Book Review: Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever by Matt Singer

Author: Matt Singer
Title: Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever
Narrator:  Matt Singer
Publication Info: G.P. Putnam’s Sons (2023)
Summary/Review:

Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel were newspaper critics from competing Chicago newspapers brought together to discuss and debate the latest movies on a weekly TV.  At first awkward, the two men’s commitment to film as an artform, and their often contentious opinions on what that meant for determining the worth of a film, lead to their show becoming very popular.  First on PBS and later in syndication, Siskel and Ebert grew to be the most famous and influential movie critics in America.

I loved watching Siskel and Ebert in their various iterations growing up.  In fact I wrote about them last year in a TV Draft on the PowerPop blog.  I still refer to reviews on Roger Ebert’s website when I watch and review movies he previously wrote about.  Despite knowing a lot about the two critics and the history of their show, I enjoyed reading Singer’s dual biography which describes the duo’s lasting effect on popular culture.  I think he does a great job except that he spends too much time on the efforts to continue the show after Siskel’s death and Ebert’s illness.  The book concludes well, though, with the description of 25 movies that Singer considers buried treasures despite getting “two thumbs up” at the time of their release.

Recommended books:

• Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” by David Bianculli
• Even This I Get to Experience by Norman Lear
• Street Gang by Michael Davis

Rating: ***1/2

Book Review: Love by Roddy Doyle

Author: Roddy Doyle
Title: Love
Narrator: Morgan C. Jones
Publication Info: Penguin Audio (2020) 
Summary/Review:

Two old friends meet in a Dublin pub.  Davy, the narrator, has long ago emigrated to England, only returning to visit his ailing father.  Joe does most of the talking, telling a story of a woman named Jessica who they were both attracted to four decades earlier when they were young men in their early twenties.  While Davy doesn’t remember them getting to know this woman even well enough to know her name, Joe claims they had enough of relationship that it was rekindled when he met her again serendipitously a year earlier.  In fact, he’s left his wife and children to live with Jessica.

While Joe tries and fails to get to the point of his story, Davy’s mind wanders.  He thinks of his troubled relationship with his father, meeting and falling in love with his wife Fay, their move to England, and a recent neurological health scare.  It’s clear that Davy and Joe have long ago drifted apart and that Davy doesn’t even really want to be there.  And yet he remains as the stories and the memories pile up.

It feels facile to compare this book to great Irish literary works, and yet their circular conversation reminds me of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot and their perambulations through Dublin shares some significance with Ulysses by James Joyce.  Even as the story seems to go nowhere, I found myself suck into these men’s lives, their struggles and memories.  While the title may make you initially think that it’s about the late romance between Joe and Jessica, it becomes clear that Doyle is thinking of love in the broadest sense, for family, for parents and children, and between two old friends sitting together on bar stools.

Recommended books:

• Normal People by Sally Rooney
• Jazz by Toni Morrison

Rating: ****1/2