29 posts tagged “books”

I'm not sure why I never have anything to say anymore, on either of my blogs. I'm usually spewing some drivel or another so you might think it would end up here, but well, I have to chalk it up to laziness.

At least with a list like this it proves you can find pretty much anything you want on the Net. And that Stumbleupon rules. Here are a few of my favorites to keep you busy for hours.

 And so, for your lazy link pleasure:

• Sunbeam Poem Projector
• LSD vs Alcohol vs Tree
• Stun your friends with these crazy Latin sayings!
• Mentos and Coke Record Explosion
  
  
  

  Mentos and Coke Record
• An Error
• Lots and lots of cat facts
• I am a Zombie Filled with Love
• The Ten Most Puzzling Ancient Artifacts
• Star Wars Urban Photography
  
  
  

  Don't Mess with Boba Fett
• 100 greatest dance songs of the 90s
• I'm a Creep
• Frank Melech's Dreamworld
• Book Autopsies
• Velociraptor season is here. Are you prepared?
• Don't Panic!
• To satisfy your morbid fascination
• 19.20.21
• Forbidden books
• World of Inspiration
• Sickeningly cute
• How to make roses from maple leaves (useful, I know!)
• CandyKitty will take care of your money (coveting)
• Cottonmonster
• May the force be with you
• 349 scandals in eight years with time for more!
• Face your childhood fears

Candy by Joshua Hoffine

That should keep you busy for now. :)

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  Jens Lekman at the Paradise
• Battlestar Galactica Season 4 (argh it starts the night of Jens Lekman! TG for TiVO!)
• Colin Meloy at the Somerville Theater
• Planning a little wine tasting party
• SPRING at the Mt. Auburn Cemetery
• Spring in general!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• Ice cream season
• Cleaning up the back porch, potting flowers and getting ready for summer.
• Sitting on that same back porch and writing (although half the trees are gone and there is a massive house just feet away from ours now...maybe I'll have to scope out a park)
• Lavinia, by Ursula K. Leguin
• Going to the Langham Chocolate Bar for my birthday in June. I've been wanting to go since I moved here 11 years ago and this year is not going to pass without me going!
• Receiving this in the mail sometime this week!
• And this.

I haven't been posting as I go for the 50 in 365, but I have been reading. Sooo here is the backtrack for what I've read in the last two months.

#1-3

The Gormenghast Novels

The Gormenghast novels are really three books, Titus Groan, Gormenghast and Titus Alone. Incredible books, especially the first two, which chronicle the story of a very odd castle and its strange inhabitants, including the just born Titus Groan, the 77th Earl of Gormenghast. It's a well-written gothic fantasy of sorts, although it can hardly be called fantastic in that there is no magic, just an amazing cast of characters.

I highly highly recommend these books. The BBC and WGBH put out a mini-series a few years back that is based on the first two novels. I think that the mini-series would have been confusing to me if I hadn't read the books, but I thought that they did do justice to the story and they did a great job with casting. Netflix them AFTER you read the books.

Now You See Him: A Novel

I've read quite a few other books as well...

#4  After Gormenghast, I read Eli Gottleib's Now You See Him. It's not the type of book I would normally buy but I scored a free reviewers copy. It's a short, easy read. Interesting literary mystery novel if you like those sorts of things.

#5   I was looking for a book on my great reading list that I could take with me on a business trip I took in January. Joe convinced me to bring Great Expectations, which I, shockingly, have never read. In fact, I've never read any Dickens beyond certain passages handed out in writing classes in college. This is very strange to me, being such a literary freak and such a fan of British literature in general. Dickens' collected works are on my list to read, definitely. I really enjoyed the book but found it hard not to picture Ethan Hawke, Gwenyth Paltrow and DeNiro as characters. I hardly remember that movie but reading the book brought it back and it was difficult not to think of those actors as I was reading.

#6  I picked up Love in the Time of Cholera at the airport in Oakland, CA on my way back from that trip. I hadn't read it yet, nor have I seen the movie, but wow, what a beautiful story. I do want to rent the movie...can anyone tell me if the movie does the book justice?

#7 The Glass Castle was interofficed to me by a colleague who knows I like books. I don't typically read many memoirs but this one threw me for a loop. It's written by a now-successful journalist who was raised by parents who were rather fucked up but still loved their kids. The story chronicles the story of how they lived, in shacks, often without food or money or clean clothes. I was absolutely riveted.

Finite and Infinite Games

#8  Another book that I read, Finite & Infinite Games by James Carse, was a slim volume that I picked up as a result of some random blog post I read about cognition. Basically Carse presents a philosophy of looking at the world, either as a finite game or infinite game. Children play infinite games...neverending games without rules or boundaries. Adults define, place rules around and create finite games, which in turn create stress in our lives. I like the idea of figuring out how to let go a little, how to take life less seriously and how to shape the world into a game that I want to play rather than to play the finite games of others around me.

Incredible Good Fortune: New Poems

#9 If you love poetry, you must pick up Ursula K. LeGuin's Incredible Good Fortune. It's been a very long time since I have read a book of poetry that has pleased me so much. The poems are delightful, smart, charming and they are incredibly accessible.  I love the magic that weaves in and out of her words, as much here as in the many wonderful stories she has published throughout the years.

Lots and lots of books to read in the new year.

To start me out, I'm going to be tackling:

Trying to knock a few more off my massive lifelong booklist...I managed to check off about 50 this year, which is good considering that I only started it midyear. There are about 4k books on that list overall. I read about 21 or so books that are not on the main list, not counting all the many nonfiction Rome books I have been reading for research on my book. If I was only tackling books on my big list I probably would have plowed through a lot more. Goal this upcoming year is 100 books off the main booklist. Shouldn't be too hard...I read about 800 words a minute.

This week I read:

I also have been reading through You on a Diet which is pretty good, actually. Figured I could use some motivation in 2008. :)

I'll probably also snag a book on CD at the library, actually. I find that I really like listening on my drive to work. Right before Christmas I finished Pompeii, which I highly recommend.

Oh, and I zoomed through The Glass Castle right before Christmas. VERY VERY good--a book that will sit with me for years to come.


I think that's enough bookish things for now, don't you think?

Madeleine L'engle

News of her passing came out in the NY Times yesterday.

I just wrote about her a little over a week ago, about the wonderful advice she gave in the book, Madeleine L'Engle {Herself}, how inspirational she was and how I met her briefly when I was in the 7th grade. Oh how I wish I had more presence of mind at that age, to ask questions that could have benefited me throughout my writing life.

Earlier this year, her thoughts on how the world views artists helped me gain great perspective during a time in my life when my artist husband was out of work and when I was struggling to write. I can say without any measure of doubt that out of all things in this world, her words were instrumental in helping pull me out of a winter depression of last year. A few paragraphs on the page gave me hope, a new understanding and an appreciation of her wisdom.

Her Wrinkle in Time books were some of the most influential of my childhood. They fueled my imagination, they made me want to read, to write, to build my own worlds. Re-reading them within the last year reminded me of all the reasons I loved her writing as a child and gave me a whole new perspective on the underlying tenets of her writing, the power of her craft and her ability to wrangle and tame the written word. She will continue to be an inspiration to me in my life.

From {Herself}:

Struggling Toward Meaning

To be alive is to be vulnerable. To be born is to start the journey toward death. If taxes have not always been inevitable, death has. What, then, does life mean? No more than "One brief-candle?"

The artist struggles toward meaning. Mahler was terrified of death, and worked out his fear in music. I had a letter from a college student at Harvard saying, "I am afraid of non-being." That same day, a friend with whom I was having lunch, said, "I cannot bear the thought of annihilation."

Art is an affirmation of life, a rebuttal of death.

And here we blunder into paradox again, for during the creation of any form of art, art which affirms the value and the holiness of life, the artist must die.

L'Engle was an artist that, in her death, will never experience non-being or annihilation. Instead, she will live on, being reborn every time a person picks up one of her amazing books, filled with power, love and light.

Yvaine & Tristan

In a rare move, I went to see a movie by one of my favorite authors (Neil Gaiman) although I had not yet read the book (in my defense it was originally a graphic novel and I just haven't read many books in that genre). Maybe that was okay, because I absolutely loved the movie. It's good not to feel frustrated about cut scenes or ending changes (which I understand happened in this case), or characters not being represented like I thought they should.

I will go get the book, but for now I'll continue to think about Stardust the movie, which my husband and I went to see today (after much hemming and hawing on his part because he doesn't really like movie theaters). What a beautiful, beautiful, sweet, funny, exciting, well-done film.

Clare Danes played Yvaine, a fallen star. Charlie Cox plays Tristan, a boy who is on a trek to find the star and bring back the star to a local girl who he wants to marry--although he doesn't realize that the star is actually a woman. And Michelle Pfeiffer--oh I have always loved her and in this she was magnificent--played a perfectly beautiful and perfectly hideous evil witch. De Niro played Captain Shakespeare, a closeted gay pirate. Absolutely brilliant performance.

One of the key witchy things that happens in the movie is a few scenes of divination by looking at entrails. Icky, but I thought it interesting because in ancient times, divination through entrails after a ritual sacrifice was very common. I have several scenes in my novel about divination along these lines. If the liver was a certain shape or color it meant something. If there were deformed or missing organs it might mean another. In the case of Stardust, the entrails told the witches where to find the star.

Overall this is an enchanting fairytale that kids and adults alike will love for many years to come. Definitely will be snatching this up on DVD when it comes out!

• BBQs with friends
  

  Hotdogs
  
  
• fireflies
  

  Firefly
• evening thunderstorms, especially if there is heat lightning
  

  Boston-storm
• the sound of cicadas
  

  Cicadas
  
  
• the beach (although I have yet to go this year, sigh)
  

  Cranes beach
  
  
• sangria
  

  Sangria
• books books and more books to read
  

  Stack o books
• ice cream
  

  Ice cream
• champagne grapes
  

  Champagne grapes

A little roundup of miscellaneous things.

1. I have a post about the recipient of the EMC Leadership Award at the Computerworld Honors-- Laura Campbell from the Library of Congress.
   
2. I have a snippet from my book about the world's first gourmand, Apicius, if you want to check it out and tell me what you think.
3. Since summer is nearly here, I wanted to share a tasty cocktail, created entirely by me. Even if you aren't a gin drinker (which I'm not) you should try it out--I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
   

Ginger Rogers in a Shady Grove

Build, fill glass with ice

1 1/2 oz gin
3/4 oz fresh lime juice
1 tsp sugar

• Fill with ginger ale or even better, ginger beer
• Fresh mint, limes
• Serve in a highball glass with a mint sprig for garnish.
  

Scaled for 1 serving(s) and 48.0 oz pitcher

Build, fill pitcher with ice

8 oz gin (1/3 750ml bottle, 1/4 1L bottle)
4 oz lime juice
1 oz sugar
Place fresh mint and cut up limes in pitcher

• Fill with ginger ale or even better, ginger beer
• Fresh mint, limes
• Serve in a highball glass with a mint sprig for garnish.

Enjoy! 

Anyone use Good Reads? If so, drop me a PM with your email addy and I'll add you to my friends. It's similar to LibraryThing but more social.