Shelly Bryant

Hit (or Miss) List, October ’09

Saturday, October 31, 2009

It was a slower-than-usual reading month for me in October, but I did get to read some fun things, at least.  I did not, however, make much of a dent in my Fill in the Gaps list of 100 books to be read over the next 5 years.  I hope to get more of that done in November.

Here’s what I’ve been reading and watching in October:

Hit List

1. • Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (Susanna Clarke)
2. • Night and Day (Virginia Woolf)
3. • The Lover (onstage, in Mandarin)
4. • Some of Washington Irving’s short stories:

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Spectre Bridegroom, Mountjoy, The Pride of the

Village

1. •Back issues of The Fourth Genre, Chinese Language Learning and Chinese Literature
2. •Various Chinese poems (for class)

Miss List

• The Master Builder (onstage)

The performance of this supposedly dense work turned out to be pretty weak

• The Rice Queen Spy (John F. Rooney)

Neither Hit nor Miss

1. • 《甲申记》(onstage)

good acting, excellent choreography, but something just didn’t work (and I’m not sure I really got the story)

So, what have you been reading and watching this past month?