Closing tabs

A tour of the Svalbard seed vault.

Does tenure encourage risk-taking?

A social history of Australia through its swimming pools.

Jonathon Green's dictionary of slang is going online. Also: what's a chuggypig?

A miniature replica of 1950s Boston.

"He smelled amazing, he really smelled good."

So far I have held off actually buying anything here, but I can't quite bring myself to close this tab on my browser. I was especially partial as a child (still am) to the candies made out of pure sugar - the Now and Laters, the Fun Dip, the candy bracelets and the candy buttons that came on a paper band, the Jolly Ranchers, the Runts and Nerds and SweetTarts and Tart 'n Tinys - I am only surprised they don't have Bottle Caps (the cafe at Butler Library used to sell these, and I would buy a box occasionally when I really needed to fuel maniacal paper-grading - it is just as well that I haven't seen them there for a couple years, I think, as those soft tart powdery crunchable disks are irresistible to me).

I don't agree with Janet Malcolm's position on the Constance Garnett translations. I've seen this argued again and again (and it's akin to the Aciman defense of Moncrieff's Proust); I suspect the difference of opinion may be generational, in that when I first encountered the translations of this vintage as a teenager in the 1980s I just found them irremediably flowery and over-elaborate. I much prefer the newer style.

Finally, Katherine Dunn died in May. I was utterly arrested and captivated by Geek Love when I first encountered it. My college classmate Thomas Lauderdale knew Katherine very well, and when he hosted me on the low-budget book tour for my first novel in 2003 or so he not only made me feel like a literary lion, he took me over to Katherine's house for tea. I was incredibly flattered, at the end of our conversation, when she exclaimed, "Dashing!" Then she told me that I had a dashing mind, an adjective that has stayed with me as a high compliment.

Valentine-specific foods

The uneven level of consumer interest in conversation hearts.

"I want candy"

I want some of these!

Crazy golf

These really do look good enough to eat. (Underlying link also worthwhile.)

Seasonal eggishness

I already saw the top part of this the other day (appealing but a bit fiddly - think I will just buy one at the store, additives notwithstanding!), but scroll down to the bottom of this story and you will see a picture of the world's oldest Cadbury Creme Egg precursor...

Also: this sounds revolting!

Eye candy

Peggy Nelson on food-based replicas.

Catch-up

This picture made me laugh!

Unfortunately I am coming down with a cold - not surprising after Thanksgiving travels, but still regrettable. Am going to retire to bed very early this evening and hope I don't feel a lot worse when I wake up.

oooooooo

I want one of these...

Treat!

I am not much of a one for Halloween, but I got home on Monday just as large numbers of highly excited children were congregating in the building lobby for the annual Halloween party and maniacal subsequent hallway-and-stairwell trick-or-treating, and was swept up in the hospitality of some neighbors I like very much but don't see too often!  Walked away from their place an hour or so later feeling the soothing effects of cheese, beer and candy but also with a real treat tucked under my arm: an advance copy of Heidi Julavits's The Vanishers, a novel I have been coveting ever since I first heard about it a few months ago. 

I am very happy to report that it is divinely satisfactory, her best book yet (which is saying quite a lot).  It is also curiously and perfectly suited to my own reading tastes: imagine faint shades of Ishiguro's The Unconsoled and Sara Gran's Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, a way with steeply pitched verbs that's slightly reminiscent of Gary Lutz or Sam Lipsyte ("magneted," "throttled up," "pay-per-viewing"), a quasi-Parkian reflection on disambiguation and an amazing new definition of override, an eclectic and idiosyncratic mix of occult and spiritualist references, the notions that the "oblique glimpses into the lives of cinema strangers" one gets from seeing foreign films might be the only thing that would partly compensate one for the cessation of "psychic forays" and that parapsychologists would never use social networks due to the fact that they're "'a boon for psychic attackers.'" In short, an unusual and memorable first-person narrator, a fantastic and compelling story - strongly recommended...

Two other things I also liked very much this week: N. K. Jemisin's novel The Kingdom of Gods, the final volume of her excellent Inheritance trilogy; and a gripping Kindle Single by Mishka Shubaly, The Long Run.

On invention

My friend Ed Park's sensibility and our mutual friend Jane Yeh's awareness of it are both so particular and vivid that I immediately labeled this NYT profile of Columbia radiation scientist David Brenner a "Jane reads the paper" bit:

He may have inherited his knack for industrial design from his maternal grandfather, a mechanical engineer who was one of the inventors of the Kit Kat candy bar and the machinery to mass-produce it.

d/b/a

Poetic justice?

Toxic Waste brand Nuclear Sludge Chew Bars have been recalled by Circle City Marketing and Distributing, doing business as Candy Dynamics, Indianapolis, Ind. The product is imported from Pakistan.

A recent test performed by the California Department of Public Health indicated that some cherry flavor of the bars had slightly elevated levels of lead. No illnesses have been reported to date in connection with this problem.