The Spiral Arm

Redirection

2005-09-03T22:06:00.000-05:00

If you are using a reasonably modern browser, you should be automagically redirected to the new site in 3...2...1...

Well, we're movin' on up...

2005-09-01T06:56:00.000-05:00

Happy September 1st (bunny bunny), and as I alluded to earlier in the week, today is moving day!

Planning big things over at Morrow Planet, including actual updated content (!), new book and music reviews, plus a gradual release of much of my own writing under a Creative Commons license. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, please take a moment to switch over your bookmarks, blogrolls, etc to the new site: http://www.morrowplanet.com

Or maybe you live inside Bloglines or other news aggregator? Just subscribe to the new RSS/Atom Feed and you're all set.

Thanks! See you there!

Giving

2005-08-31T20:41:00.000-05:00

I'm writing today to mobilize the lit-blogging community to help our brothers and sisters throughout the Gulf states who have been ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. We have more influence than we realize.

How much a month do you spend on books? On your broadband/net access? On your various web accounts?

What if we, the lit-blogging community, committed to donating the money we would spend on books, etc. in the month of September to Katrina relief? I know that my wife and I probably spend at least $100 on books every month. So in September, we plan on giving up new book purchases and donating that hundred bucks to the Red Cross.

How can you help? Donate to the Red Cross or your favorite relief organization today. No amount is too small. Then, tell your blog readers what you are doing and encourage them to do the same.

I hope you're not annoyed by this request, but we are facing a growing humanitarian crisis. If you are, I sincerely apologize. But here's the deal: every day I turn to blogs for a sense of community and conversation. Let's turn that community and conversation into a real movement to help people in need.

[Cross-posted to Morrow Planet]

I'm Back

2005-08-26T13:26:00.000-05:00

Yes, the hiatus is over.

Life has been extremely analog of late, but I am ready to plug back into the metacortex that is our blogosphere. For those that I haven't spoken to recently, here's what's been going on:

G learned how to walk and turned one, all seemingly in the space of about five minutes

I took another step forward into my thirtysomethings

Spent some long-overdue time in the fine city of St. Louis

Finally admitted to myself (though not to Bud) that I probably won't finish Don Quixote

Most exciting of all is that this Spiral Arm has been slowly coalescing into a planetary disc, spinning and spinning 'round my mind. Very soon, it should be entirely reborn as a place called Morrow Planet, which will be a much more hospitable environment for this blog to evolve. Stay tuned and watch this space for details.

Thanks for keeping us in your thoughts and this space on your feedlists/blogrolls.

Accelerando: paper or pixels

2005-05-25T10:01:00.000-05:00

In June, Charles Stross will make his eagerly anticipated novel Accelerando available from accelerando.org under a Creative Commons license. (From Monday's Locus online)

I truly believe that authors who do this are getting it in a way that the piracy paranoids don't. It shows a faith in the writing (and in their community of readers) that I find irresistable. I'll download the ebook. And if it's good, I will buy the treeware version. In fact, I'll probably buy the book anyway as a thank-you and show of support for the model.

Mr. Stross also has a fine blog.

On relief, sweet

2005-05-16T15:13:00.000-05:00

We can all let out our collective, metaphorical breath now that the Lit-Blog Co-Op has announced it's Summer Read This! pick.

I'm particularly relieved, since I've already read (and enjoyed) Case Histories. All I needed was another book on the nightstand that I should be reading and posting on, but that only gathers dust and guilt.

Come to think of it, my nightstand would make for a lovely, Shatner-esque poem:

Godel, Escher, Bach...

Quixote...

The Algebraist...

Case Histories.

"The book is totally true...and totally false."

2005-04-26T18:03:00.000-05:00

The Journalist was one of my favorite reads in the last few years. A different kind of journalist (John Strausbaugh) has a nice write-up today in the NYT about Harry Mathews in advance of Mathews' new book, My Life in CIA.

The article is mostly written around the fact/fiction/reliable narrator playfulness that Mathews does so well. Although Oulipo is mentioned, it is never explained, nor is it referenced with respect to how its constraints might or might not apply to his new book.

One more for the TBR stack.

See also: Reading Harry Mathews (essay by John Beer)

The spiral tree

2005-04-14T22:19:00.000-05:00

This is the blog you are reading, if it were a tree.

A very slick applet at textone.org produces images that represent all of the data and links on your site as a tree, complete with trunk, branches, etc.

If you look very, very closely you can see my inner geek curled up under the tree taking a nap.

[Found via the indispensable if:book]

Dumb cookie

2005-04-14T21:52:00.000-05:00

Look what we found this week while strolling the cake mix aisle at our local Dominick's:

Being former and current marketing/publishing wonks, J--- and I couldn't stop laughing and just had to buy "Homemade Cookies for Dummies."

Books as brands anyone?

By the way, they're missing the real joke, don't you think: the bag should have pre-made cookies in it, and not mix, right? Right.

CHS tribute to Saul Bellow on Wednesday

2005-04-11T11:22:00.000-05:00

The Chicago Historical Society will be hosting a tribute event in memory of Saul Bellow this Wednesday, at 8:30. Seats are apparently first-come, first-served.

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Saul Bellow and his literary works will be recalled and recited by friends and admirers at a public tribute Wednesday in the Chicago Historical Society.

Then at 9:00, WGN radio will broadcast a live two-hour program hosted by Milt Rosenberg from the event.

Some of the "friends and admirers" slated to read are members of the Second City troupe? I'm guessing they fall into the admirers category and not the former.

[first heard this morning on WBEZ; details from this Chicago Tribune article (reg required)]

Saul Bellow, gone.

2005-04-05T22:30:00.000-05:00

Saul Bellow died on Tuesday.

"If the soul is the mind at its purest, best, clearest, busiest, profoundest, then Bellow's charge has been to restore the soul to American literature." (Cynthia Ozick)

My grandmother, who lived very close to the University of Chicago campus for most of her life, used to tell some fond anecdotes of Mr. Bellow (though she disliked his books, poor thing) during his Hyde Park days.

On fresh air, who needs it?

2005-04-03T22:36:00.000-05:00

Spectacular spring day today, and do I go lounge in the sun, wash my car or go with my wife and daughter to the park?

No...I go to the Starbucks to drink soy lattes and read Don Quixote, followed by a trip to the library to pick up:

Julian Barnes' collection The
Lemon Table

Kage Baker's collection Mother
Aegypt and Other Stories

Tomes of Rome

2005-04-02T09:44:00.000-06:00

Spend the mind-numbing hours awaiting breaking news on John Paul II's condition with these fictional Popes...

Conclave by Greg Tobin (x)

Council, also by Tobin

The Accidental Pope by Raymond Flynn

White Smoke, Andrew Greeley

Hadrian the Seventh, by Frederick Rolfe (um, I mean, Baron Corvo) (**)

Shoes of the Fisherman, by Morris West (*)

The Clowns of God, also by West (*)

(* denotes books I have read and would recommend, x denotes books I have read and would not recommend)

War Games

2005-03-31T12:08:00.000-06:00

Not literary news, but still an amazing story: "The Man Who Saved the World Finally Recognized."

(Link via Kottke)

On taxis, raining

2005-03-28T22:15:00.000-06:00

Every few months I get a happy surprise in my mailbox, and hope you do too: the latest issue of Rain Taxi.

I tend to approach each quarterly issue with a mixture of excitement and trepidation, since I know my "to get" and TBR lists will grow by the time I finish. Before I clued in to the world of lit-blogs, Rain Taxi was one of my tried-and-true sources for finding good reads, particularly small press stuff.

The Spring issue arrived today, and I can't wait to dig in. Here's hoping for a quiet evening to relish this issue's reviews...

(no disclosures or affiliations here; just a pleased subscriber)

A story a day...

2005-03-26T09:04:00.000-06:00

In case you missed the mention at The Millions about the new(ish) blog I Read a Short Story Today, I'd recommend you stop by or check out the feed.

Other than the basic premise of the site, one of the things I like is Patrick Rapa's one-liner descriptions of the stories he reviews; a bit like Digested Reads on amphetamines. For instance, Haruki Murakami's "Ice Man" (from the 2/03 New Yorker) is boiled down to: "A woman falls in love with an ice man." (never fear: he does, in fact, have more to say about the story)

Other writers recently tackled include Russell Banks, Richard Russo, George Saunders and most of the cast of the recent McSweeneys anthology. Mr. Rapa is also taking your suggestions at ireadashortstorytoday@gmail.com.

(Mostly I just wish I had the time to read a story every day!)

What's love got to do with it?

2005-03-22T15:59:00.000-06:00

Gavin Grant (of Small Beer) on "How to Start a Small Press."

It's a good piece, and strikes the right notes of caution and optimism. Having been part of both successful and, shall we say, not-so-successful micro publishing adventures, I think that the article subtly makes the most important point for those interested in becoming the next Dave Eggers ...

(pause for McSweeneys gnashing and generalized Eggers frothing) ...

Do it for love.

Not to sound too SARK-y, but unless the idea of running a press and literally evangelizing to strangers about your authors really makes you sweat with the effort of not doing it, stick with the free Blogger account and photocopier. It takes persistence, time and most importantly, vision. Yeah, money too. But you really owe it to your readers (and your writers -- don't forget that your writers are putting an enormous amount of trust in you to bring their baby fully hatched into the world) to have a coherent vision. The reason I buy everything that Small Beer or Dalkey publishes is because I trust their vision and know that it's aligned with my readerly tastes. I don't always like the books, but I want to support those presses, so I buy anyway.

The Spiral Equation for Small-Press Success™:

(passion + vision)*(marketing budget + production values/aesthetic) = reader love/trust

It's that trust that will connect your readers with your writers. And that's what it's about, right?

(Strange Horizons article first seen via Gwenda @ Shaken & Stirred)

On feeds, burning

2005-03-21T21:16:00.000-06:00

A moment of administrivia: do you syndicate The Spiral Arm to read in your news aggregator of choice? (and why wouldn't you?)

I'm changing the syndication feed over to FeedBurner, so please point your syndication links to the new URL:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheSpiralArm

If you ever get lost, there's also a new "Syndicate TSA" link to the right.

Alas, no menu update for the week...we're pretty much playing catch-up (not "ketchup") all week.

Stumped as to what to send that special someone?

2005-03-21T09:40:00.000-06:00

American Greetings now offers e-cards related to National Library Week (4/10-4/16/05). As the librarians say, "check it out"...

On bandwagons, Quixotic

2005-03-17T23:11:00.000-06:00

Just the other day, I was looking at this stack of books next to my side of the bed, wondering where to go next and thinking "I really should read Don Quixote, but I'll bet I start it and never finish...Perhaps I'm doomed to a future in which my only knowledge of Cervantes' masterwork will come from when T--- played clarinet for the Beloit rendition of 'Man of La Mancha.'"

At which point I think I fell backwards into the blissless sleep of the damned, nary a further thought of tilting at windmills remaining.

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but Chekhov's Mistress and the launch of 400 Windmills:

This site is dedicated to a reading and discussion of Cervante's masterpiece, Don Quixote. "400 Windmills" signifies the 400th anniversary of the novel's publication and the windmills that have become a permanent symbol from the story.

So I've jumped on the wagon, and will be joining an illustrious crew of errant litbloggers. Want to join the fun?

Single-author collections

2005-03-16T09:48:00.000-06:00

Over the past week I’ve been moving through the stories in Judy Budnitz’s collection Nice Big American Baby and it got me thinking about how others approach single-author story collections.

For the most part, I’ve enjoyed each of Budnitz’s stories individually. But I’m pretty sure I need to stop reading this collection sequentially and instead dip into it occasionally, when I have a sense of what kind of story I’m looking to read. Perhaps I’m making an unfair assumption (that the first few pieces will give me an appropriate taste of what’s to come), but regardless, my enjoyment is diminishing with each successive read.

I’ve reacted similarly to other collections (particularly in the spec fiction arena…authors like Ted Chiang, Robert Silverberg or John Crowley spring to mind…all brilliant writers), and have subsequently managed to return to the stories and finish and enjoy the whole volume.

So I’ll pose the question to the 'sphere: how do you tackle single-author collections? All in one gulp, or a nibble here-and-there? If it depends on the author, what qualities in the work point you one way or the other?

La dolce vita

2005-03-13T21:53:00.000-06:00

I never would have guessed that I would find a kindred soul in Italian art-house favorite Federico Fellini, but there's no denying it from this quote:

"Life is a combination of magic and pasta."

Really, what else is there to say?

A strange Victorian idea

2005-03-09T12:23:00.000-06:00

Salon talks to Dave Eggers, who weighs in on what it's like to be both a writer and a publisher:

I'm going to call it a strange Victorian idea, that the authors are away somewhere in a château and all of the people are somewhere else down in the engine room, shoveling coal into the furnace. A lot of authors are like this, where they really want to be completely divorced from all of the mechanics and the making of the books and all that. And then there are those who are always at war with it and always feel like their publisher isn't doing enough for them and they got screwed or whatever.

The problem is, some publishers won't even tell you the truth. They want to keep it all mysterious. But I do adult seminars in San Francisco every month, where we have panels of published writers talking to aspiring writers, and I always make the point that the publishing business, at any level, is still a very gentlemanly business. It's eccentric and still peopled by book-loving people, and the profit margins are narrow, and everyone's overworked and doing the best they can.

In terms of the numbers, I think if the truth is out there for everybody, then everybody is a lot better off. It quells some of the misunderstanding that goes on. I've had so many friends that were published -- and I think published well -- and then they get really angry because they don't even understand how it works and they think, "Well, my book about South American dog trainers in the 16th century only sold 4,000 copies, and it's my publisher's fault!"

That's the thing with writing -- the numbers are most often so dismal. It can be frightening, always worrying you're not selling enough, that no publisher will give you a second or third shot. You don't think that always staring the numbers in the face can have an adverse effect?

It's true, we know all the numbers. There are only four people at McSweeney's, so we all know how much money a book makes, how much it costs to print a book in Wisconsin, how much it costs to print a book in China, how much it costs to print a book in Iceland. We know how much of the cover price the bookstore takes, how much the distributor takes, how much it costs to ship a box of books to Canada overnight.

But it's empowering, incredibly empowering, to know how it all works. If we didn't know how it works, we wouldn't be able to put out Stephen Dixon's book ["I"] that no one else would publish, and William Vollmann's book ["Rising Up And Rising Down," which is seven volumes and thousands of pages] that no one else would publish, because we know the numbers and we know how to figure them out to work for these authors and these strange projects.

On Babies, Nice Big and American

2005-03-08T22:06:00.000-06:00

All intentions are to start moving through the currently hyped Nice Big American Baby by Judy Budnitz over the next week or two...more to come.

Jill Owens review
@ Powells.com

Tom
Perrotta review @ NYT

Travel in the Mouth of the Wolf by Paul Fattaruso

2005-03-08T21:59:00.000-06:00

I'm on a roll with short lit. Just finished Travel in the Mouth of the Wolf by Paul Fattaruso, and really enjoyed it. Perhaps because Fattaruso's MFA in Poetry is blurbed on the back cover, but I found the whole work to have a very serene, poetic sensibility. Not terribly concerned with novelistic conventions (though not ignorant of them), but extremely nuanced use of each line to carry the reader along...

The Mumpsimus wrote the review that landed Travel in the Mouth of the Wolf on my TBR list. Bookslut has a review as well.

Recommended quick read.

Play Dead

2005-03-02T22:56:00.000-06:00

Sweet: More ways to fritter away G--'s college fund, 99 cents at a time...

Hey now.

It's time for our next step into the digital domain: Beginning March 1st, all the live Grateful Dead archival recordings -- the two-track "Dick's Picks" series and the multi-track "Vault" series -- will be available for direct downloading through iTunes Music Store and GDStore.com. Studio albums have been available at ITunes for some time.

In the near future, certain new, previously unreleased shows will be digitally available exclusively through the iTunes Music Store and GDStore.com.

You can access these downloads either through iTunes or through Dead.net's own GDStore.com Apple will be offering complete shows and single songs up to 10 minutes long in their AAC format. At GDStore.com, you can choose among four different file formats (128, 256, Windows Media, Lossless) for complete shows, but single songs won't be available.

We've been on the cutting edge of music distribution for more than 30 years, and the evolution to digital sharing is not surprising. Dead Heads have always honored ethical standards in their sharing, and we think this offering represents a great combination -- it's easy to use and it's legal.

Enjoy!
Your friends at Grateful Dead Productions

No, not that kind of one-handed typing...

2005-03-02T14:07:00.000-06:00

If you get really geeked out by word trivia or spend lots of time procrastinating at the keyboard, be sure to check out some recent blogging by Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn (here, here and here).

Visions of Paradise on The Etched City

2005-02-28T19:56:00.000-06:00

Visions of Paradise blogs on The Etched City. Right up front, VoP addresses the issue of whether Bishop's book can be as good as all
the hype in the fantastic-fiction community. That hype has always been a reason I keep delaying reading it, although many folks whose opinions I admire have been on-board. Hard to beat this endorsement:

If I were to list all the aspects of the “perfect” novel as I see it, The Etched City contains all of them in varying degrees.

!!!???

Believe it

2005-02-25T22:18:00.000-06:00

If you hadn't noticed, The Believer has a shnazzy new site up that matches the overall look and tone of the journal.

I alternate between really liking The Believer and pure indifference.

Johnny Too Bad

2005-02-25T10:15:00.000-06:00

Salon serves up another helping of its typically hit-or-miss suggestions on "What to Read." [Insert more Salon bashing here, if you like]

Glad to see John Dufresne's new collection (Johnny Too Bad) in the roundup, though. I've enjoyed his previous work a lot.

Awash in Language: The Seas, by Samantha Hunt

2005-02-24T22:13:00.000-06:00

All too rarely in a reader's life, we encounter authors who are so absolutely in control of the words, so sure of the emotional resonance of the story, that you come to trust them completely and will follow them anywhere they dare to take you. We come to inhabit their creations permanently, no matter how unreal they may seem at first glance. The first time you read these authors is like an epiphany, and you realize you are in the hands of someone who loves language as much as you do, and recognizes that it is the most serious plaything ever created.

I'm thinking of the feeling of first reading Jeanette Winterson, David Markson, Italo Calvino, John Crowley, or the utterly neglected Deborah McKay. And I'm adding Samantha Hunt to the list.

Reading The Seas was one of those cathartic moments that reminded me why I love reading and language and art. In her first novel, Samantha Hunt has created a spare, but incredibly vivid, universe of words that contains so much pain, longing, magic and dark eros that it's hard to believe it's only 192 pages.

In one telling passage, the narrator explains to her mother:

"I think it's like chemistry. Like the letters are atoms, the words are molecules, and the sentences are elements. You just chose [sic] what scale you want to see the world in."

It's interesting that here we focus on language as fundament, since so much of The Seas is really about the spaces between concepts...love/hate, wet/dry, life/death, truth/myth, freedom/slavery, male/female, madness/sanity.

I loved this book.

Related Links:

For God's sake, buy The Seas.

www.samanthahunt.net

There was a really lazy review in the Village Voice that, although positive, seemed to really not "get it"

Gray lady eats red dot

2005-02-18T10:28:00.000-06:00

Anybody else find it interesting that the NYT is acquiring About.com?

Chabon gets Linked!

2005-02-18T10:25:00.000-06:00

Nice! Matthew Cheney reports (via Gwenda Bond) that Kelly Link's "Stone Animals" will be appearing in the next edition of Best American Short Stories.

"Stone Animals" is easily the best short story I've read in months (with the possible exception of some of George Saunders' work in
Pastoralia or Sorrentino in The Moon in its Flight).

(The Mumpsimus is also responsible for me finding Link's story in the first place, with his great post on the topic.)

DevonThink

2005-02-16T10:40:00.000-06:00

Many of you may have seen Steven Johnson's NYT article "Tool for Thought," which describes the way he has used DevonThink to manage information.

I've used DevonThink for over a year to organize almost every aspect of my digital life, from archiving intriguing fiction, articles or blog posts to managing lists of books to buy, software to install, etc.

It's a terrific program, made even more terrific by it's ability to form intelligent correlations between information in your database. Rabid DT users have been waiting a long time for the release of a Pro version, which promises the use of multiple databases.

However, with a little Unix magic (which, at first blush, seems way over my head), there's a post at macosxhints that gives a nifty workaround.

Vander-work-ethic

2005-02-14T22:05:00.000-06:00

Interesting post at Jeff Vandermeer's VanderWorld on the daily routines of a working writer.

But don't take my word for it...

2005-02-14T11:37:00.000-06:00

Meant to include this in last night's post on Case Histories... If you're thinking about moving CH from your TBR stack into your grubby little mitts, check out the other reviews at Metacritic.

Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson

2005-02-13T23:32:00.000-06:00

I’ve never been much of a fan of mystery novels, though paradoxically I do love a good mystery story. I tend to get frustrated while the author pushes me forward from plot point to plot point, promising something big but never delivering much more than the resolution of whodunit.

I came to Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories with a healthy dose of skepticism. Though I’ve enjoyed Atkinson’s stories, I was unsure of what she would do with the tropes of detective fiction, a genre that I generally don’t derive a lot of satisfaction from.

So imagine my surprise, given G---‘s erratic sleep schedule of late, as I found myself giving up precious zzz’s to finish chapters before turning out the lights. And not, as you might expect, to continue careening toward the next plot twist. For all that it has to do with grievous crime, Case Histories is a quieter novel than that. Instead, I found myself more interested in the ways Atkinson unveils the effects of loss over time. Sometimes she gives us the details with the cold gaze of a forensic examiner; other times with a subtle suggestion that often breaks your heart. Although some characters are drawn with the broad strokes of genre, each gives at least a glimpse of human truth, and those glimpses are the novel’s compulsive secret.

In my opinion, at least one (perhaps two) of the “case histories” in the novel’s title seemed superfluous, and only existed to bring the other plot threads closer together. Nevertheless, I was drawn in by Case Histories, and felt real grief for many of the novel’s characters.

Case Histories is one of those novels that feels like it was put in my hands at this exact moment for a reason. I experienced a deep loss of my own while reading this novel, and I cannot say for sure that I didn’t keep reading to see how Atkinson’s characters dealt with their own tragedies. In that sense, then, Case Histories achieves one the form’s greatest outcomes: to show one how others live life.

I mustn’t be the only one who feels this way. Before posting this I looked up The Guardian’s review:

I suspect that this is one of those protean novels that will resonate differently according to its readers' own private tragedies: some will find the painful core of the book in the story of the lost sister, others will focus on the grief of the father for his child. Others still will take comfort from nice-guy Jackson and his drive to bring restorative truth to the wounded. But everyone who picks it up will feel compelled to follow Case Histories through to the last page - and not just for closure.

Death of a Playwright

2005-02-11T15:15:00.000-06:00

Today's moment of self-discovery: I have nothing useful to add to any conversation about the death of Arthur Miller, other than that anyone who crafted some of the greatest American plays ever, defied the Unamerican Affairs Committee/McCarthy, and was married to Marilyn Monroe lived a pretty great life. Godspeed, Mr. Miller.

Who knew ice could be so interesting?

2005-02-10T13:22:00.000-06:00

Terrific conversation on today's edition of Odyssey, about ice and the deep influence it has had on our cultural and scientific imaginations.

Fascinating threads and divergent views on Romatic notions of ice versus objective fact (Alpine glaciers versus deepest Antarctica) and the history of ice as foreground for cultural signifiers...

Listen...it's more interesting than I've made it sound.

Purists Beware

2005-02-03T19:25:00.000-06:00

Interesting article at Future of the Book today, on ways that future technologies might impact ways of experiencing the act of reading.

The notion of "smart paper" makes me positively giddy...

King on Speed

2005-02-03T19:20:00.000-06:00

Via Lifehacker Stephen King offers us Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully: in Ten Minutes. For all the reasons I enjoyed his book "On Writing," I found this article to be generally annoying.

King's "take it from a guy who's been there" folksy approach rubbed me the wrong way. First point of advice: "Be talented." Genius! Maybe it's my cold, or maybe the fact that, once again, King proves that he can write nearly anything and people will read it.

Best piece of advice in the article, which should be applied to all aspects of life, not just writing:

8. Ask yourself frequently, "Am I having fun?"

All that being said, I added it to my del.icio.us
links.

Familiarity

2005-02-02T15:48:00.000-06:00

Do you ever get the sensation that suddenly, no matter where you go, every stranger you see in public looks vaguely familiar to you? Like you might have gone to high school or college together, or sat next to each other on the train, but you just can't place the connection?

Had one of those experiences today at lunch in the grocery, and it occurred to me that perhaps our minds are equipped to find comfort in familiarity. It's been a tough day; I wonder if my brain is actively seeking familiar faces to smooth out the turbulence of my morning.

Late additions to the TBR pile

2005-02-02T11:56:00.000-06:00

Late-night, wits'-end trip to Borders last night to purchase a copy of The No-Cry Sleep Solution.

Thanks to a spare Borders gift card, I was able to pick up a few titles for myself:

Natural History by Justina Robson
(SF Site Review)
Heard a few good things about this, as well as Robson's previous Mappa Mundi. File under: always searching for high quality "literary" space opera.
Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
(Web-based annotations)
An admission: Until last night I always thought the title was "The Master and the Margarita." And I always wondered why a Soviet writer would include a tequila drink so prominently in his novel. Dumb.
Anyway, I've always wanted to read this, so I picked it up--despite the creepy cat on the cover of the Grove edition.
Antipodes by Ignacio Padilla
(RCF Review) (January Magazine Review)
Has been compared to Borges and Calvino. Okay, sign me up...

"Care Packages for the Mind"

2005-01-26T19:52:00.000-06:00

Apropos of my recent post about the neccesity of art in difficult times (read: wartime), Books for Soldiers acts as a bulletin board for requests and donations of books for wounded or deployed military folks.

I like the idea a lot. It's bad enough that they have to be in harm's way for all the wrong reasons...but to be bookless? I can't even go away for the weekend without bringing an extra bag just for books "I might want to read"...

Poetry, Hope and the Madness of War

2005-01-24T21:12:00.000-06:00

Interesting story from Lourdes Garcia-Navarro on this afternoon's All Things Considered, demonstrating that our need to express ourselves through art survives even in the grimness and grit of war. Seems that a group of "soldier-poets" in Baghdad gathers to share their poetry in an open mic setting, as a safe way to share thoughts and -- perhaps most importantly -- to trancend the reality of their surroundings.

That the soldiers in the NPR story wrote of their lovers back home, of their children, of their desire to leave Iraq to the Iraqis, bears out the thesis that in the face of horror, we create hope. In the face of reality, out of words we create the world we long for.

Remembering Johnny

2005-01-23T18:18:00.000-06:00

Just heard the truly sad news about half an hour ago, that G--- will
grow up in a world without Johnny Carson.

The ultimate professional, who was satirical without being snarky
(imagine!), topical without being political, and screamingly funny
without being mean-spirited, Johnny was the reason I wanted a TV in my
bedroom as a kid, so I could watch the Tonight Show (and Letterman)
before going to bed every night. Johnny taught us all what timing and
spontaneity was really about, turning every flub into the opportunity
for a new laugh.

Johnny, we've already missed you on our screens... now we'll have to
miss you in our world. Good night.

Mexican chicken soup for the soul

2005-01-22T20:14:00.000-06:00

The snow continues to blow and drift...lake effect now...we easily have a foot or more. G--- was amazed by it when we showed her out the window.

Didn't feel like dragging out to the store, so made due with stuff on hand. Just happened to have some leftover chicken tenders and a can of hominy, a Web search and a few substitutions and we were making a nice and simple Mexican Chicken Soup.

J--- in the kitchen making pecan pie, smells delicious.

My mind has been TiVo'd

2005-01-22T10:05:00.000-06:00

I find myself wanting to TiVo everything now, from radio stories on NPR
to time with my six-month-old daughter. I never imagined how dramatic
the seemingly subtle shift in power that on-demand media could bring.

And never fully appreciated how slavishly we're held to other's
schedules...

For those keeping score at home

2005-01-21T19:22:00.000-06:00

Since we moved into the new house:
- water heater
- brakes
- stove
- gutters/ceiling
- today: television set

Gasp! How will we watch the season premier of Monk?
TiVo to the rescue.

What does "LISMU" stand for?

2005-01-21T11:57:00.000-06:00

"Literature is my utopia" as (mis)quoted from Helen Keller. Apt enough.

Here we go...

2005-01-21T11:44:00.000-06:00

Snow on the way, and here comes YA blog...