What I Read: Vacation Edition

My free time continues to be consumed by things other than reading, so despite my earlier promises, this will be a short-ish post once again. On my recent family vacation, I did manage to rip through an Anne Perry mystery (Death on Blackheath, so-so) as well as The Merry Spinster by Mallory (now Daniel Mallory) Ortberg. The latter is a re-envisioning of classic fairytales with a modern, feminist spin. I had some familiarity with Ortberg’s writing prior to reading the book, but all of the material was new to me; I’m not sure if it was previously published in any form online. I enjoyed the writing and found the narratives really compelling. In some cases, I realized that I wasn’t sufficiently familiar with the original story to appreciate the nuances and subtext of the retelling; with that said, some of the chapters were utterly captivating quite aside from all that. In particular, I am still haunted by “The Daughter Cells” (a take on the Little Mermaid) and “The Thankless Child” (Cinderella?), which were my favourite chapters/stories. By comparison, the titular “Merry Spinster” (Beauty and the Beast) was something of a letdown – but only by comparison. I am tempted to track down Ortberg’s Texts from Jane Eyre because I love his voice, and I’m intrigued by his perspective on old classic texts.

I ran out of reading material part-way through my vacation, so I ended up rummaging through our friends’ library for stuff to keep me going, which is how I ended up reading The Big Short and Salmon Fishing In the Yemen. I really enjoyed the former, even though I’m still not sure I understand what a CDO is, and how shorting works. I feel like I might need the Dummies’ Notes version for that, and while I was hopeful that the movie adaptation might help in that regard, it’s sadly not available on Netflix (Canada). The Big Short read like a really long-form Vanity Fair article – lots of human interest asides mixed in with the nitty-gritty financial stuff – which is my non-fiction sweet spot. I finished the book in a couple of days and enjoyed the ride, though, as I said, I’m not sure I am any wiser for it.

Salmon Fishing was just OK. I watched the movie version some time last year on a business trip to Calgary; as hokey as the ending of the movie might have been, I think I prefer it to the book ending. Part of my disappointment with the book came, in fact, from its divergence from the movie. I was expecting a simpler, more emotionally satisfying ending, and when it didn’t come, I was kinda mad at the book. That probably makes this an unfair review, so don’t listen to me. Moving on!

Towards the end of my trip, I belatedly realized that – lo! I had access to Netflix all along! So instead of looking for something else to read, I decided to find some stuff to watch. I ended up binging through the Iris Apfel documentary (LOVED IT), The Crown docu-series (interesting if one deploys judicious fast-forwarding through the boring bits), and Queer Eye. I finished the latter after I came back home, and it was a lot of fun. I never watched the original, so I have no point of comparison, but I liked all the new guys. It’s the kind of show that I enjoy as background noise when I’m working on my embroidery – it loses much of its charm on too close of a scrutiny, IMO. Like, the “conflict resolution” moments are kinda hokey, the home reno timelines are questionable (3 days? yeah, right!), and I’m not really sure what Antoni and Karamo do (except look adorable) … but then you’ve got Jonathan dropping bon mots all over the place, so you just go with the flow. I hope they bring it back for another season.