I was interested in reading Till I End My Song simply because the premise of gathering "last poems" together intrigued me. There may also be poets included in the anthology that I may never have read and, why not, I should read some more poetry. Well, I did like all the poems. I found some new poets or unfamiliar pieces from poets I've read before, so five stars to the poets, but the criticism and editing for this book is weighting it down. A lot.
This anthology is edited by Harold Bloom, which might be a self-explanatory statement and you can stop reading my review here if Bloom turns you off completely (I will say that he refrains from mentioning Falstaff or Hamlet on every page, a complaint I had about Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human).
Is Till I End My Song a book for lay people? Is it for those making a serious study of the subject of poetry and are already well-read in poetry? I can't tell. There are frequent references made to other poets and critics (like Walter Pater, who has no work included in this volume) with no other elaboration leading me to believe this is not intended for the lay public, although it seems to be marketed that way. The annotating is hit-and-miss; some poems have a great deal of annotating but some have absolutely no annotating and they need it (particularly those retaining original spelling and punctuation, like Raleigh's "The Ocean to Cynthia" for which I will can't quite decide what "consayte" is meant to be). The poets' introductory bios seem too perfunctory in certain cases (like John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester's) or overly effusive (like Byron's and T.S. Eliot's). Bloom's editorial decision-making also leaves a gap. He chose to use three definitions of "last": literal "last poems", poems meant to mark the end of a career, or (and this one is the wobbliest category) poems "that seem to [Bloom] an imaginative conclusion to a poetic career". He also made the decision to not represent some poets because he "could not locate in them a distinguished last poem in any of [his] three senses" (like Chaucer and Ezra Pound). This anthology is also entirely British until the inclusion of Emerson halfway through (poets are arranged chronologically by birth), largely male (there is no Sylvia Plath, Marianne Moore, or Anne Bradstreet), and, with few exceptions, white (there are no poets of the Pacific Rim, no Native Americans, no Langston Hughes).
What would I have liked to see in this book? A true collection of last poems, with far less subjective "picking and choosing" by the editor, grouped by perhaps situation (poets who died by their own hand, poets who worked through long illness before death, poets who died suddenly, poets who lived to be quite old vs. poets who died young, etc.), from all areas of the world linked together by commentary about common forms and imagery. In short, more objectivity is needed and less carping about the rise of cultural studies, etc., in the poets' short biographies because I'm pretty tired of nearly every Bloom book complaining about how "cultural studies" is maligning "The Canon".
I've come down pretty hard on the editing for this volume, but in no way should that reflect on the poets' work contained within. Like I said, five stars to the poets. If anything, this volume can be used as a jumping-off point to find new poets to read. Some of the poems are quite familiar (Emily Bronte is represented by her haunting "No Coward Soul is Mine", T.S. Eliot by the "Little Gidding" section of Four Quartets), some are not (I had not read any Amy Clampitt before and, shamefully, she's an Iowan). Skip the commentary and read the poems aloud instead.
Dear FTC: I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.
28 January 2011
27 January 2011
You know you're a foodie when...
...you're geeking out at your new cookbooks.
I ditched a whole box of old cookbooks I didn't use/had nasty recipes/had actually never opened before I moved. I've been eating much better since I moved (odd how not being depressed by your house and its crappy level of hard water can affect your desire to cook and eat at home) so last weekend I wanted to get a couple of new cookbooks about decently-easy-to-make healthy food.
I like the recipes from Whole Living magazine, just not enough to buy the magazine regularly, so the power foods cookbook is perfect. Martha Stewart isn't a massive favorite of mine, but I know the Everyday Food magazine always has easy-to-prepare meals (and the pictures look yummy).
And then, last night, I scored a fantastic deal. There were cookbook box sets - like gift sets - at the store that got really discounted. As in "about 75% off" discounted. These are fancy cookbooks, great for reference or have AMAZING recipes (also with ingredients I'm pretty sure I never heard of). I actually had been considering buying one or the other of these sets but just couldn't justify the expense before. I'm so excited about this one:
Can you guess what it is?
It even comes with a facsimile copy of the opening-night French Laundry menu, signed by Keller. Wheee!
I had a gift card left to use so I only had to fork over 7 dollars cash for those two sets. Seriously geeking out and drooling all over that French Laundry cookbook. Now I just need Bouchon for yummy bistro cooking.
I ditched a whole box of old cookbooks I didn't use/had nasty recipes/had actually never opened before I moved. I've been eating much better since I moved (odd how not being depressed by your house and its crappy level of hard water can affect your desire to cook and eat at home) so last weekend I wanted to get a couple of new cookbooks about decently-easy-to-make healthy food.
And then, last night, I scored a fantastic deal. There were cookbook box sets - like gift sets - at the store that got really discounted. As in "about 75% off" discounted. These are fancy cookbooks, great for reference or have AMAZING recipes (also with ingredients I'm pretty sure I never heard of). I actually had been considering buying one or the other of these sets but just couldn't justify the expense before. I'm so excited about this one:
Can you guess what it is?
It's the deluxe set, Volumes I and II of Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child in a beautiful blue cloth box. Love.
And then there's this one, which makes me do a little "sqeeee":
The Essential Thomas Keller box set - French Laundry and ad hoc at home. I may never make it to the restaurant in Napa but I can attempt to make things served there. Keller notes in the introduction that the chef is the soul of the recipe; you can make a "perfect" dish, but if you didn't feel the passion while making that dish then it wasn't perfect for you.
I had a gift card left to use so I only had to fork over 7 dollars cash for those two sets. Seriously geeking out and drooling all over that French Laundry cookbook. Now I just need Bouchon for yummy bistro cooking.
26 January 2011
DNF: Burnt Shadows
I won a copy of Burnt Shadows about a year ago and was initially excited to read it - the premise was intriguing and I'd heard many good things about the book. I started reading right away but about 40 pages in the progress ground to a halt.
So I put it aside. From time to time I'd come back to it, re-read the last few pages, maybe read a few more pages, and "meh", reach for a different book.
Unfortunately, I have to stop reading at about 50 pages. The opening section in Japan was beautiful, lovely writing, but now that the action has switched to India I feel disconnected from Hiroko, even though I felt for her situation. I've tried multiple times to continue but I just have no impetus to finish this book. So into the DNF bin it goes, hopefully to find a new reader.
*While unpacking all my books, I took a long, very, very (painfully) hard look at the books I have "in-progress"; I made the decision to DNF several titles because I just could not summon the interest to finish them. Not that the books are awful, they just didn't speak to me (oddly enough, the books that irritate me enough to say they are awful are usually ones I finish).
So I put it aside. From time to time I'd come back to it, re-read the last few pages, maybe read a few more pages, and "meh", reach for a different book.
Unfortunately, I have to stop reading at about 50 pages. The opening section in Japan was beautiful, lovely writing, but now that the action has switched to India I feel disconnected from Hiroko, even though I felt for her situation. I've tried multiple times to continue but I just have no impetus to finish this book. So into the DNF bin it goes, hopefully to find a new reader.
*While unpacking all my books, I took a long, very, very (painfully) hard look at the books I have "in-progress"; I made the decision to DNF several titles because I just could not summon the interest to finish them. Not that the books are awful, they just didn't speak to me (oddly enough, the books that irritate me enough to say they are awful are usually ones I finish).
25 January 2011
The Orchid Affair
Of course, timing is everything. Right after I create and post about my anti-HEA book display I go and read a HEA book. Hahaha.
The Orchid Affair is the newest Lauren Willig "Pink Carnation" novel and there's no way I could pass it up. I read it in under three hours and I have a pretty signed bookplate from Lauren. Fangirl, yes?
The new heroine in The Orchid Affair is not so new to us. Back in The Masque of the Black Tulip we were introduced to some trainee spies at Richard and Amy's spy school, one of them being a rather prim governess by the name of Miss Grey. Fresh from training, Miss Laura Grey has been inserted by the Pink Carnation into the household of one Andre Jaouen, cousin of Fouche and employed by the Prefecture de Paris, as Mlle Laure Griscogne, governess to Jaouen's two children. Laura has her own history in France, Paris in particular, and what seems like a simple assignment - observe and report on Jaouen's activities, particularly those relating to Bonaparte, Delaroche, Fouche, etc. - becomes far more complicated and dangerous than Laura expected.
Lauren excels at making her heroines different from one another and Laura is no exception. She is the oldest Pink Carnation heroine at 32 (I believe Mary was previously the eldest at about 23 or 24) and the most educated and worldly. She is also the heroine who, if thrown out into the world, could survive easily by her wits and intelligence making her an excellent agent for the Pink Carnation and a heroine you really want to root for. Once the major action of the Regency plot heats up, you really, really want Laura to succeed in her mission and have a good ending (being a Pink Carnation book, you do have some idea of how the book will end right from the beginning, but you still want it to happen and would be disappointed if Laura didn't get her man). Jaouen is a great addition to Lauren's heroes: a father, serious, educated, haunted, and he has his own secrets.
While some of the earlier Pink books felt more like Regency Romps, there is more urgency to the plotline of The Orchid Affair and, Augustus Whittlesby and his terrible, overblown poetry aside, it is a darker book. Lauren doesn't skimp on the realities of torture in post-Revolutionary France and, while dead bodies have shown up in previous books, the violence is more nuanced and necessary to the action of the book. There is more at stake in the denouement than just information, state secrets, and international espionage with masks and flowers.
I find myself far more interested in the Regency spy plots than in the framing story of modern-day PhD candidate Eloise, although it is through Eloise that we access the Regency plots. I think this is because we only see bits and pieces of the Eloise-and-Colin-have-a-relationship development even thought the framing story usually ties in thematically with part of the book; in book 3, The Deception of the Emerald Ring, Geoff and Letty wind up married as part of a mistaken-identity-botched-elopement and have to learn to overcome one anothers' prejudices and assumptions, while Eloise has to overcome some of her assumptions about Colin in order for their relationship to move forward. In the The Orchid Affair, Eloise gets to spend a little more time with Colin's air-head mother and decidedly sleazy step-father/cousin. I actually got to like Colin a little more in this book, probably because of his rotten family (family is a large part of the Regency plot).
The Orchid Affair was, as expected, as very fun book to read. Coming off a very hectic and disorganized three weeks of moving, not being able to find things, writing very large checks, and heaps of stress it was nice to curl up with a spandy new book, a pot of tea, and the cats to read the evening and night away with characters old and new, flowery spies, and dastardly villains. I can't wait until next January for a new installment!
Pink Carnation Heroine Standings:
Laura and Letty are having a face-off over who is the best Pink heroine; Laura is pretty clever but Letty is really stubborn and can create excellent distractions. Arabella is looking on to see if she can capitalize on the disagreement (if Pen doesn't beat her to the punchline). Mary thinks she is better than all this, Charlotte is reading a book, Hen is practicing her scales (and making sure Miles doesn't eat all the ginger biscuits), and Amy is far too busy training new spies to notice.
The Pink Carnation is, of course, observing the whole thing. Silently taking notes.
The Orchid Affair is the newest Lauren Willig "Pink Carnation" novel and there's no way I could pass it up. I read it in under three hours and I have a pretty signed bookplate from Lauren. Fangirl, yes?
The new heroine in The Orchid Affair is not so new to us. Back in The Masque of the Black Tulip we were introduced to some trainee spies at Richard and Amy's spy school, one of them being a rather prim governess by the name of Miss Grey. Fresh from training, Miss Laura Grey has been inserted by the Pink Carnation into the household of one Andre Jaouen, cousin of Fouche and employed by the Prefecture de Paris, as Mlle Laure Griscogne, governess to Jaouen's two children. Laura has her own history in France, Paris in particular, and what seems like a simple assignment - observe and report on Jaouen's activities, particularly those relating to Bonaparte, Delaroche, Fouche, etc. - becomes far more complicated and dangerous than Laura expected.
Lauren excels at making her heroines different from one another and Laura is no exception. She is the oldest Pink Carnation heroine at 32 (I believe Mary was previously the eldest at about 23 or 24) and the most educated and worldly. She is also the heroine who, if thrown out into the world, could survive easily by her wits and intelligence making her an excellent agent for the Pink Carnation and a heroine you really want to root for. Once the major action of the Regency plot heats up, you really, really want Laura to succeed in her mission and have a good ending (being a Pink Carnation book, you do have some idea of how the book will end right from the beginning, but you still want it to happen and would be disappointed if Laura didn't get her man). Jaouen is a great addition to Lauren's heroes: a father, serious, educated, haunted, and he has his own secrets.
While some of the earlier Pink books felt more like Regency Romps, there is more urgency to the plotline of The Orchid Affair and, Augustus Whittlesby and his terrible, overblown poetry aside, it is a darker book. Lauren doesn't skimp on the realities of torture in post-Revolutionary France and, while dead bodies have shown up in previous books, the violence is more nuanced and necessary to the action of the book. There is more at stake in the denouement than just information, state secrets, and international espionage with masks and flowers.
I find myself far more interested in the Regency spy plots than in the framing story of modern-day PhD candidate Eloise, although it is through Eloise that we access the Regency plots. I think this is because we only see bits and pieces of the Eloise-and-Colin-have-a-relationship development even thought the framing story usually ties in thematically with part of the book; in book 3, The Deception of the Emerald Ring, Geoff and Letty wind up married as part of a mistaken-identity-botched-elopement and have to learn to overcome one anothers' prejudices and assumptions, while Eloise has to overcome some of her assumptions about Colin in order for their relationship to move forward. In the The Orchid Affair, Eloise gets to spend a little more time with Colin's air-head mother and decidedly sleazy step-father/cousin. I actually got to like Colin a little more in this book, probably because of his rotten family (family is a large part of the Regency plot).
The Orchid Affair was, as expected, as very fun book to read. Coming off a very hectic and disorganized three weeks of moving, not being able to find things, writing very large checks, and heaps of stress it was nice to curl up with a spandy new book, a pot of tea, and the cats to read the evening and night away with characters old and new, flowery spies, and dastardly villains. I can't wait until next January for a new installment!
Pink Carnation Heroine Standings:
Laura and Letty are having a face-off over who is the best Pink heroine; Laura is pretty clever but Letty is really stubborn and can create excellent distractions. Arabella is looking on to see if she can capitalize on the disagreement (if Pen doesn't beat her to the punchline). Mary thinks she is better than all this, Charlotte is reading a book, Hen is practicing her scales (and making sure Miles doesn't eat all the ginger biscuits), and Amy is far too busy training new spies to notice.
The Pink Carnation is, of course, observing the whole thing. Silently taking notes.
24 January 2011
When I have to "huh"?
As a bookseller, there are days when the impulse to laugh has to be squelched mercilessly. Bad for business.
Evidence the first:
A customer on the telephone wants a copy of The Autobiography of Mark Twain - which we, as well as most of the bookstores/online sources/etc. in this country, are completely sold out of due to small print runs vs. high demand (you can get it electronically, like I did if you want to read it and want to either a) save money or b) save time, or both). I explain this to the customer who "needs this for a Christmas present today" (it's January, so someone's advance planning has failed). I apologise, offer to hold the audiobook we have on hand only to be ordered to call the other bookstores in the area. So in the interests of "good customer service" I put the customer on hold, checked the online inventory, found that the closest on hand copy is several states away, called the local indie bookstore, and they didn't have any either (I believe their bookseller actually snorted when I asked if they had any copies of the Twain). So I got my customer back on the line, informed him of this, and, once again offered to hold the audiobook because no one has any hardcovers on hand and we're all waiting for the same print run for a re-stock. The customer explodes "That's Communist!" and proceeds to tell me all about how it's soooo like the Communists that the publisher didn't print enough copies of the biography of the most famous author in America because everyone should have a copy and he wants to buy one, yadda, yadda, yadda. Um, "Communist"? Does someone needs a lesson in basic political and economic ideology? It's "Capitalist" to cause demand to go up by not printing enough copies because "Communist" is where you share everything, i.e. there's one for everybody. I told him that I'm sure the University of California Press would love to hear his opinion, but I didn't think it would make the printing presses run any faster, and would he like me to hold the audiobook (hint, hint). He took the hint and the audiobook. Oy vey.
Evidence the second:
Three teenage girls are wandering around the store, talking loudly about books that they are looking for including The Scarlet Letter and it "has to be on the bestsellers somewhere" (they've walked past me and another bookseller at this point and we both looked at each other and gave the "WTF" look). I would normally just offer to help but there's some people who just have to learn to give up and ask on their own - these three are those people, plus I wanted to hear more of the conversation. I should have offered to help because the conversation started to depress me. This trio of well-fed, obviously well-cared for girls are wandering around talking about how they don't read, and don't go to bookstores, and are being forced to read Huckleberry Finn and it's, like, omigod sooo hard (these girls are old enough to drive themselves to the mall, just FYI). They are actually PROUD of the fact that they don't read. So they finally come find me - arranging the new bestsellers, none of which are The Scarlet Letter - and ask for the Nicholas Sparks books....and I show them to the section about 8 feet behind them, alphabetical by author's last name. Then one of the girls does ask for The Scarlet Letter - so I ask my favorite question ever "Do you need a particular edition?" which completely confuses the poor girl and her face literally goes blank. So we go to Hawthorne and I pull the cheapest edition off the shelf. She still looks confused so I take a little pity on her and ask if she knows anything about the book. Nope, she doesn't know anything about it but she's supposed to read it...nope, she has no idea that it's over 150 years old or about Puritans...and she has trouble reading Huck Finn...and I'm thinking, oh crap, so I ask her, as gently as I can, if she would like me to recommend something else for her to read (I'm assuming it's for school, but I could be wrong). No, no, this is fine so the trio wanders back off to Nicholas Sparks. Pretty soon they come find me again - do I have any Cliffs Notes for Nicholas Sparks's The Rescue? I actually felt my teeth click together so my mouth wouldn't fall open. Er, no, we don't have any Sparknotes for Nicholas Sparks books...but, yes, we do have Sparknotes for Huck Finn. I take two of the three over to the Study Aids section (surprisingly, the girl with The Scarlet Letter is not interested in a Sparknotes for her book; she's determined to read it - I could have hugged her for saying that - so she hung around the Teen New Releases) to find Huck Finn and the whole way there the one girl keeps going on and on (loudly) about how long the book is and how hard it is to read and how it has, like, 500 pages and that's soooo unfair and she's not going to read it if she doesn't have to - I wanted to slap her. So I pulled the Sparknotes for Huck Finn off the rack, handed it to her, and said "Just so you know, all the teachers have read all the study aids and cheat sheets for the books you read in class. So you'll still need to read the book. Huck Finn is still relevant because Huck has to re-think his attitudes about slavery and people of color as he and Jim become friends. And, by the way, Huck Finn is often marketed as a children's book, it's only about 200 to 250 pages depending on the edition...War and Peace has 1000 pages, that's a long book." That shut her up.
Why are people so proud of being ignorant and stupid? It's like a badge of honor, trumpeting their stupidity (look at that waste case, Snooki). In the case of the three girls (because I have no idea what my phone customer looks like), it's obvious that they have money, that their parents spare no expense for them, so why parade around like some uneducated hick? Why not take pride in the advantages of an education? I've read Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason so I understand that the divide between the intelligence haves and have-nots has always existed but it always makes me go "huh?" I try to be helpful and optimistic but the really dogged way that some people just cling to their ignorance makes me want to crawl back in my hidey-hole (or point and laugh, depending on situation).
Evidence the first:
A customer on the telephone wants a copy of The Autobiography of Mark Twain - which we, as well as most of the bookstores/online sources/etc. in this country, are completely sold out of due to small print runs vs. high demand (you can get it electronically, like I did if you want to read it and want to either a) save money or b) save time, or both). I explain this to the customer who "needs this for a Christmas present today" (it's January, so someone's advance planning has failed). I apologise, offer to hold the audiobook we have on hand only to be ordered to call the other bookstores in the area. So in the interests of "good customer service" I put the customer on hold, checked the online inventory, found that the closest on hand copy is several states away, called the local indie bookstore, and they didn't have any either (I believe their bookseller actually snorted when I asked if they had any copies of the Twain). So I got my customer back on the line, informed him of this, and, once again offered to hold the audiobook because no one has any hardcovers on hand and we're all waiting for the same print run for a re-stock. The customer explodes "That's Communist!" and proceeds to tell me all about how it's soooo like the Communists that the publisher didn't print enough copies of the biography of the most famous author in America because everyone should have a copy and he wants to buy one, yadda, yadda, yadda. Um, "Communist"? Does someone needs a lesson in basic political and economic ideology? It's "Capitalist" to cause demand to go up by not printing enough copies because "Communist" is where you share everything, i.e. there's one for everybody. I told him that I'm sure the University of California Press would love to hear his opinion, but I didn't think it would make the printing presses run any faster, and would he like me to hold the audiobook (hint, hint). He took the hint and the audiobook. Oy vey.
Evidence the second:
Three teenage girls are wandering around the store, talking loudly about books that they are looking for including The Scarlet Letter and it "has to be on the bestsellers somewhere" (they've walked past me and another bookseller at this point and we both looked at each other and gave the "WTF" look). I would normally just offer to help but there's some people who just have to learn to give up and ask on their own - these three are those people, plus I wanted to hear more of the conversation. I should have offered to help because the conversation started to depress me. This trio of well-fed, obviously well-cared for girls are wandering around talking about how they don't read, and don't go to bookstores, and are being forced to read Huckleberry Finn and it's, like, omigod sooo hard (these girls are old enough to drive themselves to the mall, just FYI). They are actually PROUD of the fact that they don't read. So they finally come find me - arranging the new bestsellers, none of which are The Scarlet Letter - and ask for the Nicholas Sparks books....and I show them to the section about 8 feet behind them, alphabetical by author's last name. Then one of the girls does ask for The Scarlet Letter - so I ask my favorite question ever "Do you need a particular edition?" which completely confuses the poor girl and her face literally goes blank. So we go to Hawthorne and I pull the cheapest edition off the shelf. She still looks confused so I take a little pity on her and ask if she knows anything about the book. Nope, she doesn't know anything about it but she's supposed to read it...nope, she has no idea that it's over 150 years old or about Puritans...and she has trouble reading Huck Finn...and I'm thinking, oh crap, so I ask her, as gently as I can, if she would like me to recommend something else for her to read (I'm assuming it's for school, but I could be wrong). No, no, this is fine so the trio wanders back off to Nicholas Sparks. Pretty soon they come find me again - do I have any Cliffs Notes for Nicholas Sparks's The Rescue? I actually felt my teeth click together so my mouth wouldn't fall open. Er, no, we don't have any Sparknotes for Nicholas Sparks books...but, yes, we do have Sparknotes for Huck Finn. I take two of the three over to the Study Aids section (surprisingly, the girl with The Scarlet Letter is not interested in a Sparknotes for her book; she's determined to read it - I could have hugged her for saying that - so she hung around the Teen New Releases) to find Huck Finn and the whole way there the one girl keeps going on and on (loudly) about how long the book is and how hard it is to read and how it has, like, 500 pages and that's soooo unfair and she's not going to read it if she doesn't have to - I wanted to slap her. So I pulled the Sparknotes for Huck Finn off the rack, handed it to her, and said "Just so you know, all the teachers have read all the study aids and cheat sheets for the books you read in class. So you'll still need to read the book. Huck Finn is still relevant because Huck has to re-think his attitudes about slavery and people of color as he and Jim become friends. And, by the way, Huck Finn is often marketed as a children's book, it's only about 200 to 250 pages depending on the edition...War and Peace has 1000 pages, that's a long book." That shut her up.
Why are people so proud of being ignorant and stupid? It's like a badge of honor, trumpeting their stupidity (look at that waste case, Snooki). In the case of the three girls (because I have no idea what my phone customer looks like), it's obvious that they have money, that their parents spare no expense for them, so why parade around like some uneducated hick? Why not take pride in the advantages of an education? I've read Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason so I understand that the divide between the intelligence haves and have-nots has always existed but it always makes me go "huh?" I try to be helpful and optimistic but the really dogged way that some people just cling to their ignorance makes me want to crawl back in my hidey-hole (or point and laugh, depending on situation).
21 January 2011
It's #Bloggiesta weekend! A tiny, tiny goal for me
Natasha is hosting Bloggiesta again this year! Happy 4th Bloggiesta! (If you're wondering, it's like a "working weekend" where bloggers do housekeeping on their sites, a little pruing, maybe a few mini-challenges and help each other out).
I did some Bloggiesta-ing last year - added my header picture and changed up the template to something a little more custom designed - but I won't be really joining in since I'm still unpacking boxes. Although I could work on the Reading Chemistry blog...hmmmm....maybe.
But anywhoo the reason for this post has to do with programming. I really don't understand how blog templates set out widgets, colors, columns, etc. and I have no idea how to read the code (I know a little bit about HTML but this seems to be CSS). So this is my tiny, tiny Bloggiesta goal. Ready?
Bloggiesta 2011 goal: Find a book/good reference so I can start to understand how blog templates/websites are put together so that next time we Bloggiesta I will be able to do some more customization/cleanup.
So this is where everyone else comes in - do you have good reference material that you use when you do tweaks and updates? Books or websites are fine so tell me your faves!
I did some Bloggiesta-ing last year - added my header picture and changed up the template to something a little more custom designed - but I won't be really joining in since I'm still unpacking boxes. Although I could work on the Reading Chemistry blog...hmmmm....maybe.
But anywhoo the reason for this post has to do with programming. I really don't understand how blog templates set out widgets, colors, columns, etc. and I have no idea how to read the code (I know a little bit about HTML but this seems to be CSS). So this is my tiny, tiny Bloggiesta goal. Ready?
Bloggiesta 2011 goal: Find a book/good reference so I can start to understand how blog templates/websites are put together so that next time we Bloggiesta I will be able to do some more customization/cleanup.
So this is where everyone else comes in - do you have good reference material that you use when you do tweaks and updates? Books or websites are fine so tell me your faves!
20 January 2011
Who needs love?
So every year at the store we go from Christmas signage to Valentine's Day signage - with a brief stop-over for New Year's resolution-type books - in a blink. So for six weeks we get to live with the Valentine's Day table brimming with relationship, sex, and dating books in varying shades of pink, pink-er pink, and red. For someone who is always acutely aware that Valentine's Day is SAD (Singles Awareness Day) it can get old fast.
So I got to thinking "Why not an anti-Valentine's Day type of display?" Not neccessarily against Valentine's Day, per se, but one where the love stories don't end happily or not as the reader would wish. Also known as no HEAs (Happily Ever Afters). Just for a little balance. And would be full of good books to read. Why not, indeed. So I made one (with input from a few other booksellers - the display is buried in the fiction section but I plan on catching unsuspecting book browsers with the sign "Who needs love?"):
The Time-Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
On Love by Alain de Botton
I deliberately went with more recent novels than classics (because if I did classics, Anna Karenina would be front and center followed by Jude the Obscure and Wuthering Heights as well as very obvious plays from Shakespeare). Do you think I'm missing anything essential?
(Looking at this list again I must have had Booker awards on the brain....)
ETA: One or two things on the display that slipped my mind writing this post.
So I got to thinking "Why not an anti-Valentine's Day type of display?" Not neccessarily against Valentine's Day, per se, but one where the love stories don't end happily or not as the reader would wish. Also known as no HEAs (Happily Ever Afters). Just for a little balance. And would be full of good books to read. Why not, indeed. So I made one (with input from a few other booksellers - the display is buried in the fiction section but I plan on catching unsuspecting book browsers with the sign "Who needs love?"):
The Time-Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
On Love by Alain de Botton
I deliberately went with more recent novels than classics (because if I did classics, Anna Karenina would be front and center followed by Jude the Obscure and Wuthering Heights as well as very obvious plays from Shakespeare). Do you think I'm missing anything essential?
(Looking at this list again I must have had Booker awards on the brain....)
ETA: One or two things on the display that slipped my mind writing this post.
19 January 2011
The Complete Booker Challenge 2011
Sweet! Trying again for the Booker Challenge (and add to my Booker Project). I plan to start with the "Pix-a-Mix of Six" level:
The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch The Sea by John Banville (which I think is coming out as a movie this year, so I should read it)
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Bone People by Keri Hulme (the new Penguin Ink cover is awesome)
If I finish those I'll bump up the goal to "The Booker's Dozen" (pefect opportunity to read Possession again).
11 January 2011
2011 - to set or not to set reading goals?
In thinking about reading (and blogging) for 2011, I wasn't sure I wanted to do any challenges this year.
I've come to realize they distract me. I think and worry and fret far more about what I need to read for a challenge than what I actually read. This gets worse when I have greater than one challenge going on at the same time. I finished one challenge (Women Unbound) but had trouble finishing the other (The Complete Booker) and I only made minimal progress on my projects.
So I think I'll just do one challenge (kind of one and a half). I'd like to work on The Complete Booker Challenge 2011 - it would help make a decent amount of headway on my Booker Project. I'll probably start with the "Pix-a-Mix of Six" (read six Booker winners) and it might upgrade to the "A Booker's Dozen" (read twelve winners or nominees from the short- or long-lists). I'll need to get a challenge post up for that one. I've also signed up for the Goodreads Challenge - which is simply a goal to read a certain number of books. Goodreads makes it really easy to track that with the stats page so I signed up with the goal of reading 100 books this year. I've not made a great start what with the mess of moving and all. One hundred books in a year is like my personal glass ceiling, somehow.
I slowly started accepting review copies from publishers this last year (well, just HarperPerennial/Harper Paperbacks, really). I didn't go overboard (thank goodness) but I haven't been very good at getting things read when I need to for publication dates. So I need to work on that. I also have to pay attention to what I ask for because sometimes you get what you ask for; I requested a review copy of the new Christopher Isherwood diaries never realizing for one minute that it was going to be quite thick (and, in the manner of diaries, not terribly "readable"). So I must keep a better head on my shoulders (I apologize to Harper for that one, it's going to take me a bit to get that one read).
I also need to work on a few more of my projects - especially the Nobel and Best American ones - because the projects are really my pets. They cover a nice cross-section of literature without a great deal of cross-over (there really isn't much, from what I've found).
So, in summary, my Reading Goals for 2011:
1) Only sign-up for "real" challenge: The Complete Booker 2011
2) Write a sign-up post for The Complete Booker 2011
3) Be smarter about review copies
4) Work on my projects
Bring it, 2011!
I've come to realize they distract me. I think and worry and fret far more about what I need to read for a challenge than what I actually read. This gets worse when I have greater than one challenge going on at the same time. I finished one challenge (Women Unbound) but had trouble finishing the other (The Complete Booker) and I only made minimal progress on my projects.
So I think I'll just do one challenge (kind of one and a half). I'd like to work on The Complete Booker Challenge 2011 - it would help make a decent amount of headway on my Booker Project. I'll probably start with the "Pix-a-Mix of Six" (read six Booker winners) and it might upgrade to the "A Booker's Dozen" (read twelve winners or nominees from the short- or long-lists). I'll need to get a challenge post up for that one. I've also signed up for the Goodreads Challenge - which is simply a goal to read a certain number of books. Goodreads makes it really easy to track that with the stats page so I signed up with the goal of reading 100 books this year. I've not made a great start what with the mess of moving and all. One hundred books in a year is like my personal glass ceiling, somehow.
I slowly started accepting review copies from publishers this last year (well, just HarperPerennial/Harper Paperbacks, really). I didn't go overboard (thank goodness) but I haven't been very good at getting things read when I need to for publication dates. So I need to work on that. I also have to pay attention to what I ask for because sometimes you get what you ask for; I requested a review copy of the new Christopher Isherwood diaries never realizing for one minute that it was going to be quite thick (and, in the manner of diaries, not terribly "readable"). So I must keep a better head on my shoulders (I apologize to Harper for that one, it's going to take me a bit to get that one read).
I also need to work on a few more of my projects - especially the Nobel and Best American ones - because the projects are really my pets. They cover a nice cross-section of literature without a great deal of cross-over (there really isn't much, from what I've found).
So, in summary, my Reading Goals for 2011:
1) Only sign-up for "real" challenge: The Complete Booker 2011
2) Write a sign-up post for The Complete Booker 2011
3) Be smarter about review copies
4) Work on my projects
Bring it, 2011!
07 January 2011
I haz a happee!
Now that the house was mine, I could think about what I wanted to do with the rooms in the new house.
Mom and Dad came down to help - Dad to help paint and Mom to get started on the kitchen (see below for what was up with the kitchen). We weren't done with painting that evening - it was just too many walls to paint (even with Jess and Jackie coming over to help) and we needed another full coat in the office to cover the pink, even though we'd started with a tinted primer. So back to the condo for bed:
Up at 6am and I took the cats over to the new house. Which involved tricking two highly suspicious felines into their carriers (also known as giving up on doing it nicely and dropping them butt-first into the carriers), packing them into the car with all their toys, blankies, and new litter boxes, and taking a (mercifully) short car ride with two howling animals. They were installed in the downstairs bathroom, known as "the cats' bathroom", for the day. Then I raced back to the condo in time for the water heater guy to install the new water heater (old water heater was peeing water on the floor at the condo), the movers to come for my furniture, and the contractor to fix the drywall (I was practically paying the buyers to take my house).
It was like a circus!! We found little kitty hoards under all the furniture.
After the movers left, Dad and I worked on more painting - we didn't finish until Saturday (!) but the results were well worth it.
After the movers left, Dad and I worked on more painting - we didn't finish until Saturday (!) but the results were well worth it.
My bedroom has a much more saturated blue color - along with a more even paint job - so it feels very calm and peaceful. The cats felt more at home once we got the bed made (when I let them out of the bathroom they wouldn't go anywhere without me, even crying to get me to come downstairs so they could use the kitty box; Chaucer would stand at the bottom and cry to have me to come down and get him).
My office turned out to be AMAZING! The color is Bimini Blue and after a coat of tinted primer and two coats of color it looks exactly like the card. I've got a little touch-up work to do, still (and we got a bit of paint on the woodwork), but I'm busily filling up my bookshelves with books.
So, do you want to hear about the kitchen? The kitchen was a disaster. The oven was beyond disgusting (I'm sorry I didn't remember to take a picture), like multiple-years'-worth-of-cooking pizza-directliy-on-the-racks-without-a-pan level of dirty; we had to vacuum the ashes out of the bottom after running the cleaning cycle. My mother, who is quite good at getting kitchens in order, spent nearly three days cleaning cabinets, even borrowing the putty knife to scrape God-only-knows-what off of cabinet bottoms. She made me promise that the next time I buy a house I request on the offer to have a professional cleaning done prior to close (and that goes for my brothers and sisters-in-law, too).
In the end it turned out to be a very nice and clean kitchen with a low wall looking over the foyer where Chaucer likes to sit and vulture the food. I swear that I cleaned my condo unbelievably well prior to the sale on January 5 - it took two days and you could have eaten off the floor in the bathroom where the litter boxes sat. True story.
I had the carpet cleaned at the condo prior to closing. It was so sad to see it empty - even though I am happy to be well rid of it, it was my first house and I cried when my realtor called to tell me the sale was completed.
Bye-bye old kitchen, it doesn't even look like I lived there (or anyone, for that matter).
Among the surprises at the new house, I was gifted with a large porch swing (they asked if I wanted it and I said I didn't care because I already had a swing...so they left it) and multiple junk drawers full of old makeup, barbie shoes, hair-ties, nails, screws, keys, crap, about $3.50 in pocket change (which I fed to the Peanut-Butter Bear Bank), and these:
I think these are what I used to put notecards on but they were holding up the shower curtain in the upstairs bath! Not only were they slobs, they weren't very smart because these bad boys rust! Classy!
So my new house is slowly coming together. The cats have settled in nicely (I found favorite toys upstairs on the third day, so they adjusted quite well; Dante has found his old hiding places again). I've got a lot of boxes left to unpack - and I don't have any nice living room furniture as yet - but it feels like home now.
Welcome, friends! (My youngest brother and sister-in-law gave this to me for Christmas a few years ago - I never had a satisfactory place to hang it until now).
04 January 2011
Bye, bye 2010! Recapping the reading
2010 was a crazy year what with the stress of trying nearly the whole year to sell my house. In my attempt to "declutter" and "stage" my house for potential buyers I wound up packing up books that I was intending to read! More stress!
According to Goodreads stats (far more accurate than my count-your-reading-journal-pages method), I read 91 books this year , 9 more than last year, but I only read 28,809 pages compared with 29,709 pages last year. This probably reflects my attempts to infuse a little young adult into my reading repertoire. I had intended to try and break the 100 book barrier but the craziness of December put the kibosh on that. If I had to choose my favorite book from the year it would be a tie between Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron (an author I have an obvious favorable bias towards) and Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak; I read both at the beginning of the year and they are still with me. Least favorite book was Vixen; it wasn't so bad I wanted to light it on fire, but it really got under my skin with the cliches and seemingly poor research.
I participated in a few challenges this year. The Women Unbound Challenge was the one I completed, even reading one book beyond what I'd planned. Sadly, I didn't get the Complete Booker Challenge 2010 finished; I got three of six Booker-winning novels read but just never got to the other three (I did read one Booker short-list, so not a complete bust). I'm going to have to think on the future of challenges in 2011.
My Nostalgia Project stalled out with its initial subject - Flowers in the Attic. Too intense. The Booker Project and Newbery Project are coming along swimmingly, the Newbery especially, but the Best American Project had to go on hold when I had to pack all my Best American books in order to how the house. I didn't make much reading progress on the Nobel Project but I did acquire more books to help me in the endeavor (and I can't quite decide with Vargas Llosa to read...too many good choices there).
In honor of the International Year of Chemistry in 2011, I started a blog specifically for reading chemistry-related books (readingchemistry.blogspot.com). I cross-posted a few science/chemistry posts from this blog and will probably continue to cross-post in the future.
This year I also made my first foray into requesting review copies...which added a whole new level of stress because now I feel obligated to read and finish the book I've requested. Thank goodness I didn't go nuts and ask for many more review copies - packing and moving has gotten me far, far behind on the ones I have right now!
That's it for 2010 - bye, bye and so long!
According to Goodreads stats (far more accurate than my count-your-reading-journal-pages method), I read 91 books this year , 9 more than last year, but I only read 28,809 pages compared with 29,709 pages last year. This probably reflects my attempts to infuse a little young adult into my reading repertoire. I had intended to try and break the 100 book barrier but the craziness of December put the kibosh on that. If I had to choose my favorite book from the year it would be a tie between Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron (an author I have an obvious favorable bias towards) and Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak; I read both at the beginning of the year and they are still with me. Least favorite book was Vixen; it wasn't so bad I wanted to light it on fire, but it really got under my skin with the cliches and seemingly poor research.
I participated in a few challenges this year. The Women Unbound Challenge was the one I completed, even reading one book beyond what I'd planned. Sadly, I didn't get the Complete Booker Challenge 2010 finished; I got three of six Booker-winning novels read but just never got to the other three (I did read one Booker short-list, so not a complete bust). I'm going to have to think on the future of challenges in 2011.
My Nostalgia Project stalled out with its initial subject - Flowers in the Attic. Too intense. The Booker Project and Newbery Project are coming along swimmingly, the Newbery especially, but the Best American Project had to go on hold when I had to pack all my Best American books in order to how the house. I didn't make much reading progress on the Nobel Project but I did acquire more books to help me in the endeavor (and I can't quite decide with Vargas Llosa to read...too many good choices there).
In honor of the International Year of Chemistry in 2011, I started a blog specifically for reading chemistry-related books (readingchemistry.blogspot.com). I cross-posted a few science/chemistry posts from this blog and will probably continue to cross-post in the future.
This year I also made my first foray into requesting review copies...which added a whole new level of stress because now I feel obligated to read and finish the book I've requested. Thank goodness I didn't go nuts and ask for many more review copies - packing and moving has gotten me far, far behind on the ones I have right now!
That's it for 2010 - bye, bye and so long!
01 January 2011
Happy New Year, happy new house!!
Hello 2011!
Hello new house!!
I spent my New Year's holiday moving from my old, poorly managed condo (seemed great when I bought it 7 years ago, but no...) to a zero-lot line (for those who don't have this legal designation it's like a duplex that you own). I closed on the purchase December 30, the movers came December 31, and, whew! It was crazy for a little while.
I'm working on getting a blog 2010 review post done, a blog 2011 goals post done, one more book review from 2010, and a post about the new house. That new camera got a workout, I tell 'ya.
Happy reading in the new year! Many thanks to my parents who helped out TREMENDOUSLY with the move (story about my mom and the kitchen later).
Hello new house!!
I spent my New Year's holiday moving from my old, poorly managed condo (seemed great when I bought it 7 years ago, but no...) to a zero-lot line (for those who don't have this legal designation it's like a duplex that you own). I closed on the purchase December 30, the movers came December 31, and, whew! It was crazy for a little while.
I'm working on getting a blog 2010 review post done, a blog 2011 goals post done, one more book review from 2010, and a post about the new house. That new camera got a workout, I tell 'ya.
Happy reading in the new year! Many thanks to my parents who helped out TREMENDOUSLY with the move (story about my mom and the kitchen later).
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