Monday, January 25, 2010
Yarn blogging
posted at 9:51 AM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
Yarn Harlot has posted her sixth anniversary essay - her posts are often more essays than posts and she's almost always interesting, intriguing, funny and provocative. I wish I could write like her. No wonder her blog morphed into several popular books and she's so popular that posts commonly garner 200-300 comments apiece.

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Monday, December 21, 2009
Writing blog
posted at 9:15 AM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
Discovery of the day: Inky Girl. Interesting, informative, readable. And some pretty funny cartoons for those of us who like books a lot (too much?) and have many quirky attitudes about books.

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Friday, November 6, 2009
New blog to read
posted at 12:13 PM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
Normblog's weekly profile is of John Palmer who blogs at eclectecon.  Both the profile and the blog are well worth a visit.

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Saturday, October 31, 2009
Thought to ponder
posted at 9:33 AM | Permalink | 3 comment(s)
My 15 minutes of blogging fame are over.  A new profile is up at normblog.  It is of "Bataween, a journalist and mother of four, took her moniker from a residential district of Baghdad, Iraq, where her parents used to live. Bataween (the district) used to be almost entirely Jewish, and where once there were 150,000 Jews in Iraq, there are now seven."

Humor aside, in one of her answers, Bataween makes an comment that has lodged itself in my head as today's idea to think about:
What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat?
The idea that the root cause of terrorism lies in legitimate grievances.
In the post-Che and post-911 era as we all attempt to figure out how to co-habit one large world, this is an interesting and challenging opinion.

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Friday, October 23, 2009
Scary but true
posted at 3:58 PM | Permalink | 7 comment(s)
I've been profiled by normblog. It's evident thereby that he has a really really really shallow barrel to hand, but there it is.

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Tuesday, September 29, 2009
And speaking of books...
posted at 7:11 PM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
...there are rumors afoot in the land that second-hand bookstores are be in some survival trouble. I've heard these rumors from time to time and dismissed them as voiced by people who don't feel passion for books because, well, anyone who really cared about books would know the value - emotional, intellectual and, sometimes, monetary - of all books. New and/or used, handed down or just printed. I am not one who rails against big business or thinks large retail firms are spending much energy plotting to devour and munch on small stores. And I know that like many (most?) book buyers, buying and reading books is not about holding onto old things for holding-on's own sake. It's about treasuring words and stories and writing. There is more to reading than the words in them, witness that even people who like electronic readers for some purposes (me among them) acknowledge that it's not the same as reading books - it's useful, it's informative, it's handy, but it's not the same. Which is off topic but related. Anyway, h/t normblog.

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Are we what we eat read?
posted at 9:03 AM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
Norm of the eponymous and unfailingly interesting normblog presented an intriguing book meme. The idea is that, using only books you've read this year, one should provide titles for posed questions and without repeating titles. I do, however, tend to go completely blank as far as titles even though I read one or two or more books a week.

Describe yourself: Almost always the main character of whatever book I've just finished or am currently enjoying. For example, while thinking about this, I've veered wildly from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to The Guernsey Literary...Society to The Marx Sisters to Just Grace to Persuasion to ....

How do you feel? Mennyms (Sylvia Waugh). A young readers' book but maybe not so much when you consider she uses words like "mollify." Also Far From the Madding Crowd.

Describe where you currently live: A Covenant With Death and, simultaneously, Anne of Green Gables and Little Chapel on the River.

If you could go anywhere, where would you go? London (Rutherford), A Remembrance of Things Past, War and Peace.

Your favorite form of transportation? The Phantom Tollbooth.

Your best friend is: A Bridge Too Far and Daddy Nostalgia.

You and your friends are: Song Without End and/or Oh What a Lovely War and/or I'm (we're) All Right, Jack and/or Don Quixote and/or J'accuse and/or Eat, Pray, Love.

What's the weather like? The Bell(weather) Jar.

You fear: The Tears of Autumn and/or Conversations After a Burial.

What is the best advice you have to give? The Healing Imagination.

Thought for the day: Cryptonomicon. Dance to the Music of Time. Both.

How would you like to die? A Postillion Struck by Lightning.

Your soul's present condition? Snakes and Ladders, The Idiot, The Quinqunx.

Now you!

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Friday, September 18, 2009
Smoking ban moves outdoors
posted at 5:58 PM | Permalink | 5 comment(s)
The Nanny of New York (a/k/a Mayor Bloomberg) reportedly wants to ban smoking outdoors as well as in. Normblog has written a - presumably sarcastic - piece on same.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Book blogs
posted at 9:11 AM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
From Normblog to an article in the American Historical Association's newsmagazine to three terrific book(ish) blogs:
- Writers Read which doesn't post anywhere near often enough for how absorbing it is
- RConversation which is Rebecca MacKinnon's "ongoing conversation" with the internet
- Papercuts which is a relaxed and interesting blog about books, pure and simple
Actually, the AHA article mentions far more but these are the ones I want to recommend.

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Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Crossword puzzles
posted at 5:51 PM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
I love doing the New York Times crossword puzzles and have done since I was in high school, having had the virus enthusiasm passed on to me by mother who did them every day as regularly and necessarily as getting dressed. It's always annoyed one of my siblings that she and I did and enjoyed the Times puzzles while he not only did not particularly enjoy them but also could not do them after Tuesday - patently smarter though he is than we (which I say somewhat, although only somewhat, in jest). My father preferred the (clearly inferior) puzzles in the Daily News and the New York Post - though patently smarter, too, than my mother and me. (Please note that I sincerely hope any rare readers recognize sarcasm and flippancy here, and do not take anything I have said as offensive.)

Of late, my excitement and enthusiasm has increased many times - a hundred fold, Jane A. might say - because two compatriots and I have found each other. They enjoy the puzzles at least as much as I do and do them as furiously and thoroughly. It's so much fun to complete each puzzle and then compare times and specific reactions to words and themes with each other. I haven't enjoyed doing the puzzles this much in years. And, not surprisingly, we share lots of other enthusiasms, too, so our conversations range all over the place and are great fun.

Also, from them I learned about a daily NYT puzzle blog, Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle. This is such an amazing go-to site in that Rex is apparently unable not to finish every single puzzle and then write wittily about it, disrespectful-though-adoring fan that he is. And yesterday I met one of the proprietors of Ryan and Brian Do Crosswords, another fun puzzle site and a terrific resource that's a lot of fun. Both blogs have all manner of great links to other puzzle sites, too. What a wondrous world....

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Saturday, January 10, 2009
That final frontier
posted at 10:38 AM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
Yes, space.  Thanks to Alan for a link to Space Weather which is such an interesting site that it will surely detract from all of us otherwise fascinating bloggers.

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