New Blog This Way

-Elizabeth 4:19pm
Friday, March 12, 2004
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I've been fooling around with various ideas for this web space and googled collection of words and was delighted to find this among other things. Not what I was wondering about, but still delightful. And that's only page 18.

I haven't been reading much lately, but A Woman Who is a book of line drawings drawn blind that's worth a look-see. It's hilarious. Nutty drawings with nuttier captions ("Woman who has just realized that her feet are hot") that have enough truth in them to be just hysterical. Also God Went to Beauty School by Cynthia Rylant. It's an old theme (God coming down to experience this world he's created) but she's just so fresh and lovely that it feels new. God (for instance) goes to Pottery Barn and buys a couch ...

I also realized recently that a lot of the picture books I like are published by Kane/Miller Publishing and so I looked them up and ordered a couple that I hadn't seen before. And On My Way to Buy Eggs is one of the most beautiful books I've ever seen. It's very Ezra Jack Keats-ish. They (for all who are bored by beauty) also publish Everyone Poops and The Gas We Pass and also (I'm just discovering) All About Scabs. Excellent.

-Elizabeth 10:28am
Friday, March 5, 2004
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Waffles with strawberries and real maple syrup, accompanied by extra rich homemade hot chocolate... mmmmmmmm.... I love LOVE making decadent breakfasts.

The last few days I've been reading Kierkegaard's Either/Or and enjoying it, but then became inescapably distracted by Buffy Season 5. Sad, but inevitable.

-Elizabeth 12:11pm
Saturday, February 14, 2004
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Donald Harington's Home Page. The more I think about With, the more I miss the characters and want to read all his books... They sound delicious.

-Elizabeth 8:35am
Thursday, February 5, 2004
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If dieting can't guarantee happiness, maybe eating can.

I can't express how depressingly real the massive demand for diet books is. Some time in December I sold one of Dr. Phil's Ultimate Weight Solution for Teens and then I was told to wrap it in Christmas paper... Now usually I have a pretty open mind and don't think to carefully about these things, but in that particular case I had some trouble. [article via Bookslut]

-Elizabeth 8:16am
Thursday, February 5, 2004
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With by Donald Harington is fantastic. It's Little House on the Prairie meets Flannery O'Connor. Truly a wonderful thing. Due out in April, but the author's written eleven or twelve other novels that take place in the same fictional town... so they might be worth checking out.

Have another advance copy going as well... a Swedish black comedy called Hash. Yeah. It's interesting. Virgin Suicides is waiting patiently.

-Elizabeth 7:51am
Monday, February 2, 2004
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I woke up this morning with an idea for a high school problem solving class/club called "solve my problems" that researches resources, options, and consequences through problems like... "I'm broke", or "I want to visit paris", or "my sink is clogged", or "I want to get more excercise".... a class that explores different approaches to things and involves the community.

Anyway. So I'm thinking about this, and I google "problem solving" to see what I get, and the number one hit tells me this:

http://www.hawaii.edu/suremath/intro_algebra.html

And I know WHY they tell you that in math. They don't want you to get CONFUSED. But isn't it (in the bigger picture of problem solving in acutal circumstances... which is, after all, the point... right?) infuriating?

-Elizabeth 10:10am
Saturday, January 31, 2004
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Shadow of the Wind is something special. In turns melodramatic, absurd, frightening, charming, foolish... No wasted words. A treat among treats. I finished it instead of doing anything else this weekend. So there was no cooking... but no worries.

Interesting side note: Shadow of the Wind was translated by Lucia Graves, daughter of Robert Graves. It was simply a joy to read, and with its mess of characters, emotions and moods, must have been interesting to translate.

-Elizabeth 8:16pm
Saturday, January 24, 2004
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To cook. Or not to cook. The question of the day. I was prepared to make pork tenderloin, onion soup and salad for my parents... but am I prepared to make such a meal for just Andrew and I? I could read my book... work on my puzzle, take a nap and order pizza instead. But I had gotten excited about cooking and eating a nice meal...

The onion soup recipe is out of this book which caught my eye yesterday as I unpacked it. It's a beautful book, and manages at the same time to be packed with recipes. (I hate it when cookbooks are padded with too many photographs) And it's a paperback... so if the onion recipe worked out I wouldn't feel all that guilty about buying it.

This is so the season for soup. Which, in turn, is why I'm not so keen on going out to buy ingredients. It's nice and warm in here.

-Elizabeth 8:47am
Friday, January 23, 2004
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Shadow of the Wind is great so far. Very well written, lots of big juicy words, but low-key and relaxing. More than anything else, (In the beginning at least... read the first fourteen-ish chapters last night...) It's the sad and humerous story of a young boy trying to figure out himself and the world in post-war Barcelona. It doesn't take itself too seriously and has no trouble carrying itself along... doesn't drag, isn't frantic. Sympathetic characters, engaging story. So far, just a good, solid, enjoyable book.

It's nice to know it'll be waiting for me after this last day of work in my week. Yesterday was full of stress and aggravation. Today I am ready for the weekend.

-Elizabeth 7:56am
Thursday, January 22, 2004
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Virgin Suicides is gooooood. Also there's an advance copy, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon that looks like it really may go somewhere... I'm just dying for another Dream of Scipio. (Not, however, going to get excited about another terrible knock-off antique manuscript book... so we'll see.)

I bought the Bradt Guide to North Korea. Shhh... don't tell Andrew, he's going to give me that you-have-so-freakin-many-books-why-on-earth-do-we-need-that look.

-Elizabeth 8:33am
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
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We do not, I repeat, not close the store on account of football. We do, however, follow the game closely on the internet and fail to get a whole lot else done after the game starts. While not a football fan, and especially not the Andrew, Susie and Karen variety of football fan, I am a little sad I missed the game.

I started many things just after Christmas (see below) and have yet to finish any of them, though I did blow through an advance copy of Me and Orson Wells. A fun, well written, romp. Great main character. And it manages to be a coming-of-age novel without being angsty. Always a good thing. So I finished that at least. I read a little bit of Game of Thrones but if I really get into those I'm afraid I'll turn into my obsessive teenage self. Let's face it, Martin should have picked one plot, not seven hundred. But I've been in a fantasy mood, so I ordered Calvino's The Nonexistent Knight and the Cloven Viscount which isn't really fantasy... but fulfills the same purpose, at least for me. But I haven't actually started that. I've read half of The Conch Bearer by Divakaruni. It's a children's fantasy tale set in India, and very good. And yesterday I started Virgin Suicides finally. It's taken me a while to get past the plot synopsis... but it's wonderful. I should have trusted.

And just to completely switch gears, after reading this, I had to order in the Bradt Travel Guide to North Korea. Because... how could anyone not want to see this? I think I might have to buy it.

-Elizabeth 8:18am
Monday, January 19, 2004
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Andrew is down in Virginia and my family is out of town so I have had a quiet solitary day of puttering, eating leftovers, updating my book page, writing email and reading.

I finished the Alexander McCall Smith advance copy, The Full Cupboard of Life, enjoyed it very very much as I knew I would, and then launched into several other things at once. I started by beginning Baudolino again... very witty and... mmm... original. :) Maybe I'll be able to describe it when I get further in. And then I read the first 80ish pages of Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling which is wonderful. I hadn't read any nonfiction in a while and I was starting to feel a bit guilty... because i'm neurotic. I hate to feel like I'm reading all the same sort of thing all the time. And then when I'd had enough of Italy for the day I read about half of Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson, which is what I really wanted to be reading the whole time but felt the need to warm up for it. I guess.

I get a bit strange when I spend whole days by myself in my apartment...

-Elizabeth 10:20pm
Friday, January 2, 2004
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Love Is Not All: It Is Not Meat Nor Drink

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

-Elizabeth 9:31pm
Thursday, December 25, 2003
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I've counted them up, and it seems that I worked 55 hours last week. Interesting. That would explain why I didn't get out of bed until noon. Today is my only day off, but still, this week should be better. There's nothing left to worry over now... all we can do is sell books. And then I have Christmas and the following two days off. And all my Christmas shopping is done. Somehow.

Now, of course, there's the wrapping. But first, breakfast... lunch. Whatever.

-Elizabeth 12:37pm
Saturday, December 20, 2003
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I updated my book page including my wish list. All you people (Mom), buying me all (some... maybe) books that I ask for, don't panic!... I just added things. :)

-Elizabeth 9:05am
Friday, December 12, 2003
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I'm sorry, I've got gift books on the brain, and it seems like everyone who walks in the store wants to know about Children's books. So...

The Ellen Series is a wonderful series of stories by Crockett Johnson (Author of Harold and the Purple Crayon). Knopf publishes them together in a nice hardcover edition titled Ellen's Lion, and they're the perfect thing if you want a nice gift for an early reader, but don't want to go the paperback series route. (Not that Amelia Bedelia doesn't have her place) They are classic wry old-school humor at it's very best, and great for grown-up children as well. Especially grown-up children who are still in love with Harold.

Other children's books I'm gleefully selling (in addition to the Wombat) include The King of Capri by Jeanette Winterson (You may remember me binging on her adult books earlier this year. I love her. Her children's writing is as good as her adult stuff.), and the Twas the Night Before Christmas illustrated by Tavares... very classy black and white illustrations. Also, the best first-book-about-Christmas I've seen is a book called The Stable Where Jesus was Born. It simply tells the tale in a good read-aloud fashion, and isn't heavy handed or sappy beyond endurance.

And then I always drag people over to Over in the Meadow by Ezra Jack Keats. He's my all time favorite children's author/illustrator... ever since I first read Maggie and the Pirate.

-Elizabeth 8:18am
Friday, December 12, 2003
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