"...and she decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, and she went after her lovers, and forgat me, saith the LORD.” - Hosea 2:13

I have discovered the downside of walking to school.

If, upon arrival at the bus stop, you realize your right earring is missing – a cute little silver-and-amber dangly number – and you must retrace your steps because you have sentimental attachment to these earrings (brought back from Russia for you by one of your best friends from college), you have a fucking LOT of ground to cover.

"We did not go to Mexico to buy weed." - Kemper, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"

How many men at work do you suppose receive the following email from their wife:

To: H_At_Work [h@veryimportantjob.com]
From: Babelbabe [onlymyrealname@commie.net]
Sent: Friday, May 04, 2007 10:31 AM
Subject: RE: Home Depot

Hey, guess what I just bought?

And respond accurately with “A chainsaw”?

"...but I won't dwell upon these trifling family matters” - Lord Byron

The first few years of my marriage, H’s mom gave me for my birthday:

• a denim shorts-and-shirt set studded with rhinestones, in a size six (I was at the time probably a size ten)
  
• a greenish flowered rayon dress with embroidered flowers all over the skirt, size large (I was probably a medium – she tried)
  
• a Mary Higgins Clark mystery

The year she gave me the rest of my wineglasses from the wedding registry was a vast improvement.

The year after that, she gave me a gift card to Old Navy, which was just fine.
I like Old Navy.

Then she went straight to cash.
I have no problem with cash.
Except my mother used to give H cash for HIS birthday and I know she gave us both the same amount.
I don’t want to sound petty here – but I will – but H’s mom gives me half of what she gives H.
This year, my amount got reduced another ten dollars.

I suppose, really, I should be grateful she gives me anything at all.
It’s nice of her.
She spends a lot of money on my boys, so it's nice of her to remember my birthday at all.
It really is.
Plus, this year she got it exactly right.

This morning, with my birthday cash in hand, I went to Barnes and Noble and bought:

The new Barbara Kingsolver, because I own and read everything she writes.
This one looks really interesting, especially in light of my exciting discovery today that Construction Junction recycles paperboard! No more throwing out cereal boxes and OJ cartons. I am actually not sure what recycling has to do with eating locally, other than being tenuously connected by being-good-to-the-Earth-ness, but either way I was happy about both!



Jen Lancaster has a new book out, and everyone should go buy it. Because, wouldn’t you hate to meet her at Blogher and not have read her new book? Besides, she is just as funny in her book as she is on her blog. Who doesn’t want to laugh out loud while reading on the bus, just like a crazy person?

The saleslady at B&N had a bit of a tough time tracking down Jen’s book (Jen. Me and her. We’re like THIS.) but we finally found it on the New Paperbacks table. Because it would be a New Paperback. And I was all, “Wow, Jen is soooo funny, you should read her first book.” Basically, pathetically, trying to pass myself off as a personal friend to the famous author. (Are two famous authors not enough for me? Do I really need more? If you cut me, do I not bleed? )
But you know, Jen blogs; I blog.
She has ten thousand readers; I have ten readers.
We are blogging sisters, of a sort.

So, now that I have embarrassed myself by acting like I am still a junior in high school, I also bought this, to carry on the high-school theme:

Because, let’s face it, regardless of how erudite The Sandman series really is, it plays perfectly to the angst, the pseudo-depth, the sturm und drang of the average adolescent female.

Besides, in the last volume I read, Dream died, and I can’t quite cope with that well enough just yet to read The Wake, so Endless Nights it is.

My mother-in-law has done herself proud with the birthday gifts this year.
Thanks, Mom!

“The end of the animal trade would leave more time to trap or beat to death pop star wannabes.” - Simon Cowell

How did I miss the ENTIRE Morning News 2007 Tournament of Books? It’s way more fun than the Man Booker prize, and besides, I have a raging girl-crush on Jessa Crispin, the editor of Bookslut and one of this year’s TOB judges.

OK, admittedly, I hadn’t read even half of the contending books, but this particular verrrrrry quiet night at the ref desk, this fact wound up making the recaps of the contest that much more engrossing.

So.

Kate Atkinson’s One Good Turn (her weakest novel, IMHO) made a decent showing, handily defeating Arthur and George, The Lay of the Land, and Against the Day before succumbing to Gary Shteyngart’s Absurdistan (which, I am so confused, I thought was knocked out in the first round by Half of a Yellow Sun; oh, wait, Zombie round, in which TOB readers get to vote a book into the competition).

The round one match-up of The Echo Maker versus The Emperor’s Children, two of the world’s most boring books, would have been enough for me to fling myself off a handy parapet. I felt for poor Marcus Sakey, whoever he is other than the judge of this pairing. Emperor's Children won. Again in my oh-so-humble opinion, Echo Maker should have made it to the second round instead, as it was at least nicely written, if dull. EC was abysmally, mind-numbingly dull AND badly written (I disagree with Jessa on this one, although her comments about the stereotypical characters are spot-on).

Monica Ali’s second novel Alentejo Blue was in contention; her first novel Brick Lane made me yawn, so I never started the second.

I don’t care for Thomas Pynchon, and Richard Ford puts me to sleep with his middle-aged male “Everyman” protagonist busy having a midlife crisis in suburban New Jersey.

WARNING: Total unpolitical incorrectness ahead…
I have not and probably will never read either Half of a Yellow Sun or The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo. Because one is about Nigeria’s civil war, and one is set in post-war Namibia (a nation recently made famous by Angelina Jolie, thankyouverymuch), and I am sorry but I don’t CARE. I mean, I care in the sense that I wish there was better, less corrupt government in many of the small African nations, and I wish the refugees were better cared for, and I wish the Tutsis and the Hutus hadn’t felt the need to go slaughtering each other; I care in the way I care about what goes on in the real world. But Africa holds zero fascination for me; there are a thousand places on this planet I would rather visit and see before I decided to go to Africa. I will eagerly devour anything I can lay hands on about India; I enjoy European novels; and we are all aware of my minor Arctic/Antarctic fetish. But I am just not particularly interested in reading about Africa. I never even made it through Things Fall Apart even though H gave it to me so I could better understand the years he spent living in Cameroon. It didn’t do anything for my understanding other than to leave me saying, “Thank God I never joined the Peace Corps and got assigned to Cameroon.” So there you have it. And now I feel all Don Imus-y.

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road was the ultimate winner (also garnering the 2007 Pulitzer), and I actually have it sitting in my bedside basket to be read, now sooner rather than later. I am excited and more than a little scared. One too many people have mentioned babies cooked on spits for me to be comfortable...

“I had other priorities in the 60's than military service” - Dick Cheney, vice-president of the United States

What do I have today? Other than an indignant political post brewing, that is...let's see....

Dropped my older brother at the bus station this morning. He’d been here since Saturday, and his visit was great. He and the boys played a lot of hockey in the backyard, he accompanied Primo to his first t-ball practice, he played Stratego and Don’t Wake Daddy and dominoes with the boys all weekend long, and he watched The Baby while I ran Seg to the pediatrician yesterday (poor little guy has an ear infection, complete with perforated eardrum). I cooked this amazing Parmesan chicken on Sunday, and salmon with roasted fennel and onions yesterday, and we demolished a Victoria sponge layered with mascarpone and homemade lemon curd (most successful experiment). Not to mention a shocking amount of alcoholic beverages.

About that ear infection: Seg started complaining his TEETH hurt on Friday. Lots of crying and whining, lots of clinginess; I dosed him up with Motrin and stuck a warm water bottle on his pillow, under his face. Called the pediatrician and got an appointment for Saturday morning, which I called and cancelled because he was fine all night and woke up Saturday perky and chipper. However, by the time I got home from work on Saturday, the pain was back, and by Sunday had migrated to his EAR. Injudicious pouring of Motrin and he was mostly fine, but I took him to the pediatrician first thing Monday – or at least, as soon as they could fit him in. He was VERY BRAVE while they dug out tons of wax and dried blood and pus from his ear. The doctor thought it had ruptured probably Saturday which is why he felt so much better that morning, but she put him on two kinds of antibiotics, and Motrin for the pain and fever till it eases up. He slept all through the night last night, seemed fine by this morning, and indeed was healthy enough to get into a screaming match with Primo over whose hockey gloves were whose after breakfast. Not to mention teasing both brothers that HE got to drink “yummy pink medicine.” Ah. All better.

And about that amazing chicken: I bought Real Simple: Meals Made Easy at the library’s Half-Price Scholastic Book Fair a few weeks ago, and it has become an inspirational source for meals. Who isn’t sick of cooking the same old thing all the time, and unfortunately we cannot live on desserts from Nigella (not that I wouldn’t like to try, mind you). Some of the Amazon reviews complained that the recipes call for things the “average home cook” might not “stock”, but c’mon, anyone who cooks at all keeps chicken breasts in the freezer, and a stockpile of dried herbs handy, don’t they? Seriously? A couple recipes will NOT be attempted – the very idea of eggs baked in spaghetti sauce is indeed revolting – but I have the Cannellini-and-Tuna salad on tap for tomorrow night, I will probably give the vegetable pasta, the chicken souvlaki, and the roasted cod with potatoes a whirl at some point, and I will most definitely make the Parmesan chicken and the fennel salmon again.

I am cranking through and once again enjoying End of Mr Y. I realized that, despite the fact that it is a novel, it covers some pretty profound philosophy, and so I need to take a break now and then. I am halfway through Susan Isaacs’ Past Perfect, whose heroine is whinier and more insecure than Isaacs’ heroines usually are, and with whom I feel no empathy at all, again, most unusual for an Isaacs book.

I pick up Salley Vickers’ Instances of the Number 3 at my library’s ILL today, and then Lord’s Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land, The Secret of Lost Things, and Scarlett Thomas’s first detective novel Dead Clever at the public library, on my lunch break. Plus, I took home Sophie’s World last week, to bone up on my almost nonexistent philosophy knowledge.

Fair weather and lots of good reading ahead!

"...the nation that assumes stewardship of the Moon now will inherit stewardship of the galaxy in the coming millennium." - Wilson Greatbatch

I just hit a thousand books on Library Thing, and still have all of the actual library/computer-room books (lots more fiction, most of my history, and all of H's textbooks), and all of the boys' books, plus my old children's books, to do.

Not that it's a competition or anything.

I realize now that, were I filthy rich, I might just be the type to roll around in my money, flinging fistfuls of dollar bills into the air while I capered and cavorted and chortled.
I am not rich.
But I DO have a lot of books.

Do with that what you will.

"The paramedic called the press and sold me like a loaf of bread." - Charlie Sheen

A friend highly recommended Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking, and several book bloggers had intriguing things to say about it, including Doppelganger over at Fifty Books who called it “great and terrible.” (Which she meant in the best way possible.) It’s a compact, attractive little book, and the first couple sentences were interesting enough, so I checked it out and brought it home and it sat in my bedside basket for a couple weeks before my friend who recommended it in the first place asked if I had read it yet.

I had not.

I went home that night and crawled into bed with it.

I read a few chapters.
I skipped around the book and read bits and pieces, here and there.
I stopped to look up what John Gregory Dunne had written.
I put it down and have not picked it up again, nor will I.

My father died of a heart attack when I was teenager.
He’d had some heart trouble, and was on medications for high blood pressure (which I found out much later he’d stopped taking because filling the prescriptions was so expensive), but he also walked miles and miles each week, disappearing on Sundays after church often till dinnertime.

I was working at my part-time job at The Gap the evening he came home after a fruitless visit to fix some error on his driver’s license and collapsed in the living room smack in the middle of complaining about the inefficient morons who ran New Jersey’s DMV.

I drove home as quickly as I could, and I recall – but this CAN’T be right, they must have left by then – following the ambulance to Cooper Hospital.

I do – pretty accurately, I think - recall seeing him after they’d declared him dead, still and cold on a hospital gurney, looking old, and helpless without his glasses. I recall coming home to a living room littered with paramedic paraphernalia, which I think my sweet boyfriend cleared up. I recall my mom picking out a casket lined in blue “because he always looked so nice in blue.” We three kids made merciless fun of my mom for years about the little seagulls embossed on the inside of the coffin lid, accompanied by the caption, “Going Home.” (Yes, we were and are rotten children. We also pestered her for not burying him in his horrible, beloved Jolly Green Giant suit.)

So I can’t – won’t – read Year of Magical Thinking. It cuts a little too close to the bone for me. It’s been twenty years since my father’s death, and I don’t want to be reminded of the excruciating details. I don’t want to think about that night, or how we got through it. I don’t want to think about what my dad’s death did to my mother, or what it did to the rest of my thirteen-year-old brother’s childhood. I especially don’t want to think about what it did to my dad, someone who’d worked like a fiend for all his life, who tried very hard to be a good person but at the same time was crotchety and irascible and drove us all nuts occasionally, someone who I am sure thought he’d live to see his children grow up and marry and have children of their own, just like we all hope and expect.

And while I am sorry for Didion’s pain and suffering, I can’t relive my grief alongside hers. I don’t want to. I’m sure it’s a lovely book, that she is an exquisite writer. I will go read Slouching towards Bethlehem instead.

"There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous." - Napoleon Bonaparte

From the sublime (Victoria sponge with whipped cream and strawberry jam, from Nigella, for a mom I had over for coffee):




to the ridiculous (Rice Krispie treats, for Primo's class snack, per his request):

"There once was a man from Nantucket..."

I am stalled about halfway through Mr Y. Gina tells me to keep reading, but I just can’t right now. I will. I swear I will. But I am sleep-deprived and brain-dead right now, and slogging through the troposphere just isn’t on my list of desirable activities at the moment.
In the meantime, I took the boys shopping this morning for groceries down in the Strip District, where biscotti sprout from the sidewalk and the Nutella grows on trees and...wait, no, that’s not right. But the Nutella IS three dollars a jar cheaper than the supermarket, and the domestic Parmesan cheese (which is just fine for cooking) is four dollars a pound, so I bought two one-pound chunks and froze one. I hate running out of Parmesan. Plus, we bought ripe avocadoes and mangoes, and gorgeous spring irises, and chocolate, and the best Italian bread in the city.

Then we stopped at the library for story hour.
I picked out a gazillion books for Primo, including four more Boxcar Children mysteries (“Mom! The Bobbsey Twins are SO GOOD! But the Boxcar Children are good, too.”) and a Matt Christopher hockey book he’s been asking for. Seg was thrilled to find a brand-new Titanic book we haven’t seen before, with a huge fold-out centerfold of the boat, and we checked out the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey book YET AGAIN. Because Terzo was busy trying to get into the restrooms and navigating the elevator by himself, I only had time for a quick gander at the New Books. But I snagged Susan Isaacs’ newest, and - who just recommended this to me? – Virginia Ironside’s No, I Don’t Want to Join a Book Club: Diary of a Sixtieth Year. When we arrived home, I gratefully handed off the boys to their babysitter who had come so I could go to work tonight, made myself a bacon-and-avocado sandwich for lunch, followed up by a nice Kinder Bueno, and read about twenty pages of the Ironside book before I passed out for an hour. Those twenty pages were enough to convince me that I will keep reading; it’s wry and funny and honest, and while I suppose eventually the harping on the “I am enjoying getting old” bit could turn out to be a little annoying, the joy with which the heroine greets her first grandbaby and collects her free senior metro pass more than makes up for the smugness and faint protests-too-much air of our heroine Marie.

Now I am off to compose a limerick with the first line like: “I once knew a girl from Uzbekistan...” (except that has too many feet).

It’s probably better if you don’t ask.

"...the smell of the library was always the same...the steam of the social soup." - Peter Ackroyd

I have catalogued 638 books on Library Thing, have all my double-stacked books to do yet, and haven’t even started in the actual library, or touched the boys’ books.

I only own ten Margaret Atwood books – although I would swear I own Edible Woman, and I need to buy (at least) Moral Disorder, the Penelopiad, and The Tent.

I own an even dozen Greg Bear books.

I own at least six Ann Hood novels, and yet can’t recall reading a single one.

Why do I own two copies of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart? I don’t even like it.

Anthologies do not seem to be very popular.

Sarah Louise will be pleased that 109 people own Jeanne Ray’s Eat Cake.

I want to know if any of the other 261 people who own a copy of Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa have actually read it? (I have not.)

Daughter of Time beats out every other Josephine Tey book by at least 400 people.

It surprises me that twenty people on LT own Amit Gilboa’s Off the Rails in Phnom Penh; if I didn’t know him, I would not have bought it. It’s sort of an obscure little book.

I was very disgruntled that I couldn’t find MY edition of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas; the cover is so much prettier than the one that displays.

Not nearly enough people own Laurie King’s Mary Russell books.

Book I am most ashamed to own and to share with the fewest people: Adventures of an Ice Princess, by Liz Maverick, is owned by me and two other people.

I admit this info may not be so strictly indicative of who has what, as it all depends on what edition/format/date, etc. you choose for your work when inputting it. For example, I highly doubt I really am the only person on LibraryThing who owns Sherwood Anderson’s collection of short stories, Certain Things Last.
But apparently I am the sole owner of a copy of Charlene Gourguechon's Journey to the End of the World: A three-year adventure in the New Hebrides - and that I believe.
Three people, including me, own Thomas Starzl’s Puzzle People: Memoirs of a Transplant Surgeon. I also share Elegant Desserts, Harrod’s Book of Chocolates and other edible gifts, and Who Goes First? The story of self-experimentation in medicine with two other people.
Five people including me own Wittgenstein Flies a Kite: A Story of Models of Wings and Models of the World, by Susan Sterrett. She is my backyard neighbor, and I own a signed copy she gave me for Christmas (very small voice: I haven’t read it yet.)

Harry Potter blows away the competition with these sorts of stats:
Sorcerer’s Stone: 11,351
Chamber of Secrets: 13,347
Azkaban: 13,421
Goblet of Fire: 13,541
Order of the Phoenix: 14,068
Half-Blood Prince: 14,900
(And those are JUST the people who own the hardcovers, right?)

80 people own Meg Wolitzer’s The Position.
236 people own Stephanie Kallos’ Broken for You.
367 people own AS Byatt’s brilliant Virgin in the Garden.
767 people own Stones from the River.
1017 people own Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow.
4317 people own The Scarlet Letter
4498 people own Lolita.
4520 people own Middlesex.
5344 people own The Kite Runner.
5352 own Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
6070 people own Time Traveler’s Wife.
6602 people (sadly, including me) own Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons.
12,237 people (sadly, including me) own The Da Vinci Code.

And if that last stat doesn’t make you want to figuratively slit your literary wrists, I am not sure what would.

"...the card catalog has been a companion all my working life." - Barbara Tuchman

I am VERY BUSY doing this:


so...you know....I'm just sorta busy.

Three hundred and twenty-three, and not even close to being finished.

"A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg." - Samuel Butler

Things I have had to go look up since starting The End of Mr Y fifty-four pages ago:

- luminiferous ether
- string theory
- Jacques Derrida and his theories on deconstructionism
- Samuel Butler, and his novel Erewhon
- The novel Flatland (turns out I actually own a copy, which I discovered from my database, those of you who make fun of mad cataloging librarians)

I did NOT have to look up Schroedinger’s Cat.
So, you know, I am not a total moron.

I do seem to have a thing for books about books; there are many others which I enjoyed but these are the smartest, the most complicated, the ones that make me wish I could write like that:

Possession – AS Byatt
Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
The Rebel Angels – Robertson Davies
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
The Historian – Elizabeth Kostova

Apparently, I am a brain girl.
You can take your long legs and your tight butts and your pretty eyes; you can (not that you DO) resemble Quasimodo but if you‘re revoltingly smart, watch out.
I will fall madly in love and read everything you’ve written and clamor for more.

And look what I just requested from the library:



Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land, by John Crowley
Doesn’t it sound so cool? On deck after Mr Y.

"Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it's in my basement... let me go upstairs and check." - MC Escher

I am working a crazy hodgepodge of hours this week, since one co-worker is on her way to Paris shortly, and another’s father just passed away. My usual rhythms are all out of whack, so when I got home last night at 11 from work, I was not surprised to find myself wide-awake.

I took the opportunity to finish up Salley Vicker’s Miss Garnet’s Angel, recommended to me by both Suse, of Pea Soup and Lazy Cow, of Only Books All the Time.

What a lovely little book. Very few things make me happier than a well-written novel that also makes me want to go look things up. I learned a little bit about eastern religions and a lot about the Apocryphal Book of Tobit, and did some art history digging on a few Venetian painters (Guardi, Tintoretto, Carpaccio).
Vicker’s title character, Miss Garnet, is a mild little English spinster who finds her true self during a vacation to Venice. She falls in love with a man, and the beauty of the city, and even though the book begins as a sleepy little novel which feels like it was written by one of the Brontes, it winds up a very modern and forthright exploration of love, friendship, sexuality, and religion. The plot isn’t much to speak of; in fact, it’s almost parenthetical to the character development, but since most of the characters are engaging, interesting, and/or delightful, that works out well anyway.

I have already put in my interlibrary loan request for Ms. Vickers’ Mr Golightly’s Holiday and Instances of the Number 3.

***************

My friend E turned me on to Abelardo Morell, a photographer, who happens to be a friend of a family friend of hers.
I like his style in general, but I LOVE his book photos.
(All photos from Morell's website)

I especially like the architectural feel of some of his photos.

I include the Piranesi one because Piranesi is and has been for a long time one of my favorite artists. I first discovered him when I was studying set design, and I envied his intricate but clean drawing style. It’s always delightful to find that someone else is just as enamored.

Check out his other photos; they really are amazing.
He shows me an entirely new way to appreciate and love books.