Shelly Bryant

Hit or Miss, January ’12

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

January has been a pretty good month of reading and film for me — not a long list, but mostly good stuff.  I especially enjoyed reading Sheng Keyi’s short story “Fishbone,” which I translated for a magazine in Beijing.  It’s a good story.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve been reading and viewing over the past month…

Hit List

1. •Fishbone (Sheng Keyi)
2. •up against the window (Jim Kacian and Bruce Ross, ed.)
3. •The Science Fiction Poetry Handbook (Suzette Haden Elgin)
4. •Courageous (movie)
5. •Cat Country (Lao She)
6. •Psychoentropy (Julie Shiel)
7. •Disturbed (Julie Shiel)
8. •Celestial Bodies (Keith Sikora)
9. •The Tin Men and other poems (Kendall Evans and David C. Kopaska-Merkel)

Magazines:

Beyond Centauri (the most recent, and 1 back issue); Star*Line; Aoife’s Kiss

Miss List

1. •No misses this month!

Neither Hit nor Miss

1. •Idylls of the King (Tennyson)

– I know, I feel terrible!  It was more about my mood than the book, obviously.

1. •It’s Complicated (movie)
2. •War Horse (movie)

Another no-miss list.  I love that!

So….

what have you been reading and watching for the past month ?

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?

Hit (or Miss) List, September ’09

Saturday, October 3, 2009

I finally had a little more time for some reading and movie-watching.  I made a little headway on my Fill in the Gaps list in September, which was fun, and also got to catch up on some other reading/viewing I’d left hanging for a while.  And I had a lot of fun catching a few old movies on the MGM channel while I was unexpectedly back in Singapore for a week to settle matters for my China visa.

Here’s what I’ve been reading and watching for the past month:

Hit List

1. •Quantum Lyrics (A Van Jordan) — see my review at Sloth Jockey
2. •Velocity (Dean Koontz) — see my response at Fill in the Gaps

this was on my “Fill in the Gaps” list because I’d heard good things about Koontz’s writing; it was better than I thought

1. •Macbeth (movie)  — 2006 Australian version
2. •Slipstream (movie)

this was something I’d picked up on DVD some time back, and finally got to watch; very, very good

1. •Zen in the Art of Writing (Ray Bradbury)
2. •Dark Nebulae (John J. Dunphy)
3. •The Mouths that Remain (Gavin Salisbury)
4. •The Princess of Mars (Edgar Rice Burroughs) — see my response at Fill in the Gaps
5. •The Fountainhead (movie)
6. •Clean Slate (movie)
7. •A Fish Called Wanda (movie)
8. •Transformers 2 (movie)
9. •Rip Van Winkle (Washington Irving) — see my response at Fill in the Gaps

Miss List

•Training Day (movie)

I’m not sure it was exactly a miss, but I really didn’t like it as much as I thought I would – too cliche, I guess

•The Aeneid (Vergil, a Librivox recording)

it’s not the text that was the problem, as I’ve always loved The Aeneid, but the recording; some of the readers just don’t read poetry well, especially Dryden’s rhyme and meter

Neither Hit nor Miss

1. •The World is Flat (Thomas Friedman) — read my thoughts at Tai Shan

there were some good thoughts, for sure, but I probably waited to long to read it; it’s rather dated already

1. •Director’s Cut (Alton Gansky)

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

Hit (or Miss) List, August ’09

It’s been a rather slow month for reading, especially because of the huge volume, Infinite Jest, taking up most of my time.  (I actually only finished it today, but am listing it with the August post because that’s when the bulk of the reading was done.)  Here’s what I’ve been reading and watching for the past month:

Hit List

1. •Grosse Pointe Blank (movie)
2. •Say Anything (movie)

an old favorite (yeah, I know….); and yes, it was something of a John Cusack phase, with these two titles in there

1. •Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)

I’ll have more to say about this one down the road, I think

1. •The Crab Flower Club (onstage)

a nicely put together, ironic piece about the women in a Chinese family who decide to start a poetry club

1. •The Reduced Shakespeare:  the Complete Works (onstage)

absolutely hilarious performance; if you get a chance to see it, you’ll definitely want to catch it!

1. •What Day is Today (onstage)

extremely disturbing, and very compelling; the narrative structure was very innovative, and the whole performance was very nicely done

1. •The 2009 Rhysling Anthology (Drew Morse, ed.)

1. •various issues of these journals:

Star*Line and Dreams & Nightmares

Miss List

No misses!

Neither Hit nor Miss

1. •The Crucible (onstage)

not a good performance overall, but there were a few bright spots that redeemed it from being a  miss — & of course the script is amazing

So, what have you been reading and watching this summer?