The Road, McCarthy. Yes. Since this was the first Cormac McCarthy book I read, I had imagined that the setting—which is to say, the implied event that brought the story about—had affected the style. The movie ad would go something like this: In a world with punctuation gone mad: apostrophes only before esses (“wouldnt”, “couldnt”, […]
Have Mercy on Us All, Vargas. Yes. This was an enjoyable, briskly moving read. The only item I found truly remarkable was the perfect use of the objective case: Up and walked with my little boy (whom because of my wife’s making him idle, I dare not leave at home) … to excuse my not […]
So we went to Anaheim recently to visit the mouse (this entry has been in draft state for almost exactly two years—and here I thought I was behind on my book reviews!—so some of it was written while the trip was fresh in my mind, but most of it was thrown together based on some […]
So I’m watching At the Circus, starring the Marx Brothers. Groucho makes a joke about not having seen Chico since he stopped taking Scott’s Emulsion. Wondering what that is, I look in up on the intertubes. Well, it’s a brand of cod liver oil, still available, but not in the US, made by GlaxoSmithkline. And […]
A German-language podcast of a building a crane. More of those podcasts here.
Looking at a list of branches of the Berkeley Public Library, I noticed the Tool Lending Library. I expected it to be a book library on Tool St. or something, but NO! They lend out tools. If I could get an electric snake from my library, I totally would.
The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt, Ray. Non-fiction. This was a book club recommendation, and it was extremely informative. Pathetic fallacy (the stone having a sense of humor, the stone having made up its mind to be deciphered by a Frenchman) distracts badly when it appears. Fortunately, it does not appear all […]
A giant plastic bust of Lenin was found in Antarctica. Which reminds me that I must see if I can find out more about the Lenin medallions on the moon. Later: Correction! Only some of them had Lenin on. They seem to be called “pennants” since they have a trailing ribbony thing, but they look […]
Here are my five-star reads from 2007: You can see some of my reading jags in here, with lots of communism and Warren Ellis. Not a lot of super-great teen reading, though. The Cold War: a new history by John Lewis Gaddis 1984, Orwell Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million, Martin Amis The […]