Books and movies

I am in the middle of three books. None of them are particularly long, but they are books that I have to think about, so I read a little and then put the book down to consider. Makes for good reading, but slow blogging.

My book group met this past week and I think that the consensus was that we liked The Bright Forever by Lee Martin.(see review below) It is a book that is hard to come right out and say you liked it. It is filled with marginal people doing bad, possibly immoral, things. Yet there is an overriding theme that we don't really know our neighbors and if we really did know them we might not like them. I was really glad that we talked about this book because it got me to sort out my feelings about it.

And:

I think that people who read tend to like movies too. Last night we watched The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.I wanted to clap at the end of this movie. This is a movie about redemption and grace. That sound religious and that is not where I am coming from. Rather, I think we can all be redeemed and find grace as human beings when we recognise our shortcomings and forgive ourselves. That is a huge oversimplification of the movie, but it starts to touch on the themes.

The movie critics mainly liked this movie, but made much of the abuse of the dead body of the title character. I wasn't bothered by that. I thought the scenery was beautiful and the acting wonderful There were certainly some stock characters, but aren't there always? The movie is directed by Tommy Lee Jones and he is the main character. I like him. He seems to fit the stark landscape in the borderland that we are taken through on the journey to return Estrada to be buried in his homeland. The movie can be confusing at first with time and space jumps that take awhile to fix in your head, but once you understand what is going on, it is a wonderful ride. Two thumbs way up and they are both mine.