Down with a cold - not a disastrous one, but I seem to have spent most of the last couple days in bed. Left the opera at first intermission last night, will see how I do at the theater this evening - trying to motivate to get to the library for a couple hours of editing, but really horizontal seems the best position!
Linkage:
McNugget morphology.
Starfish cities.
Proust at the Morgan Library.
On reading fanfic.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Friday, February 22, 2013
Collation
Fifteen ways to file your cats. (Via Becky.)
Also, via Jane Y., knitting for reptiles!
I am having some satisfying work on my essay about minute particulars in life-writing and the novel. Also exercising up a storm and waiting for winter to stop.
Enchanted by a pair of novels and a novella originally recommended by some source now lost in the past of the internet; they are not of the highest literary genre, some people don't like reading stuff like this, but they are the kind of thing I particularly like, and so beautifully done I hardly can stand it! Appealing (gay) characters in fantasy world loosely based on seventeenth-century Holland, some magic but not excessive and narrative based on a crime detection plot rather than something more fantastical - they are absolutely delightful. A collaborative project by Melissa Scott and Lisa Barnett: Point of Hopes, Point of Knives, Point of Dreams. Must seek out more of Scott's novels and/or reread novels by Ellen Kushner!
Seeing Parsifal on Wednesday next week at the Met (this was a good teaser, but you may need a New Yorker subscription to access it) and 1 Henry IV on Thursday. Culture, sport, light reading - all good....
Also, via Jane Y., knitting for reptiles!
I am having some satisfying work on my essay about minute particulars in life-writing and the novel. Also exercising up a storm and waiting for winter to stop.
Enchanted by a pair of novels and a novella originally recommended by some source now lost in the past of the internet; they are not of the highest literary genre, some people don't like reading stuff like this, but they are the kind of thing I particularly like, and so beautifully done I hardly can stand it! Appealing (gay) characters in fantasy world loosely based on seventeenth-century Holland, some magic but not excessive and narrative based on a crime detection plot rather than something more fantastical - they are absolutely delightful. A collaborative project by Melissa Scott and Lisa Barnett: Point of Hopes, Point of Knives, Point of Dreams. Must seek out more of Scott's novels and/or reread novels by Ellen Kushner!
Seeing Parsifal on Wednesday next week at the Met (this was a good teaser, but you may need a New Yorker subscription to access it) and 1 Henry IV on Thursday. Culture, sport, light reading - all good....
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Top ten
Bruce Holsinger on how to get an agent. Bruce is a distinguished medievalist whose first novel will appear in 2014 - he knows whereof he speaks!
(I can weigh in here just bbriefly re: the authorial questioning on "what does fifty pages mean?" - use common sense - this goes for graduate admissions as well - it is an automatic huge negative if the applicant ignores the suggested advice about what to submit and sends something on the order of two or three times as long, or single-spaced, or anything else that shows a lack of a sense of proportion.)
(I can weigh in here just bbriefly re: the authorial questioning on "what does fifty pages mean?" - use common sense - this goes for graduate admissions as well - it is an automatic huge negative if the applicant ignores the suggested advice about what to submit and sends something on the order of two or three times as long, or single-spaced, or anything else that shows a lack of a sense of proportion.)
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Mouth feel
The section on potato chips is a must-read! Here is a snippet I liked:
The food technicians stopped worrying about inventing new products and instead embraced the industry’s most reliable method for getting consumers to buy more: the line extension. The classic Lay’s potato chips were joined by Salt & Vinegar, Salt & Pepper and Cheddar & Sour Cream. They put out Chili-Cheese-flavored Fritos, and Cheetos were transformed into 21 varieties. Frito-Lay had a formidable research complex near Dallas, where nearly 500 chemists, psychologists and technicians conducted research that cost up to $30 million a year, and the science corps focused intense amounts of resources on questions of crunch, mouth feel and aroma for each of these items. Their tools included a $40,000 device that simulated a chewing mouth to test and perfect the chips, discovering things like the perfect break point: people like a chip that snaps with about four pounds of pressure per square inch.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Monday, February 18, 2013
Friday, February 15, 2013
Catch-up
Tomorrow I am going to a big birthday blowout to celebrate G.'s 90th! His loft is the perfect place for a party, and it's going to feature a lavishly catered buffet, a live jazz band and possibly close to a hundred guests (shooting for eighty, but these things tend to escalate!). And tonight I am having a party at the opposite end of the scale, a Like a Fiery Elephant party for my fall-semester graduate students (we missed a seminar meeting due to Hurricane Sandy, and this was the book that got the axe - I promised I'd have them over at a later date to make up the missed conversation, and the day has now come). I scurried around this morning making preparations, and still need to tidy up, stow surplus triathlon equipment and get drinks in the fridge, but unlike tomorrow's party, this is a celebration of devastating simplicity: pizzas to be delivered at 7:45, wine, beer and a couple bags of half-price day-after-Valentine's candy to supplement the baked goods one student has offered to bring!
Light reading around the edges: an unusual novel by Stina Leicht, Of Blood and Honey. I loved it: particularly recommended to those with an interest in how urban fantasy elements can be hybridized with unexpected other genres. A brutal and amazing book!
Light reading around the edges: an unusual novel by Stina Leicht, Of Blood and Honey. I loved it: particularly recommended to those with an interest in how urban fantasy elements can be hybridized with unexpected other genres. A brutal and amazing book!
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Catch-up
Fruit stencils! This is an amazing piece, very much worth clicking through to....
Snoozed alarm for too long this morning and am trying to gear up to get out the door for my run. It is supposed to snow again later, so that's a good incentive to get it done now. Afternoon of grad student appointments and a rather overdue haircut, so I am not sure I will get in a second session later, though I might go to 6:30 hot yoga if I'm done at the hair place in time. (I like having quite short hair, only it's high-maintenance, and it always makes me grumpy to give up an early-evening exercise session in order to be sheared!)
I'm 90% ready to dig in on proper revisions for the two things I'm working on this month, a long-delayed essay on particular detail and the novel and the final revisions on the style book. Need one more session of preliminary work on style, then I will go for it and start really taking the particular detail piece apart and putting it back together in final form. Read enough of the remaining stack of Young Lions submissions last night to submit my rankings - we meet to decide the five-book longlist in early March. Job talks for the postcolonial search are now over; will need to read some materials before that meeting, also in early March.
Miscellaneous light reading: one more Imogen Robertson, Island of Bones; Erin Celello, Learning to Stay (I followed Erin's Ironman training blog obsessively in 2007, the first year I was really fixated on triathlon: on which note, I think this really is the year when I will be able to pull off my Ironman, having been derailed twice before by calamity and illness); Ann Leary's delightful The Good House; Chuck Wendig's Mockingbird, which I hugely enjoyed and which is exactly the sort of book I most wish I could write myself, only somehow I cannot; and my graduate school colleague M. E. Breen's lovely YA novel Darkwood, which has some minor unevenness in terms of introduction of worldbuilding and plot stuff but which is riveting in terms of character and storytelling.
Snoozed alarm for too long this morning and am trying to gear up to get out the door for my run. It is supposed to snow again later, so that's a good incentive to get it done now. Afternoon of grad student appointments and a rather overdue haircut, so I am not sure I will get in a second session later, though I might go to 6:30 hot yoga if I'm done at the hair place in time. (I like having quite short hair, only it's high-maintenance, and it always makes me grumpy to give up an early-evening exercise session in order to be sheared!)
I'm 90% ready to dig in on proper revisions for the two things I'm working on this month, a long-delayed essay on particular detail and the novel and the final revisions on the style book. Need one more session of preliminary work on style, then I will go for it and start really taking the particular detail piece apart and putting it back together in final form. Read enough of the remaining stack of Young Lions submissions last night to submit my rankings - we meet to decide the five-book longlist in early March. Job talks for the postcolonial search are now over; will need to read some materials before that meeting, also in early March.
Miscellaneous light reading: one more Imogen Robertson, Island of Bones; Erin Celello, Learning to Stay (I followed Erin's Ironman training blog obsessively in 2007, the first year I was really fixated on triathlon: on which note, I think this really is the year when I will be able to pull off my Ironman, having been derailed twice before by calamity and illness); Ann Leary's delightful The Good House; Chuck Wendig's Mockingbird, which I hugely enjoyed and which is exactly the sort of book I most wish I could write myself, only somehow I cannot; and my graduate school colleague M. E. Breen's lovely YA novel Darkwood, which has some minor unevenness in terms of introduction of worldbuilding and plot stuff but which is riveting in terms of character and storytelling.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Friday, February 08, 2013
Thursday, February 07, 2013
Rear admiral mittens
This is so demented I can hardly look at it! (Via Cleo.)
Life re-entry has proved rather stressful this week, but I think I'm finding my feet. Have just tidied up the apartment and spent an irksome half-hour dealing with some old expense receipts from last year that I need to submit before I can use my Columbia card to pay this year's MLA dues and register for the ASECS conference in April! It is increasingly clear to me that really I am only fit for life in a monastic cell. Plain walls, no possessions, highly structured schedule, lots of silence....
Life re-entry has proved rather stressful this week, but I think I'm finding my feet. Have just tidied up the apartment and spent an irksome half-hour dealing with some old expense receipts from last year that I need to submit before I can use my Columbia card to pay this year's MLA dues and register for the ASECS conference in April! It is increasingly clear to me that really I am only fit for life in a monastic cell. Plain walls, no possessions, highly structured schedule, lots of silence....
Linkage
Annalee Newitz on the cultural history of ninjas.
Paul Morton interviews Ursula K. LeGuin.
Nadia Sirota's concert on Tuesday at the Kitchen was superlative, but animated conversation and drinks at Colicchio and Sons afterwards led to the worst night of insomnia I've had for a while, and yesterday was a bit of a wash. Got a much better night's sleep last night: wasn't crazy about the play, but dinner at Petrarca with G. is one of the most soothing things imaginable...
Paul Morton interviews Ursula K. LeGuin.
Nadia Sirota's concert on Tuesday at the Kitchen was superlative, but animated conversation and drinks at Colicchio and Sons afterwards led to the worst night of insomnia I've had for a while, and yesterday was a bit of a wash. Got a much better night's sleep last night: wasn't crazy about the play, but dinner at Petrarca with G. is one of the most soothing things imaginable...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
