1.) The Almond by Nedjma. I bought this book because it was on the endcap at Borders and I'm suggestible like that. If I had thought about it a bit more, I probably wouldn't have, because I really have never enjoyed anything I've read translated all that much, and this was from the French. (The author is North African.) In translations, there are always sentences that you read--okay, that I read--that make you go, "Wow, that's probably a kickass sentence in the original language." You can see it's on the--wait for it--cusp of brilliance and that the translator just barely missed the mark. It's an almost perfect sequence of words and you (I) feel sad at missing the perfection you can sense is there in the original.
Also, book-length erotica never holds up for me.
2.) Ocean's Thirteen. Oh, c'mon now. By the time they get to the third entry in a series, what are you really expecting? Best moment of the whole movie is at the end when Brad Pitt and George Clooney are saying goodbye before they go their separate ways, presumably for a year or two till another caper comes up. Brad says to George, "Next time try to keep the weight off in between," and George says to Brad, "Yeah, and you should settle down. Have a couple kids." Bwah. I mean, I know it's an obnoxious in-joke, but still, bwah.
I'm all about the obnoxious in-jokes anyway. As careful readers may have noted.
xoxo
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