EJ's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 29 Apr 2025 20:48:29 -0700 60 EJ's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Prophet Song 158875813
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and Eilish can only watch helplessly as the world she knew disappears. When first her husband and then her eldest son vanish, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society.

How far will she go to save her family? And what � or who � is she willing to leave behind?

Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality, offering a devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.]]> 259 Paul Lynch EJ 0 to-read 4.03 2023 Prophet Song
author: Paul Lynch
name: EJ
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Candida 418373 74 George Bernard Shaw 0143039784 EJ 5 “Poor boy! Have I been cruel? Did I make it slice nasty little red onions?�

Candida is kind of a badass, and certainly the most powerful person in this play. Reading this play made me realize and confront my own shortcomings as a man; this play is truly “It’s A Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World� by James Brown.

“Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are more true: they are the only things that are true.�

In relation to Mrs. Warren’s Profession and the play I’ll be performing this spring The Country House, there’s an extra layer of sadness to Candida herself. The power she possesses at the age of 33 in this play � young, desired, vigorous.

“We all go about longing for love: it is the first need of our natures, the first prayer of our hearts; but we dare not utter our longing: we are too shy.�

As Anna, the character in The Country House, ages out of playing Candida and moves to being Mrs. Warren, she brutally confronts her age, her ‘decline,� and the power that she doesn’t possess as a metaphorical Candida.

But within this play, it’s a great moral lesson for men to realize. Enjoyed reading this a lot. I found the very beginning to be a bit slow and I thought, "can I soldier through this?" but once Candida enters, the play really becomes quite funny and the developments so interesting to follow. It really became a quick page-turner for me right after my initial doubts.

“I give myself to the weaker of the two!�]]> 3.65 1934 Candida
author: George Bernard Shaw
name: EJ
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1934
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/27
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves:
review:
“Poor boy! Have I been cruel? Did I make it slice nasty little red onions?�

Candida is kind of a badass, and certainly the most powerful person in this play. Reading this play made me realize and confront my own shortcomings as a man; this play is truly “It’s A Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World� by James Brown.

“Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are more true: they are the only things that are true.�

In relation to Mrs. Warren’s Profession and the play I’ll be performing this spring The Country House, there’s an extra layer of sadness to Candida herself. The power she possesses at the age of 33 in this play � young, desired, vigorous.

“We all go about longing for love: it is the first need of our natures, the first prayer of our hearts; but we dare not utter our longing: we are too shy.�

As Anna, the character in The Country House, ages out of playing Candida and moves to being Mrs. Warren, she brutally confronts her age, her ‘decline,� and the power that she doesn’t possess as a metaphorical Candida.

But within this play, it’s a great moral lesson for men to realize. Enjoyed reading this a lot. I found the very beginning to be a bit slow and I thought, "can I soldier through this?" but once Candida enters, the play really becomes quite funny and the developments so interesting to follow. It really became a quick page-turner for me right after my initial doubts.

“I give myself to the weaker of the two!�
]]> The Humans 29633724 Chicago Sun-Times) by acclaimed young playwright Stephen Karam "infuses the traditional kitchen-sink family drama with qualities of horror in his portentous and penetrating work of psychological unease" (Variety), creating an indelible family portrait.]]> 164 Stephen Karam 1559365420 EJ 5 “Dontcha think it should cost less to be alive?�

Shook me to my core at numerous points. A quick page-turner. Some of the most natural dialogue I’ve read in a play, and that includes HOW it’s written. So much overlapping dialogue. I’m not gonna lie, I picked this play out because I wanted to find some new monologues. I was hoping the character Richard would have a good one; and he doesn’t really? Or at least, they’re not meaty enough. However, this is not that kind of play. No real big grandstanding moments. The silences do a lot of the heavy-lifting, and it’s really just an incredible ensemble show in every sense.

“A wise, old, haggard drunk man once told me that pursuing your passion is a gift—so I’m grateful for that reminder� even if I end up pursuing it while managing an H&M, I’m lucky…�

The FEARS. They’re so valid. I was hooked from what the play decided to use as its intro. The six basic fears: poverty, criticism, ill health, loss of love of someone, old age, and death. And then the Freud quote.

“Maybe loving someone long-term is more about� deciding whether to go through life unhappy alone� or unhappy with someone else?�

Juicy writing. There are so many interesting ways to play these characters. And boy, there are some heartbreaking reveals. Just a wonderful play to read. I laughed a lot, especially at some of the unbearable cringe, but then there were times I just had to stop reading and pause. Look out into the Drama Book Shop and try not to cry from what I just read. Which wouldn’t have been a bad thing, but there are just some heavy, heavy moments and reveals. The final image is beautiful. What a journey for these characters. Three separate sessions at Drama Book Shop I read this.

“I’m not scared. If anything, I wish I could’ve know that most of the stuff I did spend my life worrying about wasn’t so bad.�]]> 3.92 2015 The Humans
author: Stephen Karam
name: EJ
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/24
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves:
review:
“Dontcha think it should cost less to be alive?�

Shook me to my core at numerous points. A quick page-turner. Some of the most natural dialogue I’ve read in a play, and that includes HOW it’s written. So much overlapping dialogue. I’m not gonna lie, I picked this play out because I wanted to find some new monologues. I was hoping the character Richard would have a good one; and he doesn’t really? Or at least, they’re not meaty enough. However, this is not that kind of play. No real big grandstanding moments. The silences do a lot of the heavy-lifting, and it’s really just an incredible ensemble show in every sense.

“A wise, old, haggard drunk man once told me that pursuing your passion is a gift—so I’m grateful for that reminder� even if I end up pursuing it while managing an H&M, I’m lucky…�

The FEARS. They’re so valid. I was hooked from what the play decided to use as its intro. The six basic fears: poverty, criticism, ill health, loss of love of someone, old age, and death. And then the Freud quote.

“Maybe loving someone long-term is more about� deciding whether to go through life unhappy alone� or unhappy with someone else?�

Juicy writing. There are so many interesting ways to play these characters. And boy, there are some heartbreaking reveals. Just a wonderful play to read. I laughed a lot, especially at some of the unbearable cringe, but then there were times I just had to stop reading and pause. Look out into the Drama Book Shop and try not to cry from what I just read. Which wouldn’t have been a bad thing, but there are just some heavy, heavy moments and reveals. The final image is beautiful. What a journey for these characters. Three separate sessions at Drama Book Shop I read this.

“I’m not scared. If anything, I wish I could’ve know that most of the stuff I did spend my life worrying about wasn’t so bad.�
]]> <![CDATA[The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream]]> 6004724
Keefe reveals the inner workings of Sister Ping’s complex empire and recounts the decade-long FBI investigation that eventually brought her down. He follows an often incompetent and sometimes corrupt INS as it pursues desperate immigrants risking everything to come to America, and along the way, he paints a stunning portrait of a generation of illegal immigrants and the intricate underground economy that sustains and exploits them. Grand in scope yet propulsive in narrative force, The Snakehead is both a kaleidoscopic crime story and a brilliant exploration of the ironies of immigration in America.]]> 432 Patrick Radden Keefe 0385521308 EJ 0 to-read 4.13 2009 The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream
author: Patrick Radden Keefe
name: EJ
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rise: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now]]> 55959483 Cultural critic Jeff Yang, blogger Phil Yu of Angry Asian Man, and Wong Fu Productions’PhilipWang team up (with iconic guests!) for a graphic romp through the ups and downs of how, over the past three decades,Asian Americans went from quiet and invisible toincredibly relevant andirresistibly cool

The first generation of U.S.-born Asian Americans raised after 1965’s Hart-Cellar Act passed would have found it difficult to imagine that sushi and boba would one day be beloved by all, that a Korean boy band named BTS would be the biggest musical act in the world, that one of the biggest movies of 2018 would be Crazy Rich Asians, or that a Facebook group for Asian American identity memes would be 2 million members strong.And that’s not mentioning the execs working behind the scenes at major companies;the activists and representatives fighting for equity;and the singers, rappers, dance crews, and social media pioneers making their mark on pop culture. And still: Asian America is just getting started.

In this intimate, eye-opening, and frequently hilarious guided tourthrough the pop-cultural touchstones and sociopolitical shifts of the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and beyond, Jeff Yang, Phil Yu, and Phil Wang chronicle how we’ve arrived at today’s unprecedented diversity of Asian American cultural representation through engaging, interactive graphics (like astep-by-step walk-through of a typical night out in Koreatown...for those who probably won't remember it the day after), charts (how much has yellowface fluctuated decade over decade?), graphic essays from major AAPI artists, exclusive roundtables with Asian American cultural icons, and more, framed byextended insider narratives of each decade bythe threeco-authors. Rise is an informative, lively, and inclusive celebration of community, and will remain a cultural touchstone for years to come.]]> 496 Jeff Yang 0358508096 EJ 0 to-read 4.40 2022 Rise: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now
author: Jeff Yang
name: EJ
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Mrs. Warren's Profession 795387 Mrs. Warren's Profession remains a powerful work of progressive theater.]]> 60 George Bernard Shaw 159605980X EJ 5 “Listen to her! Listen to how she spits on her mother’s grey hairs! Oh, may you live to have your own daughter tear and trample on you as you have trampled on me. And you will: you will. No woman ever had luck with a mother’s curse in her.�

We’ll never fully understand our parents� sacrifice. No matter how much we try.

“Everybody dislikes having to work and make money; but they have to do it all the same.�

The Country House research. My character Walter is a director, and he has opinions on this play. The parallels of this play with The Country House� you’re a clever guy, Donald Margulies.

This play, written in 1893, first performed in 1902. I'm impressed. Prophetic, empathetic, and tragic. Very, very funny. But that ending is brutal.

First Shaw. Have to read Candida and I'll cover both of the Shaw plays talked about in The Country House. Very excited for that now!

“Your love’s a pretty cheap commodity, my lad.�]]> 3.68 1898 Mrs. Warren's Profession
author: George Bernard Shaw
name: EJ
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1898
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/17
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: essentials, favorites, funny, plays, stops-you-in-your-tracks
review:
“Listen to her! Listen to how she spits on her mother’s grey hairs! Oh, may you live to have your own daughter tear and trample on you as you have trampled on me. And you will: you will. No woman ever had luck with a mother’s curse in her.�

We’ll never fully understand our parents� sacrifice. No matter how much we try.

“Everybody dislikes having to work and make money; but they have to do it all the same.�

The Country House research. My character Walter is a director, and he has opinions on this play. The parallels of this play with The Country House� you’re a clever guy, Donald Margulies.

This play, written in 1893, first performed in 1902. I'm impressed. Prophetic, empathetic, and tragic. Very, very funny. But that ending is brutal.

First Shaw. Have to read Candida and I'll cover both of the Shaw plays talked about in The Country House. Very excited for that now!

“Your love’s a pretty cheap commodity, my lad.�
]]> <![CDATA[Über die Heiterkeit in schwierigen Zeiten und die Frage, wie wichtig uns der Ernst des Lebens sein sollte]]> 141264656
»Ernst ist das Leben, heiter ist die Kunst«, schrieb Friedrich Schiller. Doch was ist Heiterkeit eigentlich? Und wie bekommen wir sie in unser ernstes Leben zurück? In Zeiten, in denen uns im Angesicht globaler Krisen intuitiv erst einmal anders zumute ist, macht sich Axel Hacke auf die Suche nach einem fast vergessenen Gemütszustand, nach einer Haltung dem Leben gegenüber, in der wir seltsam ungeübt geworden sind. Unterhaltsam, klug und persönlich erforscht er die Ursprünge des Begriffs, erklärt, was die Heiterkeit vom Witz und von der Fröhlichkeit unterscheidet und warum sie ohne den Ernst des Lebens nicht zu haben ist.

»Ein heiterer Mensch zu sein, bedeutet nicht, das Schwere zu ignorieren, sondern es in etwas Leichtes zu verwandeln.«]]> 225 Axel Hacke 3832160701 EJ 0 to-read 3.47 Über die Heiterkeit in schwierigen Zeiten und die Frage, wie wichtig uns der Ernst des Lebens sein sollte
author: Axel Hacke
name: EJ
average rating: 3.47
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Talk Radio (TCG Edition) 1393157 Talk Radio is just about the best theatrical expression of our fucked-up culture that I know.� -John Hellpern, New York Observer

“Gut-grabbing� the most lacerating portrait of a human meltdown this side of a Francis Bacon painting.� -Ben Brantley, New York Times

“More timely today than it was twenty years ago� Radio crackles with intensity.� -Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Daily News

“Hypnotic! Both as an actor’s tour-de-force and a stinging cultural analysis.� -David Rooney, Variety

This is the fully revised version of Eric Bogosian’s Talk Radio, his breakthrough 1987 Public Theater hit, which was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, was adapted to film by Oliver Stone, and was revived on Broadway in 2007 in celebration of the play's twentieth anniversary.

One of America’s premier performers and most innovative and provocative artists, Eric Bogosian’s plays and solo work include suburbia (Lincoln Center Theater, 1994; adapted to film by director Richard Linklater, 1996); Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead; Griller; Humpty Dumpty; 1+1; Skunkweed; Wake Up and Smell the Coffee; Drinking in America; Notes from Underground and Talk Radio (Pulitzer Prize finalist; New York Shakespeare Festival, 1987; Broadway, 2007; adapted to film by director Oliver Stone, 1988). He has starred in a wide variety of film, TV and stage roles. Most recently, he created the character of Captain Danny Ross on the long-running series Law & Order: Criminal Intent. In 2014, TCG published 100 (monologues), a collection that commemorates thirty years of Bogosian’s solo-performance career.
]]> 112 Eric Bogosian 155936324X EJ 5 “I happen to know that God is alive and well and living in Gary, Indiana. He’s a black steelworker with seven kids who works the night shift pouring off slag.�

Mean, caustic, hilarious. Eric Bogosian wrote some delicious, DELICIOUS monologues. You can just chew on those words. Truly so many awesome, vicious monologues.

“Lemme put it this way, Barry Champlain is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.�

Inspired to read because my friend and old roommate Steve took an acting class after I started � he was also inspired by my decision and wanted to give it a gander. He told me he prepared a monologue from this play; I wasn’t familiar, but with a gift card to the Drama Book Shop that he gave me for Christmas, I picked up a Bogosian collection as a sort-of homage.

Glad I did.]]> 3.81 1988 Talk Radio (TCG Edition)
author: Eric Bogosian
name: EJ
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1988
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: essentials, favorites, funny, plays, wtf
review:
“I happen to know that God is alive and well and living in Gary, Indiana. He’s a black steelworker with seven kids who works the night shift pouring off slag.�

Mean, caustic, hilarious. Eric Bogosian wrote some delicious, DELICIOUS monologues. You can just chew on those words. Truly so many awesome, vicious monologues.

“Lemme put it this way, Barry Champlain is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.�

Inspired to read because my friend and old roommate Steve took an acting class after I started � he was also inspired by my decision and wanted to give it a gander. He told me he prepared a monologue from this play; I wasn’t familiar, but with a gift card to the Drama Book Shop that he gave me for Christmas, I picked up a Bogosian collection as a sort-of homage.

Glad I did.
]]> <![CDATA[A Sacred Voice Is Calling: Personal Vocation and Social Conscience]]> 911204 210 John Neafsey 1570756457 EJ 0 to-read 3.95 2006 A Sacred Voice Is Calling: Personal Vocation and Social Conscience
author: John Neafsey
name: EJ
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Siren Queen 54102727 "Lyrical, mesmerizing, and otherworldly. . . stunning proof that Nghi Vo is one of the most original writers we have today. A beautiful, brutal, monstrous Hollywood fantasy.”—Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Immortality is just a casting call away.

Locus Award Finalist
Ignyte Award Finalist
An Amazon Best Book of 2022
One of NPR’s Best Books of 2022
Vulture’s #1 Fantasy Novel of 2022

Best of Year Selections at Apple Books | B&N Booksellers | LibraryReads | TIME Magazine | Oprah Daily | The Philadelphia Inquirer | Publishers Weekly | Buzzfeed | Chicago Review of Books | LitHub | Book Riot | Paste Magazine | Geek Girl Authority | Bookish | The Mary Sue | New York Public Library | Vulture | Locus Recommended Reading List | Kobo | The Quill to Live | L. A. Public Library | Audible | Amazon | NPR

An Indie Next and LibraryReads Pick
A Brooklyn Library Prize Finalist

It was magic. In every world, it was a kind of magic.

“No maids, no funny talking, no fainting flowers.� Luli Wei is beautiful, talented, and desperate to be a star. Coming of age in pre-Code Hollywood, she knows how dangerous the movie business is and how limited the roles are for a Chinese American girl from Hungarian Hill—but she doesn't care. She’d rather play a monster than a maid.

But in Luli's world, the worst monsters in Hollywood are not the ones on screen. The studios want to own everything from her face to her name to the women she loves, and they run on a system of bargains made in blood and ancient magic, powered by the endless sacrifice of unlucky starlets like her. For those who do survive to earn their fame, success comes with a steep price. Luli is willing to do whatever it takes—even if that means becoming the monster herself.

Siren Queen offers up an enthralling exploration of an outsider achieving stardom on her own terms, in a fantastical Hollywood where the monsters are real and the magic of the silver screen illuminates every page.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 281 Nghi Vo 1250788854 EJ 0 to-read 3.68 2022 Siren Queen
author: Nghi Vo
name: EJ
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Plunge - Acting Edition 3117610 72 Christopher Kyle 0822216701 EJ 4 funny, plays, wtf “I’ll bet you’re really an actor or something, right? I’m always fascinated by people with goals.�

Enjoyed reading this. Distinct characters who are just bored enough to try and do something a little reckless. My goodness, the fallout from this is kinda messy.

I'm reading some plays that my classmates were casted in for rehearsal projects. Wow, it’d be a lot of fun to be Matty. Insane dialogue from his character, and I can’t wait to watch Camillo get into it.

“Tell me you’re not really going to be a priest.�
“I promise to not be a good one.�

The non-linear progression of the story � a choice! And yeah, pretty interesting. Feels quite conducive to be filmed; does this exist as a film? Could be excellent for a film.

The dialogue is the best part. It’s actually quite funny.

“I’m not going to settle for some mindless drudgery just to be comfortable.�
“So you’ll go on letting mommy pay the bills?�
“Artists have always been supported.�
“You’re not an artist.�
“I have the temperament.�]]> 3.00 1998 Plunge - Acting Edition
author: Christopher Kyle
name: EJ
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/28
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: funny, plays, wtf
review:
“I’ll bet you’re really an actor or something, right? I’m always fascinated by people with goals.�

Enjoyed reading this. Distinct characters who are just bored enough to try and do something a little reckless. My goodness, the fallout from this is kinda messy.

I'm reading some plays that my classmates were casted in for rehearsal projects. Wow, it’d be a lot of fun to be Matty. Insane dialogue from his character, and I can’t wait to watch Camillo get into it.

“Tell me you’re not really going to be a priest.�
“I promise to not be a good one.�

The non-linear progression of the story � a choice! And yeah, pretty interesting. Feels quite conducive to be filmed; does this exist as a film? Could be excellent for a film.

The dialogue is the best part. It’s actually quite funny.

“I’m not going to settle for some mindless drudgery just to be comfortable.�
“So you’ll go on letting mommy pay the bills?�
“Artists have always been supported.�
“You’re not an artist.�
“I have the temperament.�
]]> <![CDATA[The Country House (TCG Edition)]]> 23129972
“Like Chekhov, Mr. Margulies is a specialist in rueful regrets and misty glimpses of roads not taken.� –Ben Brantley, New York Times

“With a knack for precision in depicting emotional and intellectual ambiguities, Margulies leaves his audiences feeling ripe with wisdom. His untethered finales beg for the audience to cathartically suffer and soar with his intelligently alive characters. Rather than leaving us longing for the past as in Chekhov, or looking to the potential of the future, as in Ibsen, Margulies keeps us longing for connection to the present moment.� –Kate Bergstrom, Santa Barbara Independent

Anna Patterson, the matriarch of a brood of famous and longing-to-be-famous creative artists, has gathered her family at their Berkshires summerhouse during the Williamstown Theatre Festival on the anniversary of her beloved daughter’s death. But as restless egos and simmering jealousies derail the weekend, this family of performers must come to terms with the roles they play in each other’s lives.

Donald Margulies received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Dinner with Friends . The play received numerous awards, including the American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, the Dramatists Guild/Hull-Warriner Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award and a Drama Desk nomination, and has been produced all over the United States and around the world. In addition to his adaptation of God of Vengeance , his many plays include Collected Stories , The Country House, Sight Unseen , The Model Apartment , The Loman Family Picnic , What’s Wrong with This Picture? and Time Stands Still . Mr. Margulies currently lives with his wife and their son in New Haven, Connecticut, where he teaches playwriting at Yale University.]]> 96 Donald Margulies 1559364912 EJ 4 “Being a playwright, darling? A playwright? Acting isn’t demoralizing enough, you choose playwriting?�

Read this play twice this weekend. Jumping from being nineteen years old in This is Our Youth in my Scene Study class to being sixty-six years old with a bum knee in this play for my spring rehearsal project. First time we’ll be working on a full-length production at Stella, and I’m very excited to get to work with my cast and director! Think we have a good group, genuinely.

At my core, I relate the most to Elliot. He has this air of bitterness and sadness to him that’s me on my worst days (but I won’t lie, there’s at least a moment every day where I embody Elliot, lmao). But he’s such a great character and you want to give him a hug. Of course, Anna, is such a marvelous character.

“Do you think it’s easy telling your child the truth? Do you? Shall I pretend your play was a work of genius? Is that what you want? Lies? I can lie; I pretend for a living. Marvelous! Absolutely brilliant! All it was, was a childish attempt to get back at me! To embarrass me!�

Frankly, all of the characters in this play are much older than us actors playing them. We’re all in our 20s (I’m the oldest actor at the senior-citizen age of 29 years old), but we’re playing 70, 66, three of us are in our 40s, and then of course Juliana gets to play 21.

You can tell the Chekhov influence right off the jump! The arc and the yearning and the fact that everyone’s an artist (or related to one). All the jokes on actors. It’s inside baseball, this play, but it’s fun. There’s much to mine, and I'm excited to approach as an actor.

Desire is the root of all suffering. This play supports this 100% valid claim. These strange happenings that we have no control over, and the ways we’re inextricably attached to each other, no matter how disjointed and dysfunctional. Family will disappoint you time and time again. And love shows and reveals itself in the weirdest of ways sometimes.

But we gotta keep going.

I’m gonna read this a few more times, obviously, and then I’ll be acting in it for four performances in May. God, I hope I can be convincing as Walter. But like Walter’s resolve in the third act when he tells Elliot “what he really thinks,� I believe I’ll have to just decide to be Walter, and choose to believe that my choices are the right ones. It's taken him 66+ years to get somewhere near this resolve; maybe driving the Porsche softens the blow of whatever emptiness he feels inside. But he found Nell. We choose what we want to believe, sometimes. The pain doesn't leave you.

“What should I regret? The work on stage I didn’t do? Not a chance. Starvation is not a virtue.�]]> 3.60 2014 The Country House (TCG Edition)
author: Donald Margulies
name: EJ
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/28
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: funny, inspiring, plays, essentials, wtf
review:
“Being a playwright, darling? A playwright? Acting isn’t demoralizing enough, you choose playwriting?�

Read this play twice this weekend. Jumping from being nineteen years old in This is Our Youth in my Scene Study class to being sixty-six years old with a bum knee in this play for my spring rehearsal project. First time we’ll be working on a full-length production at Stella, and I’m very excited to get to work with my cast and director! Think we have a good group, genuinely.

At my core, I relate the most to Elliot. He has this air of bitterness and sadness to him that’s me on my worst days (but I won’t lie, there’s at least a moment every day where I embody Elliot, lmao). But he’s such a great character and you want to give him a hug. Of course, Anna, is such a marvelous character.

“Do you think it’s easy telling your child the truth? Do you? Shall I pretend your play was a work of genius? Is that what you want? Lies? I can lie; I pretend for a living. Marvelous! Absolutely brilliant! All it was, was a childish attempt to get back at me! To embarrass me!�

Frankly, all of the characters in this play are much older than us actors playing them. We’re all in our 20s (I’m the oldest actor at the senior-citizen age of 29 years old), but we’re playing 70, 66, three of us are in our 40s, and then of course Juliana gets to play 21.

You can tell the Chekhov influence right off the jump! The arc and the yearning and the fact that everyone’s an artist (or related to one). All the jokes on actors. It’s inside baseball, this play, but it’s fun. There’s much to mine, and I'm excited to approach as an actor.

Desire is the root of all suffering. This play supports this 100% valid claim. These strange happenings that we have no control over, and the ways we’re inextricably attached to each other, no matter how disjointed and dysfunctional. Family will disappoint you time and time again. And love shows and reveals itself in the weirdest of ways sometimes.

But we gotta keep going.

I’m gonna read this a few more times, obviously, and then I’ll be acting in it for four performances in May. God, I hope I can be convincing as Walter. But like Walter’s resolve in the third act when he tells Elliot “what he really thinks,� I believe I’ll have to just decide to be Walter, and choose to believe that my choices are the right ones. It's taken him 66+ years to get somewhere near this resolve; maybe driving the Porsche softens the blow of whatever emptiness he feels inside. But he found Nell. We choose what we want to believe, sometimes. The pain doesn't leave you.

“What should I regret? The work on stage I didn’t do? Not a chance. Starvation is not a virtue.�
]]> The Life of the Theatre 255608 233 Julian Beck 0879100621 EJ 0 to-read 4.32 1972 The Life of the Theatre
author: Julian Beck
name: EJ
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Histoire d'O | Story of O (Story of O, #1)]]> 40483 The Story of O relates the progressive willful debasement of a young and beautiful Parisian fashion photographer, O, who wants nothing more than to be a slave to her lover, René. The test is severe—sexual in method, psychological in substance� The artistic interest here has precisely to do with the use not only of erotic materials but also erotic methods, the deliberate stimulation of the reader as a part of and means to a total, authentic literary experience.

—Eliot Fremont-Smith, The New York Times]]> 199 Pauline Réage 0345301110 EJ 0 to-read 3.37 1954 Histoire d'O | Story of O (Story of O, #1)
author: Pauline Réage
name: EJ
average rating: 3.37
book published: 1954
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Red (Oberon Modern Plays) 7709933
A moving and compelling account of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, Mark Rothko, whose struggle to accept his growing riches and praise became his ultimate undoing.]]> 67 John Logan 1840029447 EJ 5 “Spend a lifetime with them and you might get a moment of insight into their pain� until then, allow them their grandeur in silence.�

A genius play. Thank you to Fran, who told me I should read this and said, “you’d be a good Ken.� And I’m flattered, but also, the role does seem suited for me, if I may say so myself: I’m definitely going to add his last monologue to my arsenal � it’s so dang good!

“You know, not everything has to be so goddamn IMPORTANT all the time! Not every painting has to rip your guts out and expose your soul! Not everyone wants art that actually HURTS! Sometimes you just want a fucking still life or landscape or soup can or comic book! Which you might learn if you ever actually left your goddamn hermetically-sealed submarine here with all the windows closed and no natural light � BECAUSE NATURAL LIGHT ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU!�

Never have I stopped to write down more lines or quotes than this play, I think. The dialogue is so good, and the sentiments so profound. Rothko is such an interesting man; a true “artist� for all the good and the bad that entails.

“I AM HERE TO STOP YOUR HEART, YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?! I AM HERE TO MAKE YOU THINK! I AM NOT HERE TO MAKE PRETTY PICTURES!�

Like the ideas they discuss from Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, two things can be true, and opposing ideas and practices can still be inextricably linked. I agreed with Rothko, I agreed with Ken. Both are usually right, in a way.

“All my life I wanted just this, my friend: to create a place� A place where the viewer could live in contemplation with the work and give it some of the same attention and care I gave it. Like a chapel� A place of communion.�
“But� it’s a restaurant.�
“No� I will make it a temple.�

Ugh. So good! There's so much to say, but all I'll tell you is: read the play. I'd love to watch a staging of it -- can only imagine how beautiful the lighting design can be; and the whole conceit of watching the actors stare right into the audience (where we suspend our disbelief that they are looking at whatever current painting that Rothko is working on) would be so tremendous. Seeing how they're stirred looking at these paintings, but we get to see it. We're the painting -- the audience. I'd love to see that, and I'd also love to help that creation.

“How do you know when it’s done?�
“There’s tragedy in every brush stroke.�]]> 4.14 2010 Red (Oberon Modern Plays)
author: John Logan
name: EJ
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/13
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: essentials, favorites, funny, inspiring, plays, stops-you-in-your-tracks, wtf
review:
“Spend a lifetime with them and you might get a moment of insight into their pain� until then, allow them their grandeur in silence.�

A genius play. Thank you to Fran, who told me I should read this and said, “you’d be a good Ken.� And I’m flattered, but also, the role does seem suited for me, if I may say so myself: I’m definitely going to add his last monologue to my arsenal � it’s so dang good!

“You know, not everything has to be so goddamn IMPORTANT all the time! Not every painting has to rip your guts out and expose your soul! Not everyone wants art that actually HURTS! Sometimes you just want a fucking still life or landscape or soup can or comic book! Which you might learn if you ever actually left your goddamn hermetically-sealed submarine here with all the windows closed and no natural light � BECAUSE NATURAL LIGHT ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU!�

Never have I stopped to write down more lines or quotes than this play, I think. The dialogue is so good, and the sentiments so profound. Rothko is such an interesting man; a true “artist� for all the good and the bad that entails.

“I AM HERE TO STOP YOUR HEART, YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?! I AM HERE TO MAKE YOU THINK! I AM NOT HERE TO MAKE PRETTY PICTURES!�

Like the ideas they discuss from Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, two things can be true, and opposing ideas and practices can still be inextricably linked. I agreed with Rothko, I agreed with Ken. Both are usually right, in a way.

“All my life I wanted just this, my friend: to create a place� A place where the viewer could live in contemplation with the work and give it some of the same attention and care I gave it. Like a chapel� A place of communion.�
“But� it’s a restaurant.�
“No� I will make it a temple.�

Ugh. So good! There's so much to say, but all I'll tell you is: read the play. I'd love to watch a staging of it -- can only imagine how beautiful the lighting design can be; and the whole conceit of watching the actors stare right into the audience (where we suspend our disbelief that they are looking at whatever current painting that Rothko is working on) would be so tremendous. Seeing how they're stirred looking at these paintings, but we get to see it. We're the painting -- the audience. I'd love to see that, and I'd also love to help that creation.

“How do you know when it’s done?�
“There’s tragedy in every brush stroke.�
]]> The Taming of the Shrew 47021
Padua holds many suitors for the hand of fair Bianca, but Bianca may not be married until her spinster sister, Kate, is wed. Could any man be rash enough to take on Kate?

The witty adventurer Petruchio undertakes the task. While he sets about transforming Kate from foul-tempered termagant to loving wife, young Lucentio and his clever servant, Tranio, plot to win Bianca.

Frances Barber and Roger Allam are Kate and Petruchio. Lucentio is played by Alan Cox.]]> 291 William Shakespeare 074347757X EJ 4 funny, plays, wtf "What, with my tongue in your tail? nay, come again,
Good Kate; I am a gentleman."

Okay, I love 10 Things I Hate About You and that almost influences the entirety of my opinion of this play.

“Hortensio, peace. Thou know’st not gold’s effect.�

I'm exploring Petruchio in my Shakespeare class with Fran as Kate, and boy... are we in for some fun stuff with this scene! My Shakespeare teacher just telling us, "you both wanna fuck each other so bad in this scene. How do I know that? It's in the text!"

Born to be Lucentio. Challenged to be Petruchio.]]> 3.76 1593 The Taming of the Shrew
author: William Shakespeare
name: EJ
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1593
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/11
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: funny, plays, wtf
review:
"What, with my tongue in your tail? nay, come again,
Good Kate; I am a gentleman."

Okay, I love 10 Things I Hate About You and that almost influences the entirety of my opinion of this play.

“Hortensio, peace. Thou know’st not gold’s effect.�

I'm exploring Petruchio in my Shakespeare class with Fran as Kate, and boy... are we in for some fun stuff with this scene! My Shakespeare teacher just telling us, "you both wanna fuck each other so bad in this scene. How do I know that? It's in the text!"

Born to be Lucentio. Challenged to be Petruchio.
]]> Doubt, a Parable 185012 Doubt holds your conscious attention as an intelligently measured debate play, it sends off stealth charges that go deeper emotionally. One of the year’s ten best.”—Ben Brantley, The New York Times

“[The] #1 show of the year. How splendid it feels to be trusted with such passionate, exquisite ambiguity unlike anything we have seen from this prolific playwright so far. Blunt yet subtle, manipulative but full of empathy for all sides, the play is set in 1964 but could not be more timely. Doubt is a lean, potent drama . . . passionate, exquisite, important, and engrossing.”—Linda Winer, Newsday

Chosen as the best play of the year by over 10 newspapers and magazines, Doubt is set in a Bronx Catholic school in 1964, where a strong-minded woman wrestles with conscience and uncertainty as she is faced with concerns about one of her male colleagues. This play by John Patrick Shanley—the Bronx-born-and-bred playwright and Academy Award-winning author of Moonstruck—dramatizes issues straight from today’s headlines within a world re-created with knowing detail and a judicious eye. After a stunning, sold-out production at Manhattan Theatre Club, the play has transferred to Broadway.

John Patrick Shanley is the author of numerous plays, including Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Dirty Story, Four Dogs and a Bone, Psychopathia Sexualis, Sailor’s Song, Savage in Limbo, and Where’s My Money?. He has written extensively for TV and film, and his credits include the teleplay for Live from Baghdad and screenplays for Congo, Alive, Five Corners, Joe Versus the Volcano (which he also directed), and Moonstruck, for which he won an Academy Award for original screenplay.]]> 58 John Patrick Shanley 1559362766 EJ 5 “Doubt requires more courage than conviction does, and more energy; because conviction is a resting place and doubt is infinite—it is a passionate exercise.�

I knew from reading John Patrick Shanley’s introduction to the play, which I included an excerpt of above, that I was in for a real treat. Had been meaning to watch the film for a long time now, but in a way, I’m glad this was my introduction to the work. The ideas are right there, and just READING the play, and creating voices in my head � it adds to this layer of doubt.

“If I could, Sister James, I would certainly choose to live in innocence. But innocence can only be wisdom in a world without evil. Situations arise and we are confronted with wrongdoing and the need to act.�

If I heard Father Flynn explain his side, or if I heard the conviction from Sister Aloysius, maybe I’d be like Sister James and be so easily swayed. I’m left with this interesting layer of doubt � this Catholic guilt and doubt that I already possess.

Wonderfully-written. As a bonus, this play is actually quite funny. I read this entire play at a coffeeshop earlier today and let out a few good chuckles. Some satisfying bits with bloody noses, blindness, and coworker nonsense (even if they’re all nuns � we’re all only human and not divine nor immaculate).

The last couple scenes � the Mrs. Muller meeting� wow. I gasped at a reveal, which I guess is how we’re supposed to react. You think you know, you think you know. There’s layers and nuance to all of this. A lot to chew on, genuinely.

“When you take a step to address wrongdoing, you are taking a step away from God, but in His service.�

Loved reading that the original cast of the show said in interviews that the second act starts when the audience leaves the theater. This was so quick to read, and I saw that it translates to about 90 minutes of theater. Makes a lot of sense! Father Flynn’s sermons can take awhile; and boy, I’m sure there are a lot of meaningful pregnant pauses. Wow. Great stuff.

Father Flynn would be a difficult character to play� but I’d love to do it. I know it takes place in the 1960s, but hey, the next Pope might be Filipino! And I was born in the Bronx. Maybe we can manifest this for a revival in 20-25 years.]]> 4.09 2005 Doubt, a Parable
author: John Patrick Shanley
name: EJ
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: essentials, favorites, funny, plays, stops-you-in-your-tracks, wtf
review:
“Doubt requires more courage than conviction does, and more energy; because conviction is a resting place and doubt is infinite—it is a passionate exercise.�

I knew from reading John Patrick Shanley’s introduction to the play, which I included an excerpt of above, that I was in for a real treat. Had been meaning to watch the film for a long time now, but in a way, I’m glad this was my introduction to the work. The ideas are right there, and just READING the play, and creating voices in my head � it adds to this layer of doubt.

“If I could, Sister James, I would certainly choose to live in innocence. But innocence can only be wisdom in a world without evil. Situations arise and we are confronted with wrongdoing and the need to act.�

If I heard Father Flynn explain his side, or if I heard the conviction from Sister Aloysius, maybe I’d be like Sister James and be so easily swayed. I’m left with this interesting layer of doubt � this Catholic guilt and doubt that I already possess.

Wonderfully-written. As a bonus, this play is actually quite funny. I read this entire play at a coffeeshop earlier today and let out a few good chuckles. Some satisfying bits with bloody noses, blindness, and coworker nonsense (even if they’re all nuns � we’re all only human and not divine nor immaculate).

The last couple scenes � the Mrs. Muller meeting� wow. I gasped at a reveal, which I guess is how we’re supposed to react. You think you know, you think you know. There’s layers and nuance to all of this. A lot to chew on, genuinely.

“When you take a step to address wrongdoing, you are taking a step away from God, but in His service.�

Loved reading that the original cast of the show said in interviews that the second act starts when the audience leaves the theater. This was so quick to read, and I saw that it translates to about 90 minutes of theater. Makes a lot of sense! Father Flynn’s sermons can take awhile; and boy, I’m sure there are a lot of meaningful pregnant pauses. Wow. Great stuff.

Father Flynn would be a difficult character to play� but I’d love to do it. I know it takes place in the 1960s, but hey, the next Pope might be Filipino! And I was born in the Bronx. Maybe we can manifest this for a revival in 20-25 years.
]]> Trust Exercise 52381081
The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school's walls--until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside-down. What the reader believes to have happened to David and Sarah and their friends is not entirely true--though it's not false, either. It takes until the book's stunning coda for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place--revealing truths that will resonate long after the final sentence.

As captivating and tender as it is surprising, Susan Choi's Trust Exercise will incite heated conversations about fiction and truth, and about friendships and loyalties, and will leave readers with wiser understandings of the true capacities of adolescents and of the powers and responsibilities of adults.]]> 257 Susan Choi 1250231264 EJ 0 to-read 3.13 2019 Trust Exercise
author: Susan Choi
name: EJ
average rating: 3.13
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Idiots Karamazov 98207 66 Christopher Durang 082220553X EJ 5 “This morning I watched one of my patients die before my eyes.�
“But you’re not a doctor, Ivan.�
“Then I am all the guiltier. Oh, Alyosha, how can you look at this barren untranslatable Russian idiom around us, and still believe in God?�

With my fairly pedestrian and elementary knowledge of Russian Drama and literature (and let’s face it, it’s really just purely Russian Drama at this point), I can say I thoroughly enjoyed this irreverent, nonsensical play spoofing so much from Russian art as well as just contemporary Western art as well.

Laughed a lot while reading. Would imagine a lot of great bits are visual � Constance during her long, strange translations of scenes from Russian to English, and the ‘yes, and� that seems to play out with the characters she’s telling stories of but changing circumstances (from “whorehouse� to “warehouse�).

Mary Tyrone Karamazov killed me. Mary’s already ‘not there� at times in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, but how she’s used in this play, just deliriously referring to her sons as characters from a completely different play� a wonderful bit. Got me every time.

“Mama, I’m going to be a pop star!�
“Edmund, stop saying that! It’s just a summer cold!�

My first Durang. He won the Tony for Best Play with Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, and I feel like I’ll visit the play quite soon. Beyond Therapy I’d love to read next and will do it soon. He’s from New Jersey! I can hear it with the dialogue. Feels so New Jerseyan.]]> 3.79 1981 The Idiots Karamazov
author: Christopher Durang
name: EJ
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1981
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: essentials, favorites, funny, plays, wtf
review:
“This morning I watched one of my patients die before my eyes.�
“But you’re not a doctor, Ivan.�
“Then I am all the guiltier. Oh, Alyosha, how can you look at this barren untranslatable Russian idiom around us, and still believe in God?�

With my fairly pedestrian and elementary knowledge of Russian Drama and literature (and let’s face it, it’s really just purely Russian Drama at this point), I can say I thoroughly enjoyed this irreverent, nonsensical play spoofing so much from Russian art as well as just contemporary Western art as well.

Laughed a lot while reading. Would imagine a lot of great bits are visual � Constance during her long, strange translations of scenes from Russian to English, and the ‘yes, and� that seems to play out with the characters she’s telling stories of but changing circumstances (from “whorehouse� to “warehouse�).

Mary Tyrone Karamazov killed me. Mary’s already ‘not there� at times in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, but how she’s used in this play, just deliriously referring to her sons as characters from a completely different play� a wonderful bit. Got me every time.

“Mama, I’m going to be a pop star!�
“Edmund, stop saying that! It’s just a summer cold!�

My first Durang. He won the Tony for Best Play with Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, and I feel like I’ll visit the play quite soon. Beyond Therapy I’d love to read next and will do it soon. He’s from New Jersey! I can hear it with the dialogue. Feels so New Jerseyan.
]]> A Doll's House 37793

A Doll's House (1879), is a masterpiece of theatrical craft which, for the first time portrayed the tragic hypocrisy of Victorian middle class marriage on the stage. The play ushered in a new social era and "exploded like a bomb into contemporary life".

The Student Edition contains these exclusive features:

· A chronology of the playwright's life and work

· An introduction giving the background of the play

· Commentary on themes, characters. language and style

· Notes on individual words and phrases in the text

· Questions for further study

· Bibliography for further reading.

]]> 122 Henrik Ibsen 1406914835 EJ 5 “Well, you see, there are some people whom one loves, and others whom it’s almost more fun to be with.�

Torvald is not John Proctor. Torvald is in fact Reverend Parris.

Urgent and all-encompassing; I can imagine the immense ripples this play had when it originally premiered in the late 1800s. The sacredness of marriage held under a microscope; the agency of women, or at the very least, an examination of how their voices are silenced by the men in their lives.

“I know what despair can drive a man like you to.�

Some wonderful exchanges of dialogue and some iconic monologues. Nora is one of the best characters of the form.

The secondary plot of Mrs. Linde and Krogstad had some of my favorite sentiments and wonderfully counterbalances the suffocation of Nora and Torvald’s dollhouse relationship.

“I must work if I’m to find life worth living. I’ve always worked, for as long as I can remember. It’s been the greatest joy of my life � my only joy. But now I’m alone in the world, and I feel so dreadfully lost and empty. There’s no joy in working just for oneself. Oh, Nils, give me something � someone � to work for.�

I got a used copy from the Strand Book Store. But I didn’t even consider that maybe I should’ve held out for the Amy Herzog version. Alas, I can always visit that one later.

Wonderful, essential text. Torvald’s bipolar and honor-driven monologues in Act III are quite great; his character is ‘justified� because of his flawed worldviews and societal expectations; can absolutely imagine Arian Moayed KILLING this role. And it goes without saying that Jessica Chastain was undoubtedly marvelous as Nora.]]> 3.76 1879 A Doll's House
author: Henrik Ibsen
name: EJ
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1879
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: essentials, favorites, inspiring, plays, wtf
review:
“Well, you see, there are some people whom one loves, and others whom it’s almost more fun to be with.�

Torvald is not John Proctor. Torvald is in fact Reverend Parris.

Urgent and all-encompassing; I can imagine the immense ripples this play had when it originally premiered in the late 1800s. The sacredness of marriage held under a microscope; the agency of women, or at the very least, an examination of how their voices are silenced by the men in their lives.

“I know what despair can drive a man like you to.�

Some wonderful exchanges of dialogue and some iconic monologues. Nora is one of the best characters of the form.

The secondary plot of Mrs. Linde and Krogstad had some of my favorite sentiments and wonderfully counterbalances the suffocation of Nora and Torvald’s dollhouse relationship.

“I must work if I’m to find life worth living. I’ve always worked, for as long as I can remember. It’s been the greatest joy of my life � my only joy. But now I’m alone in the world, and I feel so dreadfully lost and empty. There’s no joy in working just for oneself. Oh, Nils, give me something � someone � to work for.�

I got a used copy from the Strand Book Store. But I didn’t even consider that maybe I should’ve held out for the Amy Herzog version. Alas, I can always visit that one later.

Wonderful, essential text. Torvald’s bipolar and honor-driven monologues in Act III are quite great; his character is ‘justified� because of his flawed worldviews and societal expectations; can absolutely imagine Arian Moayed KILLING this role. And it goes without saying that Jessica Chastain was undoubtedly marvelous as Nora.
]]> <![CDATA[The Sign In Sidney Brustein's Window]]> 2862565 A Raisin in the Sunshe gave this country its most movingly authentic portrayal of black family life in the inner city. Barely five years later, withThe Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, Hansberry gave us an unforgettable portrait of a man struggling wit his individual fate in an age of racial and social injustice. These two plays remain milestones in the American theater, remarkable not only for their historical value but for their continual ability to engage the imagination and heart. With an Introduction by Robert Nemiroff.]]> 126 Lorraine Hansberry 039440713X EJ 5 “Hope is something most men, even thinking men, cling to long after they know better.�

Thank you to my dear friend “Sidney Jenkins� for gifting two of Lorraine Hansberry’s plays to me � specifically her two most acclaimed and sadly the only staged plays during her lifetime, because she died young at only 34 years old from pancreatic cancer. There’s something about that fact that makes this play all the more tragic; however, let me say, it does end in a hopeful beat, which I’m grateful for, but my lord� the costs and devastations.

This play? Absolutely wonderful. The dialogue is scrumptious, and let me tell you, did it really hook me in, especially in Acts II and III; those two acts have these incredible, vicious bouts of dialogue, and the CHARACTERS� aren’t they so fleshed out and so vivid. I couldn’t help but reread passages and monologues because I just wanted to say the words to myself. I’m grateful that Sidney gifted this to me now, because Sidney (the character) has a few monologues that I’d like to add to my arsenal potentially.

I chose Hamlet’s Act II, Scene II monologue to study for the beginning of this semester, and the image of Sidney holding his bottle of pills like Hamlet holding Yorick’s skull cracked me up, but was such a provocative, stimulating image for me.

Reading about reception to The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window when it first premiered in the 1960s, I can’t say I’m incredibly surprised to learn that reviews were mixed; perhaps the content of the show was too close to home, too ‘fresh� for the folks of the time. The New York Times wrote about the 2023 revival (that I wanted to see back when it was both Off- and On-Broadway) and referenced its theme as “the Sin of liberal inertia� � and that is a much more poetic way of describing how I felt about the story, and why I loved it so much.

“Yes� weep now, darling, weep. Let us both weep. That is the first thing: to let ourselves feel again� Then, tomorrow, we shall make something strong of this sorrow…�

This is a play about Jewish characters written by a Black woman; however, I think all races and creeds should relate to the Jewish idea that we just live with the knowledge, we live with the burden, we live with the hardships and brutalities we can’t change. I think this is why we still read Russian Drama and literature � we must suffer, and we must endure.

“So there it is, the trouble with looking at ourselves honestly, Sidney, is that we come up with the truth. And baby, the truth is a bitch!�

There’s so much the characters want to do; big ideas, big characters, big morals. We get high and mighty and we talk a big game, say that we know much more than the establishment or the squares. But when push comes to shove, do we do anything? Do we do enough? Will we ever do enough? Morals take you so far; conviction takes you so far; what do we need to take to make the pain go down easier? Pills? Drugs? Art? Sex? Will anything ever be enough?

What a work. Loved Sidney, Iris, Mavis, and oh poor Gloria; a character who makes so much of an impression and invisibly controls the plot despite only being in one scene of this (relatively) long play. A great magic trick.]]> 3.73 1965 The Sign In Sidney Brustein's Window
author: Lorraine Hansberry
name: EJ
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1965
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: essentials, favorites, funny, inspiring, plays, stops-you-in-your-tracks
review:
“Hope is something most men, even thinking men, cling to long after they know better.�

Thank you to my dear friend “Sidney Jenkins� for gifting two of Lorraine Hansberry’s plays to me � specifically her two most acclaimed and sadly the only staged plays during her lifetime, because she died young at only 34 years old from pancreatic cancer. There’s something about that fact that makes this play all the more tragic; however, let me say, it does end in a hopeful beat, which I’m grateful for, but my lord� the costs and devastations.

This play? Absolutely wonderful. The dialogue is scrumptious, and let me tell you, did it really hook me in, especially in Acts II and III; those two acts have these incredible, vicious bouts of dialogue, and the CHARACTERS� aren’t they so fleshed out and so vivid. I couldn’t help but reread passages and monologues because I just wanted to say the words to myself. I’m grateful that Sidney gifted this to me now, because Sidney (the character) has a few monologues that I’d like to add to my arsenal potentially.

I chose Hamlet’s Act II, Scene II monologue to study for the beginning of this semester, and the image of Sidney holding his bottle of pills like Hamlet holding Yorick’s skull cracked me up, but was such a provocative, stimulating image for me.

Reading about reception to The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window when it first premiered in the 1960s, I can’t say I’m incredibly surprised to learn that reviews were mixed; perhaps the content of the show was too close to home, too ‘fresh� for the folks of the time. The New York Times wrote about the 2023 revival (that I wanted to see back when it was both Off- and On-Broadway) and referenced its theme as “the Sin of liberal inertia� � and that is a much more poetic way of describing how I felt about the story, and why I loved it so much.

“Yes� weep now, darling, weep. Let us both weep. That is the first thing: to let ourselves feel again� Then, tomorrow, we shall make something strong of this sorrow…�

This is a play about Jewish characters written by a Black woman; however, I think all races and creeds should relate to the Jewish idea that we just live with the knowledge, we live with the burden, we live with the hardships and brutalities we can’t change. I think this is why we still read Russian Drama and literature � we must suffer, and we must endure.

“So there it is, the trouble with looking at ourselves honestly, Sidney, is that we come up with the truth. And baby, the truth is a bitch!�

There’s so much the characters want to do; big ideas, big characters, big morals. We get high and mighty and we talk a big game, say that we know much more than the establishment or the squares. But when push comes to shove, do we do anything? Do we do enough? Will we ever do enough? Morals take you so far; conviction takes you so far; what do we need to take to make the pain go down easier? Pills? Drugs? Art? Sex? Will anything ever be enough?

What a work. Loved Sidney, Iris, Mavis, and oh poor Gloria; a character who makes so much of an impression and invisibly controls the plot despite only being in one scene of this (relatively) long play. A great magic trick.
]]> <![CDATA[Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead]]> 18545 126 Tom Stoppard 0802132758 EJ 5 “Do you like being� an actor?�
“No, sir.�

Reading this right after Waiting for Godot, lord. Waiting for the end to come�

“Don’t you see?! We’re actors - we’re the opposite of people!�

This one I found funnier than Waiting for Godot, and I do appreciate how it extends the life (but in a way, offering zero new information about them) of Hamlet’s “friends� Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Their quest is nonsensical and devoid of meaning without Hamlet himself. Their entire purpose is for Hamlet. And the way they get written off by Shakespeare in the original text, well� we need to know what could have been going through their heads on that boat ride to England.

Absurd, funny, and quite sad. Its musings on life, on art, on the futile exercise of acting, on what’s “real� and what’s “not,� and of course, on death, really fired off my imagination.

I suppose I’d have found this play on my own at some point, but reading it so close to my birthday got me confronting my mortality once again. ]]> 4.05 1967 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
author: Tom Stoppard
name: EJ
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1967
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: essentials, favorites, funny, plays, wtf
review:
“Do you like being� an actor?�
“No, sir.�

Reading this right after Waiting for Godot, lord. Waiting for the end to come�

“Don’t you see?! We’re actors - we’re the opposite of people!�

This one I found funnier than Waiting for Godot, and I do appreciate how it extends the life (but in a way, offering zero new information about them) of Hamlet’s “friends� Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Their quest is nonsensical and devoid of meaning without Hamlet himself. Their entire purpose is for Hamlet. And the way they get written off by Shakespeare in the original text, well� we need to know what could have been going through their heads on that boat ride to England.

Absurd, funny, and quite sad. Its musings on life, on art, on the futile exercise of acting, on what’s “real� and what’s “not,� and of course, on death, really fired off my imagination.

I suppose I’d have found this play on my own at some point, but reading it so close to my birthday got me confronting my mortality once again.
]]> Waiting for Godot 17716 109 Samuel Beckett EJ 5 “Yes, now I remember, yesterday evening we spent blathering about nothing in particular. That's been going on now for half a century.�

I had a very vivid dream about school after reading this (helps when you finish reading Waiting for Godot at 2:30am, and you drift away while thinking about absurdism and the meaning of life), and this dream I think enhanced my opinion of this play. The play CONTINUED, so to speak. And I woke up loving this play � kinda crazy.

Which, I must say, Waiting for Godot MUST be enhanced by reading with another person; especially the playfulness, silliness, and speediness of some of the dialogue between Didi and Gogo. That being said, I did enjoy reading this a lot � this play about “nothing� and “everything.� There were moments that were giving me pause; or I realized it was a little boring to read, because a lot of the magic comes from the intentional, meaningful silences (can imagine audiences howling with laughter at the brutal mundanity of Didi and Gogo's predicament and pleasant suicidal ideation).

“Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! (Pause. Vehemently.) Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say?� (Estrogon says nothing)

The visuals would’ve helped me, too, because there is such a blasé approach to suicide, but you know, it’s better to put it off for a day, because Godot may really be coming soon. The two tragic buffoons looking at this sad tree, and realizing, “tomorrow we’ll bring the rope. Surely tomorrow.�

If The Myth of Sisyphus was a pure absurdist comedy, and you had to endure (suffer) with a friend, you get Waiting for Godot. Trying to get ideas for plays and scenes to perform with one partner, and this one for many reasons has a few really good moments.]]> 3.85 1952 Waiting for Godot
author: Samuel Beckett
name: EJ
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1952
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: essentials, funny, favorites, plays, wtf, stops-you-in-your-tracks
review:
“Yes, now I remember, yesterday evening we spent blathering about nothing in particular. That's been going on now for half a century.�

I had a very vivid dream about school after reading this (helps when you finish reading Waiting for Godot at 2:30am, and you drift away while thinking about absurdism and the meaning of life), and this dream I think enhanced my opinion of this play. The play CONTINUED, so to speak. And I woke up loving this play � kinda crazy.

Which, I must say, Waiting for Godot MUST be enhanced by reading with another person; especially the playfulness, silliness, and speediness of some of the dialogue between Didi and Gogo. That being said, I did enjoy reading this a lot � this play about “nothing� and “everything.� There were moments that were giving me pause; or I realized it was a little boring to read, because a lot of the magic comes from the intentional, meaningful silences (can imagine audiences howling with laughter at the brutal mundanity of Didi and Gogo's predicament and pleasant suicidal ideation).

“Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! (Pause. Vehemently.) Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say?� (Estrogon says nothing)

The visuals would’ve helped me, too, because there is such a blasé approach to suicide, but you know, it’s better to put it off for a day, because Godot may really be coming soon. The two tragic buffoons looking at this sad tree, and realizing, “tomorrow we’ll bring the rope. Surely tomorrow.�

If The Myth of Sisyphus was a pure absurdist comedy, and you had to endure (suffer) with a friend, you get Waiting for Godot. Trying to get ideas for plays and scenes to perform with one partner, and this one for many reasons has a few really good moments.
]]> This is Our Youth 337630 128 Kenneth Lonergan 1585670189 EJ 5 “But listen � Would you be morally offended if I kissed you for just a second?�
“Well, I mean, what’s the rush?�
“No rush. I’d just like to get rid of this knot in my stomach.�
“Oh � Sure, I mean � Whatever’s expedient.�

Lonergan knows how to write some dialogue. This was a lot of fun to read, and it was a delight to follow these three horny, conflicted, emotional young adults. My classmate Aidan suggested this play to potentially use for our next scene in Scene Study, so I had to do my homework.

And we may do something from this! We have some time to read more and decide, but I do think we’d have some fun as Dennis and Warren (he being Dennis; I being Warren). Kinda works out, because both have this coked-up energy, but Dennis is taller/stronger (albeit unambitious), and Warren is the shorter/anxious/grieving one. They’re both kinda stuck with each other.

"I'm like the basis of your personality... I'm like a one-man youth culture for you pathetic assholes. You're gonna remember your youth as like a gray stoned haze punctuated by a series of beatings from your fuckin' Dad, and like,myjokes."

There’s only three characters here. And Warren is really the only connective tissue of the three, but all are so fun to follow and experience their world views. Warren perhaps because of inaction and a certain lack of agency he finds himself thrust (stuck) with these characters, but his arrested development is wondrous to unpack, or at least learn from.

“Not much happens,� but so much happens. Hubris, modernity, and grief are the main motivators and obstacles of this story; these are experiences that shape our youth (I mean, that title, ba dum tsssss) and it’s never easy.

Lonergan’s monologues always sound / seem so out-of-breath; but they’re frequently very funny, even if they come from a pained place. No wonder his plays have a lot of repeat actors (Michael Cera, Kieran Culkin).]]> 3.75 1999 This is Our Youth
author: Kenneth Lonergan
name: EJ
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: essentials, favorites, funny, plays, stops-you-in-your-tracks
review:
“But listen � Would you be morally offended if I kissed you for just a second?�
“Well, I mean, what’s the rush?�
“No rush. I’d just like to get rid of this knot in my stomach.�
“Oh � Sure, I mean � Whatever’s expedient.�

Lonergan knows how to write some dialogue. This was a lot of fun to read, and it was a delight to follow these three horny, conflicted, emotional young adults. My classmate Aidan suggested this play to potentially use for our next scene in Scene Study, so I had to do my homework.

And we may do something from this! We have some time to read more and decide, but I do think we’d have some fun as Dennis and Warren (he being Dennis; I being Warren). Kinda works out, because both have this coked-up energy, but Dennis is taller/stronger (albeit unambitious), and Warren is the shorter/anxious/grieving one. They’re both kinda stuck with each other.

"I'm like the basis of your personality... I'm like a one-man youth culture for you pathetic assholes. You're gonna remember your youth as like a gray stoned haze punctuated by a series of beatings from your fuckin' Dad, and like,myjokes."

There’s only three characters here. And Warren is really the only connective tissue of the three, but all are so fun to follow and experience their world views. Warren perhaps because of inaction and a certain lack of agency he finds himself thrust (stuck) with these characters, but his arrested development is wondrous to unpack, or at least learn from.

“Not much happens,� but so much happens. Hubris, modernity, and grief are the main motivators and obstacles of this story; these are experiences that shape our youth (I mean, that title, ba dum tsssss) and it’s never easy.

Lonergan’s monologues always sound / seem so out-of-breath; but they’re frequently very funny, even if they come from a pained place. No wonder his plays have a lot of repeat actors (Michael Cera, Kieran Culkin).
]]> Thinner Than Water 32024710 Melissa Ross EJ 0 to-read 3.51 Thinner Than Water
author: Melissa Ross
name: EJ
average rating: 3.51
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Women 38500 291 Charles Bukowski 0061177598 EJ 0 to-read 3.85 1978 Women
author: Charles Bukowski
name: EJ
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Ulysses 338798
According to Declan Kiberd, "Before Joyce, no writer of fiction had so foregrounded the process of thinking". Ulysses chronicles the peripatetic appointments and encounters of Leopold Bloom in Dublin in the course of an ordinary day, 16 June 1904. Ulysses is the Latinised name of Odysseus, the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey, and the novel establishes a series of parallels between the poem and the novel, with structural correspondences between the characters and experiences of Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus, in addition to events and themes of the early 20th-century context of modernism, Dublin, and Ireland's relationship to Britain.

The novel is highly allusive and also imitates the styles of different periods of English literature. Since its publication, the book has attracted controversy and scrutiny, ranging from an obscenity trial in the United States in 1921 to protracted textual "Joyce Wars." The novel's stream-of-consciousness technique, careful structuring, and experimental prose—replete with puns, parodies, and allusions—as well as its rich characterisation and broad humour have led it to be regarded as one of the greatest literary works in history; Joyce fans worldwide now celebrate 16 June as Bloomsday.']]> 783 James Joyce EJ 0 to-read 3.72 1922 Ulysses
author: James Joyce
name: EJ
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1922
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Tempest 12985
Each edition includes:
� Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play

� Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play

� Scene-by-scene plot summaries

� A key to famous lines and phrases

� An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language

� An essay by an outstanding scholar providing a modern perspective on the play

� Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books]]> 218 William Shakespeare EJ 4 funny, plays, wtf "Hear my soul speak: The very instant that I saw you did My heart fly to your service, there resides To make me slave to it, and for your sake Am I this patient log-man."

I'm playing Ferdinand in the Ferdinand/Miranda scene (Act 3, Scene 1) for my Shakespeare class with my classmate Piti. This scene is definitely my favorite scene of the play, and it's a lot of fun to play with. Ferdinand is Grade-A simp-of-the-year.

“When the sea is. Hence! What cares these roarers for the name of king? To cabin! Silence! Trouble us not.�

Not my favorite Shakespeare to read. Definitely would be aided by WATCHING it. That Act 1 set piece would be crazy as well; seeing the actual tempest (storm) happening on the boat. And then all the ensuing fallout of that.

Brothers, they be petty as hell sometimes.]]> 3.78 1611 The Tempest
author: William Shakespeare
name: EJ
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1611
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/29
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: funny, plays, wtf
review:
"Hear my soul speak: The very instant that I saw you did My heart fly to your service, there resides To make me slave to it, and for your sake Am I this patient log-man."

I'm playing Ferdinand in the Ferdinand/Miranda scene (Act 3, Scene 1) for my Shakespeare class with my classmate Piti. This scene is definitely my favorite scene of the play, and it's a lot of fun to play with. Ferdinand is Grade-A simp-of-the-year.

“When the sea is. Hence! What cares these roarers for the name of king? To cabin! Silence! Trouble us not.�

Not my favorite Shakespeare to read. Definitely would be aided by WATCHING it. That Act 1 set piece would be crazy as well; seeing the actual tempest (storm) happening on the boat. And then all the ensuing fallout of that.

Brothers, they be petty as hell sometimes.
]]> The Tao of Pooh 48757
Is there such thing as a Western Taoist? Benjamin Hoff says there is, and this Taoist's favorite food is honey. Through brilliant and witty dialogue with the beloved Pooh-bear and his companions, the author of this smash bestseller explains with ease and aplomb that rather than being a distant and mysterious concept, Taoism is as near and practical to us as our morning breakfast bowl.

Romp through the enchanting world of Winnie-the-Pooh while soaking up invaluable lessons on simplicity and natural living.]]> 176 Benjamin Hoff 1405204265 EJ 0 to-read 4.02 1982 The Tao of Pooh
author: Benjamin Hoff
name: EJ
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> By the Water 29748366 54 Sharyn Rothstein 0822233266 EJ 0 to-read 3.57 By the Water
author: Sharyn Rothstein
name: EJ
average rating: 3.57
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Heidi Chronicles 85 81 Wendy Wasserstein 0822205106 EJ 0 to-read 3.78 1988 The Heidi Chronicles
author: Wendy Wasserstein
name: EJ
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Streetcar Named Desire 12220 Death of a Salesman and The Crucible), and Williams� essay “The World I Live In.�

It is a very short list of 20th-century American plays that continue to have the same power and impact as when they first appeared�57 years after its Broadway premiere, Tennessee Williams� A Streetcar Named Desire is one of those plays. The story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed over the edge by her sexy and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Streetcar launched the careers of Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden, and solidified the position of Tennessee Williams as one of the most important young playwrights of his generation, as well as that of Elia Kazan as the greatest American stage director of the �40s and �50s.]]> 107 Tennessee Williams 0822210894 EJ 5 “Sorrow makes for sincerity, I think.�
“It sure brings it out in people.�
“The little there is belongs to people who have experienced some sorrow.�

Revisited this play yesterday at the Drama Book Shop because I was going to watch Kowalski, a new play about the tango between Marlon Brando and Tennessee Williams ahead of the production of A Streetcar Named Desire � in which Brando is supposed to meet Williams to audition for Stanley Kowalski. And since I’m writing this ŷ review after, I can say with full confidence that I loved Kowalski!

“I was—sort of—thrilled by it.�

And I’ll be seeing Paul Mescal prowling about in March with the new transfer of A Streetcar Named Desire � very excited for that (and for Patsy Ferran!).

“I don’t want realism. I want magic! [Mitch laughs] Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell truth, I tell what OUGHT to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!—Don’t turn the light on!�

I’ve seen� most of the movie? But I was in high school and I barely remember it.

Holy moly. A tremendous read. The dialogue is so dang good, and the characters are all such wonderful creatures. All of them are on different parts of the spectrum of accepting their life how it is.

Is this all it was ever going to be? Two dingy rooms, separated by a curtain? Is this too common?

Desire � oh, desire. We know it’s the root of all suffering. To want is to suffer. A streetcar named suffering, wouldn't that be a title. But this is all relative, as someone like Stella can look past her meager circumstances because of the MAN that is Stanley Kowalski. He’s described as a brute, and that’s kind of what he is; he’s a man, and men are animals. We all are animals, no? And we can’t explain our animalistic impulses.

“But there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark—that sort of make everything else seem—unimportant.�

Blanche, Stella, Stanley, and Mitch are incredible, fully-realized characters. Love them all, and Tennessee Williams made them real, made them disgusting, made them beautiful. Absolute masterpiece. Several moments from this play permanently lodged in my brain.]]> 3.98 1947 A Streetcar Named Desire
author: Tennessee Williams
name: EJ
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1947
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: essentials, favorites, inspiring, plays, stops-you-in-your-tracks, wtf
review:
“Sorrow makes for sincerity, I think.�
“It sure brings it out in people.�
“The little there is belongs to people who have experienced some sorrow.�

Revisited this play yesterday at the Drama Book Shop because I was going to watch Kowalski, a new play about the tango between Marlon Brando and Tennessee Williams ahead of the production of A Streetcar Named Desire � in which Brando is supposed to meet Williams to audition for Stanley Kowalski. And since I’m writing this ŷ review after, I can say with full confidence that I loved Kowalski!

“I was—sort of—thrilled by it.�

And I’ll be seeing Paul Mescal prowling about in March with the new transfer of A Streetcar Named Desire � very excited for that (and for Patsy Ferran!).

“I don’t want realism. I want magic! [Mitch laughs] Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell truth, I tell what OUGHT to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!—Don’t turn the light on!�

I’ve seen� most of the movie? But I was in high school and I barely remember it.

Holy moly. A tremendous read. The dialogue is so dang good, and the characters are all such wonderful creatures. All of them are on different parts of the spectrum of accepting their life how it is.

Is this all it was ever going to be? Two dingy rooms, separated by a curtain? Is this too common?

Desire � oh, desire. We know it’s the root of all suffering. To want is to suffer. A streetcar named suffering, wouldn't that be a title. But this is all relative, as someone like Stella can look past her meager circumstances because of the MAN that is Stanley Kowalski. He’s described as a brute, and that’s kind of what he is; he’s a man, and men are animals. We all are animals, no? And we can’t explain our animalistic impulses.

“But there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark—that sort of make everything else seem—unimportant.�

Blanche, Stella, Stanley, and Mitch are incredible, fully-realized characters. Love them all, and Tennessee Williams made them real, made them disgusting, made them beautiful. Absolute masterpiece. Several moments from this play permanently lodged in my brain.
]]> Chess Story 59151
Travelers by ship from New York to Buenos Aires find that on board with them is the world champion of chess, an arrogant and unfriendly man. They come together to try their skills against him and are soundly defeated. Then a mysterious passenger steps forward to advise them and their fortunes change. How he came to possess his extraordinary grasp of the game of chess and at what cost lie at the heart of Zweig's story.

This new translation of Chess Story brings out the work's unusual mixture of high suspense and poignant reflection.]]> 104 Stefan Zweig 1590171691 EJ 0 to-read 4.31 1942 Chess Story
author: Stefan Zweig
name: EJ
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1942
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Fire Next Time 464260 The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin’s early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document. It consists of two “letters,� written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. Described by The New York Times Book Review as “sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle…all presented in searing, brilliant prose,� The Fire Next Time stands as a classic of our literature.]]> 106 James Baldwin 067974472X EJ 0 to-read 4.55 1963 The Fire Next Time
author: James Baldwin
name: EJ
average rating: 4.55
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Crucible 17250
Written in 1953, The Crucible is a mirror Miller uses to reflect the anti-communist hysteria inspired by Senator Joseph McCarthy's "witch-hunts" in the United States. Within the text itself, Miller contemplates the parallels, writing, "Political opposition... is given an inhumane overlay, which then justifies the abrogation of all normally applied customs of civilized behavior. A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence."

WIth an introduction by Christopher Bigsby.
(back cover)]]> 143 Arthur Miller 0142437336 EJ 5 “Until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven.�

Great characters, and a fable in a sense that is “always relevant.� Our President-elect loves to use the term “witch hunt,� and he should look in the mirror and wonder why he’s constantly being accused, blamed, etc. for the transgressions he’s made. Oy vey.

“Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!�

Reading the play with classmates and popcorning roles was a lot of fun as we prepare to work on the play in our Technique class this upcoming semester (and we each had a couple beverages of liquid courage in us, so this made it a bit more fun, hehe). At the time I’m writing this, we’re just halfway through reading it, but meeting up again next week to finish the play. Some delicious dialogue that we get to say! That’s part of the beautiful immersion of this play.

Earlier in the day I listened to the L.A. Theatre Works production of The Crucible, and I loved it. Really was exciting to listen to (I wish I was able to watch it, but this was still really cool). Like a campfire story! Helped inspire me to make choices when I was reciting some passages from The Crucible with my friends.]]> 3.60 1953 The Crucible
author: Arthur Miller
name: EJ
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1953
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: plays, stops-you-in-your-tracks, wtf, essentials
review:
“Until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven.�

Great characters, and a fable in a sense that is “always relevant.� Our President-elect loves to use the term “witch hunt,� and he should look in the mirror and wonder why he’s constantly being accused, blamed, etc. for the transgressions he’s made. Oy vey.

“Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!�

Reading the play with classmates and popcorning roles was a lot of fun as we prepare to work on the play in our Technique class this upcoming semester (and we each had a couple beverages of liquid courage in us, so this made it a bit more fun, hehe). At the time I’m writing this, we’re just halfway through reading it, but meeting up again next week to finish the play. Some delicious dialogue that we get to say! That’s part of the beautiful immersion of this play.

Earlier in the day I listened to the L.A. Theatre Works production of The Crucible, and I loved it. Really was exciting to listen to (I wish I was able to watch it, but this was still really cool). Like a campfire story! Helped inspire me to make choices when I was reciting some passages from The Crucible with my friends.
]]> <![CDATA[There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension]]> 181346634
There’s Always This Year is a triumph, brimming with joy, pain, solidarity, comfort, outrage, and hope. No matter the subject of his keen focus—whether it's basketball, or music, or performance—Hanif Abdurraqib’s exquisite writing is always poetry, always profound, and always a clarion call to radically reimagine how we think about our culture, our country, and ourselves.]]> 334 Hanif Abdurraqib 0593448790 EJ 0 to-read 4.32 2024 There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension
author: Hanif Abdurraqib
name: EJ
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> All My Sons 179142
Winner of the Drama Critics' Award for Best New Play in 1947, All My Sons established Arthur Miller as a leading voice in the American theater. All My Sons introduced themes that thread through Miller's work as a whole: the relationship between fathers and sons, and the conflict between business and personal ethics.]]> 112 Arthur Miller 0141185465 EJ 5 “I’m his father and he’s my son, and if there’s something bigger than that I’ll put a bullet in my head!�

]]> 3.90 1947 All My Sons
author: Arthur Miller
name: EJ
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1947
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: essentials, favorites, inspiring, plays, wtf
review:
“I’m his father and he’s my son, and if there’s something bigger than that I’ll put a bullet in my head!�


]]> Kafka on the Shore 4929 Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle—yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.]]> 467 Haruki Murakami 1400079276 EJ 0 to-read 4.14 2002 Kafka on the Shore
author: Haruki Murakami
name: EJ
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What I Talk About When I Talk About Running]]> 2195464
Equal parts training log, travelogue, and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers his four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon and takes us to places ranging from Tokyo’s Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston among young women who outpace him. Through this marvelous lens of sport emerges a panorama of memories and insights: the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer, his greatest triumphs and disappointments, his passion for vintage LPs, and the experience, after fifty, of seeing his race times improve and then fall back.

By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is rich and revelatory, both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in running.]]> 188 Haruki Murakami EJ 0 to-read 3.87 2007 What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
author: Haruki Murakami
name: EJ
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Seagull 35458041 112 Tom Stoppard 0802127711 EJ 5 “What I’ve realized, Kostya, is that, with us, whether we’re writers or actors, what really counts is not dreaming about fame and glory� but stamina: knowing how to keep going despite everything, and having faith in yourself—I’ve got faith in myself now and that’s helped the pain, and when I think to myself, ‘You’re on the stage!� then I’m not afraid of anything life can do to me.�

I’ve now read the four essential Chekhov plays, and, in a way, I’ve “read� this one before with Aaron Posner’s Stupid Fucking Bird (a sort-of adaptation), which will forever have a place in my heart as the play that I used to audition for Stella Adler, kickstarting this new phase of my life. But as I was reading The Seagull, specifically this Tom Stoppard version of the play, I kept thinking to myself, “man, this is THE Chekhov play, isn’t it?�

“You know, I’ve lived a pick-and-choose sort of life, plenty of variety, I’m not complaining, but let me tell you, if I’d ever experienced that transcendent feeling artists get in the moment of inspiration, then I believe I would have had nothing but contempt for my physical life and everything that goes with it and I’d have left the earth behind me and soared away into the skies.�

Maybe it’s where I find myself in my life, but the musings and dialogue of this play, and its characters� I love it all so much. There’s a caustic brutality that all these characters inadvertently inflict on one another, and it all comes from art, love, or the lack of (good) art and the absence of love. These characters ‘suffer,� but it’s technically not the greatest suffering imaginable � just broken hearts, unfulfilled dreams, and cuckolding right in front of your eyes.

“Loving without hope—waiting years on end for something, you don’t know what� Better off married and forget about love, I’ll have new troubles to blot out the old ones—and anyway, anything for a change. Shall we have another [drink]?�

It’s a comedy � or at least this was Chekhov’s original intention. As Stanislavski and other directors and ensembles tackled the piece over the years (after it was originally booed at its first performance in Russia), the play has taken on another life and identity of its own, and it’s viewed as tragic, dramatic, with such a sadboi central performance in Konstantin.

“Now promise me there’ll be no more (pulling an imaginary trigger) chk-chk! when I’m gone.�

It proves it comes down to performance and interpretation, because yes, this play is SO melodramatic. Characters� choices truly are justifiable, but sometimes you just need to slap them across the face to knock some sense into them. But someone needs to slap ME across the face sometimes, too; I get the struggle of all of these characters. Their musings are beautiful, and I think Tom Stoppard’s version of the text captures sentiments so tenderly that I found myself nodding along with and empathizing with on every page.

“Hm� here you are talking about fame and fortune and some interesting, brilliant life I’m supposed to be having, but I’m afraid these sweet thoughts mean no more to me than sweet cakes, which I never eat.�

Gosh, that Shakespeare in Central Park creative team? I didn’t realize that THIS version I picked out at the Drama Book Shop was the version that was directed by Mike Nichols, with Philip Seymour Hoffman (!) as Konstantin, Meryl Streep as Arkadina, Natalie Portman as Nina, Christopher Walken as Sorin, Kevin Kline as Trigorin� the entire cast is divine, and it made reading this play a little easier, just imagining in my head each of them performing.

Konstantin is just a little sadboi and I love him so much. I just know I can play Konstantin or Con in SFB one day; frankly, I possess the energy and can be convincing as a pouty, woe-is-me, pathetic creative. But I love all of these characters so much; poor Konstantin, poor Masha, poor Nina, poor Arkadina, poor Dorn� poor everybody.]]> 4.22 The Seagull
author: Tom Stoppard
name: EJ
average rating: 4.22
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/26
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: essentials, favorites, funny, inspiring, plays, stops-you-in-your-tracks, wtf
review:
“What I’ve realized, Kostya, is that, with us, whether we’re writers or actors, what really counts is not dreaming about fame and glory� but stamina: knowing how to keep going despite everything, and having faith in yourself—I’ve got faith in myself now and that’s helped the pain, and when I think to myself, ‘You’re on the stage!� then I’m not afraid of anything life can do to me.�

I’ve now read the four essential Chekhov plays, and, in a way, I’ve “read� this one before with Aaron Posner’s Stupid Fucking Bird (a sort-of adaptation), which will forever have a place in my heart as the play that I used to audition for Stella Adler, kickstarting this new phase of my life. But as I was reading The Seagull, specifically this Tom Stoppard version of the play, I kept thinking to myself, “man, this is THE Chekhov play, isn’t it?�

“You know, I’ve lived a pick-and-choose sort of life, plenty of variety, I’m not complaining, but let me tell you, if I’d ever experienced that transcendent feeling artists get in the moment of inspiration, then I believe I would have had nothing but contempt for my physical life and everything that goes with it and I’d have left the earth behind me and soared away into the skies.�

Maybe it’s where I find myself in my life, but the musings and dialogue of this play, and its characters� I love it all so much. There’s a caustic brutality that all these characters inadvertently inflict on one another, and it all comes from art, love, or the lack of (good) art and the absence of love. These characters ‘suffer,� but it’s technically not the greatest suffering imaginable � just broken hearts, unfulfilled dreams, and cuckolding right in front of your eyes.

“Loving without hope—waiting years on end for something, you don’t know what� Better off married and forget about love, I’ll have new troubles to blot out the old ones—and anyway, anything for a change. Shall we have another [drink]?�

It’s a comedy � or at least this was Chekhov’s original intention. As Stanislavski and other directors and ensembles tackled the piece over the years (after it was originally booed at its first performance in Russia), the play has taken on another life and identity of its own, and it’s viewed as tragic, dramatic, with such a sadboi central performance in Konstantin.

“Now promise me there’ll be no more (pulling an imaginary trigger) chk-chk! when I’m gone.�

It proves it comes down to performance and interpretation, because yes, this play is SO melodramatic. Characters� choices truly are justifiable, but sometimes you just need to slap them across the face to knock some sense into them. But someone needs to slap ME across the face sometimes, too; I get the struggle of all of these characters. Their musings are beautiful, and I think Tom Stoppard’s version of the text captures sentiments so tenderly that I found myself nodding along with and empathizing with on every page.

“Hm� here you are talking about fame and fortune and some interesting, brilliant life I’m supposed to be having, but I’m afraid these sweet thoughts mean no more to me than sweet cakes, which I never eat.�

Gosh, that Shakespeare in Central Park creative team? I didn’t realize that THIS version I picked out at the Drama Book Shop was the version that was directed by Mike Nichols, with Philip Seymour Hoffman (!) as Konstantin, Meryl Streep as Arkadina, Natalie Portman as Nina, Christopher Walken as Sorin, Kevin Kline as Trigorin� the entire cast is divine, and it made reading this play a little easier, just imagining in my head each of them performing.

Konstantin is just a little sadboi and I love him so much. I just know I can play Konstantin or Con in SFB one day; frankly, I possess the energy and can be convincing as a pouty, woe-is-me, pathetic creative. But I love all of these characters so much; poor Konstantin, poor Masha, poor Nina, poor Arkadina, poor Dorn� poor everybody.
]]> Less (Arthur Less, #1) 39927096 You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years now engaged to someone else. You can’t say yes--it would all be too awkward--and you can’t say no--it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of half-baked literary invitations you’ve received from around the world.

QUESTION: How do you arrange to skip town?

ANSWER: You accept them all.

If you are Arthur Less.

Thus begins an around-the-world-in-eighty-days fantasia that will take Arthur Less to Mexico, Italy, Germany, Morocco, India and Japan and put thousands of miles between him and the problems he refuses to face. What could possibly go wrong?

Well: Arthur will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Sahara sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and arrive in Japan too late for the cherry blossoms. In between: science fiction fans, crazed academics, emergency rooms, starlets, doctors, exes and, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to see. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. The second phase of life, as he thinks of it, falling behind him like the second phase of a rocket. There will be his first love. And there will be his last.

A love story, a satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart, by an author The New York Times has hailed as “inspired, lyrical,� “elegiac,� “ingenious,� as well as “too sappy by half,� Less shows a writer at the peak of his talents raising the curtain on our shared human comedy.]]> 273 Andrew Sean Greer EJ 0 to-read 3.61 2017 Less (Arthur Less, #1)
author: Andrew Sean Greer
name: EJ
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Beautyland 127282939 From the acclaimed author of Parakeet, Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a wise, tender novel about a woman who doesn't feel at home on Earth.

At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different: She possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings.

For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?

Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe. It is a remarkable evocation of the feeling of being in exile at home, and it introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times.]]> 327 Marie-Helene Bertino 0374109281 EJ 0 to-read 4.08 2024 Beautyland
author: Marie-Helene Bertino
name: EJ
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Detransition, Baby 48890225 A whipsmart debut about three women—transgender and cisgender—whose lives collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to confront their deepest desires around gender, motherhood, and sex.

Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.

Ames isn't happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese—and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames's boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she's pregnant with his baby—and that she's not sure whether she wants to keep it—Ames wonders if this is the chance he's been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family—and raise the baby together?

This provocative debut is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can't reach. Torrey Peters brilliantly and fearlessly navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships, gifting us a thrillingly original, witty, and deeply moving novel.]]> 337 Torrey Peters 0593133374 EJ 0 to-read 3.94 2021 Detransition, Baby
author: Torrey Peters
name: EJ
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Three Sisters 25330090 Chicago Tribune

"I've seen over a dozen Three Sisters, but never has the final scene . . . registered so hard. It's the cumulative effect of . . . searing truth-telling—from Letts, who knows family dysfunction as only the author of August: Osage County can, and Chekhov, the good doctor who diagnoses all our weaknesses that are so strong."�Chicago Theater Beat

When the champion of modern family drama takes on the genre's patriarch, the result is an energetic and vitalizing adaptation of one of Anton Chekhov's most beloved plays. A cruder, gruffer outline of the plight of the wistful Prozorov sisters serves to emphasize the anguish of their Chekhovian stagnation. This latest work from Letts envisions the revered classic through a fresh lens that revives the passionate characters and redoubles the tragic effect of their stunted dreams.

Tracy Letts was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play for August: Osage County. His other plays include Superior Donars; Pulitzer Prize-finalist Man from Nebraska; Killer Joe, which was adapted into a critically acclaimed film; and Bug, which has played in New York, Chicago and London and was adapted into a film. Letts garnered a Tony Award for his performance in the Broadway revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?]]> 96 Anton Chekhov 1559365056 EJ 5 “Quite a difference between now and then, don’t you think? And two or three hundred years from now, people will look at the way we lived and they will be horrified and they will laugh. Our world will seem bizarre and complex and hilarious. Oh, those people will have some life. That will be some life. What a mood I’m in. I want to live, goddamn it.�

I haven’t read a Tracy Letts play yet, but as I was reading this version of Chekhov’s Three Sisters (and the whiplash I felt after reading Mamet’s The Cherry Orchard just before), I felt immediately that I need to rectify the Letts issue. Absolutely loved this in the same vein as Annie Baker’s Uncle Vanya.

“Life will always be hard and mysterious and have the occasional happy day. A thousand years from now, people will still say “life is hard� and they’ll still be afraid to die.�

However, you can only read so much Chekhov in a row. It almost becomes darkly funny reading about all these bored, unfulfilled, depressed, and repressed white people... who don't do much but complain. But I only jest, because the characters are valid for thinking what they think, and Chekhov does a brilliant job of putting words to what we feel, and offering the right perspective to� deal with what we’re dealing with.

“…every day, I can feel my strength, my youth, fading by degrees. The only thing that gets stronger is the dream.�

I’m grateful for reading these Chekhov plays, truly. Especially Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters � I will be coming back to these a lot, or at least regurgitating (botching) the sentiments of these plays. I saw a movie with friends after reading The Cherry Orchard and Three Sisters back-to-back, and then we grabbed drinks; found myself talking about the essence of these plays. Now the characters in all of these plays for the most part kind of end their storylines on a ‘downbeat,� but I think the romantic thing to take away from these plays is that we can take the lessons learned and apply them to our next actions; to our next goals.

In the end, all of these characters want MORE, and while some of their circumstances deny them from ever achieving or reaching those goals or desires, I still think the idea of ‘hoping� for the better days or ‘dreaming� for those better days is the fuel to make you� fucking do something! Sometimes I get frustrated with these characters for just sitting around and moping, but given the intensity of their desires, you can’t blame them. I understand these characters, and I think that’s what Chekhov is best at! Because he’s writing about you and me, perhaps not on our best days. But it’s the human condition distilled.]]> 3.89 1900 Three Sisters
author: Anton Chekhov
name: EJ
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1900
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: essentials, favorites, plays, stops-you-in-your-tracks
review:
“Quite a difference between now and then, don’t you think? And two or three hundred years from now, people will look at the way we lived and they will be horrified and they will laugh. Our world will seem bizarre and complex and hilarious. Oh, those people will have some life. That will be some life. What a mood I’m in. I want to live, goddamn it.�

I haven’t read a Tracy Letts play yet, but as I was reading this version of Chekhov’s Three Sisters (and the whiplash I felt after reading Mamet’s The Cherry Orchard just before), I felt immediately that I need to rectify the Letts issue. Absolutely loved this in the same vein as Annie Baker’s Uncle Vanya.

“Life will always be hard and mysterious and have the occasional happy day. A thousand years from now, people will still say “life is hard� and they’ll still be afraid to die.�

However, you can only read so much Chekhov in a row. It almost becomes darkly funny reading about all these bored, unfulfilled, depressed, and repressed white people... who don't do much but complain. But I only jest, because the characters are valid for thinking what they think, and Chekhov does a brilliant job of putting words to what we feel, and offering the right perspective to� deal with what we’re dealing with.

“…every day, I can feel my strength, my youth, fading by degrees. The only thing that gets stronger is the dream.�

I’m grateful for reading these Chekhov plays, truly. Especially Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters � I will be coming back to these a lot, or at least regurgitating (botching) the sentiments of these plays. I saw a movie with friends after reading The Cherry Orchard and Three Sisters back-to-back, and then we grabbed drinks; found myself talking about the essence of these plays. Now the characters in all of these plays for the most part kind of end their storylines on a ‘downbeat,� but I think the romantic thing to take away from these plays is that we can take the lessons learned and apply them to our next actions; to our next goals.

In the end, all of these characters want MORE, and while some of their circumstances deny them from ever achieving or reaching those goals or desires, I still think the idea of ‘hoping� for the better days or ‘dreaming� for those better days is the fuel to make you� fucking do something! Sometimes I get frustrated with these characters for just sitting around and moping, but given the intensity of their desires, you can’t blame them. I understand these characters, and I think that’s what Chekhov is best at! Because he’s writing about you and me, perhaps not on our best days. But it’s the human condition distilled.
]]> The Cherry Orchard 249146 91 Anton Chekhov 080213002X EJ 4 “I love this house. And without my orchard, what is my life? And if they must sell it, let them sell me, too. My darling. My son drowned here � take pity on me.�

Nothing like constantly needing to flip back to the list of characters as I went through the first act, trying to remind myself “who is who.� I know this is typical of Russian literature and drama. "Who is complaining now?" Lol.

“Who are you? Nietzsche?�

Quickly setting the scene, this play is about a family who needs to sell their estate, which includes a treasured cherry orchard, due to debts too large to get by in this cruel world. The characters come and go, musing about work, society, money, and how these rigid, ‘soulless� entities affect the things that really matter, like love, family, connection.

Loved characters like Lyubov and Trofimov; despite Lyubov’s debt, her instinct is to help strangers. She gets lambasted for giving away GOLD to someone who begged and she quickly shames herself for doing so; reckless, maybe, but her heart is in the right place. Trofimov I connected with because of hyper-specific monologues that sounded like ME.

“Trust in me. Anya, I am not yet thirty. I know I am young, and I am still a student but I have seen much � endured much. Hunger� Summer and winter� I have been sick. Worried� wondering� Everywhere. Day and night, I felt it. I� and it is coming� Throbbing in me. Happiness. I see it, Anya.�
“The moon is rising.�
“Yes. The moon is rising. And a better time is coming. A happier time. Nearer, nearer� Perhaps we will live to see it. And if we do not it does not matter. Others will after us.�

I realized after I read both The Cherry Orchard and Three Sisters back to back, “oh, every Chekhov play must be about the same exact thing.� But the beautiful thing is that these are representations of life. They’re not sexy, they have the real-life anxieties and worries, and they express the desires that sit inside all of us; maybe we’re not happy now, but we have hope that one day, even if just in our dreams, we can feel that joy.

Appreciated David Mamet’s version of this play; to tell you the truth, this is my first “Mamet� if this even counts. Something about his version that I didn’t find as easy to read as Annie Baker’s Uncle Vanya or Tracy Letts� Three Sisters, but maybe that’s just The Cherry Orchard itself? Who knows. I’d have to compare by reading someone else’s version of the play.]]> 3.57 1903 The Cherry Orchard
author: Anton Chekhov
name: EJ
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1903
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: plays, stops-you-in-your-tracks
review:
“I love this house. And without my orchard, what is my life? And if they must sell it, let them sell me, too. My darling. My son drowned here � take pity on me.�

Nothing like constantly needing to flip back to the list of characters as I went through the first act, trying to remind myself “who is who.� I know this is typical of Russian literature and drama. "Who is complaining now?" Lol.

“Who are you? Nietzsche?�

Quickly setting the scene, this play is about a family who needs to sell their estate, which includes a treasured cherry orchard, due to debts too large to get by in this cruel world. The characters come and go, musing about work, society, money, and how these rigid, ‘soulless� entities affect the things that really matter, like love, family, connection.

Loved characters like Lyubov and Trofimov; despite Lyubov’s debt, her instinct is to help strangers. She gets lambasted for giving away GOLD to someone who begged and she quickly shames herself for doing so; reckless, maybe, but her heart is in the right place. Trofimov I connected with because of hyper-specific monologues that sounded like ME.

“Trust in me. Anya, I am not yet thirty. I know I am young, and I am still a student but I have seen much � endured much. Hunger� Summer and winter� I have been sick. Worried� wondering� Everywhere. Day and night, I felt it. I� and it is coming� Throbbing in me. Happiness. I see it, Anya.�
“The moon is rising.�
“Yes. The moon is rising. And a better time is coming. A happier time. Nearer, nearer� Perhaps we will live to see it. And if we do not it does not matter. Others will after us.�

I realized after I read both The Cherry Orchard and Three Sisters back to back, “oh, every Chekhov play must be about the same exact thing.� But the beautiful thing is that these are representations of life. They’re not sexy, they have the real-life anxieties and worries, and they express the desires that sit inside all of us; maybe we’re not happy now, but we have hope that one day, even if just in our dreams, we can feel that joy.

Appreciated David Mamet’s version of this play; to tell you the truth, this is my first “Mamet� if this even counts. Something about his version that I didn’t find as easy to read as Annie Baker’s Uncle Vanya or Tracy Letts� Three Sisters, but maybe that’s just The Cherry Orchard itself? Who knows. I’d have to compare by reading someone else’s version of the play.
]]> Disgraced 17801667 79 Ayad Akhtar 1472532090 EJ 0 to-read 3.83 2013 Disgraced
author: Ayad Akhtar
name: EJ
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Trust 58210933 An unparalleled novel about money, power, intimacy, and perception

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly boundless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.

Hernan Diaz's TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation.

At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.]]> 402 Hernan Diaz 0593420314 EJ 0 to-read 3.77 2022 Trust
author: Hernan Diaz
name: EJ
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Downstate 44162995
Bruce Norris's new play Downstate zeroes in on the limits of our compassion and what happens when society deems anyone beyond forgiveness.]]> 96 Bruce Norris 1848428197 EJ 0 to-read 4.24 Downstate
author: Bruce Norris
name: EJ
average rating: 4.24
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Letters to a Young Poet 46199
A hugely influential collection for writers and artists of all kinds, Rilke's profound and lyrical letters to a young friend advise on writing, love, sex, suffering and the nature of advice itself.]]> 80 Rainer Maria Rilke 0486422453 EJ 5 "Why should you want to exclude from your life all unsettling, all pain, all depression of spirit, when you don't know what work it is these states are performing within you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where it all comes from and where it is leading? You well know you are in a period of transition and want nothing more than to be transformed. If there is something ailing in the way you go about things, then remember that sickness is the means by which an organism rids itself of something foreign to it. All one has to do is help it to be ill, to have its whole illness and let it break it out, for that is how it mends itself."

Beautiful. Absolutely marvelous. As Rilke says himself in his letters to Franz Kappus, he read and re-read the correspondences Kappus made to him; so I myself will read and re-read Rilke's letters to Kappus. They are chock full of inspiration, even if Rilke himself wasn't in much of the mood to inspire at all times. Wisdom through pain; wisdom through seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. But it's wisdom nonetheless, and very much worth digesting and sitting with. For anyone with a desire -- perhaps the burden -- to create, to make art, to make sense of this ridiculous world we live in.

“There is nothing less apt to touch a work of art than critical words: all we end up with there is more or less felicitous misunderstandings.�

Found myself laughing in agreement with the sentiments Rilke was expressing; at times I felt closer to Rilke, but maybe that's just wishful thinking. Reading how Rilke was acknowledging Kappus' deep sadness and solitude, perhaps there are many moments where I've felt like Kappus himself. That he reached out to Rilke in the first place is beautiful in and of itself, and as a result, ten wondrous letters that will outlive us all, enchanting wayward souls for millennia.

Rilke talks mostly about 'why do you want to write?' Will you die without expressing those thoughts? If so, then dive in. But you can apply this to any form of art, really. 'Why do I want to act?' Why do I want to create? Will I die if I don't unleash these thoughts or feelings? I really think I might. I probably have a problem, but I've found that art can save me, and I've witnessed it save others; these letters are proof of that saving-ability for at least Rilke and Kappus, despite the wells of sadness that come from the doubt, that come from the loneliness that deep examinations of art and creation require.

Lean into your everyday life, what makes you special and different than others (even if it's not much). Take refuge in what is unique to you. Because you're you. Thank you, Rilke. Thank you, Kappus.

"And if I have anything else to say to you it is this: do not think that the person who is trying to console you lives effortlessly among the simple, quiet words that sometimes make you feel better. His life is full of troubles and sadness and falls far short of them. But if it were any different he could never have found the words that he did."]]> 4.32 1929 Letters to a Young Poet
author: Rainer Maria Rilke
name: EJ
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1929
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/11
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves: essentials, favorites, inspiring, stops-you-in-your-tracks
review:
"Why should you want to exclude from your life all unsettling, all pain, all depression of spirit, when you don't know what work it is these states are performing within you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where it all comes from and where it is leading? You well know you are in a period of transition and want nothing more than to be transformed. If there is something ailing in the way you go about things, then remember that sickness is the means by which an organism rids itself of something foreign to it. All one has to do is help it to be ill, to have its whole illness and let it break it out, for that is how it mends itself."

Beautiful. Absolutely marvelous. As Rilke says himself in his letters to Franz Kappus, he read and re-read the correspondences Kappus made to him; so I myself will read and re-read Rilke's letters to Kappus. They are chock full of inspiration, even if Rilke himself wasn't in much of the mood to inspire at all times. Wisdom through pain; wisdom through seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. But it's wisdom nonetheless, and very much worth digesting and sitting with. For anyone with a desire -- perhaps the burden -- to create, to make art, to make sense of this ridiculous world we live in.

“There is nothing less apt to touch a work of art than critical words: all we end up with there is more or less felicitous misunderstandings.�

Found myself laughing in agreement with the sentiments Rilke was expressing; at times I felt closer to Rilke, but maybe that's just wishful thinking. Reading how Rilke was acknowledging Kappus' deep sadness and solitude, perhaps there are many moments where I've felt like Kappus himself. That he reached out to Rilke in the first place is beautiful in and of itself, and as a result, ten wondrous letters that will outlive us all, enchanting wayward souls for millennia.

Rilke talks mostly about 'why do you want to write?' Will you die without expressing those thoughts? If so, then dive in. But you can apply this to any form of art, really. 'Why do I want to act?' Why do I want to create? Will I die if I don't unleash these thoughts or feelings? I really think I might. I probably have a problem, but I've found that art can save me, and I've witnessed it save others; these letters are proof of that saving-ability for at least Rilke and Kappus, despite the wells of sadness that come from the doubt, that come from the loneliness that deep examinations of art and creation require.

Lean into your everyday life, what makes you special and different than others (even if it's not much). Take refuge in what is unique to you. Because you're you. Thank you, Rilke. Thank you, Kappus.

"And if I have anything else to say to you it is this: do not think that the person who is trying to console you lives effortlessly among the simple, quiet words that sometimes make you feel better. His life is full of troubles and sadness and falls far short of them. But if it were any different he could never have found the words that he did."
]]> Buried Child 12137 Buried Child is as fierce and unforgettable as it was when it was first produced more than twenty-five years ago.

A scene of madness greets Vince and his girlfriend as they arrive at the squalid farmhouse of Vince's hard-drinking grandparents, who seem to have no idea who he is. Nor does his father, Tilden, a hulking former All-American footballer, or his uncle, who has lost one of his legs to a chain saw. Only the memory of an unwanted child, buried in an undisclosed location, can hope to deliver this family.]]> 120 Sam Shepard 0307274977 EJ 5 “We can’t not believe in something. We can’t stop believing. We just end up dying if we stop. Just end up dead.�

Within the first five pages of reading this, I already thought to myself, “where has Sam Shepard been my whole life?� Thank you again to my acting technique teacher Josh for recommending Shepard to me. True West was brilliant, and Buried Child, which won the Pulitzer for Drama in 1979, was just as amazing.

Gobsmacked with the writing in this beautiful play, with such subtle brutality. I thought to myself, “man, every play I’m reading is the same,� but it’s just poetic that I decided to pick three plays to read in recent months that are soul siblings � Long Day’s Journey Into Night by O’Neill, Death of a Salesman by Miller, and now Buried Child by Shepard. Three essential American plays, and with themes and characters that’ll stay with me forever, and that will inform all future art! Because everything does come back to family, to dreams.

“He’s not my flesh and blood! My flesh and blood’s buried in the backyard!�

That ending! Holy cow. I was a tad confused, but I got the soul of what was communicated. I absolutely respect how subtle the writing is; the words do so much, and with all the dialogue in the play, there are a few pointed, crucial lines that change EVERYTHING. The last couple pages, I had to stop and just visualize what I think the stage would look like with everything happening. Who’s being acknowledged, who’s not being acknowledged. How much of this� is real? There’s a casual surrealism that is quite lovely (and scary) that I’m curious how it’d be staged.

“I don’t want to talk!�
“You don’t wanna die do you?�
“No, I don’t wanna die either.�
“Well, you gotta talk or you’ll die.�
“Who told you that?�
“That’s what I know. I found that out in New Mexico. I thought I was dying but I just lost my voice.�

Maybe watching the play would actually make it a little less vague. Because there’s a huge event that I didn’t immediately pick up on until finishing and reflecting and reading some takes on the play. I knew that the “buried child� was important to a couple characters (and why they were resented or loved), but the big, uh, twist or reveal. It was beyond me. I still was quite shaken by the play without realizing, but fuck, man. Heavy stuff.

Thinking of Vince, Shelly, Dodge, Tilden, Halie, Bradley� six characters with such rich backgrounds and objectives that they’re each after. They all dreamed of something. And none of them are getting it. You may think it’s the hope or dream that kills you, but hope most importantly sustains (as The Iceman Cometh emphasized). You gotta dream. You gotta have something to look forward to.

Loving Sam Shepard. I have a book of seven plays by him, and I’ll just keep at it! They were organized like this for a reason.]]> 3.87 1979 Buried Child
author: Sam Shepard
name: EJ
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1979
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/03
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: essentials, favorites, plays, stops-you-in-your-tracks, wtf
review:
“We can’t not believe in something. We can’t stop believing. We just end up dying if we stop. Just end up dead.�

Within the first five pages of reading this, I already thought to myself, “where has Sam Shepard been my whole life?� Thank you again to my acting technique teacher Josh for recommending Shepard to me. True West was brilliant, and Buried Child, which won the Pulitzer for Drama in 1979, was just as amazing.

Gobsmacked with the writing in this beautiful play, with such subtle brutality. I thought to myself, “man, every play I’m reading is the same,� but it’s just poetic that I decided to pick three plays to read in recent months that are soul siblings � Long Day’s Journey Into Night by O’Neill, Death of a Salesman by Miller, and now Buried Child by Shepard. Three essential American plays, and with themes and characters that’ll stay with me forever, and that will inform all future art! Because everything does come back to family, to dreams.

“He’s not my flesh and blood! My flesh and blood’s buried in the backyard!�

That ending! Holy cow. I was a tad confused, but I got the soul of what was communicated. I absolutely respect how subtle the writing is; the words do so much, and with all the dialogue in the play, there are a few pointed, crucial lines that change EVERYTHING. The last couple pages, I had to stop and just visualize what I think the stage would look like with everything happening. Who’s being acknowledged, who’s not being acknowledged. How much of this� is real? There’s a casual surrealism that is quite lovely (and scary) that I’m curious how it’d be staged.

“I don’t want to talk!�
“You don’t wanna die do you?�
“No, I don’t wanna die either.�
“Well, you gotta talk or you’ll die.�
“Who told you that?�
“That’s what I know. I found that out in New Mexico. I thought I was dying but I just lost my voice.�

Maybe watching the play would actually make it a little less vague. Because there’s a huge event that I didn’t immediately pick up on until finishing and reflecting and reading some takes on the play. I knew that the “buried child� was important to a couple characters (and why they were resented or loved), but the big, uh, twist or reveal. It was beyond me. I still was quite shaken by the play without realizing, but fuck, man. Heavy stuff.

Thinking of Vince, Shelly, Dodge, Tilden, Halie, Bradley� six characters with such rich backgrounds and objectives that they’re each after. They all dreamed of something. And none of them are getting it. You may think it’s the hope or dream that kills you, but hope most importantly sustains (as The Iceman Cometh emphasized). You gotta dream. You gotta have something to look forward to.

Loving Sam Shepard. I have a book of seven plays by him, and I’ll just keep at it! They were organized like this for a reason.
]]> <![CDATA[All the Women in My Brain: And Other Concerns]]> 59808040 Like Jenny Lawson and Caitlin Moran, Emmy-nominated actress and writer Betty Gilpin delivers a lightning-strike dispatch of hilarious, intimate, and luminous essays on how to navigate this weird and wondrous life.

Betty Gilpin has a brain full of women. There’s Blanche VonFuckery, Ingrid St. Rash, and a host of others—some cowering in sweatpants, some howling plans for revolution, and some, oh God, and some…slowly vomiting up a crow without breaking eye contact? Jesus. These women take turns at the wheel. That’s why Betty feels like a million selves. With a raised eyebrow and a soul-scalpel, she tells us how she got this way.

Betty has depression, Betty has a dream, Betty has tits the size of printers. She has debilitating shame and then, impossibly, a tiny voice saying what if. She takes us from wild dissections of modern womanhood to boarding school to the glossy cringe of Hollywood. We laugh through the failures (monologue to beagle! Ancient mentors proposing fellatio!) and quietly hope with her for the dream. Whether that dream is love or liberation or enough iMDb credits to tase the demon snapping at her ankles, we won’t know until the shit-fanning end. There’s Hamlet, there’s self-sabotage, there’s PTSD from turkey. Stunning, candid, and laugh-out-loud funny, All the Women in My Brain is perfect for any reader who’s ever felt like they were more, or at least weirder, than the world expected.]]> 256 Betty Gilpin 1250795788 EJ 0 to-read 3.91 2022 All the Women in My Brain: And Other Concerns
author: Betty Gilpin
name: EJ
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)]]> 52397
Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.

When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.]]> 345 Octavia E. Butler 0446675504 EJ 0 to-read 4.21 1993 Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: EJ
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Sluts 51587 The Sluts chronicles the evolution of one young escort's date with a satisfied client into a metafiction of pornography, lies, half-truths, and myth. Explicit, shocking, comical, and displaying the author's signature flair for blending structural complexity with direct, stylish, accessible language, The Sluts is Cooper's most transgressive novel since Frisk, and one of his most innovative works of fiction to date.]]> 263 Dennis Cooper 0786716746 EJ 0 to-read 3.79 2004 The Sluts
author: Dennis Cooper
name: EJ
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Closer: A Play 51670 123 Patrick Marber 0802136451 EJ 5 “Don’t b a pussy. Life without riskisdeath. Desire,like the world,is am accident. The bestsex is anon. We liv as we dream,ALONE. I’ll make u cum like a train.�

Lol. In the context of the play, the above is an online chatroom that two of the characters, uh, participate in. But there’s a lot of truth in its crudeness! Which is what this play is about: the reckoning with the truth, with the impulses and desires that rage within us. Knowledge of the truth, of this perversion that exists within us (maybe some with more intensity than others), does not bring us “closer� together. In this case, it’s like what that Chevy Impala band said, “the less I know the better.�

“Deception is brutal, I’m not pretending otherwise.�

The dialogue is quick, it’s sharp, it’s biting, it’s hilarious. There’s a cruelty that exists, and these characters are trapped in this vortex where they’re consciously or unconsciously pulled toward each other. All of this chaos started with a fated (cursed?) car accident, and over several years, the characters bump into each other over and over like the end of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.

“Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off. But it’s better if you do.�

Fall Out Boy and Panic! At the Disco mined so much of their HITS from this play. Can only imagine the fellas all sitting around, watching the Mike Nichols movie, and� taking the wrong things from the film, lol. Oh, the early-to-mid 2000s�

“You’re a man, you’d come if the tooth fairy winked at you.�

Yes, I’ve also seen the Nichols film, and that was my first exposure to Closer. It was a lot of fun to read the play; which was quite faithfully adapted from what I remember. This semester at Adler, there’ve been a few scenes from this play assigned for our Scene Study class. Technically I haven’t been assigned a scene, but there’s a possibility I can sub in to replace a classmate who may or may not be asked to leave -- whatever happens, I wish him the best; I love the guy. I’m just taking the initiative to read this play in the event that I’m asked to play Larry.

“He spends hours staring up my arsehole like there’s going to be some answer there. Any ideas, Anna?�

It’s a great scene, and let’s be honest, not really a character I could / should play, but for ONE scene, I can embody the carnal beast that is Larry. He has some delicious, piercing slashes of dialogue that he hurls at Dan.

“Everyone wants to be happy.�
“Depressives don’t. They want to be unhappy to confirm they’re depressed. If they were happy they couldn’t be depressed any more, they’d have to go out into the world and live, which can be� depressing.�

The beats and silences do a lot of work, but this is verbal warfare. Not many monologues or diatribes; there’s such a music to the dialogue that makes it so quick to read. Usually just different variations of the two-person combos that can engage among the four-person cast. The truth will not set you free in Closer. But we need to know the truth, even though all evidences suggests it won’t help any of us.

“What’s so great about the truth? Try lying for a change � it’s the currency of the world.�

“Get a lot of men in here, crying their guts out?�
“Occupational hazard.�]]> 3.97 1997 Closer: A Play
author: Patrick Marber
name: EJ
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/25
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: essentials, favorites, funny, plays, wtf
review:
“Don’t b a pussy. Life without riskisdeath. Desire,like the world,is am accident. The bestsex is anon. We liv as we dream,ALONE. I’ll make u cum like a train.�

Lol. In the context of the play, the above is an online chatroom that two of the characters, uh, participate in. But there’s a lot of truth in its crudeness! Which is what this play is about: the reckoning with the truth, with the impulses and desires that rage within us. Knowledge of the truth, of this perversion that exists within us (maybe some with more intensity than others), does not bring us “closer� together. In this case, it’s like what that Chevy Impala band said, “the less I know the better.�

“Deception is brutal, I’m not pretending otherwise.�

The dialogue is quick, it’s sharp, it’s biting, it’s hilarious. There’s a cruelty that exists, and these characters are trapped in this vortex where they’re consciously or unconsciously pulled toward each other. All of this chaos started with a fated (cursed?) car accident, and over several years, the characters bump into each other over and over like the end of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.

“Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off. But it’s better if you do.�

Fall Out Boy and Panic! At the Disco mined so much of their HITS from this play. Can only imagine the fellas all sitting around, watching the Mike Nichols movie, and� taking the wrong things from the film, lol. Oh, the early-to-mid 2000s�

“You’re a man, you’d come if the tooth fairy winked at you.�

Yes, I’ve also seen the Nichols film, and that was my first exposure to Closer. It was a lot of fun to read the play; which was quite faithfully adapted from what I remember. This semester at Adler, there’ve been a few scenes from this play assigned for our Scene Study class. Technically I haven’t been assigned a scene, but there’s a possibility I can sub in to replace a classmate who may or may not be asked to leave -- whatever happens, I wish him the best; I love the guy. I’m just taking the initiative to read this play in the event that I’m asked to play Larry.

“He spends hours staring up my arsehole like there’s going to be some answer there. Any ideas, Anna?�

It’s a great scene, and let’s be honest, not really a character I could / should play, but for ONE scene, I can embody the carnal beast that is Larry. He has some delicious, piercing slashes of dialogue that he hurls at Dan.

“Everyone wants to be happy.�
“Depressives don’t. They want to be unhappy to confirm they’re depressed. If they were happy they couldn’t be depressed any more, they’d have to go out into the world and live, which can be� depressing.�

The beats and silences do a lot of work, but this is verbal warfare. Not many monologues or diatribes; there’s such a music to the dialogue that makes it so quick to read. Usually just different variations of the two-person combos that can engage among the four-person cast. The truth will not set you free in Closer. But we need to know the truth, even though all evidences suggests it won’t help any of us.

“What’s so great about the truth? Try lying for a change � it’s the currency of the world.�

“Get a lot of men in here, crying their guts out?�
“Occupational hazard.�
]]> <![CDATA[A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda]]> 200201076 288 Carrie Rickey 0393866769 EJ 0 to-read 3.99 2024 A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda
author: Carrie Rickey
name: EJ
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Bright Room Called Day 298112 Washington Post

“A juggernaut of a play.� -San Francisco Weekly

“Unabashedly political, thought-provoking, a little scary and frequently a good deal of theatrical fun� intoxicatingly visionary.� –Sid Smith, Chicago Tribune

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner’s powerful portrayal of individual resolution, irresolution and dissolution in the face of political catastrophe, A Bright Room Called Day follows a group of artists and political activists struggling to preserve themselves in 1930s Berlin as the Weimar Republic surrenders to the seduction of fascism. Often exquisitely lyrical, always exhilaratingly intelligent, the poetic world of the play moves beyond the bounds of historical reality with the morally outraged outpourings of a contemporary New York woman. Her fury at the Reagan and British presidencies brings into stark relief the discomfiting similarities between then and now, and challenges us to remember that although evil may seem inevitable, it is never irresistible.

Tony Kushner’s plays include Angels in America; Hydriotaphia, or the Death of Dr. Brown; The Illusion, adapted from the play by Pierre Cornelle; Slavs!; A Bright Room Called Day; Homebody/Kabul; Caroline, or Change, a musical with composer Jeanine Tesori; and The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures. He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols’s film of Angels in America and for Steven Spielberg’s Munich and Lincoln. His books include The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present; Brundibar, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak; and Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, co-edited with Alisa Solomon.
Among many honors, Kushner is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, two Evening Standard Awards, an Olivier Award, an Emmy Award, two Oscar nominations, and the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. He lives in Manhattan with his husband, Mark Harris.
]]> 183 Tony Kushner 155936078X EJ 5 “I am not a camera; I would like to be a camera; or maybe something more I don’t know participatory than a camera even, but instead I am the Zombie Graduate Student of the Living Dead.�

My Angels in America scene partner Romeo is a HUGE Tony Kushner fan / expert. Kushner is their favorite playwright (please correct me if I’m misquoting you, Romeo � you follow me here on ŷ). Romeo also performed as Baz from this play at our first day of conservatory showcase, and when I got to that part of the play, it hit me doubly hard, knowing the context of the play and the purgatorial circumstance that the characters find themselves in, being in Germany during the time when Hitler is rising to power.

“History repeats itself, see, first as tragedy, then as farce.�

It’s a tragic play, as I discussed with Romeo tonight in class. There’s a defeat that permeates; it’s tough to read now, especially with Trump coming to power for his second term in the US. But it’s never been more relevant. In fact, Kushner said that no one wanted to produce it for decades until Trump won his first term for President that he re-wrote it with a contemporary lens. The version I read, however, was Romeo’s personal copy (which was the 90s version).

I see no reason to be ashamed. In the face of genuine hopelessness one has no choice but to gracefully surrender reason to the angelic hosts of the irrational. They alone bring solace and comfort, for which we say, in times of distress, “Hosannah and who needs science?�

As Hitler comes to power, the characters discuss the futility of their actions. Though they stand for what they deem morally correct or acceptable, society (or at least the masses) tells them, “nice try, but, nope!� It’s hard to live your truth when fascists prey on the tired, hungry, angry, and therefore easily-manipulated populace with empty promises and harmful practices.

“Art� is never enough, it never does enough. We will be remembered for two things: Our communist art, and our fascist politics.�

Watching each of the characters fold under Nazi pressure or self-destruct due to disappointment from the world is tragic, but it’s hard to blame any of them.

“Our humanity,� he said to himself, “is defined through our struggle to overcome nature.�

Such an intellectual play. I loved how much it made me think as well as the philosophical debates. Art is certainly necessary, but some of its job is for us to educate ourselves and take in the pain � like Jane’s takeaway in Max Wolf-Friedlich’s play Job: the only way for us to take the darkness out of the world is to take it in and� suffer with it. Perhaps the knowledge seeps into our subconscious and slowly we’re radicalized to eventually� do something about the fucking bullshit of this world.]]> 3.97 1994 A Bright Room Called Day
author: Tony Kushner
name: EJ
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1994
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/25
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves: essentials, favorites, inspiring, plays, stops-you-in-your-tracks
review:
“I am not a camera; I would like to be a camera; or maybe something more I don’t know participatory than a camera even, but instead I am the Zombie Graduate Student of the Living Dead.�

My Angels in America scene partner Romeo is a HUGE Tony Kushner fan / expert. Kushner is their favorite playwright (please correct me if I’m misquoting you, Romeo � you follow me here on ŷ). Romeo also performed as Baz from this play at our first day of conservatory showcase, and when I got to that part of the play, it hit me doubly hard, knowing the context of the play and the purgatorial circumstance that the characters find themselves in, being in Germany during the time when Hitler is rising to power.

“History repeats itself, see, first as tragedy, then as farce.�

It’s a tragic play, as I discussed with Romeo tonight in class. There’s a defeat that permeates; it’s tough to read now, especially with Trump coming to power for his second term in the US. But it’s never been more relevant. In fact, Kushner said that no one wanted to produce it for decades until Trump won his first term for President that he re-wrote it with a contemporary lens. The version I read, however, was Romeo’s personal copy (which was the 90s version).

I see no reason to be ashamed. In the face of genuine hopelessness one has no choice but to gracefully surrender reason to the angelic hosts of the irrational. They alone bring solace and comfort, for which we say, in times of distress, “Hosannah and who needs science?�

As Hitler comes to power, the characters discuss the futility of their actions. Though they stand for what they deem morally correct or acceptable, society (or at least the masses) tells them, “nice try, but, nope!� It’s hard to live your truth when fascists prey on the tired, hungry, angry, and therefore easily-manipulated populace with empty promises and harmful practices.

“Art� is never enough, it never does enough. We will be remembered for two things: Our communist art, and our fascist politics.�

Watching each of the characters fold under Nazi pressure or self-destruct due to disappointment from the world is tragic, but it’s hard to blame any of them.

“Our humanity,� he said to himself, “is defined through our struggle to overcome nature.�

Such an intellectual play. I loved how much it made me think as well as the philosophical debates. Art is certainly necessary, but some of its job is for us to educate ourselves and take in the pain � like Jane’s takeaway in Max Wolf-Friedlich’s play Job: the only way for us to take the darkness out of the world is to take it in and� suffer with it. Perhaps the knowledge seeps into our subconscious and slowly we’re radicalized to eventually� do something about the fucking bullshit of this world.
]]> <![CDATA[You're on an Airplane: A Self-Mythologizing Memoir]]> 34002007 Dazed and Confused, Party Girl, and You've Got Mail, and her recurring roles in Christopher Guest's mockumentaries, including his most recent, Mascots, on Netflix.

With remarkable candor and a refreshing perspective on life in the spotlight, Posey opens up about the art of acting, life on the set, and the realities of its accompanying fame. She explores her relationships with brilliant directors like Christopher Guest and Woody Allen, as well as the nerves and expectations that come with the territory. A funny and authentic childhood prepared Posey for a life of creating and entertaining, which not only extends to acting but to the craft of pottery, sewing, collage, yoga and cooking, all of which readers will find in this highly entertaining book. In You're On an Airplane, Posey delves into her personal style--unique, famously inspiring, and never indebted to trends--as well as her approach to everyday life on and off set. Laugh-out-loud advice from her legendary Greenwich Village therapist Mildred Newman appears alongside poignant portrayals of painful relationships and the love she has for her dog, Gracie. For fans of Nora Ephron's spot-on commentary, Jenny Lawson's absurdly comical foibles, Amy Sedaris's unexpectedly hilarious quips, and Carrie Brownstein's cool-girl appeal, You're On an Airplane proves Posey has a voice that will enchant fans and old and new alike.]]> 320 Parker Posey 0735218196 EJ 0 to-read 3.14 2018 You're on an Airplane: A Self-Mythologizing Memoir
author: Parker Posey
name: EJ
average rating: 3.14
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> True West 206893 71 Sam Shepard EJ 5 “There’s no such thing as the West anymore! It’s a dead issue! It’s dried up, Saul, and so are you.�

Well hello Sam Shepard! My Acting Technique teacher Josh told me specifically to read some Sam Shepard, in regards to building a repertoire of monologues. He told me in class that I have a strong imagination, and Sam Shepard writes a lot of characters who possess that imagination, that desire, that capacity to dream� who are then crushed by circumstances, bad timing, or whatever else it may be.

“Nobody can disappear. The old man tried that. Look where it got him. He lost his teeth.�

I was smiling reading this (despite its intense thematic material � it was because of the style and the beautiful dialogue), and I read it in one sitting at the Shakespeare & Co. in the Upper West Side after watching Juror #2 and killing time before Friday class. Was so moved by it that I even emailed Josh when I got off the subway, “You were right about Sam Shepard!� I said a bit more in the email, too. I can’t help myself. I yap.

“Is that the correct criminal psychology? Not to think of the victims?�
“What victims?�

Austin and Lee are brothers, with each possessing an intangible skill that the other desperately wants � they don’t give each other an inch at first, during their first reunion in five years. Immensely loved both characters; so rich, so layered. I gotta say, I’m definitely Austin of the pairing. His monologue about the Chop Suey and his dad’s teeth� amazing. I immediately pinned that. His arc, my lord.

The ending made me audibly say, “wow� at the bookstore cafe. Such a tragic, tragic ending. Obviously the appropriate ending, but still incredibly shocking and raw. And it just ends! Not a second wasted.

“I mean I can tell ya� a story off the tongue but I can’t put it down on paper. That don’t make any difference though does it?�
“No, not really.�
“I mean plenty a� guys have stories don’t they? True-life stories. Musta� been a lota� movies made from real life.�

So, Sam Shepard and Patti Smith were briefly an item. The two of them made an indelible impact on each other with their artistic journeys. Sam Shepard has a rock-and-roll sensibility, and the music and attitude lives and breathes in his words, in his scenes. I couldn’t help but think that Shepard is like Ernest Hemingway, if Hemingway was around for rock-and-roll instead of jazz. But I brought up Patti Smith because I’m using one of her poems for my Voice & Speech class; love the interconnectedness of everything this semester and everything so far at Stella Adler!

Doubly thankful for Josh to have recommended me Sam Shepard; I can really see myself living in a world of Sam Shepard -- THIS PLAY! I bought a book that has seven of his plays. True West was the first one, and next is Buried Child. Sooooo excited for that one. Won the Pulitzer in �79!

“You could call the police. That’d be the obvious thing.�
“You’re my brother.�
“That don’t mean a thing. You go down to the LA Police Department there and ask them what kinda� people kill each other the most. What do you think they’d say?�
“Who said anything about killing?�
“Family people. Brothers. Brothers-in-law. Cousins. Real American-type people. They kill each other in the heat mostly. In the Smog-Alerts. In the Brush Fire Season. Right about this time a� year.�]]> 3.72 1981 True West
author: Sam Shepard
name: EJ
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1981
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/15
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: essentials, favorites, inspiring, plays, stops-you-in-your-tracks
review:
“There’s no such thing as the West anymore! It’s a dead issue! It’s dried up, Saul, and so are you.�

Well hello Sam Shepard! My Acting Technique teacher Josh told me specifically to read some Sam Shepard, in regards to building a repertoire of monologues. He told me in class that I have a strong imagination, and Sam Shepard writes a lot of characters who possess that imagination, that desire, that capacity to dream� who are then crushed by circumstances, bad timing, or whatever else it may be.

“Nobody can disappear. The old man tried that. Look where it got him. He lost his teeth.�

I was smiling reading this (despite its intense thematic material � it was because of the style and the beautiful dialogue), and I read it in one sitting at the Shakespeare & Co. in the Upper West Side after watching Juror #2 and killing time before Friday class. Was so moved by it that I even emailed Josh when I got off the subway, “You were right about Sam Shepard!� I said a bit more in the email, too. I can’t help myself. I yap.

“Is that the correct criminal psychology? Not to think of the victims?�
“What victims?�

Austin and Lee are brothers, with each possessing an intangible skill that the other desperately wants � they don’t give each other an inch at first, during their first reunion in five years. Immensely loved both characters; so rich, so layered. I gotta say, I’m definitely Austin of the pairing. His monologue about the Chop Suey and his dad’s teeth� amazing. I immediately pinned that. His arc, my lord.

The ending made me audibly say, “wow� at the bookstore cafe. Such a tragic, tragic ending. Obviously the appropriate ending, but still incredibly shocking and raw. And it just ends! Not a second wasted.

“I mean I can tell ya� a story off the tongue but I can’t put it down on paper. That don’t make any difference though does it?�
“No, not really.�
“I mean plenty a� guys have stories don’t they? True-life stories. Musta� been a lota� movies made from real life.�

So, Sam Shepard and Patti Smith were briefly an item. The two of them made an indelible impact on each other with their artistic journeys. Sam Shepard has a rock-and-roll sensibility, and the music and attitude lives and breathes in his words, in his scenes. I couldn’t help but think that Shepard is like Ernest Hemingway, if Hemingway was around for rock-and-roll instead of jazz. But I brought up Patti Smith because I’m using one of her poems for my Voice & Speech class; love the interconnectedness of everything this semester and everything so far at Stella Adler!

Doubly thankful for Josh to have recommended me Sam Shepard; I can really see myself living in a world of Sam Shepard -- THIS PLAY! I bought a book that has seven of his plays. True West was the first one, and next is Buried Child. Sooooo excited for that one. Won the Pulitzer in �79!

“You could call the police. That’d be the obvious thing.�
“You’re my brother.�
“That don’t mean a thing. You go down to the LA Police Department there and ask them what kinda� people kill each other the most. What do you think they’d say?�
“Who said anything about killing?�
“Family people. Brothers. Brothers-in-law. Cousins. Real American-type people. They kill each other in the heat mostly. In the Smog-Alerts. In the Brush Fire Season. Right about this time a� year.�
]]> Uncle Vanya 16057422
Annie Baker, one of the most celebrated playwrights in the United States, lends her truthful observation and elegant command of the colloquial to Anton Chekhov's despairing masterpiece Uncle Vanya. A critical hit in its sold-out Off-Broadway premiere, Baker's telling is a refreshingly intimate and modern treatment of a Chekhovian classic.]]> 120 Anton Chekhov 1559364475 EJ 5 “I’m probably just as unhappy as you are, but I’m not giving in to despair. I� I endure my unhappiness and I will endure it until my life comes to its natural end. You have to endure it too.�

My. What is there to say, really? What you see is what you get! There’s not much subtext with Chekhov, no? That’s what I’ve learned in class and what I’ve surmised throughout my journey through art, film, plays. Oh yes, there was a gun! And yes, it was of course fired. It did not go how I thought it’d go, though!

“Look, in one hundred, two hundred years there will be people who look back and laugh at us because we lived our lives so foolishly and tastelessly.�

There have been many translations and versions of Uncle Vanya, but call me biased, I had to go with the Annie Baker version. This year’s Lincoln Center revival was Heidi Schreck’s version, which I’ve read sounds even more “contemporary� than Baker’s� but come on, 2012 modernity is modern enough for me. Annie Baker can translate the biggest of ideas with the most casual and simplest of English. It’s a magic trick.

Yes, I did imagine Steve Carell as Uncle Vanya and William Jackson Harper as Astrov.

“The past is gone, it was wasted on trivialities, and the present� God, the present is too ridiculous for words.�

These are characters speaking freely, openly (whether or not the people they’re talking to want to hear it) about their emotions, about the suffering of being alive, about the suffering of desire, about the suffering of not amounting to much. Of being on the cusp of death and feeling� unfulfilled! Fuck, man! That’s one of my biggest fears, if not THE BIGGEST!

“Man has been blessed with reason and creativity, but instead of progressing, he only knows how to ruin.�

The ending is quite bittersweet. A choice was made! Because if we don’t choose, we’re just fucking ourselves. But the choice that was made� it’s hard to tell if the characters can honestly follow that for the rest of their lives. We can delude ourselves all we want. But we need someone there with us. I feel for everyone in this play; no one gets what they want. But perhaps they each get what they need. Humans are complex creatures, no?

My Scene Study teacher Shawn said today that he can ‘appreciate� Chekhov but he can’t say that he really ‘likes� Chekhov. I’m not basing this off much, but I did absolutely devour Uncle Vanya � I read this all today, such an easy read. And yes, I did audition for Stella Adler with Stupid Fucking Bird, which is� sort of adapted from Chekhov’s The Seagull? This man is obsessed with art and the futility of being obsessed with art.

Fuck, man. You and me both! The emptiness that exists with unrequited love and the unfairness of this world that we’re in, and the necessity of art to satiate that emptiness, but then you realize that nothing can fill that void. Gotta read some more Chekhov, but I think I get it. And I think I love it! It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy!

“It’s so difficult for me. If you only knew how difficult it is!�
“What can we do? We have to live. We’ll live, Uncle Vanya. We’ll live through a long, long row of days and drawn-out evenings; we’ll endure the trials that fate sends us; we’ll work for others; and finally in our old age, having never known peace, when our hour comes, we’ll die. And from beyond the grave we’ll be able to look back and say that we suffered, that we wept, that we were bitter, and God will take pity on us, and you and I, Uncle, dear Uncle, we’ll see a radiant new life, beautiful, full of grace, and we’ll smile and look back tenderly at our past unhappiness. And we’ll rest. I believe this, Uncle, I believe in it passionately. We’ll rest!�]]> 4.18 1897 Uncle Vanya
author: Anton Chekhov
name: EJ
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1897
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/13
date added: 2024/11/14
shelves: essentials, favorites, funny, inspiring, plays, stops-you-in-your-tracks, wtf
review:
“I’m probably just as unhappy as you are, but I’m not giving in to despair. I� I endure my unhappiness and I will endure it until my life comes to its natural end. You have to endure it too.�

My. What is there to say, really? What you see is what you get! There’s not much subtext with Chekhov, no? That’s what I’ve learned in class and what I’ve surmised throughout my journey through art, film, plays. Oh yes, there was a gun! And yes, it was of course fired. It did not go how I thought it’d go, though!

“Look, in one hundred, two hundred years there will be people who look back and laugh at us because we lived our lives so foolishly and tastelessly.�

There have been many translations and versions of Uncle Vanya, but call me biased, I had to go with the Annie Baker version. This year’s Lincoln Center revival was Heidi Schreck’s version, which I’ve read sounds even more “contemporary� than Baker’s� but come on, 2012 modernity is modern enough for me. Annie Baker can translate the biggest of ideas with the most casual and simplest of English. It’s a magic trick.

Yes, I did imagine Steve Carell as Uncle Vanya and William Jackson Harper as Astrov.

“The past is gone, it was wasted on trivialities, and the present� God, the present is too ridiculous for words.�

These are characters speaking freely, openly (whether or not the people they’re talking to want to hear it) about their emotions, about the suffering of being alive, about the suffering of desire, about the suffering of not amounting to much. Of being on the cusp of death and feeling� unfulfilled! Fuck, man! That’s one of my biggest fears, if not THE BIGGEST!

“Man has been blessed with reason and creativity, but instead of progressing, he only knows how to ruin.�

The ending is quite bittersweet. A choice was made! Because if we don’t choose, we’re just fucking ourselves. But the choice that was made� it’s hard to tell if the characters can honestly follow that for the rest of their lives. We can delude ourselves all we want. But we need someone there with us. I feel for everyone in this play; no one gets what they want. But perhaps they each get what they need. Humans are complex creatures, no?

My Scene Study teacher Shawn said today that he can ‘appreciate� Chekhov but he can’t say that he really ‘likes� Chekhov. I’m not basing this off much, but I did absolutely devour Uncle Vanya � I read this all today, such an easy read. And yes, I did audition for Stella Adler with Stupid Fucking Bird, which is� sort of adapted from Chekhov’s The Seagull? This man is obsessed with art and the futility of being obsessed with art.

Fuck, man. You and me both! The emptiness that exists with unrequited love and the unfairness of this world that we’re in, and the necessity of art to satiate that emptiness, but then you realize that nothing can fill that void. Gotta read some more Chekhov, but I think I get it. And I think I love it! It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy!

“It’s so difficult for me. If you only knew how difficult it is!�
“What can we do? We have to live. We’ll live, Uncle Vanya. We’ll live through a long, long row of days and drawn-out evenings; we’ll endure the trials that fate sends us; we’ll work for others; and finally in our old age, having never known peace, when our hour comes, we’ll die. And from beyond the grave we’ll be able to look back and say that we suffered, that we wept, that we were bitter, and God will take pity on us, and you and I, Uncle, dear Uncle, we’ll see a radiant new life, beautiful, full of grace, and we’ll smile and look back tenderly at our past unhappiness. And we’ll rest. I believe this, Uncle, I believe in it passionately. We’ll rest!�
]]> <![CDATA[Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency]]> 60462182
But what if the centerpiece of this dark economy held a secret, fatal flaw? What if their currency wasn’t so cryptic after all? An investigator using the right mixture of technical wizardry, financial forensics, and old-fashioned persistence could uncover an entire world of wrongdoing.

Tracers in the Dark is a story of crime and pursuit unlike any other. With unprecedented access to the major players in federal law enforcement and private industry, veteran cybersecurity reporter Andy Greenberg tells an astonishing saga of criminal empires built and destroyed. He introduces an IRS agent with a defiant streak, a bitcoin-tracing Danish entrepreneur, and a colorful ensemble of hard-boiled agents and prosecutors as they delve deep into the crypto-underworld. The result is a thrilling, globe-spanning story of dirty cops, drug bazaars, trafficking rings, and the biggest take-down of an online narcotics market in the history of the internet.

Utterly of our time, Tracers in the Dark is a cat-and-mouse story and a tale of a technological one-upmanship. Filled with canny maneuvering and shocking twists, it answers a provocative question: How would some of the world’s most brazen criminals behave if they were sure they could never get caught?]]> 367 Andy Greenberg 0385548109 EJ 0 to-read 4.46 Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency
author: Andy Greenberg
name: EJ
average rating: 4.46
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning]]> 56097578 Meghan O'Gieblyn EJ 0 to-read 4.24 2021 God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning
author: Meghan O'Gieblyn
name: EJ
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Perestroika (Angels in America, #2)]]> 92254 Angels in America, Perestroika steers the characters introduced in Millennium Approaches from the opportunistic eighties to a new sense of community in the nineties.]]> 158 Tony Kushner 1559360739 EJ 5 “An angel is just a belief, with wings and arms that can carry you. It’s naught to be afraid of. If it lets you down, reject it. Seek for something new.�

Reading Kushner’s notes prior to diving into Perestroika, it took me for a whirl but it also made sense to see he said that, “Perestroika is essentially a comedy.� This was an interesting lens to attack this play / read with. Because, like I said when describing Millennium Approaches, my foray into Angels in America was through the Nichols miniseries, and while there was a signature lightness at times (life itself isn’t a CONSTANT drag; humans find a way to laugh a little), I never would’ve thought to have categorized Perestroika as a “comedy.�

“The Body is the Garden of the Soul.�

I’m also reducing Kushner’s words, because he was saying this was a “comedy� more or less because things are resolved, relationships are mended� life continues. And by (truly) divine intervention, there are some hilariously ironic comeuppances or reasons why certain characters live on and others� don’t.

“Nothing’s lost forever. In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we’ve left behind, and dreaming ahead. At least I think that’s so.�

Given that I’m performing as Louis in my Scene Study class, I ended up being really hyper-focused whenever Louis was in the scene � imagining “me,� to an extent. Though I really will never, ever play that part (I mean, who’s to say? But Filipino Jew named Ironson? Lin-Manuel, we’re gonna make Angels in America for the POC’s and make Belize white!) it was great reading deeply into his character’s motivations and actions, because it explains why he reacts the way he does in Act One, Scene Four of Millennium Approaches (the scene I’m studying), and if anything, it’s given me a greater empathy toward the character. As Louis does some morally-heinous things throughout!

“I just want to lie here and bleed for a while. Do me good.�

The Epilogue sequence is just wonderful. Prior’s final, final monologue. I nearly teared up again. And I would have, if I stayed with it! I powered through it, and even looked away from the page � let the words hit me. I’m still remembering Justin Kirk’s beautiful performance in the Nichols miniseries, and I can’t wait to revisit once again. Maybe winter break! Maybe I can convince my brother to watch it with me.

“We can’t just stop. We’re not rocks � progress, migration, motion is� modernity. It’s animate, it’s what living things do. We desire. Even if all we desire is stillness, it’s still desire for. Even if we go faster than we should. We can’t wait. And wait for what? God…�

Geez. I could say so much more, but I’ll just say: this is one of the most important plays ever written! Thank you Tony Kushner! I will try and get to A Bright Room Called Day soon!

“The white cracker who wrote the National Anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word free to a note so high nobody could reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on Earth sounds less like freedom to me. You come with me to Room 1013 over at the hospital and I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy, and mean. I live in America, Louis. I don't have to loveit.�]]> 4.24 1993 Perestroika (Angels in America, #2)
author: Tony Kushner
name: EJ
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/12
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: essentials, favorites, funny, inspiring, plays, stops-you-in-your-tracks
review:
“An angel is just a belief, with wings and arms that can carry you. It’s naught to be afraid of. If it lets you down, reject it. Seek for something new.�

Reading Kushner’s notes prior to diving into Perestroika, it took me for a whirl but it also made sense to see he said that, “Perestroika is essentially a comedy.� This was an interesting lens to attack this play / read with. Because, like I said when describing Millennium Approaches, my foray into Angels in America was through the Nichols miniseries, and while there was a signature lightness at times (life itself isn’t a CONSTANT drag; humans find a way to laugh a little), I never would’ve thought to have categorized Perestroika as a “comedy.�

“The Body is the Garden of the Soul.�

I’m also reducing Kushner’s words, because he was saying this was a “comedy� more or less because things are resolved, relationships are mended� life continues. And by (truly) divine intervention, there are some hilariously ironic comeuppances or reasons why certain characters live on and others� don’t.

“Nothing’s lost forever. In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we’ve left behind, and dreaming ahead. At least I think that’s so.�

Given that I’m performing as Louis in my Scene Study class, I ended up being really hyper-focused whenever Louis was in the scene � imagining “me,� to an extent. Though I really will never, ever play that part (I mean, who’s to say? But Filipino Jew named Ironson? Lin-Manuel, we’re gonna make Angels in America for the POC’s and make Belize white!) it was great reading deeply into his character’s motivations and actions, because it explains why he reacts the way he does in Act One, Scene Four of Millennium Approaches (the scene I’m studying), and if anything, it’s given me a greater empathy toward the character. As Louis does some morally-heinous things throughout!

“I just want to lie here and bleed for a while. Do me good.�

The Epilogue sequence is just wonderful. Prior’s final, final monologue. I nearly teared up again. And I would have, if I stayed with it! I powered through it, and even looked away from the page � let the words hit me. I’m still remembering Justin Kirk’s beautiful performance in the Nichols miniseries, and I can’t wait to revisit once again. Maybe winter break! Maybe I can convince my brother to watch it with me.

“We can’t just stop. We’re not rocks � progress, migration, motion is� modernity. It’s animate, it’s what living things do. We desire. Even if all we desire is stillness, it’s still desire for. Even if we go faster than we should. We can’t wait. And wait for what? God…�

Geez. I could say so much more, but I’ll just say: this is one of the most important plays ever written! Thank you Tony Kushner! I will try and get to A Bright Room Called Day soon!

“The white cracker who wrote the National Anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word free to a note so high nobody could reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on Earth sounds less like freedom to me. You come with me to Room 1013 over at the hospital and I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy, and mean. I live in America, Louis. I don't have to loveit.�
]]> Man’s Search for Meaning 4069 Man's Search for Meaning has become one of the most influential books in America; it continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living.]]> 165 Viktor E. Frankl 080701429X EJ 0 to-read 4.38 1946 Man’s Search for Meaning
author: Viktor E. Frankl
name: EJ
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1946
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Seascape With Sharks and Dancer]]> 490624 This fine work in the Pendragon cycle of plays enjoyed a sold out, critically acclaimed production at the world famous Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The play is set in a beach bungalow. The young man who lives there has pulled a lost young woman from the ocean. Soon, she finds herself trapped in his life and torn between her need to come to rest somewhere and her certainty that all human relationships turn eventually into nightmares. The struggle between his tolerant and gently ironic approach to life and her strategy of suspicion and attack becomes a kind of war about love and creation which neither can afford to lose. This is an offbeat, wonderful love story. Note: The play contains a wealth of excellent monologue and scene material.

]]> 66 Don Nigro 0573619727 EJ 0 to-read 4.02 1985 Seascape With Sharks and Dancer
author: Don Nigro
name: EJ
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Moon for the Misbegotten 150144
Eugene O’Neill’s last completed play, A Moon for the Misbegotten is a sequel to his autobiographical Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Moon picks up eleven years after the events described in Long Day’s Journey Into Night , as Jim Tyrone (based on O’Neill’s older brother Jamie) grasps at a last chance at love under the full moonlight. This paperback edition features an insightful introduction by Stephen A. Black, helpful to anyone who desires a deeper understanding of O’Neill’s work.]]> 149 Eugene O'Neill 0300118155 EJ 0 to-read 4.01 1947 A Moon for the Misbegotten
author: Eugene O'Neill
name: EJ
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1947
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Millennium Approaches (Angels in America, #1)]]> 92250
The play is a complex, often metaphorical, and at times symbolic examination of AIDS and homosexuality in America in the 1980s. Certain major and minor characters are supernatural beings (angels) or deceased persons (ghosts). The play contains multiple roles for several of the actors. Initially and primarily focusing on a gay couple in Manhattan, the play also has several other storylines, some of which occasionally intersect.]]> 119 Tony Kushner 1559360615 EJ 5 “People are like planets, you need a thick skin. Things get to me, Joe stays away and now� Well look. My dreams are talking back to me.�
“It’s the price of rootlessness. Motion sickness. The only cure: to keep moving.�

I’m a huge Mike Nichols fan, as he’s one of my favorite directors, storytellers, etc. ever. He directed the HBO miniseries of Angels in America, and what a masterpiece � Nichols considered that miniseries his proudest achievement, and you can’t fault him there.

In the continuing adventures of studying at Adler, we received our new scenes for our Scene Study class and I got� Louis! The scene is Act 1, Scene 4 of Millennium Approaches, so yes, it’s the bench scene. It’s certainly a 180 compared to being Satan in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. The scene itself begins with a lightness, and Tony Kushner’s wit leads to some very funny and clever lines which will be fun to say or play off of; but when Prior drops the hammer on Louis� oh it’s just devastating.

I’m not going to call Louis “Satan,� but he’s arguably one of the most selfish people in the play; however, he’s absolutely HUMAN. He believes he deserves pain, he knows he’s being selfish. But I understand him; it’s easier to be away from death. One still has desire � in a way, who knows how Prior would’ve acted if Louis was the one diagnosed with AIDS. Would Prior also leave Louis because he has desires that need to be satiated?

It’s a heartbreaking scene, and my scene partner Romeo I’m very excited to work with. They are such a huge Kushner fan, and Romeo would be such a good Prior. It’ll be so educational acting opposite Romeo, but most importantly, I know it’ll be so FUN to do so.

“It’s no fun picking on you Louis; you’re so guilty, it’s like throwing darts at a glob of jello, there’s no satisfying hits, just quivering, the darts just blow in and vanish.�

So I haven’t read Angels before, and as I was reading, it’s proof how scrumptious or memorable watching the miniseries was; I remembered so much of this! Nichols adapted it so faithfully for the miniseries. Rich characters, human scenarios. Gosh, I love Harper. She’s absolutely my favorite character. But everyone is beautiful in their own, flawed way. Even Joe. Even Roy! Roy Cohn says some of the most intelligent things (even if they were informed in� strange ways). At the very least, we can understand how a monster becomes a monster; or, we can understand the idea that sickness & death takes pity on no one.

“…so now, there are no gods here, no ghosts and spirits in America, no angels in America, no spiritual past, no racial past, there’s only the political, and the decoys and ploys to maneuver around the inescapable battle of politics, the shifting downwards and outwards of political power to the people…�
“POWER to the People! AMEN! (Looking at his watch) OH MY GOODNESS! Will you look at the time, I gotta…�

Extremely politically-charged. Though it’s about life in the 80s, call it Reagan, call it Trump � this all applies. The importance of community is paramount, and the injustices served to certain communities that will unfortunately continue under this new administration� it’s tragic, but it reiterates the importance of art. Because art transforms, art INFORMS, and art can really shift the way we think. It’s vital. I’m so happy to be doing some Angels in America for class, and I’m going to start Perestroika this afternoon!

“You can be numb and safe here, that’s what you came for. Respect the delicate ecology of your delusions.�
“You mean like no Eskimo in Antarctica.�
“Correct. Ice and snow, no Eskimo. Even hallucinations have laws.�]]> 4.27 1993 Millennium Approaches (Angels in America, #1)
author: Tony Kushner
name: EJ
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/08
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: essentials, favorites, funny, inspiring, plays, stops-you-in-your-tracks
review:
“People are like planets, you need a thick skin. Things get to me, Joe stays away and now� Well look. My dreams are talking back to me.�
“It’s the price of rootlessness. Motion sickness. The only cure: to keep moving.�

I’m a huge Mike Nichols fan, as he’s one of my favorite directors, storytellers, etc. ever. He directed the HBO miniseries of Angels in America, and what a masterpiece � Nichols considered that miniseries his proudest achievement, and you can’t fault him there.

In the continuing adventures of studying at Adler, we received our new scenes for our Scene Study class and I got� Louis! The scene is Act 1, Scene 4 of Millennium Approaches, so yes, it’s the bench scene. It’s certainly a 180 compared to being Satan in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. The scene itself begins with a lightness, and Tony Kushner’s wit leads to some very funny and clever lines which will be fun to say or play off of; but when Prior drops the hammer on Louis� oh it’s just devastating.

I’m not going to call Louis “Satan,� but he’s arguably one of the most selfish people in the play; however, he’s absolutely HUMAN. He believes he deserves pain, he knows he’s being selfish. But I understand him; it’s easier to be away from death. One still has desire � in a way, who knows how Prior would’ve acted if Louis was the one diagnosed with AIDS. Would Prior also leave Louis because he has desires that need to be satiated?

It’s a heartbreaking scene, and my scene partner Romeo I’m very excited to work with. They are such a huge Kushner fan, and Romeo would be such a good Prior. It’ll be so educational acting opposite Romeo, but most importantly, I know it’ll be so FUN to do so.

“It’s no fun picking on you Louis; you’re so guilty, it’s like throwing darts at a glob of jello, there’s no satisfying hits, just quivering, the darts just blow in and vanish.�

So I haven’t read Angels before, and as I was reading, it’s proof how scrumptious or memorable watching the miniseries was; I remembered so much of this! Nichols adapted it so faithfully for the miniseries. Rich characters, human scenarios. Gosh, I love Harper. She’s absolutely my favorite character. But everyone is beautiful in their own, flawed way. Even Joe. Even Roy! Roy Cohn says some of the most intelligent things (even if they were informed in� strange ways). At the very least, we can understand how a monster becomes a monster; or, we can understand the idea that sickness & death takes pity on no one.

“…so now, there are no gods here, no ghosts and spirits in America, no angels in America, no spiritual past, no racial past, there’s only the political, and the decoys and ploys to maneuver around the inescapable battle of politics, the shifting downwards and outwards of political power to the people…�
“POWER to the People! AMEN! (Looking at his watch) OH MY GOODNESS! Will you look at the time, I gotta…�

Extremely politically-charged. Though it’s about life in the 80s, call it Reagan, call it Trump � this all applies. The importance of community is paramount, and the injustices served to certain communities that will unfortunately continue under this new administration� it’s tragic, but it reiterates the importance of art. Because art transforms, art INFORMS, and art can really shift the way we think. It’s vital. I’m so happy to be doing some Angels in America for class, and I’m going to start Perestroika this afternoon!

“You can be numb and safe here, that’s what you came for. Respect the delicate ecology of your delusions.�
“You mean like no Eskimo in Antarctica.�
“Correct. Ice and snow, no Eskimo. Even hallucinations have laws.�
]]> <![CDATA[Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need]]> 49464 195 Blake Snyder 1932907009 EJ 0 movies 4.00 2005 Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need
author: Blake Snyder
name: EJ
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/07
shelves: movies
review:

]]> Deaf Republic 40121980

Deaf Republic opens in an occupied country in a time of political unrest. When soldiers breaking up a protest kill a deaf boy, Petya, the gunshot becomes the last thing the citizens hear--they all have gone deaf, and their dissent becomes coordinated by sign language. The story follows the private lives of townspeople encircled by public violence: a newly married couple, Alfonso and Sonya, expecting a child; the brash Momma Galya, instigating the insurgency from her puppet theater; and Galya's girls, heroically teaching signing by day and by night luring soldiers one by one to their deaths behind the curtain. At once a love story, an elegy, and an urgent plea, Ilya Kaminsky's long-awaited Deaf Republic confronts our time's vicious atrocities and our collective silence in the face of them.

Finalist for the T. S. Eliot Prize
Finalist for the Forward Prize for Best Collection]]> 80 Ilya Kaminsky 1555978312 EJ 5 4.41 2019 Deaf Republic
author: Ilya Kaminsky
name: EJ
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/11/07
shelves: essentials, favorites, stops-you-in-your-tracks
review:

]]> Death of a Salesman 12898 'For a salesman, there is no rock bottom to life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine.'

Willy Loman has been a salesman for 34 years. At 60, he is cast aside, his usefulness now exhausted. With no future to dream about he must face the crushing disappointments of his past. He takes one final brave action, but is he heroic at last?, or a self-deluding fool?]]> 144 Arthur Miller 0435233076 EJ 5 “Pop, I’m a dime a dozen and so are you!�

Heartbreaking. Devastating. Comes right off the page and is such a tragic page-turner. My heart aches for Willy, for Linda, for Biff, for Happy.

“A salesman is got to dream, boy; it comes with the territory.�

What an affecting read. I’m writing this review at 3:45 in the morning and I should just go to sleep; maybe my mind is racing because of school, because of the election, because of lots of things. But this play� certainly one of the best I’ve read so far and genuinely probably going to be one of the most important plays I’ll have read in my life.

Originally I said to myself, “finish Act One and then continue tomorrow.� Then Act One finished and I was like, “I think we can just bang this out.�

I’ve been Biff. I’ve had those exact conversations with my mom, in different contexts; but the dreams a father has for himself, for his family, and for his children � but specifically his son(s)� it’s too damn real.

“You’ve got to make up your mind now, there’s no leeway any more—either he’s your father and you pay him that respect or else you’re not to come here. I know he’s not easy to get along with—nobody knows that better than me—but�"...

“It sounds so old-fashioned and silly, but I tell you he put his whole life into you and you’ve turned your backs on him. Biff, I swear to God; Biff, his life is in your hands.�

It wasn’t really that long ago when I was the spiteful Biff. We find out later what this spite comes from, and it’s also heartbreaking and reasonably debilitating. Everyone is right in this play, and everyone is wrong! Could Biff have had a bit more spine at times? Yeah. Did Willy fuck up his son forever? Yeah.

“Figure it out; work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there’s nobody to live in it.�

The writing is incredible. And the place it comes from, is so sad, too. I read that Arthur Miller got the idea for this play after a chance encounter between himself and his uncle Manny Newman, a salesman. Newman never said congrats or anything, and just said, “Buddy is doing very well.� Newman, consciously or unconsciously, always comparing his son to his nephew for their whole lives. Newman ended up committing suicide soon after.

“A man can’t go out the way he came in, Ben, a man has got to add up to something. You can’t, you can’t…�

Expectations. Desire. Suffering. All go hand in hand. Such in conversation with The Iceman Cometh, which I just recently read for the first time. I had to keep putting the book/play down to catch myself; just think of the new information I had to process. The heaviness of the words; the pangs of my heart. So, so tragic. It just gets sadder and sadder. But it’s, unfortunately, so true.

“Will you let me go, for Christ’s sake? Will you take that phoney dream and burn it before something happens?�]]> 3.57 1949 Death of a Salesman
author: Arthur Miller
name: EJ
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1949
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/04
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves: essentials, favorites, inspiring, plays, stops-you-in-your-tracks, wtf
review:
“Pop, I’m a dime a dozen and so are you!�

Heartbreaking. Devastating. Comes right off the page and is such a tragic page-turner. My heart aches for Willy, for Linda, for Biff, for Happy.

“A salesman is got to dream, boy; it comes with the territory.�

What an affecting read. I’m writing this review at 3:45 in the morning and I should just go to sleep; maybe my mind is racing because of school, because of the election, because of lots of things. But this play� certainly one of the best I’ve read so far and genuinely probably going to be one of the most important plays I’ll have read in my life.

Originally I said to myself, “finish Act One and then continue tomorrow.� Then Act One finished and I was like, “I think we can just bang this out.�

I’ve been Biff. I’ve had those exact conversations with my mom, in different contexts; but the dreams a father has for himself, for his family, and for his children � but specifically his son(s)� it’s too damn real.

“You’ve got to make up your mind now, there’s no leeway any more—either he’s your father and you pay him that respect or else you’re not to come here. I know he’s not easy to get along with—nobody knows that better than me—but�"...

“It sounds so old-fashioned and silly, but I tell you he put his whole life into you and you’ve turned your backs on him. Biff, I swear to God; Biff, his life is in your hands.�

It wasn’t really that long ago when I was the spiteful Biff. We find out later what this spite comes from, and it’s also heartbreaking and reasonably debilitating. Everyone is right in this play, and everyone is wrong! Could Biff have had a bit more spine at times? Yeah. Did Willy fuck up his son forever? Yeah.

“Figure it out; work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there’s nobody to live in it.�

The writing is incredible. And the place it comes from, is so sad, too. I read that Arthur Miller got the idea for this play after a chance encounter between himself and his uncle Manny Newman, a salesman. Newman never said congrats or anything, and just said, “Buddy is doing very well.� Newman, consciously or unconsciously, always comparing his son to his nephew for their whole lives. Newman ended up committing suicide soon after.

“A man can’t go out the way he came in, Ben, a man has got to add up to something. You can’t, you can’t…�

Expectations. Desire. Suffering. All go hand in hand. Such in conversation with The Iceman Cometh, which I just recently read for the first time. I had to keep putting the book/play down to catch myself; just think of the new information I had to process. The heaviness of the words; the pangs of my heart. So, so tragic. It just gets sadder and sadder. But it’s, unfortunately, so true.

“Will you let me go, for Christ’s sake? Will you take that phoney dream and burn it before something happens?�
]]> Job 216526632 68 Max Wolf Friedlich 0573711054 EJ 5 “I’m not denying anything � I feel it all � and it’s a privilege to suffer as much as I do.�

There’s so much I can say about this play, about this show. And I will! This is my ŷ, and I can ramble and rant if I want to.

For the longest time, the ads of this show on social media or the subway always intrigued me. “Oh, it’s Frank from Succession. And it looks like he’s typecast again to be a corporate ‘employee.’� The office visuals and the stapler to Sydney Lemmon’s face made me think this was about two co-workers shooting the breeze existentially at their cubicles.

However, that is not what the show’s about. I went into the show mostly blind, and was successfully going to be able to do so until my summer Adler classmate Jared (who I took with me the first time I saw the play) told me at dinner prior to the show that, ‘yeah, so it’s about a social media worker who has a viral video and needs to see a therapist?� I wish I hadn’t known that, but still, that is only the tip of the iceberg of what this play’s about.

When I tell you my jaw dropped when I realized what the show’s “about”� I think I even teared up. The specificity, me working in social media for the past seven years, and watching a young woman in disarray vent, process, and ramble about an uncertain world, her sense of ‘purpose,� and every little thing in between: there was so much to love. Jane is truly one of my all-time favorite characters � I see a lot myself in Jane, and I think a lot of young people would, too. And Sydney Lemmon’s performance? Lord have mercy. Absolutely incredible stuff.

“It’s endless and hopeless because you just get trapped in the like “discourse� of it all and you just end up mindlessly reposting GoFundMes all day, begging for spare change on your little Instagram street corner on behalf of strangers instead of actually doing something so I’m just not sure therapy aligns with how I deal with things.�

So that first night I saw the show, I walked with my friend Jared to the subway. We parted, but I had it in the back of my mind, since I was still so floored by the show, “I gotta see if they’re going to do stage door!� I went back to the theater and a few folks were still waiting. I asked if anyone came out yet, and they said no one yet. Soon, Peter Friedman came out and he was so generous talking to everyone who waited. When he got to me, I told him about how much I loved the show, how I went in blind and was floored; that my day job is in social media. And how moved I was with his performance and Sydney’s because� the following week I’d be starting at Stella Adler in their conservatory! He did this cool little hop and clapped his hands and said to me, “wow, that’s some change! What inspired this?� And I told him just the burning inside of you to want to create, to want to say something. Watching the two of them perform was the perfect primer for school. He extended his hand and shook my hand, wished me luck, and thanked me for coming again.

And then Sydney came out � some people had cleared out, didn’t feel like waiting. But I knew I needed to speak to her because her performance was just so, so moving for me. Kind of had a similar intro as with Peter, and when I told her I was starting at Stella Adler next week, she said, “hell yes!� and then she gave me a high-five, and then did a little hand-hug with me. She was genuinely floored for me, it seemed, and she told me that part of what took her so long to come outside was that one of her acting school professors was at the show and so she caught up with him; the training and education is absolutely essential. She told me to keep seeing theater, keep staying inspired. I had gushed to her how great I thought she was and how moved I was and she was so appreciative of that. Took pics with both Peter and Sydney that night and I remember walking back and getting a late-night bite at Junior’s still floored.

“You don’t know yourself and so you can’t accept the idea that anyone else might.�

Through TKTS, I got discounted tickets to see the show again � this would make it two viewings in about three weeks. It didn’t matter to me, I knew the show was closing soon and I just wanted to immerse myself once more. I ended up taking my conservatory classmate Nour � it was his first Broadway play! And he was so grateful for the chance. He ended up really enjoying the play, and that was validating for me. Glad it didn’t go to waste! Such a great show to have a conversation about after; it invites so much discourse. Nour even wanted to see it again the weekend after with a friend from Chicago; I was like, “this was your first Broadway play, you could see anything else!�

Cut to the announcement of Closing Night. And the very effective social media-posting by Max Wolf-Friedlich and the JOB IG page � I splurged on second-row seats. I took my friend Andrew with me, heavily influenced by the fact that we both worked in social media together for a year; and we have conversations about ‘advertisers not wanting their ads to pop up next to neo-Nazi content.� I’ve never seen a play three times before, but if there’s any show that would make me do it, it’s JOB. If it wasn’t closing, maybe I’d see it again! It was regularly featured in TKTS.

And this viewing was probably the best. Just leaned in, floored by the performances. The most I ever teared up � this is not really a ‘sobbing� type of show, but there’s something about Lemmon’s vulnerability as Jane that moves me immensely. You just want to HELP her.

The night before Closing Night, I actually went to a table reading of Max Wolf-Friedlich’s new play currently called HEAD. In regards to that play, it’s already a hit for my money’s worth; authentic in its portrayal of young people, specifically people� my age! That was such a lovely night because it really felt like being in the NYC creative scene; everyone walking around was interesting. I got to speak with the director of JOB and HEAD Michael Herwitz for about 10 minutes; a bit before the reading and then after with my classmate Romeo. The tangibility of everything, being around these creatives� it was so vibrant, it was so alive. Madeline Weinstein, who I loved in Between the Temples, played the lead female character and it was nice talking to her for a few minutes after the reading as well.

By the end of the night, I finally got to speak with Max. Went totally the uncool way and just gushed about JOB, about HEAD, and said, “I’m gonna ask a real cornball thing of you� and I pulled out my script and asked him to sign it. Told him I was going back to JOB tomorrow for the third time, and he was like, “three times! Thank you. And I’ll see you there! It’ll be a special one, since it’s Closing Night.� I also told him that I was planning on doing Jane’s “Nordstrom Rack� monologue in my Technique class and he thought that was pretty great. I said, “I know it’s a part I’ll never play, but�" and he cut in with, “hey, who knows? Why not!� and that was pretty funny to hear. If he ever revisits this but decides to gender-flip it and make Jane instead Gene and make him an anxious Filipino-American� I’ll demand an audition (and also would think, main character syndrome of me, this has to be for me, no?).

And at the end of the Closing Night performance, I was able to chat with Sydney again for a moment, and she signed my script as well. When she saw me, she said, “hey you!� I also told her I was going to be doing the Nordstrom Rack monologue in my technique class and she was excited about that, and said, “you’ll be able to give the character your own spin! Have fun with it.�

As I was walking out of the theater, Max was standing in the aisle. He extended his hand and shook my hand, said, “thanks for coming out again, EJ!�

I mean, I didn’t actually say much about the script itself or the play. It’s just so damn good. The ideas communicated, Sydney and Peter with the acting masterclass. Max was 26 when he wrote this. Come on. It helped me realize the necessity for youth in theater; for young, new perspectives. This is the play that really made me think, “okay, I can do this.� Be specific, have a point of view; be curious. Andrew and I are gonna powwow one of these days and shoot the breeze on the early Ameritrade days. That’d be a fun little project to work on; maybe it can be something!

“It’s like there’s another person there with me, rubbing my back, telling me to keep going as I march into the bathroom and I brush my teeth and fuck around with my hair and eat my muesli and I drink my coffee and as I do each of those things the panic turns them into little missions � I have to NAIL flossing, I have to DESTROY my emails from Nordstrom Rack. I delete them and I EMPTY the trash and I imagine my emails burning. These little morning routine fucking inconsequential things become a sense of real…purpose…but on days like today there just isn’t anything else � there’s only me and the panic, alone together.�]]> 4.47 Job
author: Max Wolf Friedlich
name: EJ
average rating: 4.47
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/01
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: essentials, favorites, funny, inspiring, plays, stops-you-in-your-tracks, wtf
review:
“I’m not denying anything � I feel it all � and it’s a privilege to suffer as much as I do.�

There’s so much I can say about this play, about this show. And I will! This is my ŷ, and I can ramble and rant if I want to.

For the longest time, the ads of this show on social media or the subway always intrigued me. “Oh, it’s Frank from Succession. And it looks like he’s typecast again to be a corporate ‘employee.’� The office visuals and the stapler to Sydney Lemmon’s face made me think this was about two co-workers shooting the breeze existentially at their cubicles.

However, that is not what the show’s about. I went into the show mostly blind, and was successfully going to be able to do so until my summer Adler classmate Jared (who I took with me the first time I saw the play) told me at dinner prior to the show that, ‘yeah, so it’s about a social media worker who has a viral video and needs to see a therapist?� I wish I hadn’t known that, but still, that is only the tip of the iceberg of what this play’s about.

When I tell you my jaw dropped when I realized what the show’s “about”� I think I even teared up. The specificity, me working in social media for the past seven years, and watching a young woman in disarray vent, process, and ramble about an uncertain world, her sense of ‘purpose,� and every little thing in between: there was so much to love. Jane is truly one of my all-time favorite characters � I see a lot myself in Jane, and I think a lot of young people would, too. And Sydney Lemmon’s performance? Lord have mercy. Absolutely incredible stuff.

“It’s endless and hopeless because you just get trapped in the like “discourse� of it all and you just end up mindlessly reposting GoFundMes all day, begging for spare change on your little Instagram street corner on behalf of strangers instead of actually doing something so I’m just not sure therapy aligns with how I deal with things.�

So that first night I saw the show, I walked with my friend Jared to the subway. We parted, but I had it in the back of my mind, since I was still so floored by the show, “I gotta see if they’re going to do stage door!� I went back to the theater and a few folks were still waiting. I asked if anyone came out yet, and they said no one yet. Soon, Peter Friedman came out and he was so generous talking to everyone who waited. When he got to me, I told him about how much I loved the show, how I went in blind and was floored; that my day job is in social media. And how moved I was with his performance and Sydney’s because� the following week I’d be starting at Stella Adler in their conservatory! He did this cool little hop and clapped his hands and said to me, “wow, that’s some change! What inspired this?� And I told him just the burning inside of you to want to create, to want to say something. Watching the two of them perform was the perfect primer for school. He extended his hand and shook my hand, wished me luck, and thanked me for coming again.

And then Sydney came out � some people had cleared out, didn’t feel like waiting. But I knew I needed to speak to her because her performance was just so, so moving for me. Kind of had a similar intro as with Peter, and when I told her I was starting at Stella Adler next week, she said, “hell yes!� and then she gave me a high-five, and then did a little hand-hug with me. She was genuinely floored for me, it seemed, and she told me that part of what took her so long to come outside was that one of her acting school professors was at the show and so she caught up with him; the training and education is absolutely essential. She told me to keep seeing theater, keep staying inspired. I had gushed to her how great I thought she was and how moved I was and she was so appreciative of that. Took pics with both Peter and Sydney that night and I remember walking back and getting a late-night bite at Junior’s still floored.

“You don’t know yourself and so you can’t accept the idea that anyone else might.�

Through TKTS, I got discounted tickets to see the show again � this would make it two viewings in about three weeks. It didn’t matter to me, I knew the show was closing soon and I just wanted to immerse myself once more. I ended up taking my conservatory classmate Nour � it was his first Broadway play! And he was so grateful for the chance. He ended up really enjoying the play, and that was validating for me. Glad it didn’t go to waste! Such a great show to have a conversation about after; it invites so much discourse. Nour even wanted to see it again the weekend after with a friend from Chicago; I was like, “this was your first Broadway play, you could see anything else!�

Cut to the announcement of Closing Night. And the very effective social media-posting by Max Wolf-Friedlich and the JOB IG page � I splurged on second-row seats. I took my friend Andrew with me, heavily influenced by the fact that we both worked in social media together for a year; and we have conversations about ‘advertisers not wanting their ads to pop up next to neo-Nazi content.� I’ve never seen a play three times before, but if there’s any show that would make me do it, it’s JOB. If it wasn’t closing, maybe I’d see it again! It was regularly featured in TKTS.

And this viewing was probably the best. Just leaned in, floored by the performances. The most I ever teared up � this is not really a ‘sobbing� type of show, but there’s something about Lemmon’s vulnerability as Jane that moves me immensely. You just want to HELP her.

The night before Closing Night, I actually went to a table reading of Max Wolf-Friedlich’s new play currently called HEAD. In regards to that play, it’s already a hit for my money’s worth; authentic in its portrayal of young people, specifically people� my age! That was such a lovely night because it really felt like being in the NYC creative scene; everyone walking around was interesting. I got to speak with the director of JOB and HEAD Michael Herwitz for about 10 minutes; a bit before the reading and then after with my classmate Romeo. The tangibility of everything, being around these creatives� it was so vibrant, it was so alive. Madeline Weinstein, who I loved in Between the Temples, played the lead female character and it was nice talking to her for a few minutes after the reading as well.

By the end of the night, I finally got to speak with Max. Went totally the uncool way and just gushed about JOB, about HEAD, and said, “I’m gonna ask a real cornball thing of you� and I pulled out my script and asked him to sign it. Told him I was going back to JOB tomorrow for the third time, and he was like, “three times! Thank you. And I’ll see you there! It’ll be a special one, since it’s Closing Night.� I also told him that I was planning on doing Jane’s “Nordstrom Rack� monologue in my Technique class and he thought that was pretty great. I said, “I know it’s a part I’ll never play, but�" and he cut in with, “hey, who knows? Why not!� and that was pretty funny to hear. If he ever revisits this but decides to gender-flip it and make Jane instead Gene and make him an anxious Filipino-American� I’ll demand an audition (and also would think, main character syndrome of me, this has to be for me, no?).

And at the end of the Closing Night performance, I was able to chat with Sydney again for a moment, and she signed my script as well. When she saw me, she said, “hey you!� I also told her I was going to be doing the Nordstrom Rack monologue in my technique class and she was excited about that, and said, “you’ll be able to give the character your own spin! Have fun with it.�

As I was walking out of the theater, Max was standing in the aisle. He extended his hand and shook my hand, said, “thanks for coming out again, EJ!�

I mean, I didn’t actually say much about the script itself or the play. It’s just so damn good. The ideas communicated, Sydney and Peter with the acting masterclass. Max was 26 when he wrote this. Come on. It helped me realize the necessity for youth in theater; for young, new perspectives. This is the play that really made me think, “okay, I can do this.� Be specific, have a point of view; be curious. Andrew and I are gonna powwow one of these days and shoot the breeze on the early Ameritrade days. That’d be a fun little project to work on; maybe it can be something!

“It’s like there’s another person there with me, rubbing my back, telling me to keep going as I march into the bathroom and I brush my teeth and fuck around with my hair and eat my muesli and I drink my coffee and as I do each of those things the panic turns them into little missions � I have to NAIL flossing, I have to DESTROY my emails from Nordstrom Rack. I delete them and I EMPTY the trash and I imagine my emails burning. These little morning routine fucking inconsequential things become a sense of real…purpose…but on days like today there just isn’t anything else � there’s only me and the panic, alone together.�
]]> No Exit 123933 The play is a depiction of the afterlife in which three deceased characters are punished by being locked into a room together for all eternity. It is the source of Sartre's especially famous and often misinterpreted quotation "L'enfer, c'est les autres" or "Hell is other people", a reference to Sartre's ideas about the Look and the perpetual ontological struggle of being caused to see oneself as an object in the world of another consciousness.]]> 60 Jean-Paul Sartre 0573613052 EJ 5 “Do I look the sort of person who lets go? I know what’s coming to me. I’m going to burn, and it’s to last forever. Yes, I know everything. But do you think I’ll let go?�

What the fuck, man? I loved this so much. It’s funny, I checked this out of my local library maybe a year or two ago, because I wanted to get into French existentialism (lol). Clearly I just wanted to look the part, because I checked it out and never opened it. Well, I did once, and was surprised to see that No Exit, which Google told me was a fundamental philosophical text, was a play.

What’s that? EJ reading another play? Gonna be the next two years, pretty much, at minimum. And perhaps longer, because I’m REALLY enjoying reading plays at the moment. If I get nothing else from acting school (though that’s already an impossibility � I feel so nourished!), at least I’d have read some good plays while training.

It felt right to read this now. Because of the fact I meant to read this before, it’s been gestating in my subconscious; and also because Naomi from Year 2 performed a monologue from this play as part of her day one showcase for this school year. And the Marlon Brando library at school has over 2,500 books, mostly plays. We can check out whatever we want. I'm there five days a week anyway... the ease of access is just amazing. So many worlds in there. UGH, so exciting.

“If they’d put me in a room with men � men can keep their mouths shut. But it’s no use wanting the impossible.�

Oh my god, is this play so funny and so fucking hopeless. Right from the jump, and it does not let up. The dialogue is just too good. We are the sum of our actions, and we live as long as we’re going to live. These three characters aren’t TOO awful, but they are just the right flavor of cilantro to each other to really just get on each other’s nerves. Hell is a crowded room, or perhaps more apropos:

“Hell is other people!�

Amazing, I forgot / didn’t realize that this play coined that iconic phrase. Oh, the joys of being PERCEIVED.

“One always dies too soon—or too late. And yet one’s whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are—your life, and nothing else.�

I love Inez. My favorite character by a mile, and perhaps she’s most people’s favorite? She, seemingly, is the most normal. But “normal� in hell means to be aware and to have knowledge, and that is clearly Inez� deep-seeded burden; ignorance would certainly be bliss in Hell. If I could characterize each character with one adjective, it’d be as such:

Garcin the Coward. Inez the Neurotic. Estelle the Vain.

They’re all wonderful characters; you get them and understand them. Can you define a person by one action? These people really aren’t that bad, at the end of the day. But while on Earth, they’ve each done something � that mortal sin-like action � that damned them forever. And they don’t make mistakes in Hell.

“I’m your lark-mirror, my dear, and you can’t escape me.�

So freakin� good. I technically read this in two sittings (it’s not that long, just a bit over 40 pages), but that was only because of the train and me having to stop after just picking it up. Next time I read, I’ll probably do it all in one sitting. I want to do a table-read of this! Or fuck, even perform it. Garcin’s an interesting character; I’m haunted that he just wants the faith of one other person to believe he’s not a coward. And he can’t even find that one. In his fight or flight moment on Earth, he chose to flee. And it’ll haunt him forever.

What a play. What a work. Sartre? Damn. I’ve got three other plays by him and I’m ready to dive in. Speaking of philosophers, I already am citing Nietzsche to some friends in passing, though I mean it in as positive of a way as possible; our lives have no inherent meaning other than what we impose on it � therefore we are the ones who choose to see that our life is great, we take the chaos and mold it into something beautiful.

Where did I learn that Nietzsche sentiment from? Another monologue I performed from a play called North to Maine. Oh, man, who the hell is even reading this? Doesn't matter. I do it for me.]]> 4.13 1944 No Exit
author: Jean-Paul Sartre
name: EJ
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1944
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/10
date added: 2024/10/30
shelves: essentials, funny, favorites, inspiring, plays, stops-you-in-your-tracks, wtf
review:
“Do I look the sort of person who lets go? I know what’s coming to me. I’m going to burn, and it’s to last forever. Yes, I know everything. But do you think I’ll let go?�

What the fuck, man? I loved this so much. It’s funny, I checked this out of my local library maybe a year or two ago, because I wanted to get into French existentialism (lol). Clearly I just wanted to look the part, because I checked it out and never opened it. Well, I did once, and was surprised to see that No Exit, which Google told me was a fundamental philosophical text, was a play.

What’s that? EJ reading another play? Gonna be the next two years, pretty much, at minimum. And perhaps longer, because I’m REALLY enjoying reading plays at the moment. If I get nothing else from acting school (though that’s already an impossibility � I feel so nourished!), at least I’d have read some good plays while training.

It felt right to read this now. Because of the fact I meant to read this before, it’s been gestating in my subconscious; and also because Naomi from Year 2 performed a monologue from this play as part of her day one showcase for this school year. And the Marlon Brando library at school has over 2,500 books, mostly plays. We can check out whatever we want. I'm there five days a week anyway... the ease of access is just amazing. So many worlds in there. UGH, so exciting.

“If they’d put me in a room with men � men can keep their mouths shut. But it’s no use wanting the impossible.�

Oh my god, is this play so funny and so fucking hopeless. Right from the jump, and it does not let up. The dialogue is just too good. We are the sum of our actions, and we live as long as we’re going to live. These three characters aren’t TOO awful, but they are just the right flavor of cilantro to each other to really just get on each other’s nerves. Hell is a crowded room, or perhaps more apropos:

“Hell is other people!�

Amazing, I forgot / didn’t realize that this play coined that iconic phrase. Oh, the joys of being PERCEIVED.

“One always dies too soon—or too late. And yet one’s whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are—your life, and nothing else.�

I love Inez. My favorite character by a mile, and perhaps she’s most people’s favorite? She, seemingly, is the most normal. But “normal� in hell means to be aware and to have knowledge, and that is clearly Inez� deep-seeded burden; ignorance would certainly be bliss in Hell. If I could characterize each character with one adjective, it’d be as such:

Garcin the Coward. Inez the Neurotic. Estelle the Vain.

They’re all wonderful characters; you get them and understand them. Can you define a person by one action? These people really aren’t that bad, at the end of the day. But while on Earth, they’ve each done something � that mortal sin-like action � that damned them forever. And they don’t make mistakes in Hell.

“I’m your lark-mirror, my dear, and you can’t escape me.�

So freakin� good. I technically read this in two sittings (it’s not that long, just a bit over 40 pages), but that was only because of the train and me having to stop after just picking it up. Next time I read, I’ll probably do it all in one sitting. I want to do a table-read of this! Or fuck, even perform it. Garcin’s an interesting character; I’m haunted that he just wants the faith of one other person to believe he’s not a coward. And he can’t even find that one. In his fight or flight moment on Earth, he chose to flee. And it’ll haunt him forever.

What a play. What a work. Sartre? Damn. I’ve got three other plays by him and I’m ready to dive in. Speaking of philosophers, I already am citing Nietzsche to some friends in passing, though I mean it in as positive of a way as possible; our lives have no inherent meaning other than what we impose on it � therefore we are the ones who choose to see that our life is great, we take the chaos and mold it into something beautiful.

Where did I learn that Nietzsche sentiment from? Another monologue I performed from a play called North to Maine. Oh, man, who the hell is even reading this? Doesn't matter. I do it for me.
]]> The Two Gentlemen of Verona 82346 The Two Gentlemen of Verona is more intelligible if we think of them as boys, leaving home for the first time. One has a crush on a girl, Julia, though he hasn’t yet told her.

Sent to court to learn to be “perfect gentlemen,� Valentine and Proteus are derailed by their attraction to Sylvia, the ruler’s daughter. Valentine’s mental denseness does not deter Sylvia from returning his love, but he is caught, and banished, when he tries to elope with her. Proteus’s desire for Sylvia wipes out his former love, leading him into despicable acts that win scorn from Sylvia and wound Julia, who has pursued him disguised as a boy.

When Sylvia follows Valentine into banishment, Proteus follows Sylvia, and Julia follows Proteus, the stage is set for a disturbing ending. But the stage is also set for the “gentlemen� to take small steps toward maturity.

The authoritative edition of The Two Gentlemen of Verona from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, includes:

-Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play
-Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play
-Scene-by-scene plot summaries
-A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases
-An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language
-An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play
-Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books
-An annotated guide to further reading

Essay by Jeffrey Masten

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.]]> 245 William Shakespeare 0671722956 EJ 5 funny, plays, essentials “Fire that’s closest kept burns most of all.�

In the continued adventures of life at Adler, I chose my first Shakespeare monologue to tackle and work on for class, and it’s Proteus� “Even as one heat another heat expels� from Act 2, Scene 4. I fell in love with how direct, honest, and ridiculous the monologue was as I was looking online � and it was a change of speed from the contemptuous monologue I auditioned for the Conservatory with (Edmund’s “Now gods, stand up for bastards� from King Lear). I knew I wanted to work on a comedy monologue after auditioning with two tragic characters (Edmund and Con from Stupid Fucking Bird).

And even if this is considered “lesser� Shakespeare, lesser Shakespeare is better than most people’s best. To tell you the truth, I really enjoyed reading this. The male characters are all so freakin� stupid (Lance and Speed are rather insightful, though), but the female characters possess all the wisdom and patience to just deal with the chutzpah that is these horny, conniving and/or oblivious men.

Poor Julia. Heart aches for her. What a character, and what hot rocks she makes herself walk over for Proteus. Girl, he does NOT deserve it!

Julia, as Sebastian (Act 4, Sc. 4)
“Because methinks that she loved you as well
As you do love your lady Sylvia.
She dreams on him that has forgot her love;
You dote on her that cares not for your love.
’Tis pity love should be so contrary,
And thinking on it makes me cry ‘Alas.’�

I agree with the discourse that Act 5 is rather, uh, concerning. It’s very misogynistic and I cannot believe it just ends “happily ever after.� In Act 4 and 5, I found myself laughing just at Shakespeare’s wondrous wordplay and the messy entanglement he gets his characters involved with � it’s a great setup, but boy, that denouement� the gall of you, William! Male friendship can't excuse EVERYTHING.

A sincere thought I had while reading was, “so many iconic English expressions or phrases must’ve come from this play?� Just incredible phrases like, “Love is blind,� or “And seal the bargain with a holy kiss� (maybe that’s not iconic, but I’m pretty sure there was a Disney Channel show that referenced this?).

I’m really excited to dive into my Proteus monologue. He’s such a fuckboy! And I can’t say that I’m much of that. But it’ll be fun to lean into.]]> 3.40 1594 The Two Gentlemen of Verona
author: William Shakespeare
name: EJ
average rating: 3.40
book published: 1594
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/17
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: funny, plays, essentials
review:
“Fire that’s closest kept burns most of all.�

In the continued adventures of life at Adler, I chose my first Shakespeare monologue to tackle and work on for class, and it’s Proteus� “Even as one heat another heat expels� from Act 2, Scene 4. I fell in love with how direct, honest, and ridiculous the monologue was as I was looking online � and it was a change of speed from the contemptuous monologue I auditioned for the Conservatory with (Edmund’s “Now gods, stand up for bastards� from King Lear). I knew I wanted to work on a comedy monologue after auditioning with two tragic characters (Edmund and Con from Stupid Fucking Bird).

And even if this is considered “lesser� Shakespeare, lesser Shakespeare is better than most people’s best. To tell you the truth, I really enjoyed reading this. The male characters are all so freakin� stupid (Lance and Speed are rather insightful, though), but the female characters possess all the wisdom and patience to just deal with the chutzpah that is these horny, conniving and/or oblivious men.

Poor Julia. Heart aches for her. What a character, and what hot rocks she makes herself walk over for Proteus. Girl, he does NOT deserve it!

Julia, as Sebastian (Act 4, Sc. 4)
“Because methinks that she loved you as well
As you do love your lady Sylvia.
She dreams on him that has forgot her love;
You dote on her that cares not for your love.
’Tis pity love should be so contrary,
And thinking on it makes me cry ‘Alas.’�

I agree with the discourse that Act 5 is rather, uh, concerning. It’s very misogynistic and I cannot believe it just ends “happily ever after.� In Act 4 and 5, I found myself laughing just at Shakespeare’s wondrous wordplay and the messy entanglement he gets his characters involved with � it’s a great setup, but boy, that denouement� the gall of you, William! Male friendship can't excuse EVERYTHING.

A sincere thought I had while reading was, “so many iconic English expressions or phrases must’ve come from this play?� Just incredible phrases like, “Love is blind,� or “And seal the bargain with a holy kiss� (maybe that’s not iconic, but I’m pretty sure there was a Disney Channel show that referenced this?).

I’m really excited to dive into my Proteus monologue. He’s such a fuckboy! And I can’t say that I’m much of that. But it’ll be fun to lean into.
]]> The Iceman Cometh 111734 The Iceman Cometh in 1939, but he delayed production until after the war, when it enjoyed a modest run in 1946 after receiving mixed reviews. Three years after O'Neill's death, Jason Robards starred in a Broadway revival that brought new critical attention to O'Neill’s dark play. In the half century since, The Iceman Cometh has gained in stature. Kevin Spacey and James Earl Jones have played Hickey.The Iceman Cometh focuses on a group of alcoholics who endlessly discuss but never act on their dreams, and Hickey, the traveling salesman determined to strip them of their pipe dreams.]]> 236 Eugene O'Neill 0300117434 EJ 5 “I’ve had hell inside me. I can spot it in others.�

Okay. Wow. This is freakin� brilliant. So heartbreaking. Pipe dreams, who needs ‘em?

…r?

“It’s worse if you kill someone and they have to go on living. I’d be glad of the Chair! It’d wipe it out! It’d square me with myself.�

As a read, I think I enjoyed this or was moved more than I was with Long Day’s Journey Into Night, which I think perhaps is the minority opinion? But these two works are some of O’Neill’s masterpieces. I won’t protest the idea that WATCHING or even performing in Long Day’s Journey Into Night is more affecting than Iceman Cometh. But I did in fact LOVE immensely both plays.

The play’s biggest point that it makes is that we need that reason, that hope, that pipe dream, to genuinely keep going. Hickey is all talk when he tells the regulars at the bar to give up their pipe dreams and go ahead and DO what they keep saying they’ll do ‘tomorrow� or ‘when the time’s right.� I’ll admit, some of Hickey’s earlier points I did agree with in certain contexts.

I can even speak for myself, if I never applied to acting school when I did, I don’t think I ever would’ve. Perhaps since late 2019 or early 2020, I was saying, “when the TD Ameritrade and Schwab integration completes, I’m gonna do something! I’m gonna go back to school, I’ll get a new job, whatever.� Now, antithetical to what happens to the doomed characters in this play, I did DO THE THING and I feel so much happier.

“A stew bum is a stew bum and yuh can’t change him.�

This play is in conversation with Kierkegaard’s musing and philosophy (which I frequently cite since it’s so important and is my MO): “happiness is in desire; so long as there is desire, there is hope, and there is potential for said happiness. Even if happiness doesn’t exist in the current moment.� So long as you’re hoping for something, you’re looking forward to something, you know that what you’re enduring is in service for something bigger, or something outside of yourself � you can keep going!

And Hickey, being all talk, and trying to convince himself the most of all (unsuccessfully), tells everyone, and I'm paraphrasing now, “give up! Accept who you are and you’ll be liberated.�

A secondary interpretation of everything happening� don’t drink! This is as much of an anti-drinking PSA as anything; but, to which I can also contend: “the social drinker will live longer than the friendless, straight-edge individual.� Because Hickey, sober as can be throughout the play, is the play’s biggest firecracker.

Some great characters and great threads. Perhaps one too many characters in this script, which is why more contemporary adaptations remove one or two characters completely. The play truly begins when Hickey shows up initially, but it takes more than 40-50 pages for that to happen.

There are some incredible, heartbreaking, and tragic monologues here. I love these characters and what they have to say. That final sequence? There’s no other way this play could’ve honestly ended, and it’s perfect, and it’s hellish, and it’s purgatory. So cynical, but so real. ]]> 3.91 1946 The Iceman Cometh
author: Eugene O'Neill
name: EJ
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1946
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/29
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: essentials, favorites, inspiring, plays, stops-you-in-your-tracks, wtf
review:
“I’ve had hell inside me. I can spot it in others.�

Okay. Wow. This is freakin� brilliant. So heartbreaking. Pipe dreams, who needs ‘em?

…r?

“It’s worse if you kill someone and they have to go on living. I’d be glad of the Chair! It’d wipe it out! It’d square me with myself.�

As a read, I think I enjoyed this or was moved more than I was with Long Day’s Journey Into Night, which I think perhaps is the minority opinion? But these two works are some of O’Neill’s masterpieces. I won’t protest the idea that WATCHING or even performing in Long Day’s Journey Into Night is more affecting than Iceman Cometh. But I did in fact LOVE immensely both plays.

The play’s biggest point that it makes is that we need that reason, that hope, that pipe dream, to genuinely keep going. Hickey is all talk when he tells the regulars at the bar to give up their pipe dreams and go ahead and DO what they keep saying they’ll do ‘tomorrow� or ‘when the time’s right.� I’ll admit, some of Hickey’s earlier points I did agree with in certain contexts.

I can even speak for myself, if I never applied to acting school when I did, I don’t think I ever would’ve. Perhaps since late 2019 or early 2020, I was saying, “when the TD Ameritrade and Schwab integration completes, I’m gonna do something! I’m gonna go back to school, I’ll get a new job, whatever.� Now, antithetical to what happens to the doomed characters in this play, I did DO THE THING and I feel so much happier.

“A stew bum is a stew bum and yuh can’t change him.�

This play is in conversation with Kierkegaard’s musing and philosophy (which I frequently cite since it’s so important and is my MO): “happiness is in desire; so long as there is desire, there is hope, and there is potential for said happiness. Even if happiness doesn’t exist in the current moment.� So long as you’re hoping for something, you’re looking forward to something, you know that what you’re enduring is in service for something bigger, or something outside of yourself � you can keep going!

And Hickey, being all talk, and trying to convince himself the most of all (unsuccessfully), tells everyone, and I'm paraphrasing now, “give up! Accept who you are and you’ll be liberated.�

A secondary interpretation of everything happening� don’t drink! This is as much of an anti-drinking PSA as anything; but, to which I can also contend: “the social drinker will live longer than the friendless, straight-edge individual.� Because Hickey, sober as can be throughout the play, is the play’s biggest firecracker.

Some great characters and great threads. Perhaps one too many characters in this script, which is why more contemporary adaptations remove one or two characters completely. The play truly begins when Hickey shows up initially, but it takes more than 40-50 pages for that to happen.

There are some incredible, heartbreaking, and tragic monologues here. I love these characters and what they have to say. That final sequence? There’s no other way this play could’ve honestly ended, and it’s perfect, and it’s hellish, and it’s purgatory. So cynical, but so real.
]]> The Technique of Acting 237329 156 Stella Adler 0553349325 EJ 5 “In this life, most people are forced to use only one side of themselves. All those other selves create a unique unquiet in the actor’s soul; and that is what provokes the actor’s talent to be heard."

Yeah. This is kind of a Bible for an actor, or I’d go as far as to say any creative. To the few of you who follow me here, I’ve been a broken record talking about my recent start at acting school (specifically the Stella Adler Studio of Acting).

We were encouraged to seek this book out for more context before starting at the conservatory. And this was such a succinct, easy read, with many insights and quick, intuitive examples that really helped reframe my mind when it comes to acting and using my imagination. Seeking the truth.

It’s a book I could probably reread once a year, or whenever there’s an intense role I need to prepare for and I just need to go back and learn the essentials again. It’s like a musician still needing to do scales before a performance, like an athlete who warms up before a game; it’s all applicable.

“These set standards of behavior, or the Norm, are obstacles for the growing artist. This middle-class way of thinking (Norm) becomes a straitjacket for the imagination.�

Organically in my life I’ve already referenced this book that applied to scenarios or conversations outside the context of acting. Specifically the idea that actors only really have two different motivations when it comes to a scene, when you really break it down:

�1. His destructiveness when he deals solely with the appetites he was born with.
2. His dissatisfied struggle to attain something higher in life than his instincts.�

There are pearls of wisdom like these that kept popping up. Sure, it’s a book about the technique of acting, but acting is representative of a life itself, even if heightened, exaggerated, or fictional. Within the context of its scene or play, it’s truth. Playing characters with real problems, we can, if managed correctly, merge parts of ourselves with the character. My voice & speech teacher said my Edmund will be different than other people’s Edmund because I approach the role, written in classic Shakespearean old English, differently than how someone else would.

“An actor is the person who understands that words carry ideas.�

And damn, they do. Thank you, Stella. Excited to keep moving forward and growing. Apologies in advance, to anyone that cares, that all the books I’ll be reading are probably plays or relating to craft. Back in #school.]]> 4.15 1988 The Technique of Acting
author: Stella Adler
name: EJ
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1988
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/21
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: essentials, favorites, inspiring
review:
“In this life, most people are forced to use only one side of themselves. All those other selves create a unique unquiet in the actor’s soul; and that is what provokes the actor’s talent to be heard."

Yeah. This is kind of a Bible for an actor, or I’d go as far as to say any creative. To the few of you who follow me here, I’ve been a broken record talking about my recent start at acting school (specifically the Stella Adler Studio of Acting).

We were encouraged to seek this book out for more context before starting at the conservatory. And this was such a succinct, easy read, with many insights and quick, intuitive examples that really helped reframe my mind when it comes to acting and using my imagination. Seeking the truth.

It’s a book I could probably reread once a year, or whenever there’s an intense role I need to prepare for and I just need to go back and learn the essentials again. It’s like a musician still needing to do scales before a performance, like an athlete who warms up before a game; it’s all applicable.

“These set standards of behavior, or the Norm, are obstacles for the growing artist. This middle-class way of thinking (Norm) becomes a straitjacket for the imagination.�

Organically in my life I’ve already referenced this book that applied to scenarios or conversations outside the context of acting. Specifically the idea that actors only really have two different motivations when it comes to a scene, when you really break it down:

�1. His destructiveness when he deals solely with the appetites he was born with.
2. His dissatisfied struggle to attain something higher in life than his instincts.�

There are pearls of wisdom like these that kept popping up. Sure, it’s a book about the technique of acting, but acting is representative of a life itself, even if heightened, exaggerated, or fictional. Within the context of its scene or play, it’s truth. Playing characters with real problems, we can, if managed correctly, merge parts of ourselves with the character. My voice & speech teacher said my Edmund will be different than other people’s Edmund because I approach the role, written in classic Shakespearean old English, differently than how someone else would.

“An actor is the person who understands that words carry ideas.�

And damn, they do. Thank you, Stella. Excited to keep moving forward and growing. Apologies in advance, to anyone that cares, that all the books I’ll be reading are probably plays or relating to craft. Back in #school.
]]> <![CDATA[Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?]]> 14940 272 Edward Albee 0451218590 EJ 5 “Truth and illusion, George; you don’t know the difference.�
“No, but we must carry on as though we did.�

My first introduction to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was Mike Nichols� 1966 film adaptation masterpiece of the original Edward Albee play. Since, it’s gone through some updates and revisions, and this update for the 2005 revival is considered to be the definitive version now, and is what has usually been staged since. I haven’t seen the film in a few years, but there definitely were a few changes made here and there that I could notice.

Gosh. What brilliant, brilliant dialogue. So darkly funny, so coarse, so vicious. The “fun and games� that Martha and George have for their guests Nick and Honey, lordy lordy.

The Succession Season 4 balcony fight between Tom and Shiv wouldn’t be possible without this sacred text from Edward Albee. Just hearing it in my head, how I’d play it, or how I’d imagine actors playing it� it’s intense and it’s amazing.

My acting technique teacher Ella saw me pull out the book since I used it as a prop in setting up “my room� for an assignment in her class, and she told me that she played Honey in a production of the show once. Another time, I was holding this book while on my way to a comedy show at the Bell House and the woman who checked my ID told me, “that’s my favorite play of all-time.� And it took me a second to process that I was holding the book.

I’d LOVE to see this performed live soon. I’d love to be in it one day, shiiiiit. I feel like I’d only be qualified to ever be George, lol, so I guess I have to wait some 20+ years for this to ever be an option.]]> 4.07 1962 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
author: Edward Albee
name: EJ
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1962
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/20
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: essentials, favorites, funny, stops-you-in-your-tracks, plays
review:
“Truth and illusion, George; you don’t know the difference.�
“No, but we must carry on as though we did.�

My first introduction to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was Mike Nichols� 1966 film adaptation masterpiece of the original Edward Albee play. Since, it’s gone through some updates and revisions, and this update for the 2005 revival is considered to be the definitive version now, and is what has usually been staged since. I haven’t seen the film in a few years, but there definitely were a few changes made here and there that I could notice.

Gosh. What brilliant, brilliant dialogue. So darkly funny, so coarse, so vicious. The “fun and games� that Martha and George have for their guests Nick and Honey, lordy lordy.

The Succession Season 4 balcony fight between Tom and Shiv wouldn’t be possible without this sacred text from Edward Albee. Just hearing it in my head, how I’d play it, or how I’d imagine actors playing it� it’s intense and it’s amazing.

My acting technique teacher Ella saw me pull out the book since I used it as a prop in setting up “my room� for an assignment in her class, and she told me that she played Honey in a production of the show once. Another time, I was holding this book while on my way to a comedy show at the Bell House and the woman who checked my ID told me, “that’s my favorite play of all-time.� And it took me a second to process that I was holding the book.

I’d LOVE to see this performed live soon. I’d love to be in it one day, shiiiiit. I feel like I’d only be qualified to ever be George, lol, so I guess I have to wait some 20+ years for this to ever be an option.
]]> Just Kids 341879 Just Kids, Patti Smith's first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.]]> 304 Patti Smith EJ 5 “I would go as far as I could and hit a wall, my own imagined limitations. And then I met a fellow who gave me his secret, and it was pretty simple. When you hit a wall, just kick it in.�

Fell in love with Patti Smith’s lyrical prose instantly, and adored her recollections of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe � from the meager beginnings where art was barely enough to sustain (but it did power them through!) to the tastes of success; or rather, the public just catching up to what they were both living authentically day in and day out at the Hotel Chelsea, Max’s Kansas City, and everywhere in between in New York City.

“Still love you through it all,� Robert says to Patti, and that’s perhaps the most succinct way to describe their relationship, and the relationship artists have with art itself. There’s a magnetism between Robert and Patti that makes their feeding off of each other vital, necessary, important. Despite their differences as they grew older, nothing was more honest or truthful than when each inspired each other’s best work.

Patti Smith’s writing shines through. I hadn’t realized that she really began as a poet prior to being a rock star and punk rock icon, and her command of the written word is simply sublime. Lived in, honest, and dancing across this invisible melody that makes reciting each sentence in my head like discovering a new favorite song.

“I felt, watching Jim Morrison, that I could do that. I can’t say why I thought this. I had nothing in my experience to make me think that would ever be possible, yet I harbored that conceit. I felt both kinship and contempt for him. I could feel his self-consciousness as well as his supreme confidence. He exuded a mixture of beauty and self-loathing, and mystic pain, like a West Coast Saint Sebastian.�

Tremendous read. About these brilliant artists, and the world they were brought up in, were inspired by. How every experience informs the next. About the magic of looking around and observing the beauty all around you, despite impoverished circumstances; despite the odds stacked against you; despite the starvation. I teared up while reading this at a couple points and had to pause while reading the last three pages on the train home today. Amazing stuff.

Probably one of my favorite books ever now.]]> 4.19 2010 Just Kids
author: Patti Smith
name: EJ
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/01
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: essentials, favorites, inspiring, stops-you-in-your-tracks
review:
“I would go as far as I could and hit a wall, my own imagined limitations. And then I met a fellow who gave me his secret, and it was pretty simple. When you hit a wall, just kick it in.�

Fell in love with Patti Smith’s lyrical prose instantly, and adored her recollections of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe � from the meager beginnings where art was barely enough to sustain (but it did power them through!) to the tastes of success; or rather, the public just catching up to what they were both living authentically day in and day out at the Hotel Chelsea, Max’s Kansas City, and everywhere in between in New York City.

“Still love you through it all,� Robert says to Patti, and that’s perhaps the most succinct way to describe their relationship, and the relationship artists have with art itself. There’s a magnetism between Robert and Patti that makes their feeding off of each other vital, necessary, important. Despite their differences as they grew older, nothing was more honest or truthful than when each inspired each other’s best work.

Patti Smith’s writing shines through. I hadn’t realized that she really began as a poet prior to being a rock star and punk rock icon, and her command of the written word is simply sublime. Lived in, honest, and dancing across this invisible melody that makes reciting each sentence in my head like discovering a new favorite song.

“I felt, watching Jim Morrison, that I could do that. I can’t say why I thought this. I had nothing in my experience to make me think that would ever be possible, yet I harbored that conceit. I felt both kinship and contempt for him. I could feel his self-consciousness as well as his supreme confidence. He exuded a mixture of beauty and self-loathing, and mystic pain, like a West Coast Saint Sebastian.�

Tremendous read. About these brilliant artists, and the world they were brought up in, were inspired by. How every experience informs the next. About the magic of looking around and observing the beauty all around you, despite impoverished circumstances; despite the odds stacked against you; despite the starvation. I teared up while reading this at a couple points and had to pause while reading the last three pages on the train home today. Amazing stuff.

Probably one of my favorite books ever now.
]]> The Flick 17675118 The Flick pays tribute to the power of movies and paints a heartbreaking portrait of three characters and their working lives. A critical hit when it premiered Off-Broadway, this comedy, by one of the country's most produced and highly regarded young playwrights, was awarded the coveted 2013 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, an Obie Award for Playwriting and the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.]]> 177 Annie Baker 1559364580 EJ 5 “Well, yesterday I had this thought.
I was like: okay.
Maybe it’s never gonna get better.
Maybe I’m gonna live with my dad for the rest of my life and like the actual problem is just that I’m waiting for things to change.
Like maybe I’m just gonna be that weird depressed guy and I should just like accept it.
And that’ll be the life I get.
And that’ll be okay.�

I read Act One, Scene Six, which only features Avery talking on the phone with his therapist while his coworkers are out for a lunch break, and I thought to myself, “I think I found my next monologue for acting class.�

I’ve since decided to change it since the whole entire scene is too long, and taking out only a chunk of the scene won’t have it hit as hard. But Avery expresses sentiments in this monologue that I feel like I’ve almost said verbatim out loud myself (even in a video I made!) that I found endlessly relatable that I reread the scene on the train and then again a couple of times (when I was considering using it as a monologue of my own) to examine each little ebb of his speech on his dreams, his dad, his doubts, his loneliness, and his movies.

Nevertheless, really had a great time reading Annie Baker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Only took me two sittings! Such an easy page-turner, and as a reader, it’s so easy to keep going; but some of the magic of this play exists in the frequent pauses and beats � in the awkward, deafening silence of addressing shame, fulfillment, circumstance, or even just changing a film projector to a digital one.

Such natural dialogue, and such vividly-realized characters, even if presented in such modest, simple ways.

A play that follows three people coming of age in their own ways, each in completely different phases of their lives. Annie Baker emphasized their insecurities and shortcomings in ways that are extremely relatable as an audience.

I merely only knew the setting of the play, that it won the Pulitzer, and that it was Annie Baker, who I became initially familiar with through her radiant film Janet Planet (which inadvertently may have kickstarted this theater kick I’m on). I didn’t expect this play to be so� simple. In an admiring way, it makes me think, “fuck, why am I not writing something like this?� But the ability to make “simple� naturalistic writing so effective is so hard to master, and now I’ve got folks like Annie Baker and Hemingway to look up to in terms of this brevity in speech and scene-setting.]]> 4.08 2014 The Flick
author: Annie Baker
name: EJ
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/05
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: essentials, favorites, funny, stops-you-in-your-tracks, plays
review:
“Well, yesterday I had this thought.
I was like: okay.
Maybe it’s never gonna get better.
Maybe I’m gonna live with my dad for the rest of my life and like the actual problem is just that I’m waiting for things to change.
Like maybe I’m just gonna be that weird depressed guy and I should just like accept it.
And that’ll be the life I get.
And that’ll be okay.�

I read Act One, Scene Six, which only features Avery talking on the phone with his therapist while his coworkers are out for a lunch break, and I thought to myself, “I think I found my next monologue for acting class.�

I’ve since decided to change it since the whole entire scene is too long, and taking out only a chunk of the scene won’t have it hit as hard. But Avery expresses sentiments in this monologue that I feel like I’ve almost said verbatim out loud myself (even in a video I made!) that I found endlessly relatable that I reread the scene on the train and then again a couple of times (when I was considering using it as a monologue of my own) to examine each little ebb of his speech on his dreams, his dad, his doubts, his loneliness, and his movies.

Nevertheless, really had a great time reading Annie Baker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Only took me two sittings! Such an easy page-turner, and as a reader, it’s so easy to keep going; but some of the magic of this play exists in the frequent pauses and beats � in the awkward, deafening silence of addressing shame, fulfillment, circumstance, or even just changing a film projector to a digital one.

Such natural dialogue, and such vividly-realized characters, even if presented in such modest, simple ways.

A play that follows three people coming of age in their own ways, each in completely different phases of their lives. Annie Baker emphasized their insecurities and shortcomings in ways that are extremely relatable as an audience.

I merely only knew the setting of the play, that it won the Pulitzer, and that it was Annie Baker, who I became initially familiar with through her radiant film Janet Planet (which inadvertently may have kickstarted this theater kick I’m on). I didn’t expect this play to be so� simple. In an admiring way, it makes me think, “fuck, why am I not writing something like this?� But the ability to make “simple� naturalistic writing so effective is so hard to master, and now I’ve got folks like Annie Baker and Hemingway to look up to in terms of this brevity in speech and scene-setting.
]]> <![CDATA[The Last Days of Judas Iscariot]]> 759844 From one of our most admired playwrights, "an ambitious, complicated and often laugh-out-loud religious debate" (Toby Zinman, The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Set in a time-bending, seriocomically imagined world between Heaven and Hell, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is a philosophical meditation on the conflict between divine mercy and human free will that takes a close look at the eternal damnation of the Bible's most notorious sinner. This latest work from the author of Our Lady of 121st Street "shares many of the traits that have made Mr. Guirgis a playwright to reckon with in recent years: a fierce and questing mind that refuses to settle for glib answers, a gift for identifying with life's losers and an unforced eloquence that finds the poetry in lowdown street talk. [Guirgis brings to the play] a stirring sense of Christian existential pain, which wonders at the paradoxes of faith" (Ben Brantley, The New York Times).]]> 128 Stephen Adly Guirgis 0571211011 EJ 4 funny, plays “You cashed in silver, Mr. Iscariot, but me? Me, I threw away God� that’s a fact. That’s a natural fact.�

Love a lot of the ideas thrown in this play. As someone riddled with Catholic guilt, I loved some of the play’s sentiments profusely.

I shall admit, perhaps my least favorite thing I’ve read for Stella Adler so far. If I were 16, maybe this would’ve been the funniest, coolest, most profound play I’ve ever read. It comes across more as juvenile to me now. I’m not so sure that time will help my relationship with this play.

But I read this because my first character in Scene Study is� SATAN. Because when you look at me, you think Satan, right? lol. Was flattered and almost nervous that this was the first character my Scene Study teacher gave me solely from my monologue performance on Day 1. I do like my scene that I’m working on; it’s silly.

The monologues in this play are nice. Especially the final, devastating one by Butch.

Still, some of the dialogue is so swear-y and vulgar for the sake of it; not because it adds anything.]]> 4.22 2005 The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
author: Stephen Adly Guirgis
name: EJ
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/19
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: funny, plays
review:
“You cashed in silver, Mr. Iscariot, but me? Me, I threw away God� that’s a fact. That’s a natural fact.�

Love a lot of the ideas thrown in this play. As someone riddled with Catholic guilt, I loved some of the play’s sentiments profusely.

I shall admit, perhaps my least favorite thing I’ve read for Stella Adler so far. If I were 16, maybe this would’ve been the funniest, coolest, most profound play I’ve ever read. It comes across more as juvenile to me now. I’m not so sure that time will help my relationship with this play.

But I read this because my first character in Scene Study is� SATAN. Because when you look at me, you think Satan, right? lol. Was flattered and almost nervous that this was the first character my Scene Study teacher gave me solely from my monologue performance on Day 1. I do like my scene that I’m working on; it’s silly.

The monologues in this play are nice. Especially the final, devastating one by Butch.

Still, some of the dialogue is so swear-y and vulgar for the sake of it; not because it adds anything.
]]> hir 23734421 89 Taylor Mac EJ 0 to-read 3.67 2015 hir
author: Taylor Mac
name: EJ
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Skeleton Crew 35259754 90 Dominique Morisseau 057370516X EJ 0 to-read 4.24 Skeleton Crew
author: Dominique Morisseau
name: EJ
average rating: 4.24
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Demon Copperhead 60194162 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780063251922.

"Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver EJ 0 to-read 4.46 2022 Demon Copperhead
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: EJ
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Aliens 10258055 80 Annie Baker 0571274447 EJ 5 “No. No. She was like: the state of just having lost something is like the most enlightened state in the world. And I thought of that last night, and all of a sudden I felt incredible. I was simultaneously like being stabbed in the heart over and over again with this like devil knife but I also felt euphoric. And then I sat down and I wrote like twenty pages.�

Last week at the bar after our Friday classes, there was a moment when I was having a convo with my friends/classmates Dan and Romeo (this convo was about types of roles we want to play, specifically in regards to our Scene Study class). We bounced around a bit, but when we got to the subject of Annie Baker, I said I read The Flick and wanted to do Avery’s monologue from it; this inspired Dan to say to Romeo, “you know what� EJ would be really good as the kid in The Aliens.� Dan then shifted his attention to me, “I mean, you have a young face. It’d work. The kid’s Jewish, though� but still, I think you’d be great as the kid.�

“Sometimes the Fourth, like, depresses me.�

Boy, this was such an easy read! Finished in one sitting after beginning ~1am-ish and then writing this review at 3:15am -- great life choices once again, EJ. However fast it took me to read I’m sure it’d be at least three or four times as long to watch � so many pauses! And Annie Baker wrote in her note that “at least a third—if not half—of this play is silence.� I had to picture in my head, or feel it with some of the play’s haymakers of musings, how the silences filled the space. What wasn’t being said; what was being thought of. What the characters were afraid of talking about or diving deeper into � but they never had to, because they know. And we know as an (attentive) audience because Annie Baker goes Chekhov with this play. Not like I’m some Chekhov expert, but it's the idea of “Going Beyond� � of doing everything we can possibly be doing except talking about the thing.

I’m flattered Dan thought of me as being potentially a good fit for the role of Evan, the 17-year-old newbie employee at the coffeeshop, who is described as being “in a constant state of humiliation� when we first meet him. …Thanks Dan?

“Maybe you’re a genius too!�
Pause.
Ԩ𲹳.�

But it’s a great character. And I identified very much with his initial awkwardness, and then with how attracted and magnetized he was with his two new friends � who on the surface seem like 30+ year old burnouts, drinking on the back porch of a coffeeshop shooting the shit every day.

End of Act One was so beautiful, with distinctly some of my favorite moments and ideas. When I finished reading the play, I had to re-read excerpts of Jasper’s novel that he was reading to KJ (and later Evan). It hits so hard. The ideas of immense� disappointment. The lack of fulfillment. That on the character’s journey of America, a lot of American cities look like� other American places. America looks like the rest of America. Jasper’s disillusionment is hidden in plain sight; Annie Baker is such an incredible writer.

Act Two is so disarming, it’s a magic trick. Evan has one scene where he has a phone call with someone he met at the camp he was at, and ugh, I teared up a bit at the implication of it all. There were a couple moments between KJ and Evan that really got me in Act Two.

Dane DeHaan was the original Evan of The Aliens. There’s something about Dane DeHaan that I think I can channel� I’ve always loved the work I’ve seen of him. His performance in Chronicle moved me immensely when I was in high school. He was 27 playing a high school sophomore or something. …I can do the same!!! Lmao.]]> 4.10 2011 The Aliens
author: Annie Baker
name: EJ
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/24
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: essentials, favorites, funny, plays, inspiring, stops-you-in-your-tracks
review:
“No. No. She was like: the state of just having lost something is like the most enlightened state in the world. And I thought of that last night, and all of a sudden I felt incredible. I was simultaneously like being stabbed in the heart over and over again with this like devil knife but I also felt euphoric. And then I sat down and I wrote like twenty pages.�

Last week at the bar after our Friday classes, there was a moment when I was having a convo with my friends/classmates Dan and Romeo (this convo was about types of roles we want to play, specifically in regards to our Scene Study class). We bounced around a bit, but when we got to the subject of Annie Baker, I said I read The Flick and wanted to do Avery’s monologue from it; this inspired Dan to say to Romeo, “you know what� EJ would be really good as the kid in The Aliens.� Dan then shifted his attention to me, “I mean, you have a young face. It’d work. The kid’s Jewish, though� but still, I think you’d be great as the kid.�

“Sometimes the Fourth, like, depresses me.�

Boy, this was such an easy read! Finished in one sitting after beginning ~1am-ish and then writing this review at 3:15am -- great life choices once again, EJ. However fast it took me to read I’m sure it’d be at least three or four times as long to watch � so many pauses! And Annie Baker wrote in her note that “at least a third—if not half—of this play is silence.� I had to picture in my head, or feel it with some of the play’s haymakers of musings, how the silences filled the space. What wasn’t being said; what was being thought of. What the characters were afraid of talking about or diving deeper into � but they never had to, because they know. And we know as an (attentive) audience because Annie Baker goes Chekhov with this play. Not like I’m some Chekhov expert, but it's the idea of “Going Beyond� � of doing everything we can possibly be doing except talking about the thing.

I’m flattered Dan thought of me as being potentially a good fit for the role of Evan, the 17-year-old newbie employee at the coffeeshop, who is described as being “in a constant state of humiliation� when we first meet him. …Thanks Dan?

“Maybe you’re a genius too!�
Pause.
Ԩ𲹳.�

But it’s a great character. And I identified very much with his initial awkwardness, and then with how attracted and magnetized he was with his two new friends � who on the surface seem like 30+ year old burnouts, drinking on the back porch of a coffeeshop shooting the shit every day.

End of Act One was so beautiful, with distinctly some of my favorite moments and ideas. When I finished reading the play, I had to re-read excerpts of Jasper’s novel that he was reading to KJ (and later Evan). It hits so hard. The ideas of immense� disappointment. The lack of fulfillment. That on the character’s journey of America, a lot of American cities look like� other American places. America looks like the rest of America. Jasper’s disillusionment is hidden in plain sight; Annie Baker is such an incredible writer.

Act Two is so disarming, it’s a magic trick. Evan has one scene where he has a phone call with someone he met at the camp he was at, and ugh, I teared up a bit at the implication of it all. There were a couple moments between KJ and Evan that really got me in Act Two.

Dane DeHaan was the original Evan of The Aliens. There’s something about Dane DeHaan that I think I can channel� I’ve always loved the work I’ve seen of him. His performance in Chronicle moved me immensely when I was in high school. He was 27 playing a high school sophomore or something. …I can do the same!!! Lmao.
]]> The Egg 17563539 A short story about the universe and your place in it.

"You were on your way home when you died. It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. ... And that’s when you met me."

The Egg is a short story written by Andy Weir, his most popular, and follows a nameless 48-year-old man who discovers the "meaning of life" after he dies. The story is about "you" (in the second person), and God, who is "me" (in the first person). God says that you have been reincarnated many times before, and that you are soon to be reincarnated once more, leading to quite a few existential questions.

Andy Weir (1972-) built a career as a software engineer until the success of his first published novel, The Martian (2011), allowed him to live out his dream of writing fulltime. He is a lifelong space nerd and a devoted hobbyist of subjects such as relativistic physics, orbital mechanics, and the history of manned spaceflight. He also mixes a mean cocktail.]]> 3 Andy Weir EJ 0 to-read 4.21 2009 The Egg
author: Andy Weir
name: EJ
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Invitation to a Beheading 376561 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

Like Kafka's The Castle, Invitation to a Beheading embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world. In an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude", an imaginary crime that defies definition. Cincinnatus spends his final days in an absurd jail, where he is visited by chimerical jailers, an executioner who masquerades as a fellow prisoner, and by his in-laws, who lug their furniture with them into his prison cell.]]> 223 Vladimir Nabokov 0679725318 EJ 0 to-read 3.95 1935 Invitation to a Beheading
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: EJ
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1935
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> She Kills Monsters 16241391 72 Qui Nguyen 0573700567 EJ 0 to-read 3.87 2012 She Kills Monsters
author: Qui Nguyen
name: EJ
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Vietgone 34120242 Play: 2 acts; 6 scenes; Epilogue]]> Qui Nguyen EJ 0 to-read 4.00 2015 Vietgone
author: Qui Nguyen
name: EJ
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen (NHB Modern Plays)]]> 61948046 61 Marcelo Dos Santos 1788505999 EJ 0 to-read 4.17 Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen (NHB Modern Plays)
author: Marcelo Dos Santos
name: EJ
average rating: 4.17
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> How I Learned to Drive 141658 58 Paula Vogel 082221623X EJ 0 to-read 3.93 1997 How I Learned to Drive
author: Paula Vogel
name: EJ
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Indecent 31945149 112 Paula Vogel 1559365471 EJ 0 to-read 4.45 2017 Indecent
author: Paula Vogel
name: EJ
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Waiting for Lefty 92832 31 Clifford Odets 0827440197 EJ 0 to-read 3.38 1935 Waiting for Lefty
author: Clifford Odets
name: EJ
average rating: 3.38
book published: 1935
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> If We Were Villains 30319086
As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.]]> 354 M.L. Rio 125009528X EJ 0 to-read 4.11 2017 If We Were Villains
author: M.L. Rio
name: EJ
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Director's Craft: A Handbook for the Theatre]]> 8184302 256 Katie Mitchell EJ 0 to-read 4.30 2008 The Director's Craft: A Handbook for the Theatre
author: Katie Mitchell
name: EJ
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> little scratch 48677116 In the formally experimental tradition of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers and Ducks, Newburyport comes a dazzlingly original shot-in-the-arm of a novel that reveals one young woman's every thought over the course of twenty-four hours.

little scratch tells the story of an unnamed woman living in a world of office politics, clock-watching and emoji-texting as she relays what it takes to get through mundanity in the wake of a recent sexual assault.
Formatted in continuously interweaving columns that chart the feedback loop of memory, the senses, and modern distractions with witty precision, our narrator becomes increasingly anxious as the day moves on; and increasingly intent on distracting herself. Must she really drink eight glasses of water a day to stay hydrated? Does the word "rape" apply to what happened to her? Why is the etiquette of the women's bathroom so fraught? Does the colleague who keeps offering to make her tea know something? And why can't she stop scratching?
Fiercely moving and slyly profound, little scratch is a fearless and defiantly playful look at how our minds function in-- and survive--the darkest moments.]]> 224 Rebecca Watson 0385545762 EJ 0 to-read 3.71 2021 little scratch
author: Rebecca Watson
name: EJ
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Little Life 22822858
Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride.Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.]]> 720 Hanya Yanagihara 0385539258 EJ 0 to-read 4.28 2015 A Little Life
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: EJ
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Autobiography of Red 61049 Autobiography of Red, a stunning work that is both a novel and a poem, both an unconventional re-creation of an ancient Greek myth and a wholly original coming-of-age story set in the present.

Geryon, a young boy who is also a winged red monster, reveals the volcanic terrain of his fragile, tormented soul in an autobiography he begins at the age of five. As he grows older, Geryon escapes his abusive brother and affectionate but ineffectual mother, finding solace behind the lens of his camera and in the arms of a young man named Herakles, a cavalier drifter who leaves him at the peak of infatuation. When Herakles reappears years later, Geryon confronts again the pain of his desire and embarks on a journey that will unleash his creative imagination to its fullest extent. By turns whimsical and haunting, erudite and accessible, richly layered and deceptively simple, Autobiography of Red is a profoundly moving portrait of an artist coming to terms with the fantastic accident of who he is.

"A profound love story . . . sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender." -- The New York Times Book Review

"A deeply odd and immensely engaging book. . . . [Carson] exposes with passionate force the mythic underlying the explosive everyday."-- The Village Voice

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

National book Critics Circle Award Finalist]]> 160 Anne Carson 037570129X EJ 0 to-read 4.28 1998 Autobiography of Red
author: Anne Carson
name: EJ
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> Hag-Seed 28588073
Eventually he takes a job teaching Literacy Through Theatre to the prisoners at the nearby Burgess Correctional Institution, and is making a modest success of it when an auspicious star places his enemies within his reach. With the help of their own interpretations, digital effects, and the talents of a professional actress and choreographer, the Burgess Correctional Players prepare to video their Tempest. Not surprisingly, they view Caliban as the character with whom they have the most in common. However, Felix has another twist in mind, and his enemies are about to find themselves taking part in an interactive and illusion-ridden version of The Tempest that will change their lives forever. But how will Felix deal with his invisible Miranda’s decision to take a part in the play?]]> 301 Margaret Atwood 0804141290 EJ 0 to-read 3.77 2016 Hag-Seed
author: Margaret Atwood
name: EJ
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Roadside Picnic 331256
First published in 1972, Roadside Picnic is still widely regarded as one of the greatest science fiction novels, despite the fact that it has been out of print in the United States for almost thirty years.]]> 145 Arkady Strugatsky 0575070536 EJ 0 to-read 4.16 1972 Roadside Picnic
author: Arkady Strugatsky
name: EJ
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Jerusalem 6653565 109 Jez Butterworth EJ 5 “So don’t ever worry, because anywhere you go. If you’re ever short. Back to the wall. Remember the blood. The blood.�

I watched the Sam Mendes-directed The Hills of California twice already on Broadway. Both times, I wept. The first viewing, I took advantage of the 2-for-1 ticket offer; second viewing, I scored some free tix through school! I tweeted about it after the first time, and then the show itself used my praise for sponsored content � I love that they did, I wouldn’t mind if they sent me a hat or a t-shirt or something :)

Anyway, that masterpiece of a show was written by the Tony-winning playwright Jez Butterworth. Separately, my Technique teacher Josh brought up the character Johnny “Rooster� Byron from Jerusalem in class as a firecracker role; a character that perhaps doesn’t learn anything. I don’t remember if that’s exactly what he said, but Johnny is such a tragic, sad character. But I suppose it depends? Maybe he really gets stuff more than us; but he numbs himself so much with the hard drugs and liquor, and while he has a natural empathy for the burnouts and outcasts of rural Britain (and is salvation for some young people who are most likely being abused in their family homes), it still takes a toll. Whatever Johnny needed to “learn� he simply knows already; and knowledge is a curse for him.

“School is a lie. Prison’s a waste of time. Girls are wondrous. Grab your fill. No man was ever lain in his barrow wishing he’d loved one less woman. Don’t listen to no one and nothing but what your own heart bids. Lie. Cheat. Steal. Fight to the death. Don’t give up. Show me your teeth.�

There are some rich, meaty dialogue exchanges here. Frequently funny, at times vicious. There are a few truly grounded moments, and the first time we meet Johnny’s ex-wife Dawn and his estranged six-year-old son, the whole idea of that scene, and how loaded & pissed Johnny was during it � it’s so sad. Would’ve been incredible to see Mark Rylance perform this role.

“I’m heavy stone, me. You try and pick me up, I’ll break your spine.�

Johnny’s a chaotic man, but at least he’s not a hypocrite. He’s been beaten down numerous times in life, but he’s got the spirit to keep rising up. However, it’s so sad to witness how used he is to being beaten down; he’s a masochist and wants the pain. His way of living is harming his body (from being a stuntman to then donating his special blood every six weeks). He’s posturing just as much as everyone else; he tries his best to be perceived as tough, hard, all-knowing. When people try to tear him down, it doesn’t really affect him, tragically. Maybe it’s because he’s drunk out of his mind, but I believe he already knows. And there’s nothing he can, or is willing to do to change that.

“And even if you gets us all killed today, at least we’ll all show up in Heaven pissed. Cheers!�]]> 4.06 2009 Jerusalem
author: Jez Butterworth
name: EJ
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/09
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: essentials, favorites, funny, plays, wtf
review:
“So don’t ever worry, because anywhere you go. If you’re ever short. Back to the wall. Remember the blood. The blood.�

I watched the Sam Mendes-directed The Hills of California twice already on Broadway. Both times, I wept. The first viewing, I took advantage of the 2-for-1 ticket offer; second viewing, I scored some free tix through school! I tweeted about it after the first time, and then the show itself used my praise for sponsored content � I love that they did, I wouldn’t mind if they sent me a hat or a t-shirt or something :)

Anyway, that masterpiece of a show was written by the Tony-winning playwright Jez Butterworth. Separately, my Technique teacher Josh brought up the character Johnny “Rooster� Byron from Jerusalem in class as a firecracker role; a character that perhaps doesn’t learn anything. I don’t remember if that’s exactly what he said, but Johnny is such a tragic, sad character. But I suppose it depends? Maybe he really gets stuff more than us; but he numbs himself so much with the hard drugs and liquor, and while he has a natural empathy for the burnouts and outcasts of rural Britain (and is salvation for some young people who are most likely being abused in their family homes), it still takes a toll. Whatever Johnny needed to “learn� he simply knows already; and knowledge is a curse for him.

“School is a lie. Prison’s a waste of time. Girls are wondrous. Grab your fill. No man was ever lain in his barrow wishing he’d loved one less woman. Don’t listen to no one and nothing but what your own heart bids. Lie. Cheat. Steal. Fight to the death. Don’t give up. Show me your teeth.�

There are some rich, meaty dialogue exchanges here. Frequently funny, at times vicious. There are a few truly grounded moments, and the first time we meet Johnny’s ex-wife Dawn and his estranged six-year-old son, the whole idea of that scene, and how loaded & pissed Johnny was during it � it’s so sad. Would’ve been incredible to see Mark Rylance perform this role.

“I’m heavy stone, me. You try and pick me up, I’ll break your spine.�

Johnny’s a chaotic man, but at least he’s not a hypocrite. He’s been beaten down numerous times in life, but he’s got the spirit to keep rising up. However, it’s so sad to witness how used he is to being beaten down; he’s a masochist and wants the pain. His way of living is harming his body (from being a stuntman to then donating his special blood every six weeks). He’s posturing just as much as everyone else; he tries his best to be perceived as tough, hard, all-knowing. When people try to tear him down, it doesn’t really affect him, tragically. Maybe it’s because he’s drunk out of his mind, but I believe he already knows. And there’s nothing he can, or is willing to do to change that.

“And even if you gets us all killed today, at least we’ll all show up in Heaven pissed. Cheers!�
]]> Lincoln in the Bardo 29906980 Lincoln in the Bardo is a literary experience unlike any other—for no one but Saunders could conceive it.

February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. "My poor boy, he was too good for this earth," the president says at the time. "God has called him home." Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returned to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy's body.

From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a thrilling, supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory, where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie's soul.

Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction's ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices—living and dead, historical and invented—to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?]]> 368 George Saunders 0812995341 EJ 5 3.75 2017 Lincoln in the Bardo
author: George Saunders
name: EJ
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves: essentials, favorites, stops-you-in-your-tracks
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Miseducation of Cameron Post]]> 40801157
But that relief doesn't last, and Cam is soon forced to move in with her conservative aunt Ruth and her well-intentioned but hopelessly old-fashioned grandmother. She knows that from this point on, her life will forever be different. Survival in Miles City, Montana, means blending in and leaving well enough alone (as her grandmother might say), and Cam becomes an expert at both.

Then Coley Taylor moves to town. Beautiful, pickup-driving Coley is a perfect cowgirl with the perfect boyfriend to match. She and Cam forge an unexpected and intense friendship--one that seems to leave room for something more to emerge. But just as that starts to seem like a real possibility, ultrareligious Aunt Ruth takes drastic action to "fix" her niece, bringing Cam face-to-face with the cost of denying her true self--even if she's not exactly sure who that is.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a stunning and unforgettable literary debut about discovering who you are and finding the courage to live life according to your own rules.]]> 485 Emily M. Danforth EJ 5 favorites 4.13 2012 The Miseducation of Cameron Post
author: Emily M. Danforth
name: EJ
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves: favorites
review:

]]>