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Here’s a link to today’s “One for the Books” column
on Books for Teens and Tweens.
Archive for the ‘IMHO’ Category
Teens and tweens
Friday, August 27th, 2010She has 4th manuscript
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010Eva Gabrielsson, who lived with author Stieg Larsson for 32 years, says she has a completed fourth manuscript in the Millennium saga, but she won’t let anyone have it because of the way Larsson’s work has been abused, according to the UK Telegraph.
Also, he died without a will, so, since they weren’t legally married, I guess she gets nothing. That certainly isn’t fair.
She says he wanted to call the first book “Men Who Hate Women,” which would have been extremely appropriate. But I don’t disagree with changing the titles to focus on Salander instead. She is a remarkable character.
Come on, Eva. I sympathize with your problems. But Larsson finished the book. He would want it published. The public wants it published. I want it published!
Pretty please, with sugar on it?
Making a better world
Friday, August 13th, 2010
Here’s a link to today’s “One for the Books” column on Making the World a Better Place.
Not just comic books for grownups
Friday, July 30th, 2010
Today’s “One for the Books” column is on Graphic Novels.
Publishing drama over e-books
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010If you’re interested in the publishing industry or e-books or what’s been going on with Random House and Andrew Wylie, this is a really interesting piece.
Here’s what NPR has to say on the subject.
And the Huffington Post has this to say.
Prize-winning novels
Friday, July 23rd, 2010
Today’s “One for the Books” column is on Prize-Winning Fiction.
Deer party
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
Last night I chanced to see what I can only describe as a “party” of deer: at least seven adults and a couple of babies in the tall grass, jumping and rolling and frolicking and playing. It looked like they were jumping into waves of water in the ocean. Then they went their separate ways.
Poetry = Sculpture
Friday, July 16th, 2010
From Shelf Awareness:
Are e-books unpoetic? The Associated Press reported that while prose has found its place in the digital world, for poetry “the gap is especially large because publishers and e-book makers have not figured out how the integrity of a poem can be guaranteed. And a displaced word, even a comma, can alter a poem’s meaning as surely as skipping a note changes a song.”
“I found that even in a very small font that if the original line is beyond a certain length, they will take the extra word and have it flush left on the screen, so that instead of a three-line stanza you actually have a four-line stanza,” former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins observed. “The critical difference between prose and poetry is that prose is kind of like water and will become the shape of any vessel you pour it into to. Poetry is like a piece of sculpture and can easily break.”
My response: Use PDFs, JPGs, GIFs, etc., and treat the as pieces of art rather than text. There you go!
Authors’ lives
Friday, July 9th, 2010
Here’s the link to today’s “One for the Books” column on Authors’ Lives, Real or Imagined
War—Hunh. What is it good for?
Friday, June 25th, 2010“War is always a horror
that can become more of a horror
if undertaken with a weak will.”
–Jay Ambrose
“You don’t start a war.”
– Mary Louise Ruehr
Bionic cat
Friday, June 25th, 2010
from the AP:
LONDON (AP) — Oscar the cat may have lost one of his nine lives, but his new prosthetic paws make him the world’s first bionic cat. After losing his two rear paws in a nasty encounter with a combine harvester last October, the black cat with green eyes was outfitted with metallic pegs that link the ankle to the foot and mimic the way deer antlers grow through skin. Oscar is now back on his feet and hopping over hurdles like tissue paper rolls. After Oscar’s farming accident, which happened when the 2 1/2-year-old-cat was lazing in the sun in the British Channel Isles, his owners, Kate and Mike Nolan, took him to their local veterinarian. In turn, the vet referred Oscar to Dr. Noel Fitzpatrick, a neuro-orthopedic surgeon in Eashing, 35 miles southwest of London.
Together with biomedical engineering experts, Fitzpatrick gave Oscar two metal prosthetic implants that are a bit wobbly, to imitate a cat’s natural walk. But first, he covered the brown implants with black tape to match Oscar’s fur. Fitzpatrick said he and biomedical engineers designed the artificial paws so that they would be fused to the bone and skin. “That allows this implant to work as a seesaw on the bottom of the animal’s limbs to give him (an) effectively normal gait,” he said. “Oscar can now run and jump about as cats should do.” The veterinarians then inserted the peg-like implants by drilling them into Oscar’s ankle bones in his rear legs. The metal implants are attached to the bone where Oscar lost his paws and were coated with a substance that helps bone cells grow directly over them. The cat’s own skin then grew over the end of the peg to form a natural seal to prevent infections. After rehabilitation training that taught Oscar how to walk again, the cat was on all four feet in less than four months. Oscar’s owners said they hoped his new paws would also further the technology for developing artificial limbs for humans. …
As the previous owner of a cat who lost a leg, I found this story especially interesting. Cats are, after all, only human.
Memorable characters
Friday, June 25th, 2010
Why I don’t like Rush
Thursday, June 17th, 2010Read this, if you want to know why I don’t like Rush Limbaugh. Recommending that children dive in dumpsters for food? Unbelievable.
True-life adventure for dad
Friday, June 11th, 2010
Today’s
“One for the Books”
column is on
True-Life
Adventure
for Dad.
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Excerpt from Elizabeth Gilbert’s “The Last American Man”:
“I live,” Eustace said, “in nature, where everything is connected, circular. The seasons are circular. The planet is circular, and so is its passage around the sun. The course of water over the earth is circular, coming down from the sky and circulating through the world to spread life and then evaporating up again. I live in a circular teepee and I build my fire in a circle, and when my loved ones visit me, we sit in a circle and talk. The life cycles of plants and animals are circular. I live outside where I can see this. The ancient people understood that our world is a circle, but we modern people have lost sight of that. I don’t live inside buildings, because buildings are dead places where nothing grows, where water doesn’t flow, and where life stops. I don’t want to live in a dead place. People say that I don’t live in the real world, but it’s modern Americans who live in a fake world, because they’ve stepped outside the natural circle of life. I saw the circle of life most clearly when I was riding my horse across America and I came across the body of a coyote that had recently died. The animal was mummified from the desrt heat, but all around it, in a lush circle, was a small band of fresh green grass. The earth was borrowing the nutrients from the animal and regenerating itself. This wasn’t about death, I realized; this was about eternal life. I took the teeth from that coyota and made myself this necklace right here, which always circles my neck, so I’d never forget that lesson. Do people live in circles today? No. They live in boxes. They wake up every morning in the box of their bedrooms because a box next to them started making beeping noises to tell them it was time to get up. They eat their breakfast out of a box and then they throw that box away into another box. Then they leave the box where they live and get into a box with wheels and drive to work, which is just another big box broken up into lots of little cubicle boxes where a bunch of people spend their days sitting and staring at the computer boxes in front of them. When the day is over, everyone gets into the box with wheels again and goes home to their house boxes and spends the evening staring at the television boxes for entertainment. They get their music from a box, they get their food from a box, they keep their clothing in a box, they live their lives in a box!”
Rainy day books
Friday, May 28th, 2010
Questions of Identity
Friday, May 14th, 2010
Today’s “One for the Books” column is on
“Questions of Identity.”
Kent State, May 4, 1970 — 40 years later
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
Forty years ago. Can it really be?
I revisited my blog entry from last year, and I feel the same. The following links really spoke to my heart:
NPR talked with some of the survivors recently.
This is an excellent article written by the mother of Jeff Miller, whose son is lying dead in the Pulitzer-Prize-winning photo by John Filo, above.
Real women
Friday, April 30th, 2010
Southern hospitality
Friday, April 23rd, 2010
Today’s “One for the Books” column is on
“A Bit of Southern Hospitality.”
Marriage
Friday, April 9th, 2010
Today’s “One for the Books” column is on “Marriage.”
WWJD?
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010Jesus threw the moneylenders out of the temple. Do you really think he wouldn’t want today’s moneylenders to be regulated?
Greenspan?
Monday, April 5th, 2010I just have to repeat this from the Daily Kos (check out the original for links and a video and transcript):
Alan Greenspan tells ABC’s Jake Tapper (who will probably get called a socialist by Republican teabaggers furious that he dared raise a question about right-wing ideology) that the financial crisis does not indict Ayn Rand’s vision of laissez faire capitalism nor the view that financial markets ought to police themselves:
Oddly, despite Greenspan’s throaty defense of Rand and unfettered markets, he concluded by saying that to prevent future financial meltdowns, big institutions should be required to maintain much larger capital reserves.
In other words, even Ayn Rand-loving free market disciples like Alan Greenspan recognize that there is a proper role for regulation when it comes to our financial markets.
There’s something reassuring about that concession. Despite all the bleating about socialism from nutjobs like Glenn Beck, even some of the most rigid free marketers out there understand that our national prosperity (and the success of capitalism) require a certain amount of government oversight.
It’s well-known that over the past half-century, Democratic presidential administrations have created more private sector jobs on average than Republican administrations. Oh, and the stock market does better under Democrats too. (The Dow, which actually fell under Bush, is up a cool 40% under President Obama.)
All this adds up to a simple fact: Democrats aren’t just better for the middle-class, they aren’t just better for the poor, they aren’t just better for America — Democrats are also better for the capitalist economic system that Republican teabaggers claim to defend.
Funny, ain’t it?
MY OPINION: Jesus threw the moneychangers out of the temple. Do you really think he wouldn’t have wanted them to be regulated?
Politicians
Friday, March 26th, 2010
Today’s “One for the Books”
column is on
“Politicians Behaving Badly.”
Favorite childhood books
Thursday, March 18th, 2010Blogger Elizabeth Bluemle talks lovingly about favorite books from your childhood that nobody else seems to know about.
Mine (the only one I know the title for) is “Polka Dot Tots.” Does anybody remember it?
Remember bookplates?
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010Jennifer Schuessler talks about “The Death of the Bookplate.” Check out the illustrations!
Novels set in Ireland
Friday, March 12th, 2010
Bad books, bad
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010The Los Angeles Times discusses the American Book Review’s list of the Top 40 Bad Books. Among those listed: “The Great Gatsby,” “Revolutionary Road,” “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (are you kidding me?) and “Let the Great World Spin.” (Yes, amen to the last one.)
A Meditation on Trees
Monday, March 1st, 2010
At last, we say goodbye to the seemingly endless January and February and hello to March, the promise of spring to come. But before we welcome the verdant green that will be here in a few weeks, let’s pause to look around.
Take a look at a large tree. Have you ever noticed that, without leaves, the branches look just like the roots? It looks as if a giant hand had pulled the tree out of the ground whole, turned it upside-down, and shoved it back down in the ground, with the roots sticking out.
So, imagine that the “roots” you can see are trying to pull nutrients out of the air as roots pull them out of the soil. Can you imagine yourself mustering up your own energy and sending it to the tree, to feed it? Try it. Send it positive thoughts of strength, health, sunshine, love. And as soon as you do, I’ll bet the tree sends you more, right back. You may feel foolish at first, but eventually, I’ll bet it will make you smile.
We are all part of one energy force. Feed a tree.
Thank you to Lisa Scalfaro for the beautiful photograph.
Be happy!
Friday, February 26th, 2010
Today’s “One for the Books” column is “Don’t Worry; Be Happy!”
Lionel Jeffries, R.I.P.
Friday, February 19th, 2010
Actor Lionel Jeffries has died at the age of 83.
I absolutely adored him in his early movies. And as King Pellinore in “Camelot.” And he created the best-best-best audio version of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories ever. It’s hard to find, but if you can locate a copy, listen to it with joy!