2 Things I Enjoyed

(1) The movie The Third Man, an English film noir written by Graham Greene.

My favorite parts:

* Several wonderful images - a huge balloon-man's shadow on the wall, fingers grasping up desperately through a sewer grate, a cat cuddling up to a large man's shoe.

* Orson Welles. The man is on. Apparently, he wrote the little Italy/Switzerland speech for himself.

* All the German that doesn't get translated for us unless somebody translates it for our non-German-speaking American protagonist. I had fun trying to make sense of it.

(2) The book Timbuktu by Paul Auster. I have liked several of his books - Book of Illusions and Leviathan (according to my BookBag software) - but this one was different. The book seems more felt than thought. It is about a dog. (Well, actually, it's about loneliness.) Now I didn't realize this would be the case when I checked it out of the college library. Typically, centering a story around a dog's-eye-view of the world does not grab me as a great premise. I'm not much of a dog person in general, though I suspect that's more due to that certain kind of self-flattery many people have in believing themselves to be akin personally to a cat (a creature of mystery, independence, and disdain) than my not liking dogs. Well, that and the drool factor. But using the dog allowed the writer to develop his themes with a tone of sadness, not melodrama.

Best part: Mr. Bones demonstrates the depths of his confusion about the Baltimore Orioles baseball team.

Honorable (or dishonorable) mention: The author himself makes an appearance with a name that the dog doesn't quite get right, "Omster or Amster" he thinks.

Worst part: It really is kind of bleak. Definitely no Max the Dog That Refused to Die triumph against all odds stuff going on here.