“You’re so money and you don’t even know it!”

The Movie: Swingers, 1996 (Jon Favreau, screenwriter; Doug Liman, dir.)
Who says it: Vince Vaughn as Trent, an aspiring actor
The context: Trent encourages his friend Mike (Jon Favreau), who’s questioning his decision to move to Hollywood.
How to use it: All-purpose moral support.

This is the first Swingers quotation I've used since I launched this blog -- and Swingers is one of the movies my friend Tom and I talked about when we first batted around the You Talking to Me? idea. Go figure.

For those of you new to this blog: the daily movie quotes come from an idea my friend Tom had for one of those impulse-purchase books, a collection of movie quotes for use in everyday life situations. Since I was starting this blog anyway to track my move from Los Angeles to Maine, it seemed a good hook.

And that brings me to another issue. When I started this blog, I said the movie quotes would only run for a year. That year is up at the end of July. Therefore, I have approximately two months left to use any crucial quotations I've missed. If I haven't used your favorite line yet, please e-mail me with your suggestions; the only restriction I have is that I must have seen the movie myself. (If it's a good enough quotation, I'll watch the movie just so I can use the line. God bless Netflix.)

The blog will continue in some form after the end of July, but I'll find a new hook for it.

In the meantime, here's What I Read This Week.

William Lashner, Falls the Shadow. This book reminded me of what's good about legal thrillers: when they're well-done, the structure of the legal process creates extra tension, and inspires action and ingenuity on the part of the characters. Lashner's protagonist, Victor Carl, agrees to take on an apparently unwinnable appeal for a chef accused of murdering his wife. Victor, who likes to pretend he's amoral, confronts the full implications of the statement, "He might be a bad guy, but he's not a murderer," when his partner becomes infatuated with their client. Meanwhile, he struggles with a pro bono child protection case that raises similar moral issues. This is vacation reading you don't have to apologize for, and Victor Carl is a character screaming for a movie deal.

Gene Riehl, Sleeper. Riehl's brilliant first novel, Quantico Rules, introduced FBI agent Puller Monk, a compulsive gambler with serious authority issues. Monk returns in this sequel, which has a stronger, more action-driven plot -- the hunt for a North Korean assassin -- but feels a little lighter on character development. Still, this is really good stuff, and I'm already impatient for the next installment. Highly recommended for fans of Charles McCarry's novels, as Monk operates in many of the same neighborhoods and moral gray zones as McCarry's hero, Paul Christopher.

Bernd Heinrich, A Year in the Maine Woods. The book group at the Gardiner Public Library read this a few months ago, but I missed it then. Bernd Heinrich is a naturalist and professor of zoology at the University of Vermont, and spent a year -- June to June -- in his hand-built cabin, without running water or (for the most part) human company. This book is part memoir, part field guide, part meditation on human nature and animal natures. I'll keep this book and refer to it throughout the year; Heinrich's cabin is about 60 miles northwest of Gardiner, and I've spent no time yet in the woods at all. I won't be giving up my indoor plumbing anytime soon, though.