Whatta Fiasco

Audrey Tatou as beautiful as ever, but Chiwetel Ejiofor as a Nigerian emigrant is even better. Disturbing and satisfying. It may not make your best of list, but it’s a good little film.

Another well-written popular evolutionary biology, this time by an actual scientist. His prose is a smidgen less polished than Carl Zimmer’s, but the geeky detail level is comparable. And the anecdotes are great. It’s a great bit of escapist nonfiction and is deservedly ending up on a lot of end of year lists. Very enjoyable. But I’ve read enough books in this genre that I feel like I need similar books with the geek level dialed up a few more notches.

[powells]

Last night I went to see the KC Lyric Opera’s production of Handel’s Julius Caesar. Baroque opera? Yes! And through a fluke, the set was the one used when Beverly Sills sang the role of Cleopatra. And both Julius Caesar and Ptolemy are sung by counter tenors. Favorite non musical bits include a great slow motion battle scene, great sexy staging, and some fake nipplage that worked so well in profile (even from the second row) that I thought they might have gone for actual bare breasts again. But no. Still, nicely done. It turns out this is the first baroque opera the Lyric has staged in its fifty years of existence. I hope they do some more.

If you aren’t willing to read feminist science fiction, then this might be a pass for you. And if you’re looking for a feminist science fiction where the feminine is the answer to all of society’s problems, this might not be a comfortable book for you either. (In fact, this just isn’t a comfortable book.) Weirdly, this first book in the cycle feels a little dated. It really does feel like an extrapolation from the mid 1980s, but I’m having trouble quite putting my finger on why. In that, and in several other ways, it makes an interesting counterpoint to Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue books.

This is very much the first book in a longer story, so I’m holding my judgement in check until I’ve read the rest of it.

[powells]

Another tale from the author of the delightful book, The Rabbi’s Cat. Disturbing, abrasive, touching, and it made me laugh out loud, no cute abbreviations needed. And there are two more volumes to this story which I must now track down. Such fun. And do read the end notes.

[powells]