Friday, December 13, 2013
Squirrelmania!
Interesting story. In Cayman, it is the green iguana that is the charming invasive species - as native Philadelphian/New Yorker, I am amazed by tourists that want to take pictures of squirrels (and charmed by presence of black squirrels in Ottawa), but really they are a pest....
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Grotesqueries
This might be the most dreadful Xmas list I have ever seen, to the point that I wonder if it's satire - it seems to be without a byline....
Fractions
It has been an extremely busy week, and I haven't yet started my end-of-semester grading, though I think it shouldn't take too long. It will be the middle of next week at the earliest, I would guess, before I can do any of my own work.
Have had some pleasurable distractions in spite of pressures of work. On Monday night, saw my friend Elliot Thomson's little gem of a comedy (he and actor Peter Hirsch call it his "Faberge egg roll"), Le Refuge.
Last night I met up with G. for the highly enjoyable Le Jazz Hot. The documentary joining-together bits are a little amateurish, though the footage is interesting, but the musicians are superb: I would definitely go and see them again. (The Anderson brothers are twins, and I was strongly reminded of my own twin brothers by the way each referred to the other as "my brother"!) Extremely delicious dinner afterwards at Bottega del Vino; I had beef carpaccio and spinach gnocchi before confirming my previous impression that this restaurant serves the best tiramisu in New York.
Closing tabs:
Colin Wilson is dead. Ritual in the Dark is more an artifact of its time than a great novel, I think, but it's a fascinating phenomenon, that mid-century period of British occultism. You get a bit of it in Jonathan Coe's B. S. Johnson biography - I don't think there's a Wilson biography, but there should be.
Teju Cole on truth and reconciliation in South Africa and elsewhere.
Light reading around the edges: several more Eva Ibbotson comfort re-reads; Charlie Williams' excellently titled Love Will Tear Us Apart; Michael Connelly's The Gods of Guilt (the plot is too intricate and the characters too shallow, but fairly readable regardless); Paul Cornell's London Falling, which is so exactly the sort of book that I like to read that I fell into a psychological slump when I came to the end and realized the next installment hasn't yet been published; and Laini Taylor's really delightful novella Night of Cake and Puppets (more books should have the word "cake" in their titles). I am contemplating a resolution for 2014 to read more nonfiction - one does occasionally, especially when reading something like the Connelly, get the feeling that the brain will rot on a diet of so much pap - but I would have to reserve the right to consume a good deal of light reading regardless, perhaps just not the fodder-level books.
Have had some pleasurable distractions in spite of pressures of work. On Monday night, saw my friend Elliot Thomson's little gem of a comedy (he and actor Peter Hirsch call it his "Faberge egg roll"), Le Refuge.
Last night I met up with G. for the highly enjoyable Le Jazz Hot. The documentary joining-together bits are a little amateurish, though the footage is interesting, but the musicians are superb: I would definitely go and see them again. (The Anderson brothers are twins, and I was strongly reminded of my own twin brothers by the way each referred to the other as "my brother"!) Extremely delicious dinner afterwards at Bottega del Vino; I had beef carpaccio and spinach gnocchi before confirming my previous impression that this restaurant serves the best tiramisu in New York.
Closing tabs:
Colin Wilson is dead. Ritual in the Dark is more an artifact of its time than a great novel, I think, but it's a fascinating phenomenon, that mid-century period of British occultism. You get a bit of it in Jonathan Coe's B. S. Johnson biography - I don't think there's a Wilson biography, but there should be.
Teju Cole on truth and reconciliation in South Africa and elsewhere.
Light reading around the edges: several more Eva Ibbotson comfort re-reads; Charlie Williams' excellently titled Love Will Tear Us Apart; Michael Connelly's The Gods of Guilt (the plot is too intricate and the characters too shallow, but fairly readable regardless); Paul Cornell's London Falling, which is so exactly the sort of book that I like to read that I fell into a psychological slump when I came to the end and realized the next installment hasn't yet been published; and Laini Taylor's really delightful novella Night of Cake and Puppets (more books should have the word "cake" in their titles). I am contemplating a resolution for 2014 to read more nonfiction - one does occasionally, especially when reading something like the Connelly, get the feeling that the brain will rot on a diet of so much pap - but I would have to reserve the right to consume a good deal of light reading regardless, perhaps just not the fodder-level books.
Monday, December 09, 2013
Friday, December 06, 2013
IT to falconry
At the FT (site registration required), Emma Jacobs on the work of an urban falconer. (Link courtesy of I.H.D.)
Thursday, December 05, 2013
Mundanities, a.k.a. "Thursday is my weekend"
Thursday this semester was always my "weekend," unless I had complex meetings or a deadline, but the day after the last day of classes always brings particular relief!
I slept late (late enough that I am not going to hot yoga this morning - may hit a class in the early evening if I have the energy, but it's fine if not).
I finally made two phone calls that I've been meaning to take care of for weeks: scheduling a house call to get my two cats a proper checkup (they both had initial kittenage vaccinations, but I have been remiss about vet visits - this is long overdue!); scheduling an appointment with my asthma doctor to discuss ongoing exercise-induced asthma issues but more particularly to ask what I should do about the fact that my indispensable asthma control medication Flovent will no longer be covered by my prescription health coverage plan as of January. This is frustrating, it has worked very well - it would cost about $200/mo. if I am paying for it out-of-pocket, so really I need to find out what I can take instead, but I wish they weren't messing around with some solid basics!
And I have a haircut appointment at 2 and will go from thence to the allergy doctor for shots - missed last week due to Thanksgiving-related scheduling issues.
Not an exciting day, in short, but a very useful one, and the best part of it is that in half an hour or so I will head out for a lovely quiet run. The weather is foggy but very mild, with temperature in the mid-50s - short sleeves!
(I do have to write one more letter of recommendation, but that won't be too bad....)
I slept late (late enough that I am not going to hot yoga this morning - may hit a class in the early evening if I have the energy, but it's fine if not).
I finally made two phone calls that I've been meaning to take care of for weeks: scheduling a house call to get my two cats a proper checkup (they both had initial kittenage vaccinations, but I have been remiss about vet visits - this is long overdue!); scheduling an appointment with my asthma doctor to discuss ongoing exercise-induced asthma issues but more particularly to ask what I should do about the fact that my indispensable asthma control medication Flovent will no longer be covered by my prescription health coverage plan as of January. This is frustrating, it has worked very well - it would cost about $200/mo. if I am paying for it out-of-pocket, so really I need to find out what I can take instead, but I wish they weren't messing around with some solid basics!
And I have a haircut appointment at 2 and will go from thence to the allergy doctor for shots - missed last week due to Thanksgiving-related scheduling issues.
Not an exciting day, in short, but a very useful one, and the best part of it is that in half an hour or so I will head out for a lovely quiet run. The weather is foggy but very mild, with temperature in the mid-50s - short sleeves!
(I do have to write one more letter of recommendation, but that won't be too bad....)
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
Longing
This is the book I wish I could have in my hands right now: The Islands of Chaldea, left incomplete by Diana Wynne Jones when she died and completed by her sister Ursula Jones.
Picking up where her sister left off was an "odd journey", said Jones. "Diana was very much my eldest sister, and I was very much aware of a fury from her, either that I was doing it, or that I was not doing it fast enough. I had awful nightmares about it. It was curiously traumatic," she said. "I was conscious of her looking over my shoulder in many different ways. To start with, there was this disturbing feeling of fury. Then once I'd got under way there was almost a moment of rather grumpy 'oh all right then'. I'm not a believer in any of this sort of thing but I tell you it was palpable, and quite uncanny.
"Then it went ahead very easily. I did notice I was moving things around and changing structures or settings almost at her prompting, possibly because I knew how to get right inside the book at that stage. I certainly managed to erase my style."
And writing the last sentence, she said, "was an unbearable second parting from her: as if she had died again".
Circles redux
At Bookslut, Colleen Mondor has some kind words about The Magic Circle in an end-of-year roundup.
(Alas, I remember saying to B. sometime last year something like "I think this novel might really be a big deal!" In fact it sank like a stone and was barely reviewed, though I got some very nice feedback from actual readers. The world is telling me to be a critic and essayist rather than a novelist, I think - and indeed it is my resolution for the coming year to write at least an essay or two after the manner of Hazlitt!)
(Alas, I remember saying to B. sometime last year something like "I think this novel might really be a big deal!" In fact it sank like a stone and was barely reviewed, though I got some very nice feedback from actual readers. The world is telling me to be a critic and essayist rather than a novelist, I think - and indeed it is my resolution for the coming year to write at least an essay or two after the manner of Hazlitt!)
Catch-up
Rather arduous week, but I taught my last class of the semester today and I should be able to have a bit of a breather as long as I keep chipping away at tasks: I have one more letter of recommendation to write tomorrow, and a lot of comments on student assignments and various other similar, but it is very good to have a temporary reprieve from the form of public self-performance, however enjoyable and stimulating, that we call teaching!
(This week's reading: Justine, which is sufficiently disturbing that at 11pm on Monday night, though I still had several hundred pages left to read for Tuesday's class, I instead downloaded a favorite novel by Eva Ibbotson and read it in its entirety as a remedy!; and Persuasion.)
Lots of meetings and appointments still over the next two weeks, but I am looking forward to getting more sleep and doing massive amounts of exercise, particularly the hot yoga, which I have a yen for right now (was too tired to get there this afternoon, but with luck I will make it there tomorrow morning).
Miscellaneous light reading around the edges: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus (excellent, memorably so); Jakob Arjouni, Happy Birthday, Turk!, a good recommendation from Chase Madar; Daniel Woodrell, The Maid's Version (excellent); Kelly Braffet, Last Seen Leaving (I've liked all the books of hers I've read, but I think this one is my favorite); Garth Nix, Newt's Emerald (not bad, but it made me think about how Georgette Heyer's Regency pastiche has been so influential that anyone who writes in that period is almost bound to sound exactly like Heyer - it makes me wonder whether there is any other literary period ripe for colonizing with this kind of a verbal and world-building reimagining?); and Gordon Ferris, Truth Dare Kill. I think I am going to spend the evening rereading several other Ibbotson books; they are immensely and indescribably soothing, second only to the works of Diana Wynne Jones I think.
Really I am hungry for something genuinely intellectually demanding, but I think I need a few days of downtime first, and some more light reading to bathe the tired brain. Minor tasks for December include doing the final revisions on my article about particular detail and reading and reviewing an academic book that I promised to write about a long time ago; in January, I think I will be working on a proposal for my long-contemplated little book about Clarissa....
(This week's reading: Justine, which is sufficiently disturbing that at 11pm on Monday night, though I still had several hundred pages left to read for Tuesday's class, I instead downloaded a favorite novel by Eva Ibbotson and read it in its entirety as a remedy!; and Persuasion.)
Lots of meetings and appointments still over the next two weeks, but I am looking forward to getting more sleep and doing massive amounts of exercise, particularly the hot yoga, which I have a yen for right now (was too tired to get there this afternoon, but with luck I will make it there tomorrow morning).
Miscellaneous light reading around the edges: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus (excellent, memorably so); Jakob Arjouni, Happy Birthday, Turk!, a good recommendation from Chase Madar; Daniel Woodrell, The Maid's Version (excellent); Kelly Braffet, Last Seen Leaving (I've liked all the books of hers I've read, but I think this one is my favorite); Garth Nix, Newt's Emerald (not bad, but it made me think about how Georgette Heyer's Regency pastiche has been so influential that anyone who writes in that period is almost bound to sound exactly like Heyer - it makes me wonder whether there is any other literary period ripe for colonizing with this kind of a verbal and world-building reimagining?); and Gordon Ferris, Truth Dare Kill. I think I am going to spend the evening rereading several other Ibbotson books; they are immensely and indescribably soothing, second only to the works of Diana Wynne Jones I think.
Really I am hungry for something genuinely intellectually demanding, but I think I need a few days of downtime first, and some more light reading to bathe the tired brain. Minor tasks for December include doing the final revisions on my article about particular detail and reading and reviewing an academic book that I promised to write about a long time ago; in January, I think I will be working on a proposal for my long-contemplated little book about Clarissa....
Monday, December 02, 2013
Faux bedroom synthtronica
Simon Holland's bedroom cassette masters project erases the line between history and fiction:
I began to be approached by people who wanted to have their music on the compilation but who had not even been alive in the eighties. They were contemporary bedroom musicians, usually with a small collection of vintage analogue instruments and equipment who were committed to producing work using authentic vintage methods. So I had an idea: let them produce their music in-the-style-of lo-fi, cassette-based, bedroom-recorded demos and provide a short biography suggesting they had in fact been produced between 1980-89. They had to carefully date their recordings based on the manufacture dates of the vintage synths they were using to avoid any anachronisms and think of artistic motivation based on age, sex and geography. And so I re-wrote the submission brief to include the sound-alikes, and the music kept coming in but I no longer knew if I was listening to something truly historic or retro-perfect facsimiles.(Via.)
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