New Sidebars, and True Grit

You will also notice a few new sidebars on the right-hand panel: my Netflix DVDs at home, the next five DVDs in my queue, the next ten movies in my Netflix Instant Queue, and the last twenty songs I've listened to via last.fm. I don't know that any of this is of interest to anyone, even myself, but I added the plugins anyhow. One of these days I'll also update my 2011 books page too. For some reason I'm having trouble linking from that page to the best book I've read all year, True Grit, by Charles Portis. It is, no exaggeration, an American classic, and I recommend it to all. I've seen and enjoyed both versions of the movie but neither comes close to the book. Read the first two sentences and you are hooked. If you've seen the movie you see how the sentences set up the entire story:

People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band.

That, my friends, is masterful writing. In two sentences Portis establishes character, place, time, and situation. And it keeps getting better. Every page contains laughs, deep insights and marvelous writing and storytelling. True Grit is true Americana, and it doesn't get much better. I love, love, love it.