{"id":1179,"date":"2013-07-03T22:00:56","date_gmt":"2013-07-04T02:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/?p=1179"},"modified":"2013-07-03T22:00:56","modified_gmt":"2013-07-04T02:00:56","slug":"anneliese-summer-reads-so-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/2013\/07\/03\/anneliese-summer-reads-so-far\/","title":{"rendered":"Anneliese: Summer Reads So Far"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>As a working girl this summer, I have an hour commute to and from the office. A lot of people would complain about the travel time, but I don’t mind because I don’t have to drive; instead, I take the commuter train that drops me off a quick seven minute walk away from WXPN, where I’m interning (see my previous blog for details!). I love taking the train for the following reasons: I’m not required to be awake during the ride–yay for not risking falling asleep at the wheel!; there’s excellent people watching (I’m looking at you, lovely bearded man with a penchant for plaid); and, when I’m not\u00a0catching up on sleep or checking people out, I have ample reading time. Seriously,\u00a0I haven’t had this much time for pleasure reading since high school.<\/p>\n

For those of you\u00a0searching for a good read for your own morning commutes–or for the beach, you lucky kids!–check out what I’ve\u00a0read so far this summer:<\/p>\n

1) Nobody’s Perfect:\u00a0Billy Wilder, a Personal Biography<\/i> by\u00a0Charlotte Chandler<\/p>\n

I\u00a0received\u00a0my first introduction to\u00a0Billy Wilder in my junior year of high school when my film studies teacher\u00a0showed us\u00a0Some Like It Hot<\/i>, Sunset Boulevard<\/i>, and Stalag\u00a017<\/i>.\u00a0Wilder\u00a0instantly won me over with his\u00a0quick-witted dialogue,\u00a0deep\u00a0understanding of human nature, and\u00a0original stories.\u00a0I’m not a huge\u00a0fan of biographies (I actually think this is the first one I’ve ever finished), but I\u00a0sped through Mr. Wilder’s in\u00a0a couple of days. The biography commences with Billy’s humble beginnings\u00a0growing up as a Jew in\u00a0Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and moves\u00a0through his\u00a0extraordinary career one film at a time.\u00a0The biography is written through Billy’s own words, as he recounts his tales to\u00a0Chandler, and is bolstered by the\u00a0memories of some\u00a0of\u00a0Old\u00a0Hollywood’s greatest stars–Groucho Marx, Tony Curtis,\u00a0Jack Lemmon, and Gloria Swanson among them. Billy Wilder was an incredible filmmaker and led such a colorful life. The biography is a must-read for all film buffs, but\u00a0would be\u00a0enjoyable for and accessible to\u00a0even the\u00a0most casual reader.<\/p>\n

2) Fargo Rock City<\/i> by Chuck Klosterman<\/p>\n

I’ve been a longtime fan of Chuck Klosterman, having read Chuck IV; Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; Killing Yourself to Live<\/i>; and Downtown Owl <\/i>over the years. He’s probably\u00a0one of the\u00a0most politically incorrect, yet hilarious and intelligent\u00a0writers I’ve ever read. Fargo Rock City <\/i>has been sitting on my shelf for the past four years, but I had never gotten around to reading it because\u00a0it\u00a0didn’t interest me at all;\u00a0the topic of the book is social commentary about hard rock–specifically metal–framed by Klosterman’s memoir of growing up as a metalhead in rural North Dakota.\u00a0Sure, a fair amount of the metal references soar so far over my head,\u00a0but this is a book I can enjoy purely for style and voice. I received multiple dirty looks while sitting in the quiet ride car of the train and\u00a0chuckling at phrases like, “That leads us back to Ozzy Osbourne, who was rarely boring and usually hilarious. At various times in his career, Ozzy has behaved like a satanic pope.”<\/p>\n

3) A Dance with Dragons <\/i>(A Song of Fire & Ice, Book 5)<\/i> by George R.R. Martin<\/p>\n

Yes, I’m one of those awful people who reads Game of Thrones<\/i>. I don’t even know what to tell you about this book, other than it’s just under 1000 pages, and I read it in a week. So, yeah, it was really good. Martin’s series is so <\/i>much better than its HBO counterpart (but that’s always the case for book-to-tv\/film adaptations); the\u00a0show skims only the surface of Martin’s highly complex world, and that’s a shame because\u00a0it’s\u00a0in the\u00a0tiny details of his plot that we\u00a0uncover the most intriguing\u00a0mysteries.\u00a0C’mon, there\u00a0is almost two months of summer left–you have time to catch up!<\/p>\n

4) L’ecume\u00a0des Jours (Foam of the Daze\/Froth on the Daydream\/Mood Indigo)<\/i> by Boris Vian<\/p>\n

I ordered this book on Amazon for two reasons: 1) The novel is the source material for Michel Gondry’s (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Science of Sleep<\/i>) new film, and 2) As a French minor, I wanted to keep in practice over the summer.\u00a0The book is a surrealist work and tells the story\u00a0of Colin, a wealthy and extravagant\u00a0young man, who marries Chlo\u00e9, the woman of his dreams.\u00a0The couple should live happily ever after, except Chlo\u00e9 falls ill while on their honeymoon, as a water lily begins growing in her lungs. The novel mocks existential ideologies (Vian loathed Sartre) and is full of double entendres and wordplay. Between the dense content and my shoddy knowledge of the French language, it’s slow slow going, but I’m really enjoying the novel. I’ll probably read it in English after I finish the French version to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I’m super stoked to see Gondry’s film adaptation with Romain Duris and Audrey Tautou! (Check out the trailer here: http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=N4HIAwI4irs<\/a>)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a working girl this summer, I have an hour commute to and from the office. A lot of people would complain about the travel time, but I don’t mind because I don’t have to drive; instead, I take the commuter train that drops me off a quick seven minute walk away from WXPN, where … Continue reading Anneliese: Summer Reads So Far<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2018,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3892,44301,4057],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1179"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2018"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1179"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1180,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1179\/revisions\/1180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}