The Last Emperox, Scalzi. Yes. I do enjoy these, so was pleased when it occurred to me to wonder whether there was a new Interdependency book and the answer was yes, and pleased me even more that there was no waitlist. Scalzi does a reasonable job of sliding in the “Previously on…” retro-exposition, which I […]
Again from New York Daily Tribune, May 25, 1842 Baths.–Brooklyn Salt Water Warm Baths at Fulton Ferry, open for gentlement and ladies every day, from 5 A. M. until 10 P. M. Also, Cold, Warm and Tepid Salt Water Shower Baths. These Baths are pleasantly situated at Fulton Ferry, and equally convenient for New York […]
A series of portraits of Londoners commenting on the Olympics in In Focus: 1. Was he told about the portrait ahead of time or was he just WALKING AROUND IN THAT GETUP? 2. There’s some good-looking tubers there. 3. Is that a Matt Lucas vs. Sasha Baron Cohen mural? 4. She may need to invest […]
From the delightful book by Laura Shapiro, Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America (which I highly recommend for other food history and home ec history nerds like me), a poetic mixer interlude: “Back in 1940, while [Gertrude] Stein and [Alice] Toklas were living in the country house where they spent the war […]
Better than a tank full of salty water, the Willauer Box. I wish there were any more information I could track down about this. Until then, visualize it.
While perusing menus at NYPL, I often came across an item called box stew in the same category as oyster stews. I now happen to run across mention of a specially-made oyster stew box in the magazine Table Talk, a sort of 1800s combination of a fine living magazine and a home hints column: Oyster-stew […]
The Explosionist, Davidson. Yes. There were a number of features of this book that annoyed me: it’s nearly tiresome in the same ways that Jo Walton’s “Small Change” series was nearly tiresome (it is conceptually similar to Walton’s work, too); I discovered that I do not much care for the taint of outright fantasy in […]
“In the health area, over 80 percent of the users said they made a change in their diet after using library computers,” Crandall said, adding that he did not know whether the changes were permanent. “One-third of Americans use library computers” Seattle Times, Wednesday, March 24, 2010
The Adoration of Jenna Fox, Pearson. Yes. I’m not sure I would recommend this book to anyone: it bears the earmarks of sf written by a non-sf writer in that some obvious questions are implied but not explicitly raised (and certainly not addressed); I found the scientific rationale to be very hand-wavy, yet at more […]
Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soapbox. Okay. A friend of the Collective brought this documentary to my attention, and having enjoyed the Bronner labels for several years, I was interested enough to throw it on my Netflix queue. It’s a bit of a ramble, which is probably fitting for the topic, but does make it a little […]