The Thin Red Line

Awhile back I was tagged with the Six Word Memoir meme and I wish at the time I had had this just recently release trade paperback from the editors of Smith Magazine.   Subtitled  "six word memoirs by writers famous and obscure", Not Quite What I Was Planning is a collection of over 1,000 stories, told six words at a time.  Some of the celebrity contributions were quite funny:  "Liars, hysterectomy didn’t improve sex life"– Joan Rivers while others seemed a bit odd: "Revenge is living well without you"– Joyce Carol Oates or merely lame:  "Brought it to a boil, often"– Mario Batali.

For the most part the obscure contributors were more clever:  "Without ideas intelligence couldn’t exist"–Ornette Coleman or witty:  "Aspiring lady pirate, disillusioned sells boat"– Diana White and sometimes even wise:  "Lived in moment until moment sucked".   And my favorite as a blogger:  "Blogging is easy.  Writing is hard"–Jennifer Shreve.

I doubt anyone will mistake this for great literature but it is a very amusing book,  the perfect thing to be kept in a bathroom or waiting room for those times when you want to read a bit but not get involved in a story that will keep you there.   Not Quite What I Was Planning   Recommended.

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When I first started this blog I remember hanging out on Blog Catalog and it always seemed I was talking to people who were facing writers block or unable to think of topics to post about and generally struggling to regularly publish a blog.    And I would look at the huge stack of books on my couch and think to myself, ‘at least I don’t have _that_ problem.

And let me say right off that my stack of books is as tall as ever,  so I can’t really use that as an excuse for my recent lack of posts.   Honestly I don’t know why I have been spending my time lately playing games and watching television and even reading books rather than posting and promoting my blog.   Sometimes, I suspect, you just need a mental break.  Having recharged my inner batteries I hope to on Monday resume my five posts per week and thought I would ease back into things by posting today about three great books I’ve read during my hiatus.

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My regular readers who’ve been with me awhile already know that I really hate memes, though like Turnip of Power wrote in this post I generally try to be a good sport about them albeit most always with a twist of my own. (See The Einstein’s Brain God Does Not Exist Meme or The Why We Want To Kill You For Not Understanding Iraq Meme.) So none of my friends should be too surprised that having been tagged by my friend JD over at Techfun with Geek Mom Mashup’s Seven Weird Things About Me meme I am NOT in fact going to paste in and follow the instructions. Instead I decided to post about seven books, each of which while not exactly "weird" is a bit unusual or at the very least a bit interesting. (Saavy readers will realize that I am using this as yet another excuse to clear my stack of a bunch of books that I’m just not going to get around to reading. SHHH!!!. Please don’t call the Meme Police on me.)

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Happy Friday!   Just a Short Take Today on a very funny book  that is sure to brighten your day.   Leo Cullum is a cartoonist for the New Yorker magazine and this 2003 collection of his dog cartoons is a real treat.   Cullum’s dogs engaged in very human conversations are both genuinely witty and laugh out loud funny.    Go ahead and click the cover image and request it from your library.   A guaranteed day brightener,  Highly Recommended to dog lovers and fans of witty cartooning.

LAST CHANCE!    The Chain Drop contest for 3,000 Entrecard credits ends at midnight Pacific time tonight.    Since this blog is actually hosted and time-stamps in Eastern time,   all entries timestamped before 3:01 am on March 1, 2009  will be counted.    The winner will be announced on Chain Drop next week.    All you have to do is leave a comment here with a few sentences about how you use social networking.     If you haven’t already, click  here and leave your comment before time runs out.

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I’ve previously written about Tilt,  a book about the famous leaning tower of Pisa, Italy that is cut on an angle so that the spine of the book slants back towards the rear of the shelf rather than standing up straight.    And when I recently came across The Slant Book by Peter Newell, which has the same angled spine, I knew immediately I would have to blog about it.    Originally published in 1910 when novelty books of this sort were a popular amusement, it was re-published in the 1960’s by Tuttle Publishing Company and as of the edition owned by my library was in its fifteenth printing.   The story of an old fashioned baby carriage that slips away from the baby’s nurse on a steep slope and slides all over town has charming illustrations evocative of its period and the slant of book cleverly contributes to the illusion of the pram rolling downhill out of control.    Recommended both as a children’s book and for those interested in novelty books and popular art from the early 1900’s.

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I am Way over due to give some link love to Claire. I has noticed that her simple but very clever cartoons reminded me of Eric Carle’s work and had intended to dedicate a review of Carle’s newest board book, but that was the day the computer and Earthlink ate my post three times and I ended up posting only a hastily written note describing how difficult it had been to post that day. So when Claire teamed up with Chelle on their newest photo contest– What Was Willy Reading? , I just knew this library drone would Have to provide some insight into Willy’s reading list….

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Entrecard continues to be a great place to meet incredible bloggers,  like Realtor Cecilia Sherrard whose Cleveland Ohio Real Estate blog has been making quite the splash  in the Entrecard Real Estate category, which had for a time been dominated by two great bloggers who pulled out of Entrecard recently, and whose blogs I had unfortunately not book-marked.

I sometimes hear people say that they don’t do more to live green and try to nurture the planet because  it’s too hard or too expensive or just not possible.    And I am a huge fan of Will Taft whose blog  is a daily eloquent argument against these lame excuses.    And when Cecilia recently posted It’s Easy Being Green, an excellent list of easy and inexpensive ways to lessen your burden on the planet,  I decided it was time to feature three, short, easy to read and inexpensive guides that offer practical advice you can actually follow without breaking your neck or breaking the bank.

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Recently Tiffany created a Blog Catalog discussion decrying the over-use of terms like "censorship" to the point they become meaningless and useless (in a ‘boy who cried wolf’-sort-of-way) and I was inclined to agree. I suspect taht Peter Phillips and the folks at Project Censored would agree as well. If you, too, think that terms like censorship should apply to things like a well written book detailing the 25 most important stories affecting our planet and its peoples that you are Not hearing about on the news or on the nets, head to the 900’s* and check out Censored 2007: The Top 25 Censored Stories. Recommended.

*at my library this book can be found at 909.83

Jenn’s blog, The Thriftshop Romantic is a treasure trove of wonderful vintage "stuff" that Jenn finds and rescues from thrift shops. I don’t specifically recall Jenn doing a piece on old magazine advertisements, but this very visual identification and price guide for Old Magazine Advertisements, somehow made me think of Jenn’s blog immediately. Many of the featured ads reminded me a great deal of the tin advertising signs Joel used to collect. Recommended.

Even though Google backed away from the change that removed the ability to leave backlinks in blog comment signatures on blogspot, I continue to see a numbe of my old Blogger buddies migrate to Word Press. For those who are not as fortunate as I am in having a host who is also a friend and an IT hotshot who nurses along all my techno-dweebishness, may I suggest Maria Langer and Jordan Miraz’s Visual Quickstart Guide to WordPress 2. If you’re not a techie and just need a book that shows you where the controls are and how to use them, this one will fit the bill just fine. Recommended.

And finally today a huge Thank You to Will who recommended the offline composter program Blog Desk. My DSL again today went down just as I finished composing and was ready to publish this entry, but with Blog Desk my work was not lost and I was able to simply wait and publish when the DSL conneciton came back up.

 

 

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I don’t normally post to this blog on the weekends,  and a second off-topic post within less than a week is for me, unprecedented.    But I have these two very interesting and unusual books that have been sitting in my stack unread for several weeks now,  and my good buddy Saphrym  today commented on my old Einstein’s Brain God Does Not Exist Meme post that he would  Welcome a challenging meme that Really made him think.   And since I today realized that as interesting and important as these two books so clearly are,  I am nonetheless unlikely to ever find the time and intellectual energy to actually read and review them and so decided instead to punt.

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My regular readers who have been with me for awhile already know that I really Hate memes.    Many times, I simply ignore them or give the sender a brief mention and link at the end of an unrelated post.   Once, when Mitch tagged me with a meme I just didn’t want to do (this is a book review site, not a free form blog and I hate to post off-topic) I played a mean meme trick by tagging him right back with the Einstein’s Brain God Does Not Exist meme.   Mitch never did attempt to tackle that very challenging meme on his blog, but he seemed to get the point that sometimes getting tagged is a real pain in the ass.   (And my friend Jamie whom I also tagged with that meme, royally rose to the challenge and did a great post.)     So when my new Entrecard buddy Saphrym tagged me with an Entrecard meme,  I decided to once again turn the tables.

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Truman Capote famously said of Jack Kerouac, author of On The Road, "That’s not writing.  That’s typing."    This is just one of the hundreds of  quotations of famous  "Needles, Skewers, Pricks and Outright Nastiness"  featured in Oh, What An Awful Thing To Say–A Book Of Notable Insults

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Books are powerful.   This morning Ron woke up feeling punk and cranky.   But after getting his coffee he picked up a library book he brought home yesterday and began reading.    And was soon laughing merrily and within minutes was feeling better and cheerfully looking forward to our busy day.    Chance are,  Bizarre Books: A Compendium of Classic Oddities may well affect you the same way.

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I have a confession to make. Sometimes I just hate getting tagged with a meme. Especially when I’m tagged by a blogger I really like. With a meme that just isn’t suited to my format of daily book reviews with only rare ‘reading days’ and very occasional off-topic posts. There. Now that is one thing you know about me. I would have to now list six more if I were to really follow my friend’s meme which I can’t really do if this post is to have the appearance of one of my usual book presentations. So I hope my BlogCatalog buddy doesn’t mind that rather than follow the meme he tagged me with, I am tagging him right back with a meme of my own.

A woman I talk to frequently online recently changed her avatar from a cartoon-like drawing to her actual picture and for several days I thought that some new comer with a vaguely familiar handle had joined the board and it wasn’t until today when I spotted something familiar in the wording of a discussion post. I typed "You look so So SO DIFFERENT! I only just now since your icon changed realized that you are still Jamie!" Displaying her actual face rather than a familiar cartoon had actually made my friend Less real to me. This got me to thinking about how often online things are not what they appear to be and it is the appearance rather than the substance that all the effort has gone into.

And then I looked at these two books I brought home from work. They are clearly so unusual and interesting that I feel certain you will have wanted to catch a glimpse of them, and it may be that one of you actually would like to read a detailed travel guide with very specific information about where unique and unusual attractions are that has an index arranged by state and could thus be very useful in planning a kitschy vacation and a very academic argument issued by a scientist in response to the Intelligence Design movement that purports to prove that God does not exist. The fact is that after paging through both books, I honestly have no desire to actually read them and tell you anything more than that.

Which is how it is that I come to tag bloggers xight and suburbian queen with the Einstein’s Brain God Does Not Exist Meme, which I hope will be a suitably amusing experience for readers of their blogs. It is not a difficult meme. You just have to do a post that includes the covers of the two memed books and appears to be about those books but actually isn’t. Making it look as this post does like one of my usual book posts is optional. Mitch is probably in Mexico and may not respond for awhile but hope he will consider this a suitable ‘Welcome Back’ and I am totally confident that whatever Jamie does with this it will make me laugh.

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One of the biggest benefits of blogging for me has been in meeting people with different backgrounds and perspectives. More than once lately I’ve been forced by another blogger to recognize some of my own prejudices, preconceptions and unexamined value judgments. And that’s a good thing.

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Sunset falls as ferry crosses Eliot Bay

undated photograph by Joel Farmer

Today’s pic is for Ron, who admired the ferry pic I previously posted.

I confess that today’s books have all three been on my couch in varying stages of being read for a couple of weeks now and were not in my mind connected until Blog Rush advised that I could improve my click through rate with catchier headlines. My apologies to anyone who clicked through expecting a sensational story about a local government summarily executing exceptional jazz singers.

Compared to Chaucer’s Cantebury Tales, Tokyo Cancelled is a novel about delayed travelers entertaining each other by telling stories. A flight to Tokyo is diverted by weather and lands unexpectedly in an un-named city (presumably Delhi, India) where they find that an economic conference and the protests it has drawn have created a shortage of hotel rooms. Eventually all but thirteen of the planes passengers are dispatched to various accommodations when the remainder are told there are no more rooms to be had and settle in for a night in an airport lounge and begin telling each other stories to pass the time. The group of travelers proves to be from all over the world and each tells a very different story. The framework of this novel allows the author, Rana Dasgupta, to explore an unusually diverse range of ideas and settings, which he masterfully does, while never losing the believability of the ’stuck at the airport’ framework. A thanks to Cromley whose review first brought this one to my attention. Recommended.

I have never been a big fan of "self-help". While I firmly believe that each and every one of us must solve his own problems (if for no other reason than that nobody else is going to do it for you), I have rarely been a fan or a consumer of the mega industry of self-proclaimed experts with a sure fire scheme for resolving some problem or another they are convinced I have. Neither apparently has Jennifer Niesslein, whose Practically Perfect gently skewers a wide range of self-help gurus and movements. It reminded me a bit of Aunt Erma’s Cope Book, though in a very conversational tone that is evocative of a diary or journal rather than Bombeck’s laugh out loud wit. The book did not persuade me to try Real Simple or any of the other self help philosophies mentioned, but I am confident Niesslein never intended it to. Recommended.

Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams passed under my check-in scanner a couple of Sundays ago and caught my eye. I brought it home and read the introduction, which has a very "Drug War" tone and left me feeling the book would be more of the usual propaganda and set it aside, unread. Ron then picked it up and read it and liked it very much. He said that contrary to the impression I got from the introduction, this very readable history of prohibition in America clearly shows the lunacy and un-intended consequences that have flowed from our tragically flawed drug policies. He liked it very much and it is now back on my ‘to read’ pile. Jury still out on this one.

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Ron and I have very different tastes in books and bring home very different stacks of books. But sometimes I read some of his or vice versa. Here’s three of his choices that I read or skimmed but didn’t put on my list.

I checked this one in at work and knew immediately I had to bring it home for Ron. As a big fan of The South Beach Diet, I found this over the top parody almost frightening. It promises to help you gain "two full dress sizes in eight days", laying out a program of four mega ginormous meals per day and including recipes like Batter Fried Twinkies . But it is laugh out loud funny at times and I knew the book’s willful sloth and in-your-face tone would appeal to Ron. It did.

A kind of cross between Steel Magnolias and Judith Martin in a place where Paula Deen meets Martha Stewart. Somebody is going to die… is an hilarious treatment of Southern weddings from the perspective of the ladies of a certain Mississippi Delta town. Their spot on observations and hilarious anecdotes present Southern weddings from shot-gun to over-the-top in all their glory. And the included recipes for everything from wedding cake and punch to cheese straws and chicken salad cream puffs, while not quite as scary as the North Beach stuff, contain more than enough butter and cream to frighten Dr. Agaston and please Ms. Deen.

I am only a few chapters into this one and probably will not finish it. Lotsa chatter with lots currently fashionable terminology. Much talk about a new collaborative economy and web 2.0 changing the world and Generation N and yada yada yada. Ron says parts of it are very interesting, so maybe it will pick up and I will finish, but I am doubtful.

Hoping to hear tomorrow about the job I interviewed for last week and have another interview scheduled Tuesday, and working four days this week. And looking forward to day off on payday, Thursday.

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