Kudos for the Week

1. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold -- a book
Read it. It's a wonderful narrative whose structure supports the theme without making it difficult to read, which is more than I can say for many other books that I've read recently. While it deals with heavy hitting subjects and afterlife, it still manages to reinforce the idea that human experience matters. It might be my favorite book that I've read this year -- I don't know, though, it's a tough call between The Lovely Bones and John Irving's recent opus Until I Find You.

2. Little Miss Sunshine -- a movie
Last night we finally watched this movie, and it's a hillarious and yet life-affirming black comedy. It managed to expose the trials of human awkwardness in a funny way without being overly pejorative or critical. To me, it seemed to celebrate the varieties of human experience while being sympathetic to its many horrors. Little Miss Sunshine was just the right combination of "these poor people" + "holy shit, that's really funny!" + "oh, no, what next?" to retain its poignancy and avoid being too painful a la typical Ben Stiller movies.