Cuddle up in a nook, not with one

Gift ideas for the bookworm: Nothing beats a real page turner

Nothing beats a book, a blanket, and steaming hot drink on a cold winter’s day. Houston may not be Minneapolis, but as the Gulf Coast weather swings from balmy to blustery this December, add a few books to your holiday gift-buying list. Here are some recommendations for the Houston bibliophiles in your life.

I’ve always loved the spare opulence of Art Deco, and Houston’s own Bright Sky Press has the perfect choice for the architecture aficionado in your life. Jim Parsons and David Bush’s Houston Deco: Modernistic Architecture of the Texas Coast (Bright Sky Press, $24.95) promises an elegant tour of the best Deco around, from the beautiful 1929 Gulf Building (now the JPMorgan Chase Building) downtown to the iconic Alabama Theater on Shepherd.

For me, the gorgeous lights of the Alabama Theater are better than the most impressive holiday lights. If you’re wondering just what the cinema landscape of Houston looked like before the advent of the megaplex, check out David Welling’s award-winning Cinema Houston: From Nickelodeon to Megaplex (University of Texas Press, $45.00). While we’re at it, maybe we could encourage the city of Houston to make a collective New Year’s resolution and preserve both the Alabama Theater and the River Oaks Theatre.

While you’re at the University of Texas Press site, check out Stephen Verderber’s love-song to Houston’s sister city. Delirious New Orleans: Manifesto for an Extraordinary American City ($45.00) promises an appreciative photo-tour of high and low, pre and post-Katrina New Orleans. If you order from the UT Press website, you’ll get one-third off the price.

David Theis aims to prove that Houston is indeed a place for book lovers in Literary Houston (Texas Christian University Press, $32.95). This handsome volume gathers a wonderful selection of accounts of Houston from Walter Cronkite and Frederick Olmsted to Simone de Beauvoir. For those familiar with the University of Houston’s impressive program in Creative Writing, you’ll recognize contributions by Edward Hirsch, Mark Doty, Donald Barthelme, Antonya Nelson, and Tony Hoagland. And who would complain about rounding out a read with Larry McMurtry?

While you can also find Literary Dallas, Literary Austin, and Literary El Paso, the best of this book idea has been realized in Art at Our Doorstep: San Antonio Writers and Artists (Trinity University Press, $29.95), a beautiful blending of visual and literary arts edited by Nan Cuba and Riley Robinson.

If you’ve always wanted to learn more about the guiding impulses behind the scene at the Menil Collection, pick up a copy of Art and Activism: Projects of John and Dominique de Menil (The Menil Collection, $65.00), which considers the theory and practice behind those most distinctive of Houston visual arts venues. This book may seem a little hefty for a stocking stuffer, but you’ll find it well worth the cost for vintage photos, unpublished correspondence, and wonderful texts about the founding of the Rothko Chapel, the Menil Collection, the Cy Twombly Gallery, the Dan Flavin Installation, and the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum.

If you have family visiting or if you’ve managed to lure your friends into moving to Houston, you have The Insider’s Guide to Houston (Globe Pequot Press, $18.95) waiting for them under the tree. It’s hard to beat the up-to-date maps and recommendations for eating, staying, and seeing the sights.

Thinking local about Houston books also means shopping locally. For the last 36 years, Brazos Bookstore has weathered the storm of national chains and online purchasing to provide the best in Bayou City independent book-buying. Stop by to pick up the store's own holiday book list and to browse some favorite selections from Inprint’s phenomenal slate of authors. Brazos Bookstore’s No. 1 pick, Texas Artists Today ($95), is also a CultureMap favorite.

As you curl up with some good reads this winter, remember: a book and a cup of hot cocoa will still keep you warmer than a Kindle or a Nook.

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Movie Review

Offbeat drama Pillion features command performance by Alexander Skarsgård

Photo courtesy of A24

Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling in Pillion.

Describing the new movie Pillion is almost an act of futility. It contains a variety of seemingly disparate parts that coalesce into a whole to make it utterly fascinating. Few other recent films have been able to walk the line between filthy and wholesome in quite the way this one does, and that’s only because few other filmmakers would actually dare to try.

It centers on Colin (Harry Melling), a meek man in his mid-thirties who still lives at home with his parents, Pete (Douglas Hodge) and Peggy (Lesley Sharp), while working a dead-end job giving out parking tickets. While performing in a barbershop quartet at his local pub, Colin catches the eye of biker Ray (Alexander Skarsgård), who summons him for a clandestine hook-up the following day (which just so happens to be Christmas Day).

With barely a word exchanged between them, Ray establishes a dominance over Colin that quickly leads to them starting a relationship in which Colin does anything Ray asks. And that means more than just sex: Colin, whether desperate for any kind of affection or unlocking a side of himself he hadn’t known, readily agrees to cook, clean, shop, and basically do whatever else Ray wants him to do.

Written and directed by first-time feature filmmaker Harry Lighton, the film is astonishing in the way it’s able to mine humor from Colin and Ray’s atypical bond. To call Ray “unfeeling” might not be totally accurate, but the way he treats Colin borders on cruel. However, the way Lighton structures the film, it’s easy to understand why someone like Colin would be willing to go along with the situation. It’s both hilarious and heartbreaking to see Colin debase himself in a variety of ways.

On the flip side is Colin’s heartfelt arc with his parents. It’s established right away that Peggy, who is sick with cancer, is a bit too involved with Colin’s love life, with the opening scene featuring her setting him up on a blind date. But their easy acceptance of his queerness and desire to see him find love is as heartwarming as it gets. The juxtaposition between the wholesomeness of their family and Colin’s new life is also the source of a good amount of comedy.

Lighton does not shy away from the sexual side of Colin and Ray’s relationship, and the scenes he depicts are as graphic as you are likely to see in an R-rated film. Some go up to and a little past what might be expected in a mainstream movie (including the use of a certain fake appendage). Other times they play out in a comical way to illustrate just how far Colin has progressed from the person he was when the film started.

Skarsgård, who stole the show in the Charli XCX movie The Moment, is the attraction in more ways than one in this film. The part calls for someone who’s not only impossibly handsome, but also a person who can stop dissent with just a glance, and he lives up to both qualities equally well. Melling, best known for playing Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter movies, also embodies his role perfectly. He plays Colin as weak enough to be run roughshod over by Ray, but not so hopeless as to not be worth rooting for.

Pillion (which is the name of the secondary seat on a motorcycle on which Colin rides multiple times in the film) operates at a storytelling level that is difficult to achieve. Many people will not fully understand the film’s central relationship, but the way it is showcased by Lighton makes it compelling, gut-wrenching, and sexy.

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Pillion is now playing in theaters.

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