Welcome to bookchat where you can talk about anything...books, plays, essays, and books on tape. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.
The meaning of the phrase in the title is one where you lean back with something that feels good to you and say, “That’s the ticket!” It is an expression meaning “just right” or as I sometimes see it as “What I need right now!”
It is often used after a long hard day and probably refers to some kind of drink in hand. Not necessarily alcoholic, but something that hits the spot.
Tonight, I am thinking of books, of course, or movies.
I admit to having varying moods about books and movies and what hits the spot on one day does not apply on another. With the internet handy, a person can tune into music, movies or books as the whim strikes them.
Sometimes my whim is something silly, a guilty pleasure, and other times it is something to satisfy my curiosity where my fingers twitch to pick up a book that I have been looking forward to reading. Once in a while it is a book that I have read before or a favorite movie.
This time, it was The Future of the Mind by Michio Kaku. I told myself that the book should wait until I had finished at least one more of my challenge books. But my fingers hovered and…grabbed. I just couldn’t wait.
I have read two of his books:
Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21rst Century
Physics of the Future
Also, last week at Bookflurries there were several books mentioned that I put on my wish list at Barnes & Noble and then I went ahead and ordered them because…wait for it…they just hit me where I lived and I couldn’t resist. I said in effect, “That’s the Ticket!”
I also borrowed my son’s copy of The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander (all in one book) to re-read because my copy is buried somewhere on a shelf and I bought the set for my grandson for his birthday this summer. I thought I had better review the story so I can talk with him about it. I admit that a few weeks ago James Wells lit the fire under me to get going on this project by mentioning the series.
There are some books that I yearn to re-read and Chronicles was high on that list. It has been too long since I entered this world. Has it lived up to my expectations after so many years? So far, it has!
Some of the books I read or skimmed recently were disappointing, but one book was just lovely. Navigating Early by Clare Vanderpool (YA) was an unexpected treat. Two lonely boys have an adventure. It is a wonderful story. As I read it, I kept feeling that this was the perfect book for me at the right time. That doesn’t happen as often as I would wish.
Sometimes, I think I am just being cranky. After several books that left me feeling luke warm, I went to my 2015 list of books to see how bad it has really been this year so far. Of 53 books, I rated 23 as really pretty good, and 12 that were definitely OK. That is not so bad. I really am grateful to the writers and to people who recommend good books that I would not find on my own. Thank you!
I have such a long list of movies that I really like and I should re-watch. I will list some of them. I have been horrified that I have not been able to sit down and watch a dvd for months. I am trying to get back into the mode because I do love so many of them.
Here is my list of those I have watched several times (in no order of any kind):
Second Hand Lions with Duval, Caine and Osment
Ladyhawke with Pheiffer
Sweet Liberty with Alda
Cold Comfort Farm with Kate Beckinsale
Educating Rita with Michael Caine
The Man with One Red Shoe with Tom Hanks
Shining Through with Michael Douglas
One Against the Wind with Judy Davis
Casanova with Heath Ledger
Return of the Native with Catherine Zeta Jones
Onegin with Liv Tyler and Ralph Fiennes
Good Night and Good Luck with George Clooney
Hero with Dustin Hoffman and Geena Davis
American Graffiti with Dreyfuss
Cat Ballou with Jane Fonda and Lee Marvin
Silverado with Costner
Accidental Tourist Anne Tyler
Gosford Park with Maggie Smith
The Secret Garden with Maggie Smith
Always with Holly Hunter, Dreyfuss
Apollo 13 with Hanks
Ivanhoe with Elizabeth Taylor
Cyrano de Bergerac with Depardieu
Middlemarch with Juliet Aubrey
All Creatures Great and Small series I, II, III
Cinema Paradiso
Back to the Future I with Fox
What about Bob? with Dreyfuss
Tootsie
The Enemy Below
A Man for All Seasons Paul Scofield, Wendy Hiller, Leo McKern, Robert Shaw
Pride and Prejudice with Garvie and Rintoul
Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson
Persuasion with Ciaran Hinds
Knight's Tale with Heath Ledger
The Man who Planted Trees animation Frederick Back
The Man in the Glass Booth
Howl's Moving Castle
Cinderella with Brandy
The Phantom of the Opera
Firefly with Nathan Fillion
David and Lisa
To Kill a Mockingbird
Behind the Lines WW I poets
Children of a Lesser God (1986)
Gandhi (1982)
Yentl (1983)
The Last Unicorn (1982)
Oklahoma! (1955) with Hugh Jackman
Fiddler on the Roof (1971)
Galaxy Quest (1999)
Ghosts of Mississippi (1996)
Renaissance Man (1994)
The Three Musketeers 1973 Raquel Welch Michael York
Lord of the Rings
Harry Potter
How the Grinch stole Christmas (2000)
Blazing Saddles (1974)
Flower Drum Song
A Christmas Carol with Randolph Scott
The Sting (1973)
A Patch of Blue
The Seventh Seal
Rhinoceros
The Ice Man Cometh with Lee Marvin
Anne of Green Gables
Enchanted April
Lark Rise to Candleford seasons 1-4
The Red Violin
War and Peace 2007 with Clemence Poesy, Alexander Beyer and Alessio Boni
The Princess Bride
First Knight with with Sean Connery, Richard Gere, Julia Ormond
Which books or movies make you sigh with relief and say…”That’s the Ticket?”
Tonight, feel free to talk about any book, play, or movie, as usual.
Diaries of the Week:
Write On! The TWANG that breaks the spell.
by SensibleShoes
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Freeping the Hugo Awards
by Susan Grigsby
http://www.dailykos.com/...
A notable effort from Susan's diary:
Ballade of Sad Puppies
by marcusbales
Who knows within what hidden garret
Vox Day scribes his sexist rant,
or why Correia tries to parrot
his vicious views with careless cant,
or Torgerson begins to prate
of how their work has been ignored
providing cover for their slate
behind his merited award;
they’re powered by their privileged fear.
Oh, where are the pros of yesteryear?
Who gives an SJW account
of why his nominees should win
by arguing there's some amount
of worthiness that gets them in
instead of that their writing's good?
Who claims that helping other folk
around the writing neighborhood
deserves a win – that’s just a joke
deserving nothing but a jeer:
Oh where is the prose of yesteryear?
And what of other nominees
whose attitudes do not align
with this reactionary sleaze?
It stains them if they don't decline
to stand there on that slippery slope,
since they implicitly compete
as cover for the scam in hope
that legal acts that seem a cheat
will not torpedo each career --
Oh where are the pros of yesteryear?
L’envoi
Fans! It's not good politics
to vote for views, not writing, here --
vote 'No Award', not for the fix
that fakes the prose of yesteryear.
by marcusbales on Mon Apr 13, 2015 at 03:35:29 AM EDT