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The Diving Bell and the Butterfly  is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. It rivals Breakfast at Tiffany’s for Best Book Of My Summer Thus Far. 

Like Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Diving Bell is a short story- more accurately it is a short memoir. It chronicles the thoughts, memories, and desires of Jean-Dominique Bauby. He was once the editor of French Elle, and after a massive stroke is left almost entirely paralyzed, except for a fully-functioning mind and the ability to blink with his left eye. Blinking is his only means of communicating with the world, and is how he wrote this memoir.

I love his wit and his creativity, and the dreaminess of his writing, though his own world probably seemed more nightmarish. Bauby gives an insightful, observant account of what it is like to be a prisoner trapped inside of one’s own mind.

The rest of my summer reading list can be found here. 

This Connecticut necklace is on sale at Gilt.

Siiigh….I love my home state, but I really don’t think I could part with $58 so I can wear it around my neck. Maybe next time.

Sita Sings The Blues gives us just a taste of Hinduism in the present perspective. This story of Sita and her husband Rama is ages old, lifted right out of the Ramayana. However, with modern commentary, animation, music, and a present-day conflict paralleling the director’s troubles with Sita’s, this film breathes new life into the story. 

I love learning about all religions, but other than my own (Orthodox Christianity) I am especially fascinated with Hinduism. I covered the Hindu celebration of Hanuman Jayanti for my journalism class, and it was probably the most challenging and the most interesting journalism assignment I’ve ever had.

The modern spirit of the movie is what keeps it so vibrant. Though the 1920’s music used in the film is considered vintage by our standards, it works with the 2000’s animation and the 7000-year-old story because the message remains the same. The story depicts Sita’s heartbreak and suffering when she is rejected by her husband for allegedly being unfaithful to him.

The film is lighthearted, and at times, quite comical, but when compared to the director’s same modern-day woes, the meaning becomes much more poignant.

You can watch and download Sita Sings the Blues here. 

I watched Layer Cake again. The first time I watched it, as I said before, the entire movie went right over my head. After reading the book, it seemed oversimplified. There’s so much they left out that I’m almost disappointed. 

I did enjoy D. Craig’s wardrobe though.

I tried to watch the movie Layer Cake one night when I was bored at school and looking to watch something action-packed and produced by Matthew Vaughn (I have already seen Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels). It was, as most of Vaughn’s movies are, very exciting (and enticing, thanks to a sharply-dressed Daniel Craig) but nearly impossible to understand with all of the fast-paced British action flying about. If only I had subtitles (goddamn Megavideo).

But had I been able to understand it, it probably would’ve been an excellent film, which is why I didn’t want to completely give up on it. I just finished reading Layer Cake, the novel.

The novel is just as twisted as the movie, plot-wise, but if you read and reread carefully enough, you might be able to understand what’s going on. I won’t go into dissecting all the layers of Layer Cake. There’s just too many. Even wikipedia had to pick and choose which layers made it into the plot summary.

I found that the beginning of each chapter was like, “Oh, just another day in beautiful London. I got a phone call and then I went to the park, la, la, la…” and then two pages later, “DEAD BODY!”, “BRUTAL BEATING!”, “DRUGS!”, “SEX!”, “THIS GUY’S DEAD AND NO ONE KNOWS WHY!” So when the action picked up, all the extraneous plot details didn’t really matter anymore because it got super exciting. 

In the end, I liked the book a lot (it’s best read in small doses, to avoid getting a headache), and I think I might be confident enough to give the movie another shot.

The rest of my summer reading list can be found here. 

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