Blasty
The Summer Blog Blast Tour is coming up next week. Colleen has the schedule–I’ll have fabulous interviews with Dave Schwartz on Monday and Jincy Willett on Friday.
I Heart My Town
Two fun things from this week: the first progressive bike dinner (yum) and Iron Man at the the
Kentucky Theater (where they now serve wine! and where the Mighty Wurlitzer was being played!). Now if only the weather would straighten up.
Unrelated: I just ordered these shoes to go with the closet-languishing fuschia and black Betsy Johnson number I plan to wear* to the Sunday night Wiscon doings. Comfort is queen. I’m hoping they 1)fit and 2)don’t look stupid. I haven’t bought a pair of Docs since college, and doing so fills me with glee.
*Um, once again I missed the window to get it to an alteration shop, so I may actually have to prevail upon the kindness of one of you who can sew to do a teensy bit of stitching to remove a flower from one side and afix it in place of a missing one. Or C will have to do it. ::cue ominous music and sound of thunder::
Thursday Hangovers
- Art by Sophie Blackall on sale. (Via.)
- Thoughts on women and the lack thereof in science.
- Top 10 challenged books 2007.
- Justine on fashion.
- Ninety-year-old debut author of Bowl of Cherries Millard Kaufman gets profiled in the WashPost: "There are curious curlicues in the many lives of Millard Kaufman. For example, he once ingested cobra venom — experimentally– and awoke to find himself playing golf in the nude."
- Alberto Manguel on his 30,000 volume library: "My library is not a single beast but a composite of many others, a fantastic animal made up of the several libraries built and then abandoned, over and over again, throughout my life. I can’t remember a time in which I didn’t have a library of some sort. The present one is a sort of multilayered autobiography, each book holding the moment in which I opened it for the first time."
- Pinky recommends some campaign-related reading.
- The Web Habits of Highly Effective People seem to involve a suspicious-amount of NYT-home paging. (Via trend-bucker Maud.)
- J.L. Bell is having a very amusing punctuation week over at Oz and Ends. The first entry highlights underused punctuation terms.
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TV is Stupid
The absolutely wonderful Miss Guided isn’t coming back. Also, sad but not shocked to see Aliens in America and Canterbury’s Law (which was Closeresque in its perfect semi-mindless entertainment factor and given a hint of actual depth by Juliana Margulies). Boo!
Monday Hangovers
- I’ve added some little book recommendations over in the sidebar (thank you, Typepad support people) and will add a couple more as soon as they roll out the bug fix that was causing them not to show up (supposedly this week).
- Also, I’m almost caught up on just about everything. So, if I owe you something, you’ll get it soon.
- New Scientist thinks these five movies get the science right (or, at least, rightish). (Via.)
- I’ll be reading both of these: "Both Lerer and Marcus emphasize that these works — from picture books marinated in biblical ethics to, yes, the Harry Potter novels — were created by human beings with diverse and often contradictory motives. What a story these authors tell, of piratical moralists stealing each other’s ethical axioms and presenting them as their own, of librarians shouting that Nancy Drew mysteries were bad for education and morality. Despite this cacophony, writers have managed to produce such cherished feats of imagination as Alice and Huckleberry Finn, Charlotte’s Web and Little Women, a magical train station that rescues an orphaned boy and a secret garden in which a girl learns what it means to grow up. These new books remind us that children’s literature, which at the moment is flourishing and hugely influential, grows from as rich and ancient a heritage as any strand of world culture."
- Colleen points out that horse racing isn’t the only sport with animal casualties, taking a look at the current plight of sled dogs.
- Stephany Aulenback is not a baby eater: "Like a recovering addict, I recognize the beast within myself. Sometimes, though, I can get carried away with my adultetarian zeal. For instance, I have found that my personal ban on eating babies now seems to extend to miniature versions of foods, as well. Baby carrots and baby lettuce have recently joined baby potatoes on my list. Many otherwise innocuous h’ors d’oeuvres have also become off-limits – I can no longer eat mini-pizza, mini-quiches, or tiny pigs in blankets. I know intellectually that those tiny guinea hens are full-grown adults but when one is placed in front of me at a banquet my visceral reaction is a desperate attraction – my hands literally quiver over my fork and knife — followed by intense revulsion. I usually have to excuse myself in order to go throw up in the ladies room." Read the whole thing.
It’s a Wiki-World and
…we just live in it.
I wrote this week’s cover story for Publishers Weekly, about the impact of Wikipedia (and other online sources) on the reference book market. I hope it’s as fun to read as it was to write.
It’s a Wiki-World and Read More »
Wild Reviews
The New York Times Book Review has a slew of children’s book reviews this week, by all sorts of excellent reviewers (Sarah Ellis! Leonard Marcus!). I am beyond happy to see Pat Murphy’s The Wild Girls get some much-deserved love.
Packet due on Monday, and so off I am to sit outside with my Neo and write some fiction. At least I have a shiny ARC of Octavian Nothing II to be my reward. w00t as they say!
Thursday Hangovers
- Interesting slideshow at Slate: "The mismatch of technology and picture books."
- This must be the week for ouchie reviews; Peter Bergen on Morgan Spurlock’s new book/docu: "Spurlock’s musings read like the interminable blog of a pampered college kid on an all-expenses-paid trip around the Middle East and South Asia. The documentary is even worse, as Spurlock is constantly on camera delivering the same platitudes, a supersized display of narcissism that makes Michael Moore’s on-screen preenings look like those of a Trappist monk."
- Also, in the WaPo, this fascinating story on the National Security Archive: "Blanton loves government documents. It’s an acquired taste that has also been acquired by his colleagues at the archive. Over the past 23 years, they have filed more than 35,000 FOIA requests and collected more than 5 million pages of government documents. Some of the documents are mind-numbingly boring, of course, but others are nothing short of astonishing…"
- 2007 Believer Book Award short list — excellent to see Liz Hand’s Generation Loss on there.
- Feeling very steampunk.
- The people are demanding bicycle novels. (Ahem.)
- Pretty pictures.
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My Sweetie, The Hero
Or the yellow bike wrangler, anyway.
There’s a big, great feature column on Christopher coming up in tomorrow’s local paper, but it’s already up online:
"Some kid had written his name all over it in magic marker," Rowe said. "I don’t think he’s going to be a very effective bike thief."
…
"One thing I’ve learned in terms of sociology reminds me of the legendary Old West attitude toward horse thieves," Rowe said. "I’m here to tell you that if you take one of these yellow bikes and put it behind your house, your friends, your neighbors, your landlord, your girlfriend … they are looking for an opportunity to rat you out."
Hee.
(Updated: New link with more pics! Also, you can now leave nice comments at the end of the story.)
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