Too much happiness

In addition to watching movies and melting my brain with cute stuff on the intewebs, I also read!  I do read at a slow pace though.  This partially explains why there aren't as many book reviews as there are movie reviews.

Last week I finished reading Alice Munro's latest book of short stories: "Too Much Happiness" (I'll refer to the book as "TMH" from here on).  If you've ever read Munro, you'll know that the title is not really indicative of the actual contents of the book.  I've only read one other Munro book ("Runaway"), so I am by no means an expert.  However, compared to that other book, TMH is a little more...dramatic in the events that unfold.  There's more death in it anyway.  Some reviewers have linked the presence of death to Munro's growing feeling of mortality (she's 75).

Although I liked "Runaway" more, TMH is a good read.  Munro uniquely captures the lives of women of all ages and circumstances.  Even in the space of a short story you get a feel of being in the skin of the main character.  A passage from an LA Times review reflects my thoughts more eloquently than I can do myself:

Munro's stories...remind us that the non-essential things -- the things that didn't have to happen, that could have been avoided if people were a bit more rational, or a bit more careful, or if the world just made a bit more sense -- so often determine the shape of a life. In doing so, they remind us that comfort and security are by their very nature essentially fragile and ephemeral, if not largely illusory.

If the title isn't warning enough, I have to be perfectly clear that these stories are not happy, heartwarming stories.  They make you think and they make you wonder and feel, which, in my opinion may sometimes better than happy and heartwarming.

There's a good Slate Double X podcast book club on this book.

That is all on the book.  I will leave you now with a bizarre image.  What you see below is an actual cake!  The photo is complements of the awesome Cake Wrecks website.

Very little

I'm posting here just to let anyone who might follow this thing know that I'm alive. If you're a friend on facebook then you already know that.

I made it back from Phoenix and rested my sick self for two or so days. Now I'm back! Healthy! Well, except for the pesky dry cough that drove me from yoga tonight. Ready to spend hours of my waking life at work digging myself out! Yeah! Thankfully I like my job.

When I got back from Phoenix I did take a class, which I had signed up for about a month earlier. Now, I read pretty slow - not sound out the words slow but not as fast as I'd like. So, I took one of those speed reading classes. I had always thought about it but never done it - I don't recommend it. Such a racket. Sure you learn some tips but you're not really going to improve unless you by the $400 dvd set.

Other than that I finished a book I would recommend: Alice Munro's Runaway. A book of short stories that captures you in the lives of the female main characters. The detailed yet every-day style with which she writes is very compelling. I also read The Suicide Collectors. You could probably skip it unless you're a voracious consumer of post-apocalyptic fiction, which I am. This book had elements of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, The Lord of the Rings, the movie The Happening, reminders of the Mormon religion, and hints of the movie Omega Man. It was also the first book for this author.

Anyway here is one of the three non-transit pictures I took in Phoenix - public art - a centipede: