"Gosh, I could do with a bathe"

At the Guardian, John Mullan lists ten of the best literary swimming scenes!

(Hmmm, I am thinking he has not read Andre Aciman's Call Me By Your Name, or it would be there too...)

In a happy development, I received a copy of the Folio Society edition of The Go-Between as a birthday present - time for a re-read, I think...

(Aciman alert: Eight White Nights: A Novel will be published in February 2010, certainly on my list of most desired things....)

(Oh, I stopped by the office today to take care of several mundane and long-overdue administrative tasks and discovered several things in my mailbox of UTTER DELIGHTFULNESS - namely, new books by Charlie Williams and Peter Temple - if I have self-control, I will save them for the Caymanian interlude that begins next Thursday, but they may prove IRRESISTIBLE!)

"I, Pencil"

At the TLS, James Campbell considers the longstanding controversy concerning Gordon Lish's editing of Raymond Carver's short fiction.

Rogue woolly monkeys

Books written by people who have raised apes in their homes! (Link courtesy of Brent.)

I also note that Me Cheeta: My Life in Hollywood has made the Booker longlist - hmmm, I feel an Amazon splurge coming on... - pity so many of them haven't been published in the US yet. Some years ago I was very full of the notion that I'd like to do a frenetic Booker longlist August blog bit, but really I would only do it if someone would send me the books for free! But perhaps I will read the few of them that are actually alluring and convenient to get hold of...

"Les Deplorables, Hugh Millais's Greatest Hits"

Via Luc Sante, a remarkable life:

Coming from a family of artists Hugh was considered a failure as he could not paint. At 96 his father muttered: “I don’t know what poor Hughie does. He cannot even draw . . . a salary.” But his father did teach him how to shoot. Millais was educated at Ampleforth during the war, and made a deal with his housemaster. If let off games and allowed to keep his two ferrets and 24 snares, he would keep the house provided with meat.

Seems to me it would be quite tiring and periodically rather unsatisfying to lead this kind of a life, but certainly a thing of beauty in the summary...

"The Fat Cat pub"

Jack Reacher scholarships at the University of Sheffield...

"I'll eat you up"

At the LRB, Jenny Diski on a new history of cannibalism.

The Method

At the Times, Kim Severson on film food:

For the 2000 movie “American Psycho,” Ms. Weinstein had prepared several vegetarian dishes for the actor Willem Dafoe, who, she was told, didn’t eat meat. But at the last minute, he decided his character was a carnivore. In deference to his Method acting technique, she had to send out for steaks and figure out how to cook them on the set.

Also: 60 deboned ducks; 25 cakes; hard-to-find cheese; off-camera representatives from the American Humane Association monitoring lobster health....

UncLE ARly

"Propter's Nicodemus Pills."

Significant objects

Meerkats and Michael Phelps.

Hauntings

From the NYT's report on the latest round of technical service bulletins from auto manufacturers:

INFINITI Is the G37 possessed? In T.S.B. 09-025 issued on May 12, Infiniti says the windows on 2008-9 models will lower an inch and then rise again when someone closes the glovebox. Apparently, a sensor wire is plugged in at the wrong spot. Putting this wire in the right place should purge “Christine.”

Related: I read Sarah Rees Brennan's absolutely wonderful The Demon's Lexicon. My only complaint is that I wished the book had been called Goblin Market instead - but it is really excellent, redolent of some of my favorites (Margaret Mahy, Diana Wynne Jones) but very fresh and original in its voice and world-building.

"On to Z!"

Celeste Headlee on the pleasures of the Dictionary of American Regional English (via Bookforum):

[W]hen this reporter tested out some words from the DARE at a Starbucks in suburban Detroit, none of the patrons seemed familiar with a "monkey's wedding" (a chaotic, messy situation in Maine); "cockroach killers" (pointy shoes in New Jersey) or "mumble squibbles" (noogies, North Carolina-style).

While it's fun to learn about colloquial language, Hall says, there are serious practical uses for the DARE as well. Forensic linguists once used it when a little girl was kidnapped and police had only a ransom note to go on.

"In this ransom note, the writer said, 'Put $10,000 cash in a trash can on the devil's strip,' " Hall says.

The key phrase in the note was "devil's strip," a term used only in a tiny section of Ohio to refer to the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street. As it happened, one of the suspects on the police list was a man from Akron. After being confronted with the evidence, linguistic and otherwise, the man ultimately confessed.

Doctors also use the DARE to understand patients who use colorful language to describe their illnesses. A patient complaining of "the groundage" or "pipjennies" likely has a rash on the feet or pimples.

Vertical seams

At the FT, Shyamantha Asokan learns sabrage, the Napoleonic-era trick of opening a champagne bottle with a sabre.

The alternate Dewey Decimal System

Ed Park on invisible libraries (courtesy of Matthew B.):

In “The Haunter of the Dark” (1936), the unfortunate protagonist stumbles upon shelves of “mildewed, disintegrating books” — “the banned and dreaded repositories of equivocal secrets and immemorial formulae.” These include “a Latin version of the abhorred ‘Necronomicon,’ the sinister ‘Liber Ivonis,’ the infamous ‘Cultes des Goules’ of Comte d’Erlette, the ‘Unaussprechlichen Kulten’ of von Junzt, and old Ludvig Prinn’s hellish ‘De Vermis Mysteriis.’ ” The titular details — the sinister-looking double i’s in “Mysteriis,” the rebarbative German tag of von Junzt’s work — are arguably as chilling as the overwrought prose Lovecraft sometimes discharges.

"D. Barber, H.M. Swan Marker"

At the Wall Street Journal, Paul Sonne on the annual tradition of conducting a census of the Queen's cygnets in the Thames (link courtesy of Julia Hoban):

The ritual was first documented in the 12th century, when the bird was a popular dish at medieval feasts. The monarchy laid claim to the birds, which were a valuable food commodity, and doled out ownership charters in exchange for favors. Up to the mid-1800s, swan marking was akin to cow branding: A unique mark, carved into the beak of a newborn cygnet, designated ownership by a specific, chartered family or organization.

Henry VIII reportedly enjoyed swan at his dinner table. Today, swan eating doesn't go down so well with many Britons, who live in a country that Dr. Perrins describes as "bird oriented." In 2005, the Master of the Queen's Music, Sir Maxwell Davies, made headlines when he found a dead swan on his property and made a terrine of it. Mark McGowan, an activist artist, upset Britons when he ate swan in a performance protest against the queen in 2007.

This week, Mr. Barber's crew counted and weighed roughly 120 newborn swans. When they come upon a brood, the rowers yell "All up!" and surround the birds with their skiffs. After deftly bringing the swans aboard, the uppers temporarily tie them up.

"The best way is to sit on the bird," said Robert Dean, a boat builder and three-year veteran of the royal crew, who stood on the Eton dock Monday morning with a bundle of swan ties holstered in his belt. Once the newborn swans are weighed and tagged with identification rings, they are entered into the log and released into the river.

Peanuts

Ruth Katcher on why summer vacation matters for kids.