While examining options for renewing a domain, I discovered that one of my existing registrars has a “Name your phone” option. So if anybody needs to get an SMS message to me without knowing my phone number, just point your browser here.
Every so often, I have occasion to see parking lots near Meydenbauer Center, and when they're especially full, I wonder what's going on. Today's event makes me want to register and attend, if only because who doesn't love convenience stores?
Hmm, I just noticed I never published this one.
Yotsuba&!. 4 by Kiyohiko Azuma
I really love Yotsuba. The books really capture little-kid ENTHUSIASM. About THINGS. Four stars.
Disapproving Rabbits, Stiteler
I don't get it. They don't look disapproving, they just look like rabbits. No stars.
The Authority. [Vol. 2], Under new management, Warren Ellis, writer
Entertaining, and taking super-heroics to new levels. Four stars.
The book awards have been announced at ALA's Midwinter Meeting. The big ceremonies aren't until the main conference in June or so, but we can start complaining now. I read American Born Chinese, the winner of this year's Printz award, and it wasn't even notable enough for me to put it in my monthly reading roundup. Yeah, it's ok, but it really didn't strike me as the best of the year. Feh.
Of course you're reading Jane Espenson's blog on a regular basis, but let me underscore one of my favorite bits in yesterday's entry: “And I love the fact that [Rome] pretty much assumes their audience is familiar with Shakespeare. Amazing. After all, there are shows that don't even assume we're familiar with the contents of the previous scene.”
In anticipation of the library awards season (middle of this month), here's my favorite reads from the past year.
Teen:
Peeps
Outbreak: Plagues that Changed History
A Certain Slant of Light
Mummies: the newest, coolest & creepiest from around the world
Adult:
Assassination Vacation (on audio)
Extraordinary exhibitions: the wonderful remains of an enormous head, the whimsiphusicon & death to the savage Unitarians: broadsides from the collection of Ricky Jay
The Areas of My Expertise
Psycho Ex Game
Walking In Circles Before Lying Down
World War Z
Kampung Boy
Furthering FP's historical squirrel research:
Delaware Weekly Advertiser and Farmer’s Journal; January 31, 1828; Issue 20; col B
Mr. A.S. Bugbee, of Northampton, has contrived a method of turning to account the natural activity of the common grey squirrel. “He has,” says the Northampton Post, “a common cylindrical cage with wire bars, about three feet in diameter, to the axis of which, (four feet long) are connected some small brass wheels which move the machinery of a coffee and pepper mill. Three squirrels are usually employed in the labor of this novel tread-mill, though we have seen a single one turn the wheel with apparent ease. The power of each squirrel in the wheel is estimated by Mr. B. at sixty-five pounds, and in an hour they grind a pound of coffee, pepper, allspice, &c. The expense of the machine was about $300, and the cost of the subsistence of each of the little laborers is about two cents a week.”
I'm adding unfinished books so that I'll be able to remember them...
Placebo Chronicles, strange but true tales from the doctor's lounge, Farrago
Bad work stories with the added entertainment of narcotics seekers. Boy, I'm glad I only have to tell people the metaphorical heroin isn't available. Three stars.
Teach Me, Nelson
Well written, and I wanted to know how the plot ended up, but apparently not enough. Unfinished.
Drawing a blank, or, How I tried to solve a mystery, end a feud, and land the girl of my dreams; Ehrenhaft
Either it didn't keep my attention or I have no attention left to keep. Unfinished.
Hello, cruel world: 101 alternatives to suicide for teens, freaks, and other outlaws, Bornstein
101 ways to stay alive just a bit longer, especially for people outside the norm. Not all of these options will be approved of by society in general but WHO CARES because they are all better than being dead forever. What a great idea. Four stars.
Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City, Miller
Very good middle grade thriller! Some thrillers for this age group come off as fairly babyish, with an adult's view of what the 12-14 years are like, but this one was a real adventure, with a city under New York full of skeletons and gold, horrible popular girls, kidnapping plots, and phony designer handbags. The only drawback is that it is quite long, with two major plots with a tiny lull between.
Four stars.
The Museum of Kitschy Stitches: a gallery of notorious knits by Stitchy McYarnpants
So, if you use vintage catalog and magazine photos for the bulk of the amusement in your book (though many snarky comments leaven), do you have to track down all the image rightsholders to pay them? Just asking. Two stars.
We haven't explicity plugged Overheard in New York (featured in Stuff We Like), but it's frequently treatful, and I found one of today's quotes terribly sweet.