This one’s easy, and it also falls into the FAB category, which I haven’t utilized in a while. FAB stands for Film, Audio, Book…as in, what have you been watching, listening to, and reading of late. To Sunday Stealing we go!
1) What’s something you want to do before summer slips away?
Sigh. You know what, folks? This summer wasn’t great, in a lot of ways. The weather wasn’t awful…but it still sucked. There are degrees of this, after all…but while we never really had that long stretch of low-90s, high humidity that usually stops summer dead in its tracks, it was never comfortable, either. We had very few days this summer where we could turn the AC off and open the windows overnight; often times it wasn’t miserable but just uncomfortable enough, until late in the day, to make being outside just unpleasant. It seemed to get humid in late June and it has stayed at that exact level of humidity until, well, two nights ago. Ugh! We’ve had no sit-by-the-fire nights, we’ve barely used our clothesline to dry clothes, we’ve eaten on the deck very few times.
So, as summer slowly yields to Fall, we’re hoping to do the enjoyable things we haven’t done in summer yet. Our favorite part of summer usually starts in early August; this year it’s arriving in early September. El Nino, maybe?
2) What book are you currently reading?
I’m digging through a lot of photo books of late: books featuring work of Annie Leibovitz, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Walker Evans, for example. I just finished a wonderful little book called The World According to Henri Matisse, featuring reproductions of his paintings alongside quotes from his writings. I’ll probably put up a post of quotes from this book before it goes back to the library.
Also, I’m starting Star Soldiers by Andre Norton. I haven’t read any old-school sci-fi in a while. Norton is one of those sci-fi authors from the mid-to-late 20th century who isn’t much mentioned anymore.
3) What have you been listening to?
I’m working my way through Sara Bareilles’s new album Good Grief, which so far is hitting me between the eyes. This one will merit much more comment once I’m all the way through it.
4) What shows or movies have you been watching?
Shows: Rizzoli and Isles has been a comfort watch for us of late, though we’re on the second-to-last season right now, so we’ll need something else soon. We recently watched the first season of R.J. Decker, a new-last-year show about an ex-con in Florida who becomes a private eye when he gets out. It’s a fun show, though I must admit I am getting tired of every show having to have a constant ongoing narrative unfolding along with the stories in the individual episodes. This season of Master-Chef is winding down, and honestly? Thank God. This season has been an annoying slog. Because FOX had the World Cup, this season of MC had fewer episodes going in, but they went into the competition phase with just as many chefs as always, so this season has had a ton of double eliminations, which sucks. My favorite new thing right now might be Bad Medicine, a fish-out-of-water story in which a weirdly uptight city doctor moves to small-town New England to practice medicine, for various reasons. I always dig this genre. This one feels like a quirkier, funnier version of Virgin River. Think House mashed up with Newhart.
Movies: I had high hopes that Super Troopers would have a lot of laughs. It had a few, and that’s it. Disappointing. Also, Triangle of Sadness is a very weird movie about a bunch of rich people getting what’s coming to them, in very weird ways. It’s probably half an hour longer than it needs to be. Tonight we’ll probably watch JAWS, because a summer without JAWS is just weird.
How about you all?