Tuesday, February 21, 2012

I'm a thirty-day photo challenge dropout

With only one day left, I failed to rise to the challenge.  It's no big deal, but I thought I'd share the news.  The assignment for yesterday was "a self-portrait".  My readers know I am not scared to show my mug online, but I've done it so much.  I couldn't think of anything unique and fun to do with a picture of myself, so I passed.  
The photo challenge has been fun, and there are others I could start.  Maybe another time.  
Photographer David took enough pictures when he visited to keep him busy with photoshop for a long time to come.  Here's one he shared on Facebook.  It was in reply to a remark Meesha made about my remarkable Facebook skills:




Yesterday I finished the John Grisham book "A Time to Kill".  I think it's my favorite of all his books I've read, a real page-turner.  I found it interesting that it was his first published book, and was a huge flop, selling very few copies.  Then his next couple of books took off, and once he made a name for himself, this one started selling like hot cakes.  Cliff remembers seeing the movie based on the book, but he must have watched it without me.  As I told him last night, I prefer to read a book rather than watch a movie.  I read a review of the book that gives you an idea about what it's like:
  
This addictive tale of a young lawyer defending a black Vietnam war hero who kills the white druggies who raped his child in tiny Clanton, Mississippi, is John Grisham's first novel, and his favorite of his first six. He polished it for three years and every detail shines like pebbles at the bottom of a swift, sunlit stream. Grisham is a born legal storyteller and his dialogue is pitch perfect.
The plot turns with jeweled precision. Carl Lee Hailey gets an M-16 from the Chicago hoodlum he'd saved at Da Nang, wastes the rapists on the courthouse steps, then turns to attorney Jake Brigance, who needs a conspicuous win to boost his career. Folks want to give Carl Lee a second medal, but how can they ignore premeditated execution? The town is split, revealing its social structure. Blacks note that a white man shooting a black rapist would be acquitted; the KKK starts a new Clanton chapter; the NAACP, the ambitious local reverend, a snobby, Harvard-infested big local firm, and others try to outmaneuver Jake and his brilliant, disbarred drunk of an ex-law partner. Jake hits the books and the bottle himself. Crosses burn, people die, crowds chant "Free Carl Lee!" and "Fry Carl Lee!" in the antiphony of America's classical tragedy. Because he's lived in Oxford, Mississippi, Grisham gets compared to Faulkner, but he's really got the lean style and fierce folk moralism of John Steinbeck--Tim Appelo

Now I'm starting "The Best Advice I Ever Got" by Katie Couric.  "Color Me English" is waiting in the wings.  

3 comments:

  1. Just to be silly I'll say "Wow! Bet you get all kinds of channels with an antenna like that!"

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  2. The movie wasn't too bad. It stuck closely enough with the book, and of course, it has Matthew McConaughey in it! lol The book is much better, of course. I think I've read all of Grisham's books at least once, and I have to say that one of my favorites is one that has nothing to do with the law, "A Painted House." If you haven't ever read that one, you should give it a try. It is, I believe, based a bit on his childhood in Arkansas.

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  3. I've never been able to get into Grisham although he is a fine writer. I'm not a huge fan of courtroom dramas. (if it's just a little piece of a book, I'm OK) I know you're a John Sandford fan; have you ever tried Michael Connelly? I'm crazy about his Harry Bosch series.

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