Sunday Sundries, Number 184

1. AOTW: The writers and producers of Blockers, a film I went to see (why?) last night. Juvenile, stupid--lots of butt-and-balls humor, teens as drunks and druggies and sex-o-philes, no one with the slightest hint of any intellectual life--although getting admitted to a prestigious college is a (minor) subplot of this hedonistic tale of three girls on prom night aching for their first sexual experiences--and their three daffy parents who decide they want to "block" the boys from, well, satisfying the girls. I hated myself for sitting there (excuse: the popcorn was good), so maybe I'm the real AOTW?

2. I finished two books this week ...

     - The first was Since We Fell, a fairly complex 2017 thriller by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, etc.). I've read a lot of Lehane (not all) and have especially enjoyed his Boston PI series (there are six of them now, including Gone, Baby, Gone--a good film) featuring Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro.

Since We Fell has several stories going on: a TV reporter (our principal character) who loses it in Haiti in the post-hurricane era--loses her job, her self-confidence, her sanity. She's also been obsessed with finding out who her biological father was (Mom wouldn't tell her); she marries, finds out some dark secrets about her husband, gets involved in "rescuing" millions of dollars her husband and others have acquired through some con jobs. A psychological thriller--with some gunfire and roaring revelations, as well. Not my favorite Lehane--but fun to read in bed at night!

     - The second I finished was the latest from the Hogarth Press in their series of Shakespeare plays re-told in contemporary novels by celebrated and/or popular contemporary novelists. (Link to Hogarth site about their series.) This one, by Norwegian thriller-writer Jo Nesbø (author of the wonderful crime series about police detective Harry Hole), is based on--and titled--Macbeth, Shakespeare's dark (short!) play about ... you know ... witches, ghosts, murders (children die, too), the swift rise and fall of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.

Nesbø imagines the novel in 1970 in an unnamed port city that's been corroding with crime and corruption. Macbeth--at the beginning--is a cop, a SWAT leader (skilled with a knife!), and his GF (not wife) is named only Lady (she runs a local casino). The witches are the makers of illegal street drugs. Macbeth, at Lady's urging, soon becomes intent on becoming in charge of the whole city. It doesn't work out well for him. (See Macbeth, by William Shakespeare!)

Nesbø does not really do much with the Shakespearean dialogue--though there is a version of "Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow" here--and he plays with the characters' names: Macduff becomes Duff here, etc.

A major review (by Shakespearean authority James Shapiro) was the cover story in this week's New York Times Book Review (link to the review) The review is generally positive--but a little cool in tone, I thought--i.e., not crazy about the book.

Which is how I felt. For one thing, this Macbeth is about 3-4 times longer than the other Hogarth adaptations (it could have been trimmed, believe me), and it just never really "caught" me: I didn't get really lost in the book (as I do in good ones--including most of Nesbø 's other novels), and I'll confess that I finished it only because I want to have read all the Hogarths--not because I was really fond of it.

3. We're in that happy/frustrating place of having more than a few of our favorite TV series available for streaming, so we end up watching like 10 minutes of each one each night, then moving to the next. Here's a list of what we're streaming now ...

• Vera
• Death in Paradise
• Line of Duty
• Bosch
• Barry (a new HBO series with Bill Hader)
• and--always in the on-deck circle--Midsomer Murders, a mediocre series that I just cannot stop streaming--I think they're up to about 933 episodes by now?
• oh, and we're about to get back into Brokenwood now that I've signed up for Britbox.

4. Last word--a word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers:

     - from the Oxford English Dictionary--and I see some metaphorical uses for this word--esp in today's political climate!

evertebrate, adj. and n.

Origin: Formed within English, by derivation; perhaps modelled on a German lexical item. Etymons: e- prefix2, vertebrate adj.

Etymology: < e- prefix2 + vertebrate adj., perhaps after German Evertebraten

A. adj.

  Of an animal: not having a backbone or spinal column. Also: relating to or comprising such animals. Cf. invertebrate adj. a.

1840   Ann. Nat. Hist. 5 378   The Evertebrate animals appear, with respect to the strength of the vital principle, to stand on a far higher scale.

1881   A. Leslie tr. A. E. Nordenskiöld Voy. Vega I. iv. 198   Certain evertebrate types can endure a much greater variation in the temperature and salinity of the water than the algæ.

1929   J. A. Bierens de Haan Animal Psychol. for Biologists iii. 75   An Evertebrate animal that generally stands in an odour of intelligence, viz. the octopus.

1974   Ambio 3 94/1   The evertebrate fauna of all six lakes is made up of very few species.

2000   Palynology 24 151/2   The evertebrate collections of Museo Nacional in Rio de Janeiro.

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 B. n.

an animal not having a backbone or spinal column; = invertebrate n. a.

1876   Nation (N.Y.) 25 May 340/1   The greater part of the treatise relates to the lower forms of life, more than two hundred pages being devoted to the various classes of evertebrates.

1881   A. Leslie tr. A. E. Nordenskiöld Voy. Vega I. vii. 324   The dredging yielded..a large number of marine evertebrates.

1903   Med. News 83 212/1 (title)    On the presence of specific coagulins in the tissues of vertebrates and evertebrates.

1941   I. Filipjev & J. H. S. Stekhoven Man. Agric. Helminthology i. 66   We will limit ourselves chiefly to the parasites of evertebrates.

2003   Oikos 103 577/1   Evertebrates confined to living trees, dead trees, or fungal sporocarps.