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The Death of Stalin - Armando Iannucci
Parker had told me a couple of stories about this movie (doesn't your 17-year-old provide recommendations on movies about postwar Soviet apparatchicks?), so last weekend we decided to sit down and watch it. OMG it was hilarious. That may sound like an odd thing to say, but all you need to know that the director's best-known work in the United States is Veep. So when he takes on the power struggle of Soviet party leaders after Stalin's unexpected death, it's going to be from an unexpected perspective.
Good story, good script, magnificent actors – what's not to like? It was particularly fun to watch Steve Buscemi (who plays Nikita Khruschev because of course) just get handed the keys to the movie. Typically it seems like he gets a line every so often and then just watches the other actors react and carry the movie. Here, perhaps because we know he's the one to watch, we are always looking to see what he does, and he never disappoints. I mean, Vyacheslav Molotov is played by Michael Palin, and you don't even notice.
I highly recommend.
Dracula: Writer's Digest Annotated Classics - Bram Stoker (author) Mort Castle (annotator)
Bram Stoker's Dracula has fascinated me since I first read it in 1983. Not for the subject matter, but for the atmosphere of dread and horror that Stoker managed to convey. In the ensuing decades I have picked up a lot of good literary commentary on the book, including fascinating analyses of where Stoker got his information and how he put the book together, all because I am interested in finding out how this dull, conventional, Irish theater manager could have told a story with so many levels and in places with such skill. For this reason, annotated versions of the book have been an obsession of mine going back to the mid-80s.
This version is a little different, however, in that the annotation by creative writing professor Mort Castle doesn't explain the people and places that Stoker was referring to, but instead uses the text to teach writing students how Stoker was telling the story in order to convey what he was doing as a writer.
While I appreciated the intent of the edition, and did learn a lot from it, the book left something to be desired for two reasons. First of all, putting the invitations in a tiny font in red ink made them very difficult to read. I often spent more time trying to find the tiny red circles in the text indicating what sentence the annotation pertaining to that I did reading the annotation.
More importantly, it doesn't appear that anyone reviewed the annotations to make sure that they were clear. In numerous places, the annotations took the form of exclamations or comments that were potentially intended sarcastically, but the reader couldn't be sure. Therefore the entire intent of the annotation was lost because the meaning wasn't clear. A sentence like "are we being treated to a little more of Stoker's humor?" would work well in a classroom followed up by an explanation of the relevant passage. But in an annotation, it is often unclear whether the question is rhetorical or actual.
But even with those shortcomings, the annotations help point out where Stoker was enhancing the tale with ambiguity, humor, foreshadowing, and especially towards the end, simply staying out of the way of the action. In doing so, it explains to the would-be writers reading it some of the tools they have available, and how to use them. It doesn't shy away from noting where Stoker made what Castle believes to be in error, and could have made a point better, and this is very useful as well.
Over and over it praised – and rightfully so from a writing perspective – Stoker's decision to present the story in an epistolary format where multiple narrators and sources present bits and pieces of the story. From the first time I read years ago it this tool – which I had never seen before – impressed me enormously, and it was interesting seeing a writing professor explain why it was so effective.
So this is something of a specialty Dracula, but if you're interested in an exposition of the book as an exercise in writing, this is the one to get.
Dinosaurs: A Journey to the Lost Kingdom - Christine Argot & Luc Vives
I picked this book up last spring or the spring before at the Smithsonian in Washington when we were going through with Collin and Parker. It is a beautiful little slipcased book, and had the best illustrations I've ever seen of dinosaurs.
Only as I started working my way through it did I realize that it was about the dinosaur collections of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, and was created to coincide with a traveling exhibition of that museum's T. Rex "Trix" and the international release of Jurassic World. But it provided an extensive background on the history of the collections and of the history of paleontology as applied to dinosaurs, including a substantial collection of paintings and engravings from the earliest days of dinosaur illustration.
Overall, a very entertaining book.
Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln - Edward Achorn
This turned out to be a really good book. A number of years ago I read Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America by Gary Wills and really enjoyed it. At least I think I did – I just took it down from my bookshelf and there's a bookmark at page 148, so maybe I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I did. And as I look at my bookcase, it also appears that I have another book Lincoln's Greatest Speech; the Second Inaugural by Ronald C. White Jr., so I may actually have read about this before. But as the late Ralph Hall once said, there are three nice things about getting older about getting older. You meet new friends every day, a new woman makes you breakfast every morning, and you meet new friends every day.
My point is that even if I didn't remember that I already had a book about this speech, I knew that I was already interested in books about the genius of Lincoln's two short speeches.
Achorn's book is actually weak weak on the address itself – his focus is on the events of the few days leading up to its delivery as a means of acquainting us with Abraham Lincoln and the people he interacted with in Washington DC in the last days of the Civil War as he was beginning to turn to the challenges of Reconstruction. He gives a magnificent insight into Lincoln the man – how desperately ugly and awkward he was, how sorrowful and serious, how hated by so many of those around him, and how unappreciated. But you also get the sense of how extraordinarily intelligent and almost inhumanly patient he was, and how politically astute. By walking through the actions of his days immediately preceding his second inauguration, the book provides a sometimes riveting account of what was actually happening in and around the Capitol before and during the ceremony itself.
Those parts of the book were my favorite. My least favorite were the side visits into the bit players of Lincoln's world – Salmon P. Chase, Clara Barton, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, and even John Wilkes Booth. I understand that they provided some insight into the subject matter, but they just weren't as interesting as Lincoln and what he was thinking and doing.
Again, it was surprising how weak the book was on the address itself - when it finally got to Lincoln standing to present his address, it skipped through parts of it and only discussed portions, and most importantly to me it didn't tie – at least adequately I thought – Lincoln's thoughts and policies into the words of the address. It attempted to, but by going through chapter after chapter of minutia, it unfortunately transformed the address to minutia as well. The centerpiece of the book was not the address, but Lincoln as he was preparing and delivering it. If the book had been focused on Lincoln's second inaugural, I wouldn't have noticed this is much, but since it focused on the address itself, I did.
But for that reason, if you're interested in the speech, you need to read this book, because it says a lot about the man who delivered it.