Truth and lies

"Bob has his trainers feeding dogs baloney treats. We don't do any of that mushy stuff."

(The Robert Crais books are extremely enjoyable reading, by the way: the first is Suspect, the second is The Promise. Crais's books have in my opinion gotten better and better; where Michael Connelly's have become more formulaic over the years (with the last few Bosch books feeling like thinned-out outlines of their former selves), these have become richer and more complicated in terms of character and voice.

Tallest Dog Ever

Death of a record-breakingly gigantic Great Dane. (Via Rivka.) He slept in his own queen-sized bed.

Prime meridian

On Tuesday we went to Bletchley Park, which was highly worthwhile (I think the Colossus rebuild is the most amazing thing, but it's very cool seeing so many bombes and Enigma machines after having read much about them); on Wednesday, we rode a fast boat to Greenwich and saw among other things precision timekeepers at the Observatory and the Maritime Museum. Visiting these places on consecutive days, one is especially struck by the implicit continuities between two different periods of brilliant technical innovation and superb precision manufacturing in British history.

Yesterday evening, a delicious gin sour and smoked mackerel latkes at Mishkin's with my dear old friend Orion and his partner Harvy, a hatter whose recent creation made a big hit this week. Later this afternoon we'll walk over to see my cousin George at her day job, then meet up with another dear friend of mine for dinner.

Light reading (planes, trains, etc.): Michael Sears, Black Fridays (not sure the autistic son plot was really successfully integrated with the trading skullduggery one, but not bad overall); Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs; Andre Aciman, Harvard Square; Gene Kerrigan, The Midnight Choir (I thought this one was fantastically good, even better than the other book of his I read recently); Melissa Scott, The Empress of Earth (I don't think volumes 2 and 3 lived up to the promise of the opening volume, but the trilogy is a pretty good read); Gordon Dahlquist, The Different Girl (another standout - it is a really lovely YA novel, science-fictional in its affinities and most beautifully written, with something of the strange haunting quality that I found as a child in the novels of John Christopher).

Old but good: basset hounds vs. gravity.

Training exercise

"County officials who investigated the mishandling of the remains had called it a well-intentioned mistake."

All is well with me in San Francisco - seems that Facebook is better for tracking minor activities on travels (look on my page over there if you are curious, I don't think I can link directly to pics). Mental soundtrack whenever I am here: Camper Van Beethoven's "Tania."

Naphtha, xylene, Japan drier

Mimi Lipson's story about a dog.

Catch-up

Very mixed feelings about my month of idyll coming to an end. On the other hand, idyll might pall if it were extended indefinitely (not, in any case, a temperamental possibility for me, even aside from logistical and career concerns). Things to look forward to in New York: the library, Joanna's spin classes at Chelsea Piers, winter running and most of all my little cat Mickey! Also Nadia Sirota on Tuesday night at the Kitchen and an evening of theatergoing on Wednesday with G. (almost certainly to be followed by dinner at Petrarca).

Miscellaneous linkage: a story by Charlie Jane Anders; the coldest journey! (Via B.)

Miscellaneous light reading: Jojo Moyes, Me Before You (a novel my English grandmother would have thoroughly enjoyed!); Alan Russell, Burning Man (very good, and I will certainly read more of his, but it was curious to read two novels about LAPD K-9 officer-dog partnerships in as many days - this was the other one); Matthew Mitcham, Twists and Turns; and an excellent historical mystery (it is a genre that makes me suspicious, but Jane Y. sent me a link that persuaded me I had to check this one out) by Imogen Robertson, Instruments of Darkness. Halfway through the second one in the series now; also midway through Thinking, Fast and Slow, which I have been meaning to read ever since it came out but never quite got around to.

Over the next few days in Cayman, three final hot yoga classes at Bliss (I finished the thirty-day challenge yesterday - thirty classes in less than four weeks definitely leads to a significant feeling of consolidation and progress), a four-mile leg Sunday morning for the Cross-Island Relay (B. has inadvertently intimidated me by observing that he believes I can run 8:15 miles on current fitness and heat acclimation!) and a decadent Sunday-night dinner at Michael's Genuine.

Catch-up

I have gotten fatally behind on logging light reading, mostly because quite a bit of it was undistinguished!

I finished the rest of the Inger Ash Wolfe books (psychologically implausible and with serial killers like nothing that has ever walked the earth, but the writing is otherwise appealing); read several crime novels by Julia Spencer-Fleming; Jennifer McMahon's The One I Left Behind, which I liked a good deal in spite of it again having an implausible serial killer at its heart; Alan Russell's Shame, ditto; Michael Prescott's The Shadow Hunter (dreadful); Grant Jerkins's The Ninth Step (not bad); Alex Berenson's The Faithful Spy (not my preferred kind of thriller, as it follows too many different characters, but good of its kind); and Robert Crais's Suspect (thin in terms of the mystery plot, but gripping as it concerns the relationship between man and dog in K-9 patrol - really very appealing indeed, and especially recommended to those who like reading books with an animal as one of the main characters).

Also, a book that was pretty much as preposterous as I thought it would be - I do not at all buy the basic account of human motivation, either general or specific to the two main characters, and I dislike the melodramatic tinge - and yet it is nonetheless a gripping read, Matt Fitzgerald's Iron War: Dave Scott, Mark Allen, and the Greatest Race Ever Run. (Here's how the book's subjects responded to the portrait; thoughtful further comments by Dan Empfield here.)

I still think that if you're only going to read one book about endurance sport and you have at all of an interest in the underlying questions of physiology, the best single book has to be Jack Daniels' Running Formula. I am also very partial to 'Doc' Counsilman's The Science of Swimming - really I am enough of an academic and intellectual in my heart of hearts that though I rot my brain with hundreds of trashy novels every year, I really would always rather read a book of substance than a book of fluff - I particularly dislike popularizations and watered-down versions when there is a high-quality and reasonably accessible straight-from-the-source version.

Spa month is coming to an end. I had two pieces of work I had to finish yesterday and it was actually very satisfying to be sinking my teeth back into a real job; I'm going to have a massive training week this coming week, then fly back to New York the following Monday and ramp things back down a bit while I reacclimate to normal life (there will be some school obligations this semester in spite of the fact that I'm not teaching). Am resolved to have at least a "spa week" a couple times a year even if I cannot always spare a whole month! The crucial thing will be to reconceptualize the first half of January and the first half of June not as times to crank out some massive piece of writing that I don't have vim to complete during a teaching semester but rather as times for rest and recovery; this will entail a fairly dramatic change of attitude, I am sure it is easier said than done, but I really am going to try and make it happen....

"Doomfully o'erhung"

Best description ever of what it feels like to be working on a book.

Also: turnspit dogs....

Bird dogs

Truly demented.

Controlling for Clever Hans

At the Times, Nicholas Wade on a border collie with a vocabulary of 1,022 nouns:

In three years, Chaser’s vocabulary included 800 cloth animals, 116 balls, 26 Frisbees and a medley of plastic items.

Production of quota

c. 1,200 words, for a total of 48,473 words.

I came across it while looking for something else entirely, but I wish I could have seen this lovely exhibit of miniature books at the Clark Library at UCLA in 2008. The picture below is of a book made by the wonderfully named Achille J. St. Onge.

"Go ahead and Google me"

Caleb Crain on canine internet metaphors:

one day a couple of years ago, when I was walking our late lab-shepherd mix, we met a hound who ignored us in order to focus on the scents left on a tree. The hound's owner apologized by saying, "He's checking his email."

Dogsbody

Dogs in space.

Sausage rights

Dachshund UN (?!?).

More details and pictures here and here. If I were in Melbourne, that is certainly where I would be next Saturday afternoon at 2pm...

"Model's own"

A hundred years of dogs in Vogue.

World records

Extra-large ancestors!

Also: the highest price ever paid at a charitable auction for a hand-cut jigsaw puzzle. . .

Three genes

"Furnishings"!

"The essence of our Lancelot"

More on dog cloning. (Via Educating Alice.)

Imaginary animal languages

Dizzy musings on language.

"If you print that rot, I will sue you"

I was fascinated by the demented dog cloning story (adorable pictures!) that emerged earlier this week, but it seemed slightly too lurid to blog; however, this follow-up story at the Times Online has persuaded me it must be posted... (Via WOOF3R.)