A few of the diversions I’ve enjoyed this summer:

Books:

The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University, by Kevin Roose.

A 19-year-old sophomore at Brown University decides to spend a semester studying at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. Among other things, he gets in the habit of praying multiple times daily, joins in an anti-masturbation support group called “Every Man’s Battle,” and conducts what turns out to be the last interview of Jerry Falwell’s life.

This could have been a parody or a rant, but it is neither. Roose writes with real balance and maturity, and the story is both funny and touching. As with Norah Vincent’s Self-Made Man, I cringed at the thought of how the people being written about would respond to the revelation they’d been duped. But even that was surprising – an interesting insight in a book packed with them.

Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival, by Norman Ollestad.

Norman Ollestad’s father was a wild man. He strapped his infant son on his back to go surfing, took him skiing down treacherous mountains, and generally pushed the kid to the breaking point trying to convince him what was fun, exciting and necessary in life. Little Norman chafed at his dad’s excesses, but when he was 11, the lessons he learned helped save him when the small plane he and his father were traveling in crashed into the side of a mountain.

This is a fascinating story, and Ollestad writes with brutal honesty about himself and his father. I did find his prose style lacking, and the scenes where he describes his escape from the side of the mountain are all but impossible to visualize. Tor me, the most compelling parts came in the last 30 pages, where he describes returning to the mountain decades later. All in all, a very good read, if you can get past the shortcomings of the author’s style.

Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese, by Brad Kessler.

Another beautifully observed book from the novelist Brad Kessler (full disclosure: he’s a friend). Kessler transitioned from the bustle to the bucolic, ditching Manhattan for a farmhouse in Vermont and taking on a small herd of goats with his wife, Dona. This book, a meditation on goat herding, cheese making and the rural life, is filled with history, etymology and achingly lovely prose. It also has a wonderfully cringeworthy section on the habits of the mating goat. Buy it immediately, please.

Movies:

(500) Days of Summer:

Zoey Deschanel: Love her or hate her? I admit, I kinda love her. That oddly ethereal presence, those shockingly blue eyes. She’s weird, but compelling. This movie was a trifle, and her character takes a highly out-of-character turn midway through, but it was a highly enjoyable trifle nonetheless. A truffle. Nice soundtrack, too.

Julie and Julia:

Everything you’ve heard is true: The Amy Adams character is incredibly annoying, Meryl Streep becomes Julia Child, and you wish there were more screen time for the latter and less for the former. Still, I didn’t squirm waiting to get through the Amy Adams bits, I just didn’t find them as compelling. One reviewer made an excellent point: Nora Ephron should start making movies about women like herself, rather than these fluffy Meg Ryanesque creatures she seems so drawn to.

Funny People:

Since when did it become okay to make a 2 1/2-hour movie with no intermission? Not since enduring Dr. Zhivago as a child have I felt the length of a film so acutely. Oh, yes, there was one other time – sitting through the (for me) nearly unbearable “Synecdoche, New York“ was equally twitch-inducing. “Funny People” is funny in parts, and the characters are sharply drawn, but the plot really meandered, to the point where I thought – is the filmmaker really trying to say anything here? Or is this just an evocation of a random 3-month period in some funny people’s lives? I wish it had been tighter; it could have been pretty great.