The Daytrippers

Ah, good value for money in the 99c iTunes movie rentals for once!  The real upside in these movies is that in addition to being cheap, they also get me to exercise longer -- 90 minutes today. 

The Daytrippers was a 90s indie thing with the kind of typical pointless scenes & characters and Parker Posey - and a scene where the Twin Towers dominated which is always weird for me.  I liked it - a solid B.  Definitely not the kind of film my husband would enjoy, which is the primary criteria I have for movies & TV at the gym.

La Collection Brukenthal - Musée Jaquemart André

I went today to the Collection Brukenthal (Brugel, Memlin, Van Eyck) exhibit in its last days, as the Musée Jaquemart André which I had never visited before.  The museum itself had a few architectural things which were interesting, but I'd have been disappointed if I'd made the regular museum the center of the outing.  The Brukenthal collection was great, and the free iPhone audioguide was fabulous!  I learned a lot about Flemish painting & there were some really impressive paintings on exhibit.

Lovely & Amazing

Lovely & Amazing was a good 99c iTunes rental, a solid B, even B+, chick flick, good actors, amusing.

Rome - Season 1

We live without a TV, but do have DVDs & a screen, and sometimes during the week we have the time to watch something short, so we watch an episode of a TV series.  We've done Law & Order (early seasons), Hercule Poirot, 24 (first season) and last year started to watch Rome.  We finished the last episode of the first season on Jan 3rd.  We both really liked this series - exceptionally well done - great acting, beautiful filming, good story and VERY IMPORTANT for E, it's historically accurate.  I think we'll move to another series before trying season 2, but I'm looking forward to the next season as well.

Fauves et Expressionistes Allemands - Musee Marmottan

We went to see German Fauves & Expressionists at the Musée Marmottan which was an interesting exhibit & a fun return to the location where E & I had our first date!  The exhibit was great, some really interesting paintings & a nice intimate location.

Books Read in 2009

Books Read 2009

• Five Skies, Ron Carlson (audiobook)
• I Thought My Father Was God, edited by Paul Auster (audiobook)
• The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (audiobook)
• Underworld, Don DeLillo
• A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens (audiobook)
• The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Schaffer (audiobook)
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
• Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi (audiobook)
• East of Eden, John Steinbeck
• Sophie's World, Jostein Gaarder
• Broken Open, Elizabeth Lesser (audiobook)
• Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
• Ce que le jour doit à la nuit, Yasmina Khadra
• Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
• Compulsion, Johnathan Kellerman
• Olive Kitteridge, Elisabeth Strout
• Get a Life, Nadine Gordimer
• Time Will Darken It, WIlliam Maxwell
• L'ile des sourciers, Anthony Horowitz
• Travels in the Scriptorium, Paul Auster
• A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
• The Witches of Eastwick, John Updike
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, F Scott Fitzgerald
• It's Not About the Bike, Lance Armstrong
• Motivational Interviewing in Health Care, Stephen Rollnick
• The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, John Le Carré
• The Logic of Life, Tim Hartford
• The Year of the Hare, Arto Paasilinna
• The Worst Thing a Suburban Girl Could Imagine, Melissa Bank
• The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, John Boyne
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
• Chess Story, Stefan Zwieg
• The Secret Lives of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
• Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery
• Dancer : A Novel, Colum McCann
• The Road Home, Rose Tremain
• The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Man of My Dreams, Curtis Sittenfeld
• Back When We Were Grown Ups, Anne Tyler
• I Feel Bad About My Neck, Nora Ephron
• Eight Stories, Dylan Thomas
• The Invisible Man, HG Wells
• Practical Photography, John Freeman
• Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
• Rabbit at Rest, John Updike
• You Remind Me of Me, Dan Chaon
• The Other Hand, Chris Cleave
• Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
• Good Calorie, Bad Calorie, Gary Taubes
• The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, John Le Carré
• White Tiger, Aravind Adiga
• Confessions of a Fallen Angel, Ronan O'Brien
• A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink
• Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
• If This is a Man, Primo Levi
• The Truce, Primo Levi
• The Secret Lives of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
• The Sorrows of an American, Siri Hadsfeldt
• The Gathering, Annie Enright
• Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer

2010 Reading Goals 

• Read more classics
• Read in French about 20% of the time 
• Read non-fiction about 20% of the time
• Do the A-Z author challenge
• Read more by Munro, Roth, Updike
  

Night of the Iguana, John Huston

We watched Night of the Iguana by John Huston, and loved it!  Raw emotion that Tennessee Williams can always be counted on to deliver, and some amazing acting by Burton, Gardner & others, along with really masterful direction & subtlety.  A real gem, A+.