an infant, a self-proclaimed cannibalist who, at the end of his 8 years in power, would be responsible for 300,000 deaths. And as Garrigan awakens to his patient's baroque barbarism - and his own complicity in it - we enter a venturesome meditation on conscience, charisma, and the slow corruption of the human heart.

Quotes:

"I did almost nothing on my first day as Idi Amin's doctor" first sentence

"That was Idi's way, you see, punish of reward. You couldn't say no. Or I didn't think back then, that you could. Or I didn't really think about it at all." pg. 3

"There was none, in our household, of that 'express yourself' mentality that is today's common wisdom. So if I was ever wild as a young boy, I was wild in my head, which was full of wandering yearnings: I was mad for maps and stamps and adventure stories." pg. 19

"As for the narrative I am presenting in these pages, it is nothing but the working-up of a journal I made at the time." pg. 20

"The Uganda Armed Forces have this day decided to take over power from Obote and hand it to our fellow soldier Major-General Idi Amin Dada..." pg. 32

"There is a hill there called kobuko, which the story says was blown by a mystery power from Maya, in Sudan. This strange force pushed it in space to Uganda and where it landed it killed all the people who were before there. For kobuko means in Kakwa the thing which smothers of covers you, stopping your breath." pg. 83

"...what surprised me was how the badger escapes bee stings: apparently, he first claws a small hole in the hive, then turns around, holds on tight, and stuns them with a blast of noxious gas from his behind." pg. 100

"Once I had pieced it all together, I felt foolish, deficient in an almost physical way - it had all been there before my very eyes." pg. 113

Stop the Cheez Waffies madness.

With all of the books I've reviewed since this blog began you would think the main reason people stumble upon She Treads Softly would be through the name of a book. Although that's true, I'm embarrassed to note that "Cheez Waffies" still remains one of the top searches that bring people here. It's time to stop the madness.

I have blogged about Cheez Waffies several times. The first time I was simply talking about the search for them.... for a family member after we moved back to the Midwest. Then we had a relative from the east coast visit and bring us some Cheez Waffies here and here.

My last post about them was an open letter to Wise Foods. It was not a serious letter. It was supposed to be a joke. I still have people commenting or emailing me to tell me where to get Cheez Waffies, or letting me know that they are going to be selling them online.

You know what? This is going to be hard for you Cheez Waffies addicts to hear, but I don't care. I don't crave Cheez Waffies. I never loved them. I'm not scouring the internet looking for places to buy them. Please, no more hints or tips about where I can buy Cheez Waffies... unless you represent Wise Foods and are informing people about expanding the Cheez Waffies sales territory back into the Kansas City area. Thank you for your cooperation.

EarthCore

EarthCore was originally one of Scott Sigler's podcast novels. My trade paperback size copy was printed in 2005 and has 319 pages. After reading Sigler's Infected, I wanted to read some of the print versions of his earlier podcast novels, but after looking around, I didn't think this was going to happen. Imagine the shock and awe I felt when I found this copy at a local used book store in the clearance section .... for $1. (And now check out the used prices at Amazon or Barnes&Noble. The used bookstore didn't know what they had their hands on.) EarthCore is a science fiction/action adventure thriller. No, it probably isn't fine literature ( and it has a few typos in the text), but its a very satisfying read. I enjoyed it immensely and highly recommend it with a rating of 4.5.

EARTHCORE SYNOPSIS:

Deep below a desolate Utah mountain lies the largest platinum deposit ever discovered. A billion-dollar find, it waits for any company that can drill a world's record, three-mile-deep mine shaft.

EarthCore is the company with the technology, the resources and the guts to go after the mother lode. Young executive Connell Kirkland is the company's driving force, pushing himself and those around him to uncover the massive treasure.

But at three miles below the surface, where the rocks are so hot they burn bare skin, something has been waiting for centuries. Waiting ... and guarding. Kirkland and EarthCore are about to find out firsthand why this treasure has never been unearthed.

Quotes:

"Fueled by sheer terror, he scrambled up the narrow tunnel, attacking the incline like an animal dashing away from a predator. If he could just make it back to the opening, back to the camp, out of the narrow tunnel and into the sunlight, maybe he could escape. Maybe this thing couldn't leave the cave." pg. 13

"Today police declared three Brigham Young graduate students missing. The three geology students were doing fieldwork in the Wah Wah Mountains in western Utah." pg. 13

"No one goes out there. No reason to go there in the first place. Nothing there but dirt and rock. I went out there to see for myself, to test the legends, you might say, but I only went once. The devil lives on that mountain. You can feel him, man." pg. 15

"Nowadays you made much more money finding the stuff and then selling the location to big companies. Let some mining corporation suck the minerals from the ground." pg. 20

"She knew from experience that Connell's business instincts bordered on the uncanny; if he smelled a profit, that was good enough for her." pg. 27

"With the deal, he'd placed himself in a situation he'd sought to avoid. He had to return to that mountain, the dead mountain where animals had the good sense not to tread." pg. 43

"Dust billowed up as if the Land Rover were a bi-wing crop duster, swooping in low over the ground to drop clouds of noxious pesticide. The view out the front wasn't much better - an endless vista of brown and yellow, dotted every now and then with scrub and other vegetation so tough it looked as if it would flourish on the surface of the moon." pg. 73