A lazyish weekend

[ellen_datlow]

I'm about fifty pages from the end of Stalin's Ghost by Martin Cruz Smith and his protag Arkady Renko just ordered a Baltika at a strip club. Now I'm not a big beer drinker (although I did my part way back in college) but I have come to really enjoy the occasionaly strong dark beer--not Guiness, it's too flat for my taste.

KGB Bar serves some great Russian beer--Baltika--in several different strengths. I always got what was the highest they had: #3 I think but for the first time, this past Wednesday, they had up to # 9 so of course that's what I ordered. It was strong (8% or something, I think) and very good. So here's to Renko and my favorite beer! Pick one up if you can.

Friday and Saturday evenings I saved for watching DVDs from netflix: I watched The Machinist with Christian Bale and quite liked it, although it was painful to watch. Because of Bale's emaciated (ribs, clavicle, and other bones sticking out)body and also because Jennifer Jason Leigh's had a boob job and I just hate that. I find it totally depressing that an often very good actress feels the need to but crap into her boobs in order to get acting jobs playing hookers. Shame.
I also watched two discs of Monk's Season 5. Yeah, I still enjoy it. Some of the shows I can't stand, others are very funny, and still others are moving. So I'll stick with poor twitch Adrian Monk, the amazing Captain Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine--who played Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs), and the hapless Lieutenant Randy Disher as they continue their adventures. I even like the character Natalie Teeger, who took over as Monk's assistant from an earlier actress (who I liked very much).

Did some errands yesterday morning and got so soaked from the unexpected rain shower that I had to completely change clothes before meeting a friend for lunch (we roamed down Bleecker street after lunch, where there was a street fair).

In between, reading YBFH stuff.

Comments

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

That one's a few years old. I haven't read most of his novels--just the ones that sounds appropriate to what I'm doing these days (horror, traveling to Chernobyl. You know that kind of stuff :-) )

[catsparx.livejournal.com]

I've read all except the last couple. I particularly liked Havana Bay. And the Renko novels, of course. I'm very thrilled about the prospect of reading Stalin's Ghost.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Just finished Stalin's Ghost and loved it. Is Havana Bay another Renko novel?)

[catsparx.livejournal.com]

It is -- I meant to type 'and the Russian Renko novels'
Rose is also very good. Its a story about women coal miners set in Victorian England.

I hate not having enough time to read. I've started listening to audiobooks as a way of getting more literature into my head at those times when reading is not practical (when I'm exercising, walking to the train station, etc). I've just finished listening to Gibson's Spook Country.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

I have plenty of time to read--but only short fiction and novellas. Novels are a treat when I travel long distances. How did you like Spook Country? I think it's my favorite of Bill's.

[catsparx.livejournal.com]

I liked it, but I didn't think it was as good as Pattern Recognition. I also revisited Neuromancer & was impressed by how well it holds up after over 20 years.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

We did Neuromancer in the bookgroup two months ago. I'd never read anything of his because I tried something and just didn't connect. I had a hard time with Neuromancer because of his style of writing, but I did make it through. The week before bookgroup, some folks on james_nicoll's LJ compared Neuromancer to Dante's Inferno so I pulled a good synopsis of that from Wikipedia and there were indeed many many similarities. I don't know if Gibson did it purposely, but it certainly folllows Inferno well.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I wish I had time to reread Neuromancer. I loved it when I read it way back when it came out.