The Sunday Salon -- Blue Like Jazz, LATFOB is coming, etc.

Hey everyone I hope you've been having a fabulous week! It's hard to believe that that we are at the midpoint of April and tax day is this week! Thankfully my taxes are done, hope yours are too.

Next weekend is the LA Times Festival of Books. I had to miss it last year, but I'm planning on going Saturday this year and really looking forward to it. I miss you Southern California book bloggers so much, if you're planning on being there please let me know! My plans at present are basically to see the panels with John Green and Patrick Ness and hang out with Danielle.

Reading

My reading has been so weird lately, but I did manage to finish Sarah Pekkanen's These Girls which was a really nice read. I read the first chapter of Cheryl Strayed's memoir, Wild and it was so brutal I haven't managed to read on, but I really want to. When I say brutal I mean she captures the raw ugly emotions of grief so well, I just...I don't know. I actually need to finish the Chaos Walking Trilogy so I might try to do that this week before seeing Patrick Ness at The Festival of Books!

Blue Like Jazz

The Blue Like Jazz film was the first project I ever helped to fund through Kickstarter, and it was actually the way I first heard about Kickstarter. (and then all these singer/songwriters I like started using it to fund their projects, so...)

It's based on Donald Miller's best-selling memoir and was turned into a story with an actual narrative. His later book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years talks about the process of telling a good story (through working on developing the Blue Like Jazz film) and is super inspirational if you ever get the chance to read it, it will make you want to do all sorts of different things with your life in order to tell a good story with it.

Anyway, I didn't think I'd be able to see the movie, but as luck would have it, it opened at a theater just 30 minutes away from me. I was inundated with emails from the BLJ people telling me how important it was to go opening weekend, so I went ahead and made plans to go Friday.

For the most part I really liked it. I mean there were times when I was sitting there feeling so many things. I guess part of it is that a story with a character who has a life I can sort of relate to. Not so much his family background, but being a part of a church that forms a lot of your identity. And then suddenly being thrust into an environment where all these people you think are smart and funny and cool and really lovely hate the very background you come from. I think the film is a little bit confusing in its resolution...what exactly was Don wrestling with? Was it being ashamed of God or actually wrestling with the ideas he'd been taught? But even so it was so nice to find so much relatable on screen. That feeling of trying to figure out a balance between believing in God and loving Him and also rejecting some of the ideas you've always been taught is somewhat present in the film. And it is a really confusing intense thing to go through and I think the movie shows some of that.

People aren't god, but that doesn't mean God doesn't exist is the idea I took away from the film. I really did like it so much--it's nice to find stories about your kind of people on screen. And it's rare! Really interesting stories and characters of faith barely exist in film or television. So for that reason alone, Blue Like Jazz is well worth seeing. Also the cast is really pretty good and for anyone that just likes that, "awww college" feeling, it's satisfying. ;)

TV

TVD comes back this week, yay! Still kind of hoping this season manages to redeem itself. I haven't hated it actually, it has just not been as good? And it has been hard to find a real direction. So hopefully these last episodes will move the story in a direction I want to follow.

Um..other than that I got nothing. I am kind of glad we're getting closer to May and news of what shows will be airing next season, but dreading things like Nikita being cancelled. Oh yeah Nikita comes back this week, too. Yay!

Don't forget to let me know if you'll be at LATFOB and I hope you all have a great week!