Catching up on reading

I suddenly remembered today that I never wrote about the audio versions of two books, each recorded by the author, to which Barry and I listened during our trip to St. John. No Tolstoy or Shakespeare here, just light “beach reading.”

On the flight to St. Thomas we began listening to Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan. Neither of us was all that familiar with Jim Gaffigan but we had read and heard that the book was enjoyable. From the start I will say that one of the most appealing things about him is that he wholeheartedly resists the temptation common among popular comics to use off-color language. I often think that comics use offensive language for its shock value, helping the audience forget that what they have to say is not really all that humorous. Of course, just the title of Mr. Gaffigan’s book tells you that he is writing about parenthood. He and his wife had five children between two and ten years of age squeezed into a two-bedroom five-story walk-up in Manhattan. They needed to learn to laugh or they might have done some harm to themselves or others. Did we really believe all of his stories? Of course not. But they were told with good humor and were perfect vacation reading.

Once we arrived in St. John we toggled our listening between Dad is Fat and Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling. We have become familiar with Ms. Kaling from her series The Mindy Project which is in its second year on Fox TV. Until reading her book, I was largely unaware of her earlier career, in part because I was never too fond of the NBC series, The Office, a show on which she was a cast member from 2005 to 2013. She is bright and funny and quite charming, all of which she might do even better if she took a cue from Jim Gaffigan and cleaned up her language a bit. Actually when I hear her use or read her written off-color language, I am always a bit surprised because it feels somehow out of character.

We had a nice but very cold weekend. We did manage to walk to synagogue on Saturday, and had invited friends to join us for lunch so we had a nice afternoon. We had hoped to go out on Sunday but (again) the snow started falling in the morning, another 6” or so before it stopped in the afternoon. So we had a quiet day at home, and while Barry worked I decided to bake some hammantaschen, the filled triangle-shaped cookies traditional for the upcoming Purim holiday.

Since we were not able to get out yesterday, we went instead this evening to see a movie, “Two Days, One Night.” This movie received quite stellar reviews, including A.O. Scott of the New York Times and a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. My hesitation was the fact that the movie is in French, but feeling buoyed by seeing a Hebrew language film last week, I decided it was worth a try.

The film is about a young family, parents Sandra and Manu and their two children, struggling with both financial and psychiatric problems. Sandra has just been discharged from a hospitalization for depression. Unfortunately, she returns to the small solar energy company where she had worked only to be told that she will be laid off. It seems that the management had offered the employees a choice: they would either maintain the current staff at current salaries, or, if they agreed that one of them (Sandra) would be laid off, they would provide the workers a long-promised bonus of $1000 euros. Sandra and a couple of co-workers appeal to them to allow the employees to vote again. The two days and one night was the time that Sandra had to try to convince all of her coworkers to support her continued employment. While most were sympathetic, many had their own financial woes and were just one small step from living off the government. The vote resulted in a tie, and the company decided that Sandra must be laid off. At the end, they made her an offer: if she waited a couple of months, they would not renew someone who was in a contract position and she could take that job. It happens that the contract worker had really gone out on a limb for her, and she was unwilling to accept that offer. But along the way she found that perhaps she had more inner strength and reserve than she thought, and somehow you just know at the end that she will land on her feet.

I may not have gotten all of those details completely correct, but hopefully I have provided the gist of it. It was an extremely well done and acted film, simple but very moving. I am not sure just how realistic the scenario is in France, but it still made for a thought-provoking tale.

It is hard to believe it has been six months since my last visit to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. First thing tomorrow we head down for the MRI, followed by a visit with Dr. DeAngelis. Good thoughts are welcome!

Love,

Rebecca