First lines in August

How do you choose a book? Perhaps a friend recommends it, or you've read a review. Maybe it's a series that you're reading one by one, or an author you've liked before. I know somebody who refuses to read books in which bad/sad things happen, another who is the opposite and is suspicious of all books with happy endings.  

Me, I read all kinds of stuff but I am a fan of book covers and first lines. I like all of these covers.

 Here are the beginning lines, all of them inviting me into the book:

"This is me when I was 10 years old." (Persepolis, a well-known graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi)

"No one had seen her naked until her death." (The Birth of Venus, historical fiction by trash-writer-I-cannot-put-down Sarah Durant. The opening scene to this book, following that first line, is cinematic.)

"Come along, Bill; we'll have to get there, or we won't hear the first of it." (Bill Brown's Radio, a kids' book from 1929 by Wayne Whipple. An irresistible book from my father-in-law's attic.)

"Ancient mythologies have much to do with modern literature." (Bullfinch's Age of Fable, copyright 1898, the precursor to Edith Hamilton's Mythology. Is his first line still true? I think so.)

"You wouldn't think a boy of six would be excited to get an alarm clock for Christmas."  (This Is Not A Confession, a recent and excellent collection of memoir-essays and "speculative nonfiction" by David Olimpio.)


I have many beloved first lines, but every summer when it turns to August, there is one that stands out. Really, not just the first sentence but the whole first paragraph of Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbit:

The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. 

The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless and hot.

It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too  much color.

Often at night there is lightening, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain.

These are strange and breathless days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.

A beautiful, eerie book for young adults, Tuck Everlasting concerns the threat and curse of immortal life. A story for the ending weeks of summer, I first read it when my kids were 12 or 13, drawn in by it's beginning lines. Every year, right about now it is worth a visit.

Cephalopod Coffeehouse book review: Americanah

Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was somewhere on the "to read" list when my daughter  suggested that I pretend to look at it like a screenwriter might. So, boom, just like that I decided to read it because I'll never ever have another chance for input on a film, even if it's an imaginary film. Fun! As I made my way through this tale of love, race, and adopted countries, I constantly pictured it as a movie. What could be left out? What has to stay? It turns out to be an interesting reader's strategy.

The story revolves around a Nigerian couple, friends from school, who find themselves worlds apart when Ifemelu goes to college in the US and Obinze ends up illegally in England. While she struggles but thrives in Princeton, he is arrested and deported as an undocumented alien in the UK. Eventually Ifemelu also returns to Nigeria to find Obinze dutifully married and caught up in lucrative real estate deals. The book covers three nations and a decade of political change, including the election of America's first black president. It describes the difference between "African Americans" and "American Africans," it examines bi-racial couples, liberal hypocrisy, and the uneasy relationship between non-whites. It looks critically at the country Nigeria has become. It is a really good read.

Here are points/opinions that a screenwriter might consider:

1. Ifem is the main character, but The Zed's story is stunning too. There are two parallel stories, but Obinze's was more weakly portrayed in the book & would have to be beefed up in a film.

2. I like the blog entries and think it gives structure. I pictured these like similar scenes in BBC's latest Sherlock series (you now what I'm talkin' about: Benedict Cumberbatch's version of course). But sometimes those entries tend to preachiness so I guess you'd want to be careful. 

3. Dike! (Ifem's charming nephew who grows up in the US) I don't think the film should show him going to Nigeria. That really fell flat in the book & would be worse in the movie. 

4. This is a story about relationships between couples, and between countries both native and adopted. The scenes in the hairdressers' shops were very telling & gave unity to the story. 

5. Author Adichie spared no one. Not the liberals who were drenched in cringe-worthy self-admiration, and also had (mostly) bratty kids with no manners. Not the academics, who were pretentious and blind. Not African Americans, whose response to Africans was unsupportive. Not the relatives, whose expectations were stifling. Not other Africans, who were (mostly) hustling to make it on their own. Not the blue collar Americans, who could not see Ifem as belonging to a class above them. All were imperfect. 

6. The writing is not without humor. Never forget the light touch, the line that makes you smile.

7. Ifemelu and Obinze do the best that they can to stay afloat in a shifting and treacherous world. In the end they're still doing their best to resolve matters of love and commitment, even though their solution is also, inevitably, imperfect but right.

8.When one finishes a thought-provoking book it provokes thoughts, like it should. So, one final thought is:  the book transcends race. It is also about just...you know...people?  I would keep that in mind if I were writing a screenplay. I would include Shan, Blaine's sister, if you want to transcend race. Shan's self-concern is non-race-specific. She comes and goes in the story, but she's recognizable across-culture.

Will I imagine every book I read from now on as a movie? To some extent, yes. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad one.
 
Up for more book reviews? Visit The Armchair Squid to read or participate.

Cephalopod Coffeehouse book review: The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age

Hetty Green-whom I hadn't heard of -- was worth over 200 million dollars by the time she died in in 1916; that's close to 3 billion dollars in today's money. That seemed like a good reason to read this book, plus it was February's selection for my book club. My rather low opinion of Wallach's biography was in the minority Wednesday night when we met to talk about it. Here are the positive aspects of the book:

1. It sheds light on the unlikely story of an astute business woman in the man's world of the late 1800's. This is the strongest reason to read Wallach's book.

2. The financial panics of 1873, 1893, and 1907 bore uncanny likenesses to the economic woes of 2008.

3. Hetty was an oddball and that's interesting. One woman announced Wednesday night that she liked Hetty and thought they could be friends.

4. Hetty Green was an astonishing money-maker.

So I had to defend myself, a newcomer to this intellectual, outspoken, and independent group of women comprising the book club...all eyes on poor little me, who sheepishly had to say I didn't much like this book. Here are a few reasons that I blurted out:

1. It does NOT shed light on the unlikely story of an astute business woman in the man's world of the late 1800's. Wallach's research into Hetty's life depended mostly on the yellow journalism reports of her written in her lifetime, and these are just not credible. Fascinating, but not credible.

2. I'm not sure that the panics of the 1800's can be fairly compared to the real estate bubble of 2008. Maybe. Hetty's profiteering from such low points is classic, though. Should I admire her for that? 

3. Hetty was an oddball in terms of a lust for money and little else. Though she clearly loved her family, she was controlling, conniving, miserly and tyrannical towards all. She was against women's suffrage. Certainly the culture of the Edwardian era was different from present day, but I couldn't find it in my heart to say that we could ever be friends. Okay, she was very fond of her dog. I could've talked dogs with her.

4. Hetty Green was a litigious zealot. Even all of those who liked this book admitted to skipping some pages, tedious passages about lawsuits. I probably skipped 6-10 such pages, which is a lot. "It's a shame when one can't put up with reading the hard stuff," said a person who loved the book, and I agree with her. But who wants to put up with boring stuff? Even she skipped some of these passages.

5. Hetty Green DID make a lot of money. Here's her secret: buy low, sell high. I know that's shocking.

I had trouble loving a book about somebody as unlikeable as Hetty. Even so I'm glad I read it because now I know who she was. Watch this short clip about Hetty, who bought up real estate in Chicago when banks were going belly-up:



For more book reviews, visit Armchair Squid and check them out.

Cephalopod Coffeehouse book review: The Goldfinch

Photo from CBS News

The Goldfinch, a tiny painting by Dutch painter Carel Fabritius created a huge stir at New York's Frick Museum exhibition of Dutch art these past few months. The star of the show was supposed to be  Vermeer's exquisite Girl With A Pearl Earring (made extra famous by Tracy Chevalier's 1999 historical novel, followed by a movie).

Line outside the Frick. Photo by Christian Johnston

October 22, the day that the Frick exhibit opened, was the same day that Donna Tartt's novel The Goldfinch was released, an accidental synchronicity of which neither the author, publisher, nor museum had been aware. This seems crazily unlikely, but there you have it. Crowds lined up to see it until the exhibit closed on January 19.

The painter Fabritius died in an explosion that leveled a quarter of the Dutch city of Delft in 1654, when the artist was only 32 years old. His studio and most of his work was destroyed, although this tiny tromp l'oeil painting of a chained bird managed to survive the disaster with minimal damage. I wish I could have seen The Goldfinch when it was in the US, but instead I read the eponymous book.

The  painting is the fulcrum of Donna Tartt's book, in which it survives another awful explosion and is taken from the surreal rubble by the book's dazed 13-year-old protagonist Theo. I couldn't resist wanting to read this novel, which sounded like a combination of art-crime and a coming-of-age story.

Be warned: the painting of a small bird chained to a shelf should be your first clue... The Goldfinch is not a fun and easy read. It's kind of like watching a Coen brothers movie: you can't look away and you keep hoping that the hapless characters will stop their downward spiral of terrible ideas. There is a desolate, feral quality to poor Theo's teen years, and there are lots and lots of drugs. Just when a character seems ready to fly free, he's yanked back to reality, kind of like that poor little bird. Tough stuff, and not to everybody's taste. Yet...I kept reading.  Nobody in this book is perfect, but just when you think a character is a total loser, he/she does something or says something redeeming. There is dark humor. Theo and his Ukranian friend Boris get mixed up in international crime, but you never stop hoping they'll come out okay.

This is a post 9-11 book with the main questions spelled out in the end.  As Boris says:

...good doesn't always follow from good deeds, nor bad deeds result from good, does it? Even the wise and good cannot see the end of all actions.

I wish I could tell you how the book ends, but that would be a mistake. You should read it. You won't love most of what happens, but it is a good book.

At the recent Dutch Painting exhibit, Frick Museum, New York. Photo by Karstan Moran for the NYT

I'm out of town for  a few days, but when I come back I'll want to catch up on the other book reviews at Armchair Squid.

Cephalopod Coffeehouse: The Secret Life of Pronouns

It seems like a lifetime ago that I was a student of applied linguistics at the University of Wisconsin. The year was 1988, just on the cusp of the computer age. The university computer labs ran 24-7; without windows or anything resembling comfortable furniture, they looked like stuffy, oddly lit caves in which it was easy to lose track of time. They were like casinos without any fun lights, food,  or music. It was a lucky thing to major in a subject that required me to spend zero time in such places. 

But one day a syntax prof said, "Computers are the future of linguistics. In your lifetime there will be computers with whom you will converse, and computers that will try to understand the meaning of what you write. However, the nuances of language and social convention will make this very difficult to achieve." Twenty five years later, thanks to computational linguists, we have Siri answering questions on iPhones and Google analyzing email for possible ad targeting.  This month I read a book that describes how computers can psyche me out by counting the number of times I use pronouns and articles.

 

The Secret Life of Pronouns is a book easily devoured in a couple of sittings, but I hesitate to recommend it to anybody but the geekiest. It's written by a psychologist so passionate about his  computer analyses of a vast array of written English (Lady Gaga's tweets, Shakespeare's King Lear,  Lincoln's Gettysburg address, John Kerry's campaign speeches, Enron emails...) that well...you might tire of it. But for word buffs, James Pennebaker's faith in his number crunching of "stealth words" in a wide variety of contexts is interesting.

Pennebaker, image from Yale Scientific

 "Stealth words" are those little guys that we never pay much attention to: pronouns, articles, and the like. Merely counting the number of times that a writer uses the pronoun "I" can indicate  gender, state of mind, and social status. Pennebaker's computer analysis of poetry is scary-accurate in its ability to predict the authors' suicides. Depression, self-deception, honesty, love, support, and the language of power are all covered by computer word-counts of "stealth words." Could this become a psychologist's tool? Maybe.

Always skeptical of technological fixes for human issues, I thought I might hate this book. The prose was approachable, if a bit odd...why suggest that the reader could skip the first chapter, and then say you might regret it, for example? But I did not hate this book. It was fun, and that's a big thing for a non-non-fiction reader to admit. I enjoyed his analysis of Obama's much-criticized use of "I," and I loved what the computer thought of Woody Allen's male characters' lines.

Final word: if you're a word buff, read this book. If you're mildly interested but don't want to buy the book, go to the website and take some short quizzes and do the exercises!  You'll become part of the ongoing research in applied linguistics, and you may learn something about yourself.

And then come back and tell me how you did on the "I" test. :-)

 For some more book ideas check out Armchair Squid:

Cephalopod Coffeehouse: September's read

By far the best book I read in September was The Engagements, by J. Courtney Sullivan, which went on my book list after Suze's recommendation in June. Thank you Suze! That was a great read, so deftly written that even an observant reader isn't likely to guess how it all wraps up. Plus it contains the most complete and wickedly satisfying revenge-after-a-jilting scene ever. Go for it.

 Littering my table right now are old newspapers, a classic or two, a mystery, a Japanese novel, some poetry, a fashion review, a book about cowgirls, ads from the Sunday paper, some comics, and a steampunk novel, volume 1. Oh, and a wrapper from a Baby Ruth. I'll take a dart, throw it at my table and see where it lands.

Aha. Let's hear it for steampunk, a term I loosely associate with vaguely-Goth fashion shoots, dirigibles, clockwork, Jules Verne, metallic jewellery, top hats, and a few recent movies such as Hugo, which contained an animatron. What's not to love?

Especially with cover art like this:

Seriously, if your name were Lilith Saintcrow wouldn't you be writing books exactly like this?  Actually Ms. Saintcrow has written prodigiously in the areas of urban and historical fantasy as well as "paranormal romance." I got this book for .99 on my Nook reader, just for fun. (Don't worry: the dart barely nicked my Nook.)

One of the annoying things about the Nook "find of the day" books is that they're often the first in a lame series of dumb books, and this is definitely in that category. However I do like to supplement my diet of quality reads with some cheap fun. It's like eating Cheetos once in awhile.

The Iron Wyrm Affair is all about an  atmospheric, alternative-London filled with sorcerers, witches, and the like. If you're a fantasy or sci-fi buff you would probably like this book. My favorite thing about it was the off-beat vocabulary. I found myself using the dictionary function  a lot, looking up a mixture of made-up words (no definitions found, duh) and slightly obscure or antiquated words. Here are some  favorite words:

juddering: vibrating with intensity
homonculus: a little man
curricle: a chaise drawn by 2 horses
antimacassar: a cover to protect the back or arms of furniture
simulacrum: insubstantial image
caracole: half-turn executed by a mounted horse
greaves: armor for the shins
coja: (invented) a mind-sharpening drug
mentath: (invented)  brilliant mind devoted to logic and reason

This is not a must-read book. But if you're in the mood for Cheetos then by all means, indulge.


Interested in some book ideas? Check out the Cephalopod Coffeehouse, Friday September 27,  hosted by Armchair Squid:

1.	The Armchair Squid	2.	Remembering Grace
3.	Vanessa Morgan	4.	Trisha @ WORD STUFF
5.	M.J. Fifield	6.	Denise Covey @ L'Aussie Writing
7.	My Creatively Random Life	8.	Subliminal Coffee
9.	The Random Book Review	10.	Divine Secrets of the Writing Sisterhood
11.	Scouring Monk	12.	Clarissa Draper
13.	Huntress	14.	mainewords
15.	Excuse Me While I Note That Down	16.	Mark Noce Stories
17.	StrangePegs -- Temporary Anne	18.	Blue Sky Gazing
19.	What's Up! MOCK?	20.	Nicki Elson
21.	V's Reads	22.	Stephen Tremp

Cephalopod Coffeehouse: The Lemon Tree

One of the many perqs of being married to John is that I get to tag along when he goes someplace great. When that happens I pick up some fiction to read before and during the trip, and it's always best if the reading is related to the place. When we went to Spain I re-read Carlos Ruiz Zafon's Shadow of the Wind; Japan was Haruki Murakami's IQ84 and while in Kyoto I read Ellis Avery's The Teahouse Fire. Absorbing a culture through the fiction of the place is a roundabout way of learning, but I prefer it to nonfiction.  I'm too lazy to read the facts straight-out.

 

Anyway. Last week we went to northeastern Oregon, and I was without a book about this area.

However I had this, a work of nonfiction being read by a book group I may join. The Lemon Tree, published in 2006, sprang from a compelling 1999 NPR Fresh Air episode narrated by the author Sandy Tolan. It's a history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict told via the true story of Dalia and Bashir; the author says he tried to write as though it were a novel, without a single thing being made-up. Good, that sounds like nonfiction I can handle.

Dalia Ashkenazi's family fled Europe after World War II, just as Bashir Al Khayri's family were forced out of their home in Palestine. Dalia grows up in Bashir's abandoned home, and from the time he knocks on the door when she is 19 years old until decades later when they're both in their 60's, the moral conflict of what is right and what is wrong becomes clouded.

So I find myself reading this book about exile on the very site of one of the darkest and most shameful episodes in US history:  the banishing of Chief Joseph's Nez Perce people from their homeland in 1877.

 

This plaque is on a tiny piece of land deeded over to the Nez Perce at the edge of Wallowa, Oregon: Respect this place, yourself, and all that come here.

The war is over and the Nez Perce will never get their homeland back entirely. But they can come here to celebrate who they are, to dance on the green grass, and to honor their ancestors.

As I absorbed the somber quality of the Nez Perce homeland, I couldn't help but think about Palestine. Turns out I was reading something completely appropriate to northeastern Oregon after all, nonfiction to boot. I did like the book, but-predictably- the most riveting parts are the actual encounters between Dalia and Bashir.  Their dialog nurtures a slight hope that the mobius strip of problems in the middle east might work out to a peaceful end after all.

But like the homeland of the Nez Perce, whatever happens in the future, there will always be a deep and abiding sadness from the past.

To see what others have been reading this month, check out the Cephalopod Coffeehouse at Armchair Squid.

Cephalapod Coffeehouse book review: The Shining Girls

The Shining Girls, just published in the US on June 4th, rocketed to the top of my must-read list when I realized it featured a time traveler and a kick-ass heroine. I started  Lauren Beukes' novel at 10:30PM, got to page 9... and slammed it shut. Well, ok, it was on a Nook, so yeah it's impossible to slam something shut on an e-reader; that would be like trying to slam the door when you live in a pup tent. E-readers are unsatisfying like that. Anyway, by page nine it had already become obvious that this was going to be a scary read, not meant for bedtime. It's on this page that a scumbag sociopath from the Hoover era, tears the wings off of a bumblebee in front of a little girl meant to be a future victim. Ack. Animal cruelty and  serial killing: not my general cup of tea.

A few days passed, and one bright afternoon while nursing a head cold I gave the book another chance, deciding that I could just skip the horrific passages. And then, written with 12 POVs in the present tense, I could hardly put it down. It's a genius idea: a serial killer driven by his own terrible pathology plus the sinister demands of a spooky house in Englewood, Chicago, spends almost 7 decades hunting his victims: the "shining girls." All of these girls are filled with potential, and all but one are destined to be stalked and die a grisly death at the hand of Harper Curtis, who disappears into another era leaving behind nothing but small, puzzling artifacts. The group of victims is an odd cross-section of historic icons: a biologist, a social worker, a cross-dresser, a Rosie-the Riveter type, and a "radium girl," among others. The radium dancer is a clever device: shining too brightly is fatal in Harper's dark world.

 

  "Radium Dancers" were entertainers who painted themselves with radium for a glowing effect. Image from Vintage Photos.

And then there is Kirby Mazrachi, who survives Harper's attack (thanks to the heroics of her poor dog, who dies in the act, because it's an awful rule that all dogs have to die sad deaths in every book ever written.) Kirby hunts back.  Her sidekick, Dan Velasquez, a sportswriter for the Chicago Sun-Times makes a good partner in her unlikely quest.

In the end, The Shining Girls wasn't the slasher-novel I feared, but an original take on the tried-and-true crime novel. If I were to change anything about this book it would be:

1. Let Kirby's dog live; there is certainly carnage enough.
2. Illustrate it with vintage pics of the Chicago neighborhoods and landmarks that all play a part.
3. Allow me to like something about the sociopath Harper Curtis. I prefer my villains to be confusing.

There was a bidding war between publishers when Beukes-who is from South Africa- first released a partial manuscript in 2011. It's kind of funny that Harper Collins won out with its high 6-figure amount, because the name "Harper" will never be quite the same after reading this book. I hope they don't make a movie out of "The Shining Girls," but it seems inevitable. Books with trailers like this seem to attract film options:





If you'd like to submit a book review, by all means join the list. The Cephalapod Coffeehouse participants publish on the last Friday of every month:

Cephalopod Coffeehouse book review: Out of the Shadows

It's the last Friday of the month, time to own up to what I've read in the past 4 weeks, and for the most part it isn't a pretty picture. Buzzfeed online. The Funny Times for a newspaper. And a new low in fiction: Desperate Housedogs by Sparkle Abbey. My god, how embarrassing! Literary junk food for a whole month? Armchair Squid of The Cephalopod Coffeehouse wonders what my best read has been.

There is one book that sets itself apart from the summertime drivel: Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows, by Richard Cahan and Michael Williams. It's a book about  a photographer who has fascinated me since I first heard about her a couple of years ago: Vivian Maier, the so-called "nanny photographer," whose thousands of undeveloped rolls of film were sold off at an auction in 2007 when she was ill and unable to pay for their storage.

Vivian died unknown in 2009. But John Maloof, who bought the spools of film hoping to find original material for a book he was writing about a Chicago neighborhood, soon realized that he was sitting atop a mountain of astonishing street photography, shot mostly in Chicago, but also in New York and France. Maloof's book Vivian Maier: Street Photographer probably contains more of Vivian's most powerful images than Cahn and Williams book, but less about the details of her secretive life.

Out of the Shadows' unedited photos accompany anecdotes gleaned from interviews with the families for whom she worked during the 50's and 60's. Imagine a nanny who took you on field trips to the Chicago livestock yards...that's pretty strange.

Maier's ability to capture forceful images on everyday walks with her young charges is astounding.


I highly recommend this book, especially in tandem with Maloof's book. I hope to see the documentary (just out this year) about Vivian Maier.  Check out the trailer here:





Writing this book review has made me  feel a little better about myself. One good book per month is better than none.

Salt Water

Considering how many books get devoured around here, it's surprising that I've never written a book review. Oh, unless you count swooning over YA fiction The Hunger Games, (more than once) yeah I guess that might count.

Then Armchair Squid started Cephalopod Coffeehouse, saying all you have to do is write a review of the best book you read in May and publish it on May 31. The details are here. The other participants are probably all super smart and very literate, so this could prove to be a daunting task. However, impressed by the the completely irrelevant tidbit that Mr. Squid's wife is a devoted fellow fan of Benedict Cumberbatch,  I am encouraged to jump in. 

Early this month I read Salt Water, by Charles Simmons,  a former editor of the New York Times Book Review. This little book-a mere 176 pages-was published in 1998, the year John and I both switched jobs and moved from Alabama to Oregon, a year when there was almost no time to read. What made me choose it a decade and a half later was:

1. It's a coming-of-age novel, told in the voice of a 15 year old boy, 35 years after the fact.
2. The author won a PEN Faulkner award for fiction.
3. The story is set in a time that's not-now.
4. Somewhere it was called "luminous." I should keep a list of the books that are described  with this adjective. It would surely number in the thousands.
5. At only $1.99 it wasn't a big risk.


Salt Water is a gem of a book. I didn't realize it was a re-telling of an old classic, although the opening quote was a clue that one should also read Turgenev's novella:

 "WELL, THAT'S AGREED THEN," HE SAID, SETTLING HIMSELF INTO AN ARMCHAIR AND LIGHTING A CIGAR. "EACH OF US IS TO TELL THE STORY OF HIS FIRST LOVE. IT'S YOUR TURN, SERGEY NIKOLAICH."
--Ivan Turgenev, "First Love," 1860

What I love about Charles Simmon's writing is its spareness. There isn't a single unnecessary word. The first sentence describes the skeleton of the entire book:

In the summer of 1963 I fell in love and my father drowned.

You continue to read this sad tale, knowing the ending after just a few words at the start.  The book's languid atmosphere belies a tense undercurrent that keeps you going. The story contains a philanderer, and a mother-daughter set of femme fatales. There's a sailboat and a couple of dogs, the beach, cigarettes,  martinis, and a mother-father-son relationship under pressure. America hasn't lost its innocence to the assassination of a president, but it is very close, a summer vacation in 1963. The atmosphere is so thick that you can feel it closing in around you.

Whaa, now I feel like re-reading it. Why not? It's short!

Cloudy Dog

"I am a fan of animated shorts" is the sentence I just wrote  & also the inspiration I just gave myself for a little video, starring a pair of talking Bermuda shorts. Think of the adventures they could have.

This is supposed to be a short post (DAMN, these puns, sorry) and it's already off-topic.

If you've ever had a dog, you should take 3 minutes to watch this little video, the whole thing. It explores the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches of dogginess. Eventually the Cloudy Dog articulates.

This is a sweet and grateful short film by Japanese graduate student Asami Ike.

Books

There should be some kind of moratorium on being sick in warm weather. I have just gotten over a cold that laid me low over the long weekend. I cured myself by letting John do everything, and by blissing out on hot lemon Thera-flu which caused me to sleep and sleep and sleep. However I did burn through two books (Swamplandia! by Karen Russell. Reservation Blues, by Sherman Alexie). There is always energy enough to read.

Books. It's hard to get along without them.

I love to read, to become lost in some other world, and then to come out of it and think about it. In the past 5 days we have acquired a new bookshelf to help organize our piles and piles of books...

...and I've just gotten an e-reader, a Nook, to be exact. The excuse for this little device is that we will go to Japan for two weeks in June, and I'll need the requisite amount of reading material, so many books that there isn't much room for clothes.

The accessibility of reading material in the palm of your hand is pretty cool. But still, it can't really compare, can it. It's like when LPs were replaced by cassettes and then CDs, and then MP3s; we lost the cover art and all of those liner notes; the feel and look of things changed. It's like wine in a box: it gets the job done, but there is no panache.

For 99 cents I bought 25 books last night, all oldies (think the Bronte sisters, etc), and this morning I dropped 55 bucks on 5 more books. But oddly, I haven't read anything yet.

I already miss the books themselves. Going completely electronic seems unlikely.

The zen of one thing

The profound love held by Native Americans for horses is so well-expressed in this video, winner of PBS's recent 5-week-long online film festival. This is a 7-minute short film narrated in Navajo with English subtitles.  Entered in the "Offbeat" category it was a surprise win, topping more amusing videos, more current-trend films.

If you can get into the zen of examining one thing, you will like this movie as much as I do.

See more from PBS Online Film Festival.

"In beauty it is said. Thank you."

Twice

After months of discussing Suzanne Collins' books with rabid fans, after following fan websites and sneak preview glimpses, after registering with TheCapitol.pn, after acquiring a Mellark Bakery t-shirt, and after re-watching "Winter's Bone," yesterday-the day before spring break-I went with a group of 180 14-year-olds to see the long-awaited  Hunger Games movie.

 

 Whew. Could there be a better field trip? Even the bus driver had a smile.

 

During the movie nobody talked, threw popcorn, or even left for the bathroom: unheard-of with a group such as ours! Afterward there was much arguing about the details left out of the movie, but mostly I think this film was well-received by fans. I won't spoil it by commenting further.

 Later we took a short quiz from the World Food Programme, which yesterday donated a free meal to a hungry child for every completed survey.

And thennnnnnn...we decorated cupcakes Here's to you, Peeta:

This evening I go to the movie again! Along with family, this time. Twice in one weekend, that's a lot for me.