Monday, August 09, 2010

Monday Whatnot

Two books that caught my attention this week:

Providence and Prayer, by Terrance Tiessen.

If Trouble Don't Kill Me, by Ralph Bernier, Jr. [reviewed here]

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The area of southwest Virginia, western North Carolina, and Eastern Tennessee has produced an inordinate amount of great music and story-telling. I'm presently reading Forrest Carter's The Education of Little Tree, which takes place in that region (in the neighborhood of Clinch Mountain). It's very beautiful, and very wise. but I hope my reading of it is not marred by the knowledge I've obtained from reading the author's bio on Wikipedia. Amazing. And awful.

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I think Victor David Hanson is one of the most accurate commenters on the scene these days. His recent column, A Rather Angry America, is an excellent example.

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I'm working on seeing every Preston Sturges movie I can get my hands on. Sturges wrote and directed in the 1940s, and is known as a master of the "screwball comedy." Last night we watched Christmas in July, made in 1940 (a golden year in film history). It's a fine and enjoyable example of the form, though lacking the bite of Sullivan's Travels and The Great McGinty, not to mention the wonderful Miracle at Morgan's Creek. The street scene in a New York tenement neighborhood, full of quintessential Hollywood ethnic stereotypes (quite lovingly depicted) is classic.

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