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Tuesday Hangovers

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Monday Hangovers

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Geeky Reading

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I’ve been thinking about this question of things you’d have been embarrassed to be noticed reading as a kid or a teenager from another direction. Are there any books I read/loved/obsessed over back then that I am embarrassed for my younger self for reading looking back? And I find that there are.*

I would have to say that the two Jim Morrison poetry collections LEAP immediately to mind, toted proudly for several months.** I have a strong memory of falling asleep on the bus to a basketball game with Wilderness in my lap.

In general, I’m still okay with my taste in high school. It being mainly Latin American fiction and Jeanette Winterson and Salmon Rushdie. But I also read a lot of questionable serialized novels when I was younger; Sweet Valley High, anyone?

You guys have any of these?

(Mr. Rowe, we all know about your novelization problem, so ‘fess up.)

*Not that I would take any of them back, because they’re now part of my readerly and writerly DNA, which I’m pretty much happy with.
**I feel positively cleansed by this admission. And yet also shamed.

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By the Way

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There’s an interesting (if sometimes depressing) conversation going on about who reads science fiction and whether the trappings of the genre itself discourages girls from reading it over in the comments of the Aetiology post I linked to about hot girls supposedly not reading SF. Several women have said they felt that reading SF growing up was something they had to keep quiet.

The stigma from other kids I noticed growing up was just associated with being a reader, period. Being a reader was odd. I never cared, so I read what I wanted, and honestly never felt like a title from a certain genre was any less okay than another in social terms. Was I just oblivious?

At any rate, I’d think that, along with a thousand other things, Harry Potter finally put the nail in this stigma’s coffin. (Not to mention the LOTR movies.) Am I still being oblivious?

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Friday Hangovers

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I Might Be Convinced…

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to forgive Amy Sherman-Palladino if this is as good as it sounds:

Ausiello: Well, it sounds like you’re headed back to work. Tell me about the new show.

AS-P: It’s called The Return of Jezebel James, and it’s basically a sister buddy comedy. It’s about a very successful, very driven, very problem-solving kind of woman who’s a young-adult book publisher. She has her own imprint. And she decides to have a baby on her own, and the doctor says, "Whoops, you’re not going to be able to do that by yourself. Sorry, sweetheart!" And she winds up tracking down her younger, much-less-focused sister, who’s the polar opposite of her. And she says to her, "I will cut you a deal and pay you to carry my baby for me. But you have to move in with me, so that I can watch you and make sure it doesn’t come out with three heads." And the younger sister, having very limited options, agrees, and that’s where our series takes off. But the pilot is these two women reconnecting and cutting a deal.

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Peter Rabbit in the Loch Ness

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The Times has an excerpt from a letter by Beatrix Potter offering a scientific opinion on the Loch Ness monster’s humps:

Armed with an innate understanding of frogs, toads and newts, she wrote in 1934 to the author of a book on the Loch Ness Monster: “May I hazard a suggestion about the humps? These beasts — whatever they are — frequent deep waters. They are able to sustain immense variations of pressure. I suggest that the humps mainly result from a power of self inflation under a very elastic skin for the purpose of equalising pressure. Frogs & toads, especially the latter, have power of inflation. Toads let off acrid water. Their inflation is in the belly. But it is conceivable that this beast may have a very loose elastic skin all round its body.”

(Via Maud.)

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Sweet, Sweet Still-Beating Hearts

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Jeff Ford went to see Apocalypto, and offers his take (undoubtedly better than the movie*). The bottom line is probably this:

If you’re not partial to the sight of hearts being ripped out while still beating and being shown to their previous owners, you might not want to check this out.

*Which I will see, absolutely, not because I particularly think I’ll like it or it’ll be good**, but because I’ve been reading a lot about that part of the world during that period and I want to admire the make-up and costuming and spectacle of it.

**Actually, it sounds like it probably is good in the way you go see a "good movie," but not in the way I necessarily mean here.

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