There's no actual content here or Fish in Exile

I read one more chapter of Fletch. In it he has a call to the finance expert at his paper where we get a chapter long info dump of the rich guy's backstory and finances. Excuse me while I try to drum up some enthusiasm. Wait...wait...nope, no, not happening. I'm just not feeling it. I'm too tired for this nonsense. My mother got out of the hospital barely a month ago after her heart transplant and I just don't have the energy for this long-winded exposition.

Which is why it's weird that I read in entirety Vi Khi Nao's Fish in Exile. Because that was pretty ridiculous as well. Mythological callbacks and metaphors abound in this tale of a couple who lost their twins to the sea. So many metaphors, so many allusions. It's a serious story with serious grief and some of it is quite well portrayed and yet. Part of the way Ethos and Catholic Romulus (yes, those are their names) handle their grief is by buying pair after pair of fish (as a pair of proxy children, named Dogfish and Pistachio) and putting them in dresses and "walking" them until they die and then starting the process all over again. I understand what it's supposed to mean in regards to their grief and guilt but it's just too silly. And the metaphors. The entire book is metaphors and similes. "I watched the pluvial curtain let down her translucent laces."  She's saying it's raining. But she just said that in the previous sentence. "Snow was predicted, but rain comes heavily in sheets." It's repetitious for no real reason other than to use fancy words. It doesn't truly add anything. Tons of this. "And soon, like a child that blooms into a hand, I fall asleep."  "I sipped from the well of the Corona." (He's drinking a beer.) "I don't understand women or cameras. My thoughts are outnumbered by white diminutive dots." The entire first part of the book from the point of view of Ethos is so dream-like and metaphor heavy that it's almost impossible to figure out what is going on. He can't make love to his wife. She's turned cold. He puts daisies down his underwear. She's not thrilled by this. He eats the daisies. They taste like tobacco. He has a haversack he keeps putting bread and butter into. There's also the neighbor couple who were present at the tragedy and Ethos' mother.
At the core of the story is the loss of two children and everyone's guilt about what they could have done to prevent it's happening but you get the full story so late and before that no one's guilt makes sense.

One more thing to share. I have a Library of Health 1935 edition of the 1916 book, edited by B. Frank Scholl. Twenty books in one volume, it was a health library for housewives to use to care for their families. (No internet!)

From the section on Self-Care for Women, on exercise and nutrition and how you can't change your natural body type but you can take care of yourself.
"This individual perfection will be each person's own type of beauty, and if this is brought out as nature intended, will be most attractive and delightful." p. 1635.
You are an individual not made to be fit to someone else's mold of beauty; take care of yourself and let your God-given loveliness shine.

Remember, if you don't laugh at yourself, somebody else will do it for you

I just finished The Winter Queen. Holy fucking shit on a biscuit hell. So the ending was unexpected. That hard edge I said was running under the surface broke through at the end to rise off the page in an attempt to skewer the reader. It doesn't quite manage it because the romance is woefully underdeveloped but while that lessens the impact it doesn't entirely do away with it. It does make me want to get the next book out of the library to see what happens so well done, Akunin! Your ploy plot worked! It was a fun read, truly.

I finished watching a Korean vampire movie called Thirst. Woo the cinematography was quite stunning and the actors were impressive. A priest is infected with a vampire like virus when he volunteers as a test subject for a new vaccine. He tries to remain good in spite of his body's need for blood but finds it harder and harder as he also falls for and gets involved with an old friend's wife. Like Let the Right One in this movie gets back to vampire basics, showing them as parasites with an uncontrollable need. It could be disgusting at times and it really could have been edited down but there were a number of very intense and captivating scenes. I've got to check out some of this directors other stuff.

I'm also watching Antibodies, a German thriller. It's good although not great. The directing and acting are very nice but the story kind of meanders. Oh it has a specific purpose; the village cop wants to find out if the serial killer recently captured is the murderer of a local girl, but it sort of wanders away at points. It's also about this farmer/cop's own descent into darkness. The only problem I have is I don't understand where his problem is stemming from. Has he always had a dark side that just never came to his attention because there were no opportunities? Is the "big city" a corrupting influence? Is his own naivety working against him, leaving him unprepared to face and deal with real evil? I can understand that his eyes have been opened to new things and that the case has had an adverse effect on him. Plus the real killer is totally his son. I haven't even finished the movie yet and I can already tell you that. It's been obvious since the halfway point if not earlier. Well. I have like the way Michael (the cop) has dealt so far with the serial killer. He doesn't give much ground and only grudgingly. So it's a pretty decent movie.

Okay I just finished watching it. Okay, that was a nice twist. And hooray for the ending. The acting at the end was moving. My impressions would probably less disjointed if I actually watched movies through in one sitting but I get so antsy.

And I just finished watching Christian Bale in The Machinist. It was good at first and then it got really slow, and then it picked up and then it just became sort of disappointing. This guy hasn't slept in a year. Bale lost weight for the role and good God he looks unhealthy. He looks like a walking skeleton. And nobody attributes his abnormal behavior to this. Nor do I really understand the whole thing with the fish. Okay, maybe I do but it was very anticlimactic. The whole thing was. We start out watching him rolling a body into the water and it never delivers on that promise. Anyway, I suppose my response is, eh.