Category: Books

Summer reading

Posted on by boj Posted in Books

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There are two weeks left of our vacation and I have even managed to read! From the contemporary Croatian selection I’ve read the usual suspects, Tomic and Baretic and even a bit of Rudan.

Tomic’s “Punoglavci” is apparently not only a novel but also a commissioned advertisement for Podravka (Croatian food industry giant). The novel, a nostalgic recounting of a summer vacation, peppered with many mentions of Podravka delicacies is a fun, quick read.

I was excited to get Baretic’s “Hotel Grand” from the library. His “Osmi Povjerenik” is very well written and absolutely hilarious but for the life of me I can’t remember if makes a point. “Pricaj mi o njoj” has a very strong central story, but I felt the writing itself to be a bit weak. In “Hotel Grand” he gets it right with both strong central story and strong writing. I usually dislike reading about criminal goings on, but the characters are so alive and the storyline so interesting, I could not put it down. The novel is written in a blog format which makes it even more interesting and funny.

I’ve had to put Rudan’s “Strah od pletenja” down despite the promising title. The foul mouthed, whiny narrator complaining about unimportant things when there is plenty of real problems out there to complain about grated too much.

In the completely opposite gene of foreign classics, I have got through the first quarter of “War and Peace” inspired by recently watched play. Apparently, there is still some Napoleon fighting left to do so I better get back to reading.

How to moralise about everything

Posted on by boj Posted in Baby, Books

Trev, Owen and I have been going to see shows at the Zagreb Puppet Theater (Zagrebacko Kazaliste Lutaka). We’ve seen “Jezeva kucica” i “Tigric” in previous weeks. This Sunday we went to see Senoa’s “Postolar i vrag“. This play is based on a poem called “Cobbler and the Devil” by a famous writer who I tend to describe as Croatian Charles Dickens. The poem tells of an honest cobbler who has children he can’t afford to feed. He works hard but there is not enough money to buy food. He calls devil to help him and the devil makes the usual whatever-you-need-in-exchange-for-your-soul deal. In an unrelated incident a bit later the cobbler gets some extra magic powers from god and uses it to beat the living daylights out of the Devil thus freeing his soul.

As the language used was pretty arcane I don’t know how much of it Trev and Owen understood. After the show Trev asked me if it was bad that they were beating up the red guy because beating someone up is always bad. I mumbled something and then I said that the devil was going to kill the cobbler otherwise. Trev looked relieved and said that he really liked the fight scenes, that this was his favourite play so far and that he would like it on CD.

I am still somewhat unhappy with my response, I like to give the kids my opinion and some food for thought but this play stumped me. My initial reaction was that the devil made a fair deal and violence seemed unfair. Upon further thought, this is not a Faustian story in that the cobbler’s choice was not made out of boredom or vanity, if he did not sell his soul, his children would have starved to death. In this case, the cobbler was right to break his end of the bargain. Does this justify violence as answer to unfairness in life? Is it our moral duty to trick and beat up the devils we encounter? What should I tell my kids?!?

I’ll try and see if I can find the poem at the library and read it to Trev and then maybe we can discuss it. Does he even care? Parenting is hard, or maybe I am just over thinking it.

Film – The Artist

Posted on by boj Posted in Books, Film1 Comment

I craved a particular cake my teta Ruza used to make. It had a layer of dough followed by a layer of apple filling covered with a dough “mesh”. I never had a chance to get the recipe from teta Ruza* so I decided to make a close-enough recipe from a book apply named “Domaci kolaci” (homemade cakes).

*Well, I did ask her how she made orehnjaca once and she explained it to me. At the time it made so much sense that I did not think I needed to write it down. Needless to say, I forgot and all the recipes that I found in cookbooks and and the interwebs are not quite right.

Yah, “Domaci kolaci” assumes that you already know exactly how to make a cake so things like measurements for ingredients, pan sizes and rolled out dough thickness are intermittent or more likely absent. So there you go, I run out of dough for a mesh and had to use the biggest pan I had because I did not know how big the cake would be.

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And oh, the oven temperature was written in Kelvins when I thought these were Fahrenheit. Did they write this book to be used in chemistry class??? Probably not, you need measurements in chemistry…

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In any case, the cake is 80% apple so even burnt it did not taste badly. In all the rush, I placed the pan on a still hot stove element (trying to bathe Markus and eat lunch at the same time causes chaos, who knew?) and broke it under the cake. At least I did not have to attempt to clean the burnt part.

Moral of the story: If you have someone in your life that bakes good cakes, film them making every single cake they make.

But is it art?

Posted on by boj Posted in Books, Film

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Costume drama

I don’t really talk about it much with people who don’t share this particular interest but I really like costume drama. While I avoid Merchant-Ivory like the plague, I will happily watch most period pieces I have the opportunity to see.

I got a bit stumped the other day when Charissa asked me what I think of Downton Abbey. My immediate reaction was to say that it is bad. I then qualified that response by admitting that I like it. This schism exists amongst my period piece following friends though few are fence sitters like me. Some think it is absolute rubbish and wonder at the nerve ITV/PBS have in producing it and others think it is the best thing on TV right now.

I have been trying to come up with a way to explain my feelings about this show, and even “worse” shows like Larkrise to Candelford which I fatefully follow. Downton Abbey has high production values. The costumes and settings are gorgeous. Acting is first rate, after all, I have never seen actors like Maggie Smith or Brendan Coyle be anything other than dazzling. The writing is good quality but not great and it is here that my criticism stems from.

In my mind, a period piece television drama is not in competition with other like dramas but with all other period pieces on television within last ten years (decade is a random delineation on my part but whatever, bear with me). This means that it competes with other shows that have the same production values but are based on classic literature. The writing of Downton Abbey can’t compete with, say, Daniel Deronda (I am just thinking of whatever show I saw last). Then there are costume dramas that are not based on classics but are nevertheless based on writing that was successful in novel form prior to being filmed such as the Hornblower or the Sharpe series. Then there are films such as The Cock and Bull Story, The Libertine and The Last Mistress which are really fantastic (in my opinion anyway).

For me, Downton Abbey is something that is enjoyable to watch if you have already seen all the great stuff and still want more or just want to see a fun and easy show to relax to. I would not recommend it to someone who does not regularly watch period pieces regardless of whether I never miss an episode or not.

Book review – “The Game”

Posted on by boj Posted in Books

I think four books is the most I have managed to read for any given Canada Reads season. As I have read four books again this year, I would say that this is a good year. I am also very pleased with the way they published the debates online. Despite expectation to the contrary, I found the debates more interesting to watch than to only listen. Also, by adding an extra section of debate to the video, CBC managed to counteract the superficiality of the relatively short air time they usually have for the show. Form now on, I will only watch the debates online. Canada Reads remains my favourite (and only) reality show.

I enjoyed the last of the four books, Ken Dryden’s “The Game”. I can very well believe that it is the best book about hockey ever written. I am still glad “Something Fierce” won the Canada Reads contest. In fact, I would vote for “Prisoner of Teheran” and “The Tiger” above “The Game” if it were up to me. I am still glad I read “The Game”. It is a very intelligent and introspective book and it gives a good insight into a Canadian public figure especially since Ken Dryden continued on to be involved in politics etc. I found the bits about hockey strategies and the team members pulling pranks a bit long winded, but then again I am not as big a hockey fan as to be interested in that. I enjoyed his take on the kids playing hockey, the violence in hockey, the financial aspect and the discussion of the background of the different team members. Prior to reading this book, I only knew Scotty Bowman as my english teacher’s older jock brother, it was interesting to read about him from a different perspective.

Book review – “The Tiger”

Posted on by boj Posted in Books

The first episode of the Canada Reads is today and I have finished three of the books, I am more than half way through “The Game” and I have not been able to get my hands on “The Cold Road”.

I liked “The Tiger”. The story under discussion would, if written succinctly, take up no more than twenty pages without missing any details. The book discusses many other aspects from the nature of the Russian Far East to history of modern hunting and effects of poverty. The result is the book that is equally fascinating and annoying. It reads something like this:

“The hunters have been tracking the tiger for days. They saw him and he was about to pounce. Before I tell you what happens next, let me spend five or six pages on Sino-Russian politics over the last hundred years.”

Can you say choppy narrative? Despite being choppy, the discussion is well placed and the author definitely manages to paint a picture very successfully. Good read though the narrator intrudes much more than I would wish.