Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the books category.
vegan cookies
Oreos, at least in the US, are vegan. But Newman-O’s are even more delicious, and give much $ to charity.
True Blood on TV
It’s my personal version of watching football, I guess, in the sense of being utterly useless and silly and bewitchingly fun vicarious involvement in events so far from our own real lives. In the same way as the football fans discuss the games—what coaches might do, relative skills of players—we discussed throughout the first season whether Sam could have killed vampire-friendly female Bon Temps citizens to frighten Sookie away from Bill, whether the Sheriff’s Department could have been covering up for one of their own, what Amy was REALLY after. But the brilliant twist of the whole series, books and HBO, is that in making the vampires the latest civil rights-vs.-bigotry flashpoint, they force the viewer to exist in a world where race and sexuality aren’t all that important. This can be very disturbing, e.g. when Sookie’s friend and coworker Lafayette, both gay and African American, confronts a high-profile politician with whom he’s had various extra-legal business dealings—because he’s outraged by the would-be senator’s anti-vampire stance, not his homophobia—and then proceeds to use the politician’s constituents’ racism to harm his electability by posing for a friendly photo. The choice of music and the swampy southern atmosphere of the show are also rather enchanting.
Very, very late on posting this….
Because I think it happened in January. But it was this magical night in Philadelphia, warm and ever so slightly misty, and very dark, and I worked a bit latish in center city to then walk over to the Borders bookstore to Charles Burns’ book signing. Whee, there I was, [trying to pretend not to be terrified at being out in public where I could be observed and despised by my fellow humans who would recoil in disgust and possibly crush me like a worm were they to notice me, for how could they not then instinctively intuit my loathsomeness and the need to rid this plane of existence of an evil of my ilk?!] getting to meet this great artist at last whose work just inspires me to my core. And besides being this amazing artist whose crisp black and white inkinesses and negative space somehow by sheer vibration create color, being this prolific imaginer whose dark baroque eruptions dance elegantly with language clean as a Morandi painting in words, he’s a real sweetheart, super nice and gracious. I’ve never been able to really understand the whole color-out-of-black-&-white thang, I just stare at his pages at length. If you’ve never read his stuff, please don’t deny yourself this experience of beauty. You might go to his entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Burns_(cartoonist) as a start, because for some reason I’m not finding his actual website tonight–I’m lucky if I can walk and think at the same time actually, we’re dealing with humongous sinus infections in an epic microbial badminton match around here–or look at the hardcover collection of Black Hole which is what he was signing and discussing that evening. When I spoke to him I of course told him how fantabulous he was, but mostly we talked about our BREEEEEELLLIONNTT seventeen year old daughters and how they’re juuuuust starting not to be too embarrassed by us đ and how one of our former publishers who’ll remain unmentioned is a total asshole. And bless his heart, Burns is a Philly boy now, too, after doing the childhood-as-trek-around-the-U.S.-cauza-Dad’s-job that I and many other artists did as well. Go buy his books, y’all….
Pembroke corgis
The Corgis in their canine-Oscar-winning performance in The Queen were Pembroke Corgis, sweet little blacknosed golden-and-white-faced ones. As the old saying goes, “The Cardigan Welsh Corgi is the one with the tail. The Pembroke is the one with the Queen of England.”
No one wrote about the Corgis until now. Apparently there’s a wonderful book called Noble Hounds and Dear Companions about ALL the dogs the British royals have been involved with, and it includes a mention of the oh so most noble and *fluffical!!!* Japanese Chin!
Click here: Telegraph | Picture Gallery | ROYAL DOGS
Reading like a kid
Juvenile reading is fun. At the train station closest to home there is a very nice lady working most mornings who shows you pictures of her grandchildren, leaves out bowls of peppermints, and, thank Goddess, has three or four cardboard boxes of recycled reading labeled with simple directions to take whatever books you want and leave your own unwanted books. What a splendid idea for a train station! I got Clive Barker’s Imajica there. It’s lots of fun! An out author, hallucinogenically beautiful or grotesque settings, realistic sex, and–so far–a near-Aristasian perception of women and men as different species. Everyone else read that in high school, or undergrad at the latest. The first how-to-draw-canines books I found that weren’t $150 vet school texts were kid-directed (and not very good). And, after running into quotes from them in twenty-two places this summer, I finally obtained used copies of those dorm-room faves I didn’t read in college, Principia Discordia and The Illuminatus Trilogy. Not to mention one of the biggest events of the summer–Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows coming out! My fellow young lady attorneys at the office and I were fully prepared to do serious harm to anyone who’d think it amusing to tell us anything about it prematurely, but fortunately no blood had to be shed.
Angela Bocage 