Whew! Lots going on this weekend. I saw two movies–Pan’s Labyrinth and Babel. I’ll probably post more thoughts on these later. I will say that, while I liked Babel, I don’t think it was any great injustice that it didn’t win Best Picture. Both movies were dark, but I thought Pan’s Labyrinth was slightly more hopeful and uplifting. I cried during Pan’s Labyrinth and didn’t during Babel, which is not to say that there were not sad, heartwrenching moments during that movie.

Anyway.

I made Eden’s peanut butter swirl brownies, and for my first attempt at brownies from scratch, I have to say not half bad. I think my pan was an 8×8 rather than 9×9, which made them a little thicker than I would have liked, but they were okay.

Sunday was our book club meeting. None of us hated the book as violently as Eden did, but we all basically agreed about the book’s problems. It seemed to me that Coupland couldn’t decide which story he wanted to tell, which resulted in a jumbled, chaotic story with too many loose threads left untied. I’m not sure the four-narrator thing worked so well, because the characters weren’t given distinct enough voices.

The book was very readable…I got through it in a day…but I just kept waiting for something to happen, particularly in Heather’s story. There were moments when I thought I saw where Coupland wanted to go, but I don’t think it quite got there. I think the father/son dynamic should have been more at the heart of the story than it was. I think Hey Nostradamus wanted to be a story about faith and redemption and family, but fell a little bit short.

I did mark a lot of passages that I thought were memorable–this one in particular:

Redemption exists, but only for others. I believe, and yet I lack faith. I tried building a private world free of hypocrisy, but all I ended up with was a sour little bubble as insular and exclusive as my father’s.

And this one:

Sometimes I think God is like weather–you may not like the weather, but it has nothing to do with you. You just happen to be there. Deal with it.

I didn’t love it, which was disappointing, given how much I enjoyed Girlfriend in a Coma and All Families are Psychotic. But I didn’t completely hate it either. I doubt I’ll ever want to read it again, and I definitely wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who hasn’t read any other Coupland.

Jen’s post, LT’s post, and Eden’s review.

LT hosted the meeting, which meant we got to visit with her adorable kitty, Linus, as well.