Neil Gaiman (recent Newbery Prize winner for The Graveyard Book) was interviewed a few days ago on the Colbert Report. Watch it at Gaiman’s blog here. It’s fun.
Archive for the ‘books’ Category
Limits of Language: A Very Fun Book
February 11th, 2009 by Emily
I just noticed a shiny new book – Mikael Parkvall’s Limits of Language – sitting on a professor’s desk and asked if I could borrow it. Bad habit, I know. But he should know by now to hide interesting books before our meetings.
I’ve been flipping through it for the last half hour, reading bits here and there. And it is, as I say in the post title, a Very Fun Book. It’s full of all sorts of random facts and trivia about language, languages, and linguists. It has a Linguist’s Calendar, a (very funny) Linguists’ Guide to the Galaxy, and chapters on everything from written language to language change to tense, mood, and aspect. It’s not a book to be read cover to cover, but a book to be sampled, read at random, jumped around within. I wish I’d had this book when I was teaching Linguistics 102; it would have been a good supplement to our rather dull course reader.
Kindle and all that
February 11th, 2009 by Emily
I like books a lot. I like real books, and turning the pages, and carrying them around, and seeing the old favorites get kind of wrinkly and yellow. I like that some of them have tea stains and food stains and weird lists jotted in the back cover.
I don’t have a Kindle. I think it’s kind of a cool idea, though. Convenient, you know? I read a lot of things on my computer – mostly PDFs for school, but I’ve also read tons of Terry Pratchett novels in TXT format. I read the New York Times online. I’ve bought the paper version ONCE so far this year, but I visit the website almost every day. It works better for me. Convenient, you know?
What am I getting at? There is certainly a tension between digital (Kindle/online/etc) and analog (real/paper/bound) forms of writing and reading. But I don’t always agree with the people who start ranting and raving that the digital stuff is going to be the death of books, the death of TRUE reading, the death of doing things the right way. I understand what they’re saying to an extent, but I think I see the value of both sides. I like my real books, but I like my blogs, and I think a Kindle might be nice. Can we have both? Can we accept that both have value, maybe to different people or in different situations, and not freak out because we’re scared about new things? Can we appreciate both tradition AND innovation?
Well. There’s my blog post for the day. Now I’m gonna go read a book. They both stimulate me and make my life richer. So there.
Conversation with my dad (via SMS)
February 5th, 2009 by Emily
Dad: We are delayed on the plane in MN. I am starting Master & Commander.
Me: Awesome. I didn’t always know what he was talking about but I liked it. The second one’s even better.
Dad: I noticed there are about 20 books in the series!
Me: I need to buy number 3
Dad: The tramontata has freshened and now it was blowing a two-reef topsail breeze, rattling the fronds of the palms…
Dad: Allow me to press you to a trifle of this ragoo’d mutton, sir.
Hard Books
February 5th, 2009 by Emily
Re. the previous post, calling Silence a hard book and then totally and miserably failing to explain what I mean . . .
Hard books are books that hurt but are good. Books you almost wish you hadn’t read but you will probably read again. Books that lurk in the back of your brain. Examples? Well, Silence, as I said. And The God Of Small Things. Those are the first two that come to mind.
Silence
February 2nd, 2009 by Emily
I just found out that Shusako Endo’s Silence is being made into a film by Martin Scorsese. More info here. I’ll be interested to see it; it is a hard book (not hard to get through, but hard to read, if that makes sense?) but I’ve read it at least three times.
Daws: Honolulu: The First Century
February 1st, 2009 by Emily
I just posted a review of Gavan Daws’s Honolulu: The First Century to LibraryThing. I’d like to do more reviews (not this long, though!) but I guess it’s a time issue.
609
January 31st, 2009 by Emily
The LibraryThing count is at 609. It’s a little scary how fast it climbs. I just found Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger in a used book store. Then I received a copy of Jan Kjaerstad’s The Conqueror from Open Letter. Then I added Ferenc Karinthy’s Metropole to an Amazon order to qualify for free shipping.
These are all books I’ve been wanting to read. Wanting badly. And now they’re all here on my desk but I haven’t had a chance to start any of them yet! School is keeping me constantly busy – I’m doing a lot of planning for the conference, I’ve got a 20-hour graduate assistantship, a part-time job grading TOEFL test. Oh yeah, and classes. I’m taking two or three. Grr. I’m not feeling sorry for myself. I’m glad I’m doing all this stuff – it’s interesting, and it’s helping me get more experience. I just want more time.
600!
January 25th, 2009 by Emily
Frans and I try to keep all the books we own cataloged in LibraryThing. I’ve been watching lately as our book count approached 600 and then today – wham! – there we are at 600 books! The one that tipped the scale is Gavan Daws’s Honolulu: The First Century, which I picked up at Barnes and Noble today for a class assignment.
I’m hoping we can weed out at least a few books before the move; if so, we’ll have to celebrate #600 all over again after we get to San Francisco and embark on a post-grad-school book-buying rampage.
Corduroy Mansion
January 17th, 2009 by Emily
Alexander McCall Smith (of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency) is writing a novel called Corduroy Mansions. Online. In installments. One chapter per day.
The first chapter is good; I like the other books of his I’ve read. As soon as I unplug my laptop and get comfy on the couch, I’m going to read some more.
Food Matters
January 7th, 2009 by Emily
I just bought Mark Bittman’s Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating (with more than 75 recipes) and started reading it. I’m enjoying it so far – to be honest, he’s not an amazing writer, but he’s good, and he’s saying some important things (though I think it’ll take more than this to reduce the consumption of meat and processed food in the US). I’m generally a healthy eater and a conscious shopper and cook, but it’s got me evaluating some of my choices, and thinking about what I’ll be able to do once grad school is over and I have the time (and more money?) to go even further with this.
Books of 2009
January 6th, 2009 by Emily
Inspired by a Books of 2008 post at a just-discovered blog of a high school friend, I’ve decided to keep a running list of my 2009 reading adventures. See the little tab up at the top of this page that says “Books of 2009″? Click that. It’ll take you to the list.
Books books books
January 4th, 2009 by Emily
I really thought I’d be writing more about food than books here, but it’s turned out the other way around so far. While I certainly HAVE experienced quite a bit of good food over the last month, I haven’t gotten good photos (curse the crap camera!), and who wants to write about food without pictures? So that will have to wait, since the non-crap camera I’m eyeing is not very compatible with my current salary.
In terms of books, though – here’s the scoop. On January first I started Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco, my first book for the Lost in Translation Reading Challenge. It’s the kind of epic story I really like, spanning the history of Martinique from the beginnings of the sugar plantations through the abolition of slavery and into the present. Slow going, to be sure, but good. Frans mentioned that he tackled the book in the original French/Creole at one point in his life; I’m extremely glad I have the English translation.
In between doses of Chamoiseau, I’ve been reading New Sudden Fiction, a delightful (and I’m not using that word lightly) collection of short-short stories, as well as The Vintage Book of Indian Writing, 1947-1997, which I think I mentioned earlier. Both are awesome.
I wish there was more than just a week left before school starts up again. One more semester, though, and then in May I’ll be free. Forever.
Milk
December 31st, 2008 by Emily
Another book I would love to own: Anne Mendelson’s Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages. Apparently it combines a history of milk with an interesting recipe collection (including one for apple-onion cream soup, which is available on the book’s website). And it’s illustrated. Guess I’ll add it to the books-I-want-to-buy list.
Where the Wild Things Are
December 30th, 2008 by Emily
I just – via Speak Quietly – found out that Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are is being made into a movie, due to come out in 2009. That’s really cool. It was one of my favorite books when I was little, and I still have a copy of it.
All sorts of memories are associated with this book in my head. I did my undergrad in Seattle, and frequently walked along the canal from the back side of Queen Anne into Fremont. At the foot of the Fremont bridge (which is itself very pleasant to look at and deserves to have its picture posted), someone had drawn Max, the boy from Sendak’s book, in his little boat:
While checking info about the upcoming movie at IMDb, I discovered an animated version had been made in 1973. So I searched the university library catalog – they DO have a copy, but unfortunately it’s on VHS, which is completely useless to me. I need a magic wand that zaps VHSs and turns them into DVDs. Or, even better, straight to AVI files. Must look into that.
But the story continues! Searching the catalog, I see – and my mouth drops open at this point – an OPERA listed! Apparently in the early 80s, British composer Oliver Knussen MADE WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE INTO AN OPERA. I have got to get my hands on that. I mean, how many children’s books have been made into operas?
