Steph & Tony Investigate!

Sorry for the one-week hiatus!  Totally unintentional, but things have been busy and movie-watching wound up taking a back seat to other stuff, and it’s taken us this long to accrue enough material to bother podcasting.

BUT.  We did manage to watch some doozies over the last two weeks…

On this week’s podcast:

• We coin a new term – “mehcommendation” – while discussing the mediocre Inkheart
• Find out why Three Coins in the Fountain is filled with dirty, dirty lies, starting with (but not limited to!) its title
• Steph finally catches up to 1999 and watches Fight Club… Was it worth the 11 year wait?!?
• We revisit childhood favorite, Labyrinth, and discuss whether David Bowie automatically makes a movie inappropriate for children…

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Yesterday I celebrated my 27th birthday!  And when I say “celebrated” I mean celebrated!  Which is of course to say that I received presents and many lovely phone calls wishing me well, and had not one but TWO great meals!  Really, who doesn’t feel good when the people you know say, “Hey!  Let’s party, because the world is that much more awesome for having you in it!”?

So, the first of the festivities involved going out for buffet lunch at our favorite Indian restaurant in Nashville, Bombay Palace.  To kick up the fun quotient, my friends Trisha and Abby joined us for lunch, and Trisha even bestowed dubious Asian candy upon me.  How dubious?  Let’s just say that if you never dreamed of using the words “Kit Kat” and “V8″ in the same sentence, I wouldn’t have blamed you.

Then, sadly I had to head back to school, but the afternoon flew by, and before I knew it, it was time to go home and begin the gift portion of the evening!  Tony was very sweet and gave me: a set of Laguiole steak knives (with neon yellow handles!), a large ceramic dutch oven, AND a pair of Ultimate Ears noise-isolating earphones (which I have been lamenting/coveting ever since I wore out my last pair of trusty UE earphones).  A wonderful combination of practical and splurge-y gifts!  You know you are getting older when you get excited about receiving steak knives for your birthday, right?   But seriously, so happy with the gifts because they are all things that I wanted but wouldn’t have bought for myself, and those are always the best gifts!

And then, it was dinner!  We decided to try a place we’d never eaten at before but was purportedly very good (and ideal for a fancy birthday dinner): Miel.  With a name like that, you wouldn’t be wrong if you suspected that the food was of the French persuasion (or, you know, honey), and yes, it was very, very good.  Click through the gallery below if you would like an in-depth photo tour (with descriptions!) of the big meal:

The meal was wonderful, and I think we’ve found a new place we can go when in the mood for a splurge.  I think my favorite dish of the evening was actually Tony’s risotto – it was so rich and creamy, and the scallops were cooked to perfection (if you don’t believe me, I’ll simply say that historically Tony has not loved scallops, but he was won over last night!). The portions were huge, so we took our leftovers home and will be able to relive that section of the meal again tonight!

Lest you think the birthday festivities are done now that my actual birthday has passed, fear not!  The joy of having a mid-week birthday is that you’re entitled to celebrate on the weekend!  So tomorrow night, Tony – with the aid of Abby & Trisha – has cooked up secret celebrations (my favorite kind, as it means I have no hand in the planning! )  Hurrah!  Long live the birthday (and me!)!

My only regret is that such a beautiful book had such an ugly cover!

A few years ago when my real-life bookclub was just setting out, I picked Never Let Me Go as our first group read.  I had heard such good things about it (it was nominated for the Booker!) as well as about its author, Kazuo Ishiguro (though I’d never read him before), and it was also dystopian fiction, which I tend to like, so I thought it would be the perfect book to kick things off.  In some ways, it was, because we all had A LOT to say about the book… unfortunately, most of it was negative.  I remember feeling completely underwhelmed with the story, the writing, the characters felt flat and unemotional and nothing about the novel surprised me (not even the so-called twists).  I was SO disappointed, and quite honestly, I wondered what all the hype about Ishiguro was about.  I couldn’t figure out why the book had been nominated for an award, and I couldn’t understand why people tripped all over themselves to sing Ishiguro’s prose any kind of praise.

Despite my poor initial outing with Ishiguro, I felt I needed to try something else by him before banishing him from my reading life.  I decided I might as well try his, ostensibly, best-known novel, the one that actually won the Booker, The Remains of the Day (which I found at McKay’s for the hefty price of 75¢).

(more…)

My review for the February issue of BookPage is now up!  I made a conscious effort to mix things up and read something other than the regular “quirky, indie fic” fare I normally devour and review.  So instead I read The Postmistress by Sarah Blake – a sweeping saga revolving around 3 women just as World War I is about to reach its apex in terms of devastation and scope.

I will say that the basic premise of the novel is that this is the story of a postmistress who decides not to deliver the mail (and all the moral quandaries and ramifications of such a decision), but I didn’t really feel that was the true heart of the novel I read, merely a sliver of a much richer story.  I hate when novels have flaps with synopses that are misleading or place the wrong emphasis on certain plot points!  I don’t normally gravitate towards fiction that is so overtly marketed towards women, nor would I consider war fiction one of my passions, but I did really enjoy this novel, in large part due to the writing, which I thought was a cut above much of what is published nowadays (though at times I did feel that perhaps coherency was sacrificed for poetry).  I thought The Postmistress was a powerful meditation on loss and how we naturally seek to impose meaning and structure on our world, especially in the face of chaos and destruction.

To read more of my thoughts on this, you can read my full review here.

[Note: I received my copy of The Postmistress for free, but irrespective of this, I would have rated it 4 out of 5 on this blog.]

Go to a bookshop and find this book!

Despite being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1978, I’m willing to be most people aren’t familiar with the novel The Bookshop or its author Penelope Fitzgerald.  I’m actually pretty surprised Fitzgerald hasn’t received more attention from the book blogging community, given that we’re comprised of people who love books! And what do you think a book called The Bookshop is about?  Books!

The Bookshop is a relatively short novel that chronicles the struggles that a widow named Florence Green faces when she decides to convert an old abandoned house in the sleepy town of Hardborough into the town’s first bookstore.  Florence faces several obstacles along her way, including a skeptical bank manager, a bumbling solicitor, but worst of all is Mrs. Violet Gamart, who wants the old house for the arts center she believes Hardborough desperately needs.  Mrs. Gamart is not one who is easily dissuaded, and she’s determined to ruin Florence’s plans and have the building for herself, no matter what it takes! (more…)

I believe this is a darn good read!

I can’t remember which post a few months ago compelled a whole slew of readers to leave comments suggesting I read Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller, but needless to say the recommendation, while overwhelming, came in loud and clear.  I’ve been trying to limit my book buying this year because I really do have so many books that need to be read, but when Trish emailed me asking whether I’d like to participate in any of the upcoming TLC Tour stops and I saw The Believers by Heller was on the list, I jumped at the chance to do so (which, yes, this means that I received this book for free).  One way or another, I wanted to know what all this Heller hype was about!

The Believers is the story of a family, the Livitnoffs, who have more than their fair share of skeletons in the closet.  Joel and Audrey were left-wing activists, fighting for socialist causes back in the ‘60s.  They have tried to instill their extremist beliefs on their children (Rosa, Karla, and Lenny), but things haven’t turned out exactly as they might have hoped.  Lenny is a layabout who only really excels at developing addiction problems; Karla is overweight, infertile, and in struggling marriage; and Rosa has suddenly decided to embrace their Jewish heritage and is dabbling with orthodoxy.  Things take a turn for the worse when Joel collapses during a trial (in which he was defending someone brought up on charges of terrorism) and winds up in a coma, only to have some of his shady secrets finally creep into the light… Oy vey!

(more…)

Somewhat of a slow week for us here at Steph & Tony Investigate, but that didn’t stop us from prattling on about the 3.5 movies we watched.  Why 3.5?  Well, you’ll have to listen to find out!

This week we watched:

Highlights include:

• Is Jean Claude Van Damme secretly cool?  We discuss this while talking about JCVD.
• Steph gets passionate about the portrayal of women in guy movies while discussing The Hangover!
• Is Ink the worst movie ever?  Probably not.  But it might be.
• We discuss whether Easy Virtue was rented because of Jessica Biel or Colin Firth. (Hint: It wasn’t because of Jessica Biel…)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

For the past week or so, I’ve been dipping in and out of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (I feel the need to clarify, as if some of you are thinking I would be reading some other Great Expectations by some other author…).  In that time, I’ve made it through about 100 pages, so, not really great progress on my part.  I admit, my life has been busy and I have perhaps not been making reading a priority, but I’m sure that I’ve been letting my reading slide because I haven’t been having fun with this book and don’t particularly look forward to reading it.

Just so we're clear, I'm not supposed to be rooting for Magwitch, right?

I have perhaps not outlined my tortuous past with this book, and that is likely because my past is not all that tortuous with it.  Just that I’ve tried to read the damn thing at least three or four times and I find myself incapable of doing so.  I don’t know why I thought this time would be different, but I was confident I would make it through this time so I could finally say, “Ha, Charles Dickens!  This time I have defeated you!” and then I could FINALLY move on with my life.  But no, once again, Dickens has beat me down.  I knew it was over when I could not longer bring myself to pick up the book, so little did I care about our fair and gentle narrator, Pip Pirrip. Actually, it was worse than that because it was more than simply being complacent or apathetic – no I was beginning to actually hate the book, and was actually preferring lying on the bed staring at the ceiling to reading.  Clearly this situation was not ideal.

So I’m abandoning ship, giving up the ghost, and letting Pip live his maudlin, tragic life in the pages of fiction, all without me present. I feebly dream that some day I may pick this book up and everything will click and I will suddenly get caught up in this epic bildungsroman.  But then, maybe I won’t, and I think I have to make my peace with that.  Because for now, Dickens and I just can’t dance together. It’s hard to pinpoint precisely, I suppose, why one book captures us and another one doesn’t, but here are two reasons why I don’t much care for Great Expectations:

(more…)

My first perfect read of the year!

Tony and I have been married for just over six months now, and I love my husband dearly.  But last week while reading The Blue Castle, I fell in love again.  With a book that starts like this, you can pretty much surmise that it was essentially love at first sight:

“If it had not rained on a certain May morning Valancy Stirling’s whole life would have been entirely different.  She would have gone, with the rest of her clan, to Aunt Wellington’s engagement picnic and Dr. Trent would have gone to Montreal.  But it did rain and you shall hear what happened to her because of it.”

The Blue Castle is the story of Valancy Stirling, who at 29, is an old maid.  She lives with her overbearing mother and sniveling cousin and has a dull and oppressed existence.  Valancy is kept under thumb, constantly berated, and is perpetually holding her tongue.  She is only able to find solace in two things: the nature books of the reclusive author, John Foster, and the blue castle of her imagination, a place where her wildest dreams come true and romance is no longer an impossibility.  Valancy’s life changes the day she sneaks out to see a doctor (without first getting her family’s approval) and is diagnosed with a severe and untreatable heart condition that will likely kill her before the year is out.  This revelation spurs Valancy to overhaul her life and break out of her shell; she may not have done much with the first 29 years of her life, but Valancy soon learns that it’s never too late to learn how to live, and when she starts to cozy up to town recluse and possible bad-boy, Barney Snaith, she finds it may not even be too late for love!

(more…)

Aw yeah, come to momma...

I don’t care if you have a treasured recipe that’s been handed down through your family’s generations for the past century – I’m about to share with you a recipe for chocolate chip cookies so good they will blow your mind.  If you thought I got excited about really good bread, you ain’t seen nothing yet.  Just try these cookies and they will rock your world… provided you like chewy chocolate chip cookies.  If you like crispy ones, I can’t help you.  I know there’s been a lot of hoopla on the interwebs about how one should freeze cookie dough for something like 72 hours before actually baking the damn things, but that is crazy talk, because who wants to wait THREE DAYS for cookies?  Not me, that’s for sure.  When I get it into my head that I want to bake cookies, it’s probably because I want to eat cookies in the near future.  Three days is not the near future on the cookie timeline.  But as Einstein said, all things are relative; just make these cookies and see.  They will be gone in three days and you will say that was far too quick.

The secret?  Two things actually: 1) almond extract (it makes the dough – or cookie flesh, if you prefer – simply divine), and 2) sea salt (the combination of salty and sweet is addictive and makes the cookies really something special).

(more…)