8 posts tagged “sunday brunch”
Someone once mentioned, on a blog I visit frequently, that it's a real shame that Douglas Adams is gone, for many reasons, of course, but not the least of which is that he'd have had a hell of a blog. A blog which she - and I - would dearly have loved to be reading. Right now.
Douglas Adams didn't have a blog, but he did write freelance articles for magazines as well as a regular column for The Independent (a London paper). Some of the best of these various articles plus some short stories and the rough beginning of a Dirk Gently novel are compiled here in the wonderful Salmon of Doubt.
You don't have to like funny science fiction or any science fiction at all to enjoy this one. He covers travel, strange men in smelly rhinoceros suits, swimming with (or at least near) manta rays, the Beatles, Procol Harum, technology in general, Macs in particular, and the life of being a writer completely hopeless at meeting deadlines. Yes, there's bits about Hitchhiker's, naturally. It's also a handy reference for making a perfect cup of British tea, in case that's something you ever find yourself likely to do.
Most of the articles are quite short, so it's a good book to take along when you know you'll have moments to snatch for a bit of a read. The paperback fits nicely into a small purse or backpack for easy carry. Though I imagine the audio version is wonderful as well, for I'm certain they got someone with a lovely British voice to do the reading.
I really enjoyed this little book and found myself laughing out loud about something on almost every page. If you need a giggle, or a really good cup of tea, give the Salmon of Doubt a try sometime.
Sure, it's an oldie, and almost everyone who might be interested in it has probably already read it. But, if you haven't, go do it right now.
In light of the article from NYT that I linked to a couple of days ago, I thought it would be a good time to dig up Huxley. In the NYT article "Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge," there is a line that struck me, reminding me of BNW. "Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters." That's pure BNW, folks.
I am ever more convinced that this book is truly representative of our times, more so than Orwell's 1984. After all, why go to the expense and trouble of policing and spying on your citizens with Big Brother when you can simply anesthetize them with TV, Prozac, infotainment, alcohol, and Britney Spears? Get them so focused on non-issues like abortion, fat, gay marriage, and celebrity death that they don't have any interest in the business as usual corruption of politics or some country they've never heard of murdering and raping its citizens. It's boring, after all, and takes too much effort to actually think about something rather than letting CNN or FOX tell you what to think. We don't really need to be policed and spied on because we simply do not care about government, politics, or the idea that history repeats endlessly when the people allow themselves to become numb and dumb. Let me have my soma and Bravo TV, please, I'm not interested in how a dictatorship is born.
So, yes, some of Brave New World will seem a bit dated to modern eyes. The people seem quaint and stuck in a sort of 1940's innocence that we no longer possess. It was written in 1932, after all. It projects the plastic fantastic and hovercar world that the 1940's thought we'd have by the 21st century. The speech seems antiquated, but that isn't insurmountable. But Huxley's view of "the future" still feels on target, even if it did arrive about 500 years sooner than he expected - well, okay, we probably won't have the hovercars until then, but boy do we have the sex and the soma and the mindless entertainment and the lack of interest in intellectualism and hedonistic consumerism and the idea that we are supposed to Always Be Happy, Dammit.
Read it if you haven't. Read it again if you have. Welcome to your future.
Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner.
This wasn't the first book of Jennifer Weiner's that I had read, I actually read In Her Shoes first, then this one (and yes it pretty much pissed me off that they cast skinny little Toni Collette as the "fat" sister - they put her in bulky sweaters and called it fat...whatever). But I liked this one much better. After these two, though, JW delved ever further into exploring motherhood lit rather than fat chick lit and I wasn't as interested. However, she writes a darn good book, so if you're into the whole having babies thing, the rest of her books are probably perfectly swell.
So, there's chick lit - The Devil Wears Prada, and that sort of thing - but for the rest of us there's fat chick lit, too. Naturally it isn't nearly as popular as tales about The Beautiful People, as you would expect. Jennifer Weiner is definitely one of the better voices in fat chick lit and I really recommend Good in Bed. It was funny and sad and very touching. JW definitely understands how it feels to be a large woman trying to find acceptance and love. Maybe her heroines are a bit too "Friends" for my tastes, sometimes... in other words, nobody I know really lives that kind of life, and, even if the heroine is a fat chick, she's one that "passes" for attractive ("you'd be so pretty IF...").
The first bit that really, really sucked me in was JW's hook (as it should!) which was the heroine, Cannie, reading an article in a magazine that just happened to be written by her ex-boyfriend... about her... about why he loved a fat woman. About why he couldn't be with her any more. This excerpt is from the first chapter, the entirety of which can be found online at JW's website:
"Her shoulders were as broad as mine, her hands were almost as big, and from her breasts to her belly, from her hips down the slope of her thighs, she was all sweet curves and warm welcome. Holding her felt like a safe haven. It felt like coming home.
But being out with her didn’t feel nearly as comfortable. Maybe it was the way I’d absorbed society’s expectations, its dictates of what men are supposed to want and how women are supposed to appear. More likely, it was the way she had. C. was a dedicated foot soldier in the body wars. At five foot ten inches, with a linebacker’s build and a weight that would have put her right at home on a pro football team’s roster, C. couldn’t make herself invisible.
But I know that if it were possible — if all the slouching and slumping and shapeless black jumpers — could have erased her from the physical world, she would have gone in an instant. She took no pleasure from the very things I loved, from her size, her amplitude, her luscious, zaftig heft.
As many times as I told her she was beautiful, I know that she never believed me. As many times as I said it didn’t matter, I knew that to her it did, and it always would. I was just one voice, and the world’s voice was louder. I could feel her shame like a palpable thing, walking beside us on the street, crouched down between us in a movie theater, coiled up and waiting for someone to say what to her was the dirtiest word in the world: fat.
And I knew it wasn’t paranoia. You hear, over and over, how fat is the last acceptable prejudice, that fat people are the only safe targets in our politically correct world. Date a queen-sized woman and you’ll find out how true it is. You’ll see the way people look at her, and look at you for being with her. You’ll try to buy her lingerie for Valentine’s Day and realize the sizes stop before she starts. Every time you go out to eat you’ll watch her agonize, weighing what she wants against what she’ll let herself have, what she’ll let herself have against what she’ll be seen eating in public.
And what she’ll let herself say...
Loving a larger woman is an act of courage in this world, and maybe it’s even an act of futility. Because, in loving C., I knew I was loving someone who didn’t believe that she herself was worthy of anyone’s love. "
Time for tissue in the fat chick camp...
(By the way, I should add that I really appreciate you and your courage, my love. And thank you for helping me feel worthy.)
The Double Helix, by James Watson
Below is the introduction and other bits of an essay I wrote on The Double Helix for a class called Literature of Science and Technology. When I first realized that I had to read the memoir I was afraid that it would be very dry and boring. However, it was written not very long after Watson and Crick got their Nobel, and young James Watson turned out to be very a very amusing memoir writer. Of course, now, as even back then, there's a bit of unpleasantness in Mr. Watson's personality, but putting that aside, the tale of the discovery of the structure of DNA is a very good tale.
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With his memoir, The Double Helix, James Watson tells not only the story of the discovery of the structure of DNA, but also gives non-scientists a look at how science is truly done. He says, “As I hope this book will show, science seldom proceeds in the straightforward logical manner imagined by outsiders” (7). Contrary to what most of us learn in high school science classes, the scientific method is not the whole of science. Research and intuition play a large part in the process well before the scientific method is even brought to bear, while the people behind the science are important in bringing all of these elements together at the proper time and place. Watson shows us that, though not all scientists are brilliant – or perhaps, because of this – much more than lab work is behind scientific advancement.
Watson devotes a great deal of his short tome to ruining the idea that all scientists are great geniuses, with a full interest in and knowledge of every possible scientific subject. He states this bluntly early on: “...a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid” (13). He even relates his own science shortcomings from time to time. Watson, for instance, was a poor chemist and also made it a point to avoid subjects which required difficult math (17). It is for this reason that the research stage of scientific discovery is vitally important. It goes far beyond simply reading a few textbooks or scholarly papers. As Watson shows throughout The Double Helix, research also involves attending seminars, consulting with experts in fields one does not fully comprehend, and even casual conversations with other scientists at pubs and dinner parties. He shows that, though a scientist might not know a particular thing, they ought to be acquainted with someone who does.
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Watson felt it was important to describe not only the bare facts about the science of DNA, but of the surrounding factors and personalities which helped move the science along. In his preface he says, “[Science's] steps forward (and sometimes backward) are often very human events in which personalities and cultural traditions play major roles.” (7). Watson shows that cooperation among the personalities was just as important as competition. Cooperation is even more important after the science is done, as well. A hypothesis is not widely accepted as true just because one laboratory says it is; many other scientists must delve into the matter, offer opinions, verify or deny the claim, as Pauling, Wilkins, and Franklin did with the Watson-Crick DNA structure at the end of Watson's tale. In the end, neither the personality quirks nor the conflicts which arose were more important than finding out the truth.
My Physics instructor has not yet handed back our tests from Monday, so I don't know exactly how I did. I don't think it was very good, however. The test was over the first four chapters, Measurement, Motion on a Straight Line, Vectors, and Motion in Two and Three Dimensions. I had a pretty decent handle on things through vectors, but I got really messed up in Chapter 4. Uniform circular motion was fine, and I almost understood projectile motion but I don't think I ever managed to complete a relative motion problem on my own. So, the plan now is to add a projectile motion problem and a relative motion problem to my homework every day until I get the hang of them. I have this strange feeling that they will become harder and more important as we move forward...
At any rate, as no one really noticed, that means that this past Sunday's Sunday Brunch book review had to be pushed aside while I studied for said test. Just in case someone is waiting in breathless anticipation for my next review, I wanted to clear that up. <wink>
In other, much better news, my second ever technical document (a user guide for a web application) was sent to the client and accepted and approved with wild acclaim. Or, at least, no loud complaints. They seemed to like it, and didn't send back any changes. Go me!
(Okay, so this is closer to a Sunday midnight snack than a brunch, but it's been a crazy weekend.)
This little 60 page gem is just about the handiest little reference I've encountered since I came back to school. Between my beloved and myself, we have now accumulated about six, perhaps seven, grammar and mechanics handbooks, most of which are just the same damn thing. Some of them I do like, and one of them I helped write (as a student project, so it's no big deal, really), but this one I am fond of because it is simply the basics in a very small book. It's small enough to tuck into a duo-tang folder, and even comes with holes down the side for just that purpose.
Grammar and mechanics are explained in easy, short sections, rarely longer than a paragraph or two, unless its something more complicated. There are several examples in each section, both wrong and right samples, to highlight the difference. There is a short table of contents on the front inside cover and, even better, a "Quick Locator Chart" on the back cover to help you find just the right section. The entire intent of this grammar guide is to get you essential information quickly, not to put you to sleep with a dissertation on comma splices that you won't remember anyway.
In comparison to the more complete, trade size style guides or handbooks, this one does have a few disadvantages. One, it isn't comprehensive, but of course, that was the point. And second, the larger books have those handy tabs so that you can just flip to the section you want. In English Simplified, you really do have to look up the section on the back cover and then go find it in the book. But when I just need a quick reminder of some minor rule, this book suits my purposes perfectly well, and I still don't have to dig through endless dull paragraphs to get to the heart of the information. I can definitely recommend it as a supplement to a regular format style guide. You can keep the big style guide on your shelf at home for reference, but English Simplified can go with you anywhere!
Okay, so last week zombies, this week, more undead: vampires, zombies again, and other supernatural creepy crawlies. I promise, this isn't a pattern...
I'm going to sort of review the bulk of the series all at once here, because I can't wholeheartedly recommend Laurell K. without a few reservations about the way the series has turned lately. Let's start with the good stuff! Anita Blake is a fantastic heroine. She starts out pretty one dimensional - the beautiful tough chick with a chip on her shoulder - but Laurell K. puts in the work, allowing Anita to change and grow - some things for the better, some things for the worse. She isn't precisely the Anti-hero, but she's got enough darkness to make her interesting. Her supporting cast is full of varied and interesting beings, who don't develop quite so much, though the sheer number of her supporting cast certainly grows.
Plot? Well, here's where things get wonky. The first several books are paranormal mysteries, really. Anita works as a consultant for a police task force charged to investigate supernatural crimes. Murders by or of vampires and other monsters, for instance. There's also this important subplot about Anita being a necromancer, just to keep things interesting. This part of the series is just plain fun. Mystery, horror, mythology, the counterplay of Anita's "normal" life and her "paranormal" life. The series is well written (okay, Laurell K. isn't Emily Dickinson, but she isn't Jackie Collins, either), and exciting - can't wait to get to the next one exciting. There is, even from book one, a lot of sexual tension, and eventually, a whole lot of sex. A. Whole. Lot. of. Sex.
And here's where things break down. I can totally get behind the first nine books in the series, even with the ever-increasing porn. (And hey, nine books is a good, long series - you could stop there and feel like you've done your duty by Laurell K., and that she'd done her job as an author.) In fact, as an aside, book 9 (Obsidian Butterfly) is amazingly good and is a slight departure from the rest of the series - Anita leaves town to lend a helping hand to a "friend" of hers, Edward, upon whom the story largely focuses. Edward is a true Antihero. Edward is a Bad Man. It's brilliant, and possibly the best book in the series - and notably, the one with the least sex.
There are at least three, maybe now four, more books in the series. I know that I read three more after Obsidian Butterfly. But these last few books have been... disappointing. I didn't even bother to find out about any new releases, which is why I don't know if the series is up to 13 or 14 or even 15 books now. Now, I'm no prude, certainly, and I really enjoyed the sensuality of many of the early books (really... really, really...umm, nevermind...) But I do like some PLOT with the porn. There used to be plot. I really miss that. Where has the plot gone, Laurell K? I loved the mysteries, I loved believing that Anita and the gang could actually be in danger from time to time. Now they have already defeated creatures so vast and powerful that nothing on the planet would dare challenge them.
Somebody let me know when Anita remembers to put her pants back on and gets back to participating in a story.
I first discovered Max Brooks and his zombies a couple of years ago. We had some friends over to watch the Night of the Living Dead remake, and... well, basically, zombies are my Thing. That thing that really, really scares the (un)living daylights out of me. Vampires... meh! Demons... meh! Toothy aliens... meh! I've been reading Stephen King since the 5th grade, so there isn't much that gets to me, you see. Except zombies.
So, after a nervous night with the nightlight on, I come home from work to find my beloved had gotten me a gift: Max Brooks' first book, The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead. Since then I have found my zombie-bashing courage and have been able to enjoy a range of zombie-related entertainment. You can imagine my excitement when I heard that Brooks had released a new book. (Well, okay, not excited enough to buy it in hardcover, but you get the point...)
Okay, ready for the review? This book is SO GOOD. Need I say more? All right: I stayed up reading until I fell asleep from exhaustion two nights in a row because I didn't want to stop reading. I am foisting this book off on everyone I know - my beloved is reading it now, and next it goes to work. I keep sneaking back to it to see where my beloved is in the tale and read the bits before and after his bookmark.
The concept of the book is that it is a series of interviews with people who survived the zombie apocalypse, organized in a way which tell the tale from the first known zombie infections to the ultimate all out war against the zombie horde. Yes, the typical zombie tropes are there, there's no new or innovative zombie lore (except for perhaps a description of the mechanism that causes the undead to assemble). And the reader already knows the outcome of the war from the very first page, or the description on the back of the book. None of these things are surprising. What is wonderful is that Brooks manages to take a slew of stock characters and stereotypes and turn them into living, fascinating characters with merely a paragraph long introduction and three to five pages of dialogue. Just dialouge. He transmits everything through the character's speech, the words they choose, when they pause, what they choose to talk about. It's just brilliant.
I gave this book 5 out of 5 stars on my aNobii bookshelf (see links to the right), and I'd say it was the best thing I read last year.
