House:
Errands
Reading:
Kinwork
Lisa:
Love love love Zora Neal Hurston. "The sun swept itself across the horizon, months and weeks flaring out behind it." Or something, I was driving at the time.
I wonder if she and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings knew each other at all: they were contemporaries in time and space and avocation, if not in culture. Isn't it pretty to think so. Although they wrote about rural life in northern Florida and flourished within decades of each other, I notice Hurston's language but Rawlings's geography--probably because I've listened to Hurston but not to Rawlings (when I read The Yearling to RDC I apologized for butchering the accent, and again reading Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry). I haven't read Hurston describe the dance of the whooping cranes but I have listened to her build a shack and plant a garden and lie on her back gazing at the sky over the St. John's River.
"Drenched in Light," "The Conscience of the Court," "Muttsy," "The Gilded Six-Bits," John Redding Goes to Sea," and "Sweat."
Either Blake's nutrition has gone out the window--a distinct possibility, since he's a carbohound like his mother and even his favorite vegetable (or most favored element of his twice-daily chow) is corn--or he's having a minor moult. A few contour feathers, a racing stripe on the windowsill, and, tonight's prize, his longest crest feather. He grows four, so he doesn't look scalped when he's shedding, as Percy, who grew only two, did. (Percy's crest feathers were brighter yellow and maybe longer, but Blake's crest is altogether fuller.)
Do you think he would tolerate a used basset hound?
Courtesy the web and the foolish folk at the Cazenovia Public Library in Cazenovia, New York, I have in my very paw a discarded-by-them but beloved-to-me copy of Anne H. White's Junket, which is a delightful story about a dog (even if only an Airedale), illustrated by Robert McCloskey. I love Junket.
Would a used basset hound be as charming?
When did I first learn about Robertson Davies? Probably in 1991, when I bought The Lyre of Orpheus from the Co-op. The word "lyre" likely caught my eye, and when I read something on the back cover about the Fisher King (I think), I was hooked. It took me some time to realize that that was the third in a trilogy, and in the intervening dozen years the only Davies I have read I listened to, Murther and Walking Spirits. I remember only that I didn't adore it. Also I had this idea that Davies would intellectually intimidate me.
I loved The Rebel Angels, which stimulated but didn't intimidate me. I can't wait to get hold of What's Bred in the Bone.
is Trainspotting. I think I need to own this, not have it from the library, because it will take me a while to read the dialect fluently. It's harder than A Clockwork Orange, easier than The Canterbury Tales. I could read--if not pronounce--Chaucer fairly easily after a few weeks, and that's how I need to approach this.
It has a movie cover, and--did I just say this about Fight Club?--I finally realized a good reason for my elitist aversion to movie covers: how do you distinguish between the book with a movie cover and the novelization of a movie?
Other people kindly toted all the loot to Clove's car, and two took it upon themselves to put the leftovers away while I hostessed otherwise, and the house is nearly normal despite recently containing a baby shower, but I woke up loooong before sunrise (nerves, I expect) and scurried about all day, and now I am content in my chair with my buddy-goiter and finishing The Rebel Angels and reading the first 20 pages of Trainspotting with .03% of its sentences in regular English. I think I will take myself off to my freshly laundered bed with I, Juan de Pareja, about which I know nothing other than that it's a Newbery. And therefore a children's book, damn it.
The theme for the baby shower was Zero Percent Twee, though I confess to cooing in unison when Clove unfurled tiny little newborn outfits. One bib had giraffes on it: I can't resist that. In the spirit of the Theme, there were No Humiliating Games. Honestly, the suggestions I found online were horrifying as well as utterly craven and wanting in taste (one required guests to write out their own thank-you note envelopes). I admit being tempted by Guess the Mother's Circumference, but I suppressed that temptation like a guinea pig in court right quick. I liked CGK's sister's one-line summations of nursery rhymes from this summer, though, and that inspired me. I didn't produce this until late in the day, in honor of No Humiliating Games, but it turned out to be a hit.
Select the text for answers, if you didn't view source before.
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
the eponymous Babar
the eponymous Cat in the Hat
Chester the Cricket (most famous for The Cricket in Times Square, though this is from Tucker's Countryside)
the eponymous Corduroy, who is adopted by a little girl named Lisa
Make Way for Ducklings
the eponymous Ferdinand
the eponymous Frederick
Curious George
Goodnight Moon, though if you're under 50 and didn't get this I would prefer you not read my journal anymore, you cretin.
Harold and the Purple Crayon, which ditto.
Horton Hatches the Egg
Sam-I-Am from Green Eggs and Ham
Little Bear's Friend
Max from Where the Wild Things Are, the third absolutely vital picture book.
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, Mary Anne
Pat the Bunny
The Story About Ping
Mr. Popper's Penguins
Ramona the Pest
The Runaway Bunny
The Wind in the Willows RDC guessed "something by Mark Twain." I pointed to Ratty and Moley and said yeah, these were Huck and Jim. That's my next doctoral dissertation, the two pairs' river experiences.
I considered all of these dead easy, and omitted poor Frances (and Gloria and Albert) for being perhaps obscure. Jessie reprimanded me for that.
The writing irritated me, with constructions like "Subject predicate with an object and with another object" when a double object of a single preposition would have made more sense, and a few misspellings ("weasle"), and it might not have been the best story. But second only to art, its predominant theme is race inequality and slavery, and that made the book a fitting recipient of the Newbery in 1965.
I'm on page 12 and it's already annoying me. Partly it's insecurity: the author is three years younger than I. Mostly it's annoyance: the Seventeen of the author's youth peddled downmarket products? This was a Seventeen from an alternate universe, I believe. Alissa Quart is only in her early 30s, and she's already issuing jeremiad proclamations of how much worse everything's got in the past two decades?
I might have to say "Feh" and move along.
Jed Bartlett just asked a retiring English teacher if, when she taught Beowulf, she taught it in the original Middle English or in translation.
"The West Wing" is not "Northern Exposure." It's not even "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." But it is "West Wing." Or at least it was. Once the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff perpetuated the myth that the eagle's head on the Great Seal of the United States turns from the olive branch to the arrows in time of war. Once there was a representative who had taken the seat of his deceased wife. I don't mind when it changes the name of a newspaper (it got Denver's wrong), and I certainly don't mind when it spins Dot Org with an anachronism--that it mentions Dot Org at all is cool enough for me. "West Wing" certainly shouldn't get government information wrong, but Beowulf is common knowledge, damn it.
It saddens me to say that I have found yet another flaw in "The Last Seduction." First I rewatched "Every Girl Should Be Married," its polar opposite. Then "Last Seduction." Spoiler: At the end, when Mike's lawyer says he believes him but there's not a scrap of physical evidence to back up his version of events, all Mike can think of is the name on the apartment building's doorbell. A while ago I had wondered about the fake Trish letter. He wouldn't've shown it to Bridget, because he doesn't want her to know about Trish, but maybe it doesn't exist anymore--and a good graphologist would be able to distinguish between Bridget's imitation and Trish's genuine hand--because he destroyed it upon receipt. Then there's Trish [her]self: and avoiding a capital murder charge is sufficient reason to expose your accidental marriage to a man, isn't it? Anyway, the bit of physical evidence I thought of yesterday he might still have had in his wallet, the note on which Bridget wrote their fake names together, backward.
But it's still a brilliant movie.
I am aware that no one thinks anyone else's pet or child is as engaging as the owner thinks. Especially when someone says that their pet is the sweetest, funnest little guy ever, but then doesn't let the pet socialize because she's petrified he might get squashed in the crowd and she doesn't particularly want him shitting on anyone either.
With that said, Blake is such a joy.
The setup: I was sitting downstairs on the couch, feet on the ottoman, with Blake's crates--wooden four-sided boxes RDC knocked together in 1993 to hold stereo components now serving as occasional tables--alongside, short end to short end, between ottoman and chair. On one crate was an oatmeal box serving as a buddy cave, on the other, the buddy tray (vegetable chow, spinach, apple slices, seedballs) and my water glass (from which he also drinks).
Blake was in his box, preening or singing or just hanging out, when something--not a phone call or a sneeze or the heat snapping on--startled him and he ran out of his box, onto the crate, toward the next crate, which didn't abut the first in perfect alignment. He didn't see that, and so fell, wheeling a bit just like Wile E. Coyote before dropping (fourteen inches) to the floor.
I howled. Presently he pranced into view, bobbed his head, and clucked at me. I apologized, picked him up, and kissed his belly. I love my buddy.
Nisou's sister had a baby girl today. She is named her for her maternal grandmother. Everyone is well.
Where the fuck was this Albert Gore in 2000? In his endorsement announcement, he spoke with vigor, nearly passionately. His hair was disheveled. This Gore could have won more decisively than 2000's Gore.
There is a basset hound mix in Greeley whose human just died. She's mixed with Australian shepherd, which is not such a good dog option. There's a basset hound, full blood and older so maybe safer, 280 miles away in Wyoming.
But today Blake had a yawnfest. Dogs yawn. I've seen it. However, no dog yawning has ever been as cute as Blake yawning. Dogs don't tuck under your chin. Dogs don't sing in their boxes. Dogs don't bow while you brush your teeth.
Dogs go for walks. Dogs are big enough to hug. Dogs--particurly Labrador retrievers and basset hounds--have floppy ears instead of icky reptilian holes in their heads (though charmingly covered by orange feathers). Dogs have oversized paws instead of ugly scaly feet, and when you trim their toenails, they don't shriek and kick to the point you fear they'll dislocate their hips. Dogs snore. Dogs aren't afraid of pigeons.
Are dogs as fascinating to watch? Do dogs make rattling-of-sabers sounds as they preen and rearrange their tail feathers? No? Damn.
I never thought I'd be 35 and dogless. Sigh.
I really enjoyed The Professor and the Madman, despite its flaws. I don't believe most of the brief history of English that Simon Winchester with which introduces his history of the Oxford English Dictionary, but I trusted and enjoyed the latter.
I love this delving into something obscure, finding letters and scraps of paper and the fate of Telephone Number One (the first major editor of the OED was friends with Alexander Graham Bell and was possibly was given the first working phone, which possibly remained in his attic to be burned by billeted soldiers one freezing winter during World War II). Bounty: the True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty and The Longest Day (N.B.: D-Day is not obscure) remind me of that kind of painstaking effort.
CLH and I were talking about Shadow. She really was not the best behaved of all possible dogs, but she was still the best dog. No dog has ever been 26, I know. She would have liked a basset hound.
Happy birthday, my Shadow puppy.
Blake is singing in his box. My mother once had a dog who could kind of say "Lauuurrrrra," which was not its name; Blake can say both his own names.
And the goose is getting fat.
The 15th is late to get a tree, and this year for the first time we didn't slaughter, tote home, erect, and decorate it all the same day.
Monday I did get the lights on, and arrayed all the ornaments on the couch partly so I could admire them but mostly because I always pack the tree skirt at the bottom of the box. For cushioning, but also because it enables the arraying and admiring. Also I finished wrapping all my sister's stuff.
Tuesday we decorated. I contemplated the ornaments and was sure we didn't have enough. RDC gave me one of my presents early. I love this one. It's on the heavy side, it shades from blue through indigo to violet, and it's traced with silver in a, to me, Tolkieny kind of way. Also I made peanut butter cookies for my father. If they crumble on their way to Florida, I figure they'll still eat well.
I am physically incapable of buying ornaments for others without buying one for myself. Also it's got a perky bill.
A neighbor made this for me when I was about 11. Cardinals always nest at Yuletide. Speaking of, we had our trees trimmed, which was painful for me too, and I had the trimmers leave the bird-feeder branch on the nectarine, but the pine tree is gone and so are the birds. My poor chickadees!
Granny must have taken a Yule crafts class in 1978. This barn that she painted, my Little Drummer Boy little sled, and the plaster ornaments that look like cookie-cutter cookies all say "dew 1978" on their sides. She gave me all those that year, others to CLH, and a thingie saying "Noel" or "Yule" for the front door to my mother.
Others she kept and I inherited. I like this one, besides because she made it, because it looks like an extra from "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." And I like the other one too.
CLH gave me a hedgehog some years ago. I hope all my packages, which I didn't mail until Wednesday, get to Vermont and Albany and waythehell upstate New York and Boston and two places in Connecticut and two places in Florida by Wednesday.
This was in a batch of Granny's ornaments. I used to have a few of these clip-on animules and it seems to be happy there.
I bought this last year or year before. For myself. While ornament-shopping for others. I am not made of stone.
RDC asked me please not to break this one. Damn straight, it took 20 months for its replacement to show up on eBay. I would have got medieval on anyone who outbid me, but luckily I seem to be alone in my dreadful taste so won it handily. I don't care that it's stupid, I love it.
We had enough ornaments. Kinda. It is not slathered, but it's not sparse either. It's a balsam fir so smells delicious, but its branches are so dense and tend toward the vertical so much that some ornaments could not find a home. I was going to try to make diagonal stripes with the wired ribbon but I figured vertical was sufficient.
And so, for the first time, we have a tree by the window. It is gorgeous and tall (I had to hack some off the top to jam the star on) and I suggested to RDC that we could continue to get bigger trees in future years if only we lay them on their sides. We could work up to a 24-foot tree laid diagonally in the living room. Or even bigger, if we moved the dining table and used that room too.
I'll be back, I'm sure. For almost a year now I've written frequently, if not at length, if only a sentence about a book I've read or modest exercise I've shuffled through. There are a couple of things I don't want to talk about here until I've hashed them out elsewhere; hashing will take effort and time and I don't want to jinx myself. They're good things, or should be.
Apparently all I needed was to give that permission to myself. Hence, a couple of stories.
Tuesday Intern and I were waiting for the bus together for 15 minutes longer than we should have because we missed the bus we were aiming for by about 45 seconds. In the chat, he divulged that the best present his parents could give him would be a bunch of toilet paper, because buying it seems so petty and is a terrible reminder that he's not living at home anymore. A lightbulb went off in my head.
Friday I drove and suggested to Intern that I give him a ride home punctuated with a stop at my house to give him his present (which I had announced the existence of before, because I'm hideous with surprises). He was hesitant, but he wanted to meet Blake too (who wouldn't?) and I am sure he recalled a dumpster into which he could deposit whatever I had in mind if it wasn't to his taste. So first there was the mandatory admiring of my tree, which I again refuse to be modest about--actually first was my mourning as we pulled up under the shorn outside trees--and second was the Meeting of Blake, who had got so offended when I came home and spent a minute in the living room with my guest instead of fetching him right off that after dutifully climbing onto Intern's finger he immediately hopped back to me for his proper measure of snuggling, and third was scampering down to the basement and my saying "Merry Christmas" and handing a 36-pack of Costco toilet paper into his arms while he laughed. Also he met RDC, who was much more sociable than Blake. Then I drove him home.
So that was a success.
I say this hoping my father and notstepmother haven't found this site. If you have, don't read this until after Thursday. (I keep thinking Christmas is Wednesday.)
My sister's gift to our father (and notstepmother) is a photograph album, more his photobiography. She received family photographs from Aunt Namesake and included those. (I would have found that difficult, greedy and grasping as I am, but CLH said, realistically though scarily, that she would get them back eventually. We both swallowed hard.)
There is a photograph of the Ascendancy great-grandmother who married our decidedly-not-Ascendancy, plain Irish, immigrant great-grandfather and was disinherited for his sake. (Similarly, our maternal great-great-grandmother Elizabeth Rockefeller was disinherited for marrying our great-great-grandfather (whose daughter I hazily remember: she died when I was five). We are peasants from way back and on both sides.) A photograph of our great-grandfather holding our infant maternal grandmother; his face is just not one that gets made any more. Photographs of her girlhood; of her beloved big brother, our great-uncle, whose story I want to tell here but for which I want a scanner; of our father and his siblings as children (all wearing glasses before their fourth birthdays; I'm grateful again to have my maternal line's myopia rather than their compound of problems, and mystified again how my sister at nearly 40 (!) can still have perfect sight).
A picture I'm jealous of, since I could never be in it: my father's cousin, sister-in-law, brother, father, and wife holding his first daughter. I, the second daughter, was born after his father died.
A large section of pictures of CLH and me:
* With puppy Sagi. My mother has a series of snapshots of us mauling the poor thing; in one, I in no more than a diaper am holding the dog, and in the next, my hand is raised to hit CLH who is now holding the dog. This latter is the one in the album, of course.
* With grown and aged Shadow in her beanbag in front of our father's chair, in which I sit with CLH on my lap. Over the chair is a photograph portrait of Dad's father.
* At my high school graduation and her college graduation and my wedding, all with him, and the last time he saw us together, at his brother's in 2001.
* The two of us in Boston and Old Lyme and Aspen over the years.
Also pictures of CLH on her own and of me on my own and with RDC, including this one of us going to the opera. Last weekend our materal cousin was looking through the album, I hope out of interest and not just courtesy, and when she turned to this page said "Great dress!" I replied, "That dress? Fifteen bucks at T.J. Maxx!" and my sister exclaimed "Good story, Jwaas!"
Because most of my stories, like the one I've just told here, are overly long and filled with tedious unnecessary detail and have no particular point. Whereas that one merely communicated the glee of that dress at that price. My sister is my biggest fan. Whereas I was proud of myself for fibbing about the name of the store, since the actual one, while operating on the same principle, isn't nationally recognizable.
I picked up Blake's tray (a foot by less than a foot, with a half-inch lip; it started its life as part of my dorm fridge) the other day and asked RDC what were those desiccated hairy things? He had bought broccoli sprouts to put on sandwiches. We always share foods with Blake--the sandwich bread, some lettuce or spinach, a wisp of cheese--and that's how RDC discovered what extremely yummy things sprouts are. Except they mummify even faster than spinach wilts.
They snap in the beak, they shred well, they stick to the wall when you whip your head back and forth to clean it (like a wet dog shaking), so even if they weren't tasty, their physical attributes would make them a favorite. My little buddy.
The last page of my father's album features his grandchildren: Kitty sunning herself in my sister's ivy-covered window, and Blake preening his tail. Of course.
RDC just digitized our wedding video, eight years old, already deteriorating, and not of high quality to start with. His uncle took it and gave us a copy, I'm pretty sure. I didn't know he was taking it until I spotted him during our first dance, which was unsurprisingly dreadful. I asked RDC, when he told me he'd digitized it, if the dance was as cringeworthy as I remember. He said that the most embarrassing moment was when I wouldn't let him feed me cake.
We didn't have an argument about something that happened 8.5 years ago, but we had stiff words: he said it was embarrassing that I wouldn't let him feed me, that I held his hand away from my face with both of mine, that I didn't trust him just to put a little frosting on my lips to kiss off. Hmm. Whereas what I remembered was not knowing about this "little bit of frosting" ahead of time and fearing that he would smear me. "You didn't trust me," he translated. I didn't argue that, but why would he think I wanted frosting on my mouth?
So I started the video, jumping up to remove cookies from the oven every few minutes, and finished the cookies sometime during the wholly unorganized because unplanned receiving line. I figured I had already found the most embarrassing moment: my mother's shrill voice commanding everyone to "look over here," over and over and over again.
Then I brought my computer downstairs to finish watching it with him. The dance was terrible, but either RDC's uncle didn't catch my first, displeased reaction to spotting the videocamera or he tactfully edited it out (which might be why we have only a copy). There is only my saying, "Arrest that man!" and RDC at my ear--he was whispering that any protest would be undignified because, in fact, also taped. He was correct, though I was right--I didn't want video--and I shushed.
The toasts were okay, EJB's short and sweet and my sister's welcoming us to Colorado and praising RDC for putting up with "that laugh." That footage does include the worst moment of the tape, RDC's aunt approaching the lens to urge her husband closer, thereby giving a really dreadful close-up.
Then the cake-cutting, and yes I was watching to make sure I was right, always a nice way to treat wedding relics. RDC fed me first, bringing his hand to my mouth, and I took a bite. Then, with audible encouragement from at least two identifiable voices, he approached his hand to my face again, frosting forward. So ha, I did have cause to fear the oh-so-tacky smearing, and that's when I leaned back and pushed his hand away before, for form's sake though with basilisk eyes, I stopped outwardly resisting. He put a little frosting on my lips and kissed it off. When I fed him, I held the piece of cake still so he could control his bite rather than have to work around my moving it toward him.
Then we kissed and made up, both on the video and in person.
Not the most embarrassing but the stupidest moment is the bouquet toss. The only things I had forgotten to bring with me were not on my list: garters. RDC's grandmother gave me one that might have fit around my lower arm when I was eight. Also, my uncle gave me the garter he caught at my parents' wedding--what he was doing going for the garter when he was already married I couldn't say--and I would have worn that as my Something Old if I had remembered it--but not thrown it, a keepsake meant for CLH. Without a garter, we had a co-ed bouquet toss. That might have been funner if we could have coordinated a throw better. We released the bouquet so late that it landed nearly at our feet, while everyone bunched up to catch it stood at least 10 feet away. CLH and SPG were equally determined to get it, so they tussled amusingly.
I think I have mentioned before that I completely bollocksed the old-new-borrowed-blue poesy. My dress was new, LEB lent me a pearl choker, I forgot the old garter, and RDC's aunt had lent me diamond-and-sapphire earrings but I preferred faux-pearl-and-rhinestone pendants that went with my dress better, dangling for its neckline and pearly for its fabric. I had my sapphire engagement ring of course, but CLH wore that during the ceremony.
We seem to be muddling along all right despite that inauspicious beginning.
This was one of the first books that Good Books Lately recommended, and here I am finally getting around to it. It is plainly and simply written, and common and regular in its plot, but lovely and thorough in its story.
I am not sure that Kent Haruf is good enough not to use quotation marks, which lately seems to be the Literary Mark, but he's pretty good.
Plainsong made me laugh out loud once as two people unused to anyone other than each other try to make conversation with someone new.
RDC and I were talking about "Return of the King." He said he had expected the matter of the ring to be resolved at the end of the first movie. I asked him if he knew there were going to be two other movies--living with me, he ought to have--and he said yes; I asked what he thought the other two movies were going to be about, then? He said, "Some other ring?" and I laughed and laughed and laughed.
A while later he asked if I recognized that "some other ring" was a Baldrick answer. I hadn't. I laughed again.
I have been refreshing his memory, since he hasn't read the books and saw "Fellowship" two years ago in the cinema and "Two Towers" whenever it came out on DVD (I still don't have the extended version). He was confusing Saruman and Sauron, so to remind him of who is who, I recalled the battle between the two wizards, Ian McKellen and Christopher Lee, smiting each around in the white tower, "and remember how you said that since it was filmed in the southern hemisphere, Gandalf should spin the other way?" He remembered that. Other characters are Agent Smith, the Aerosmith chick, the Alice Cooper guy, and Sallah.
The three miles of walking in my bus commute (a mile to the bus, a few minutes on the bus, a half mile to work, and home again) has meant audio books again. Baking cookies helps too.
This was my first Philip Roth and I liked it fine. Apparently the book, or Philip Roth, has been criticized for sexism. Delphine Roux* is a feminist, but that's not why she's a negative character. She's a negative character because she's nutty as a fruitcake. Also some Amazon reviewers deplore his so-called digressions; I saw them as explanatory asides, but perhaps because I was listening not reading. One reviewer said all the characters had the same narrative style, and I know the reader spared me that (if I would have noticed anyway) since he gave Silk, Zuckerman, and Farley different intonations.
Next up is American Pastoral, and next month is my turn to choose the book from Audible.com. I'm thinking of either War and Peace or Underworld (not that Don DeLillo isn't also an RDC author), but neither my walk nor my baking is enough to get me through such long books in a short enough period to do them justice.
*I just looked it up, but listening I thought it might be spelled Rue. Street doesn't make a lot of sense as a name, but Regret does.
We were looking at animals for a baby and an almost-baby we'll see tomorrow. I swooned over a lemur and an elephant and an ostrich. RDC frowned when he saw more of the ostrich than its generic head. "I thought it was a vulture," he said, "It's ecologically sound for when the other stuffed animals die."
When I put my grandmother's clip-on koala to the tree, I remembered mine, mouldering among other keepsakes. Today I added another koala and two raccoons. (I figure they're arboreal and like being in Yule trees even though they don't sparkle.) I noticed my koala's off hind leg was about to fall off. RDC suggested, "We can have it for dinner."
I am married to Ebenezer Scrooge.
I decided to make like Linus van Pelt (or Emily Blair) and read the Christmas stories as given severally and contradictorily in the gospels. Fifteen of the first 16 verses of Matthew are begats, the generation of Jesus Christ, ending with "And Jacob begat Joseoph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ."
Why is Joseph counted in the genealogy of Jesus, no matter how good a stepfather he was?
I have been sneaking snorts of buddy fluff. Often when he's preening and facing away, I can get my nose into his breast for a sniff or two before he notices and beaks me. He's in a forgiving mood today, I guess: he was on my shoulder and I had my nose in his shoulder joint and my lips against his breast for a couple of minutes and he just let me. I really doubt basset hounds smell as good.
If I got up at midnight to see, it would be very bad luck to spot him genuflecting. It would also scare the piss out me, because cockatiels don't have knees.
I first typoed "kneeds." Ha! Cockatiels have plenty of those.
I am watching the Loony Tunes' Golden Collection, since my mother-in-law, perspicacious as she is, did not fail to notice the want want want note under that item in my Amazon wishlist. Bugs Bunny is arguing with an umpire: "I was safe!" " Yer out!" "Safe!" "Out!" until finally Bugs says "Out!" so the umpire contradicts "Safe!"
This reminds me that I lost an argument ("Is not!" "Is too!") to NCS once by falling for the exact same trick. I hang my head.
This is why I am probably better off not pursuing English literature at the graduate level. I could never ever write something like this. I could understand it, at least, and though it took me a zillion rereadings of Possession, I don't think I missed anything Burgass pointed out.
When my sister was home, she looked at the cards on the mantel. My mother's husband got a Christmas card from his boss, with a gift certificate to a local restaurant and a note: "Your awesome." BDL is a high school janitor, which makes his boss a high school principal. My sister clearly is not always the Good Daughter, because she was disgusted by this. My mother said she had noticed as well but not said anything because BDL was so pleased by present and compliment.
Having bad grammar and spelling doesn't make you a bad human being. It just means you shouldn't be in education.
We got a card from a family whose mother, who has a B.A. in elementary education, is homeschooling her young brood. The return address, on a preprinted label, read The Brood's.
The other day I glanced at a stack of address labels in the Dot Org mailroom. Dot Org works closely enough with government entitites to warrant printed address labels to capital cities, to offices near capitols, yet Dot Org, someone at Dot Org, cannot distinguish between "capital" and "capitol"? And I, happening by to photocopy something, was the first to notice the error in a stack of labels half gone?
I am so glad I saw the movie before I read it, partly because having an outline helped me when its English was an entirely different version than mine but mostly so that when various terrible things happened, I expected them.
For a while I tried to figure out how Scottish vowels shifted differently than Chaucerian London ones did, but there's not just one Scottish English anyway. It's remarkable that so many accents evolved in such a small geographic space. The island of Britain has about Pennsylvania's area, but do Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and Pennsyltucky and the Amish all sound as different as Cockney and Brummie and Liverpudlian and Edinburgh? Amish yes, but the others?
I can understand why to be "Lee Marvin" is to be hungry (starvin', in the rhyming slang), but why does "greet" mean "cry" or "coupon" mean "face"? Some words are onomatopoeic, like "pluke" for "pimple" (the glossary glosses into English English, so "pluke" is given as "spot"); some I can just roll with, like "draftpak" for lowlife or container of alcohol; some I knew, like bairn; but why does "to k.b." mean "to elbow or turn away"?
She maybe was going to call Persuasion "The Elliots"? Ptooey.
Deidre Le Faye brought to my attention a lot of the little homegrown, true-to-life details that I have not given enough attention to. I had never thought why it's okay to call Bingley and Willoughby by the surnames alone but why it's crass for Mrs. Elton to call Mr. Knightley by only by his. I mean, I could tell it was, but I didn't think, beyond that Mrs. Elton is tacky and Jane Bennet is not, why that might be. Le Faye says that the mode of so addressing men had gone out of fashion in the 20 years between the one-time First Impressions and Emma.
I think I feel a rewatch coming on. Except how often do I get five days in a row to indulge in only books? On to The Child that Books Built.
My mother's husband gave her a cellular phone for Christmas. Being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, she is. That's not what I'm proud of.
What I'm proud of is this: a while ago BDL was given a hand-me-down, surely obsolete computer from his school. Its price was right, even if nothing else is. Today she told me that BDL finally set it up on a table in the...work room? My sister's former bedroom has, besides the computer, quite a snazzy sewing machine in it, both machines thus far unused. The room of misfit technology, then. She told me it was just on a table so far, not aerogonomically [sic] correct or anything, and I asked, "So you know that the monitor faces front, right?" and she laughed! She even continued, "Yes, it's all set up, with the keyboard in front of the monitor, hee hee, and everything."
She asked about presents. I told her that, as RDC retreated to the couch after the Great UnMasking with a stack of new books clasped to his bosom, I asked him, "But what will you read tomorrow?" and she understood the implication of far more than a day's new material.
Really, I should have got her remarried off years ago. We'd have an entirely different relationship.
I skimmed People or a similar rag in the grocery line the other day. It said that Brooke Shields has a daughter named Rowan Francis. Eh? I figured People had made an error, so I just looked it up. According to Extra, that's the girl's name. Francis, not Frances.
Looking it up, I see that although Frances was "standardized" as the spelling for females, females have always been named Francis too. Well. Okay then.
A woman I used to work with had a sign hanging in her cube:
"When it comes
To Francis, sir,
It's 'i' as in 'him'
And 'e' as in 'her.'"
Francis Spufford sounds like Alissa Quart, who wrote Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers, in that he uses himself for data more than anecdote. I like the metaphors he uses broadly to divide childhood reading, from earliest reading through to YA: the Forest, the Island, the Town, the Hole.
He made me laugh once. More than Middle Earth, more than EarthSea, more than the Little House, when he was a child he wanted to live in Narnia (in his Island period). Later, when he "began to read one-handedly," books like Emmanuelle seemed to have as as their motto "Farther up and farther in!"
I love Girl with a Pearl Earring, though I managed to miss the movie. Fallen Angels pleased me less: Tracy Chevalier tried a narrative technique that she didn't use well. This third book--but effectively her sophomore one, considering how wildly successful Girl was after an unknown first--had several characters, and she told her tale with several first-person points of view. The problem is, if each chapter hadn't started with the speaking character's name, the writing would have not otherwise have indicated who was speaking. Griet, the Girl, spoke with such a clear individual voice that the banal interchangeability of the not-quite-characters in Fallen Angels was more distressing than if I had never encountered her.
Irvine Welsh changed the speaker in Trainspotting and he did it well. When Begbie or Spud or Mark speaks, you can tell because the Beggar is (even) more foul-mouthed than the rest and Spud says "likesay" more and Renton has the best grammar, relatively speaking. William Faulkner changes the speaker only four times in The Sound and the Fury, and though the first section might lose the less determined reader, you can damn well tell Benjy from Quentin from Jason from Dulcie. Or Caddy, whatever.
In The Lady and the Unicorn, Chevalier does the same thing as in Fallen Angels but hasn't got any better at it. The latter's subject matter didn't mean so much to me that the mistreatment hurt. Chevalier spoke of the the subject matter of her next book when I saw her tour two years ago for Angels, when I was freshly back from Paris where I had seen the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries in the flesh. This time, the mistreatment hurts. I might be done with Chevalier.
There are several characters and at least seven speakers. Only by their chapter headings, and not immediately by their content, nor ever by their language (an illiterate painter vs. an illiterate but upperclass mistress of a house vs. an upper class but at least minimally literate master of a house would speak differently) can the reader distinguish the speaker.
Twenty-two nonfiction, plus two abridged non-fiction (three audio):
Caroline Alexander, The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty
Sue Birtwistle, The Making of Pride and Prejudice
Catherine Burgass, A.S. Byatt's Possession
David Denby, Great Books (audio)
Al Franken, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right
Antonia Fraser, Faith and Treason
Antonia Fraser, Marie Antoinette: A Journey
Michal Grynberg, Words to Outlive Us: Eyewitness Accounts of the Warsaw Ghetto
Stephen Hawking, The Universe in a Nutshell (audio)
Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (audio)
Jon Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven
Deirdre Le Faye, Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels
John Leonard, When the Kissing Had to Stop
Michael Moore, Dude, Where's My Country?
Alissa Quart, Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers
George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society
Eric Schlosser, Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market
Roger Shattuck, The Forbidden Experiment: The Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron
Francis Spufford, The Child That Books Built
David Starkey, Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne
Sarah Susanka, Creating the Not-So-Big House
John Sutherland, Is Heathcliff a Murderer?
Emma Thompson, The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay & Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film
Simon Winchester, The Meaning of Everything: A History of the Oxford English Dictionary
Forty-three novels or titled collections of short stories
Sherman Alexie, The Lone Range and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
Margaret Atwood, Dancing Girl and Other Stories
Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle
Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Toni Cade Bambara, Gorilla, My Love
John Banville, Book of Evidence
Antonia S. Byatt, A Whistling Woman
Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony
Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda
Michael Chabon, Mysteries of Pittsburgh
Michael Chabon, Summerland
Michael Chabon, Wonder Boys
Tracy Chevalier, The Lady and the Unicorn
Jim Crace, The Devil's Larder: A Feast
Sjil Dai, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels
Charles Dickens, Bleak House
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
Jasper Fforde, Lost in a Good Book
Denis Guedj, The Parrot's Theorem
Kent Haruf, Plainsong
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (audio)
Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy
Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
Barbara Kingsolver, Pigs in Heaven
Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees
Ursula K. LeGuin, Unlocking the Air: Stories
Sándor Márai, Embers
Yann Martel, Life of Pi (audio)
Robin McKinley, Deerskin
Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Susan Palwick, Flying in Place
Richard Powers, The Goldburg Variations
Pamela Ribon, Why Girls Are Weird
Philip Roth, Human Stain (audio)
José Saramago, The Cave
José Saramago, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
Donna Tartt, The Little Friend
Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting
Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
Twenty children's books
Avi, Crispin: The Cross of Lead
Barbara Helen Berg, All the Way to Lhasas
Sharon Creech, Ruby Holler
Chris Crutcher, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes
Elizabeth de Borton de Trevino, I, Juan de Pareja
Jeanne DuPrau, City of Ember
Elizabeth Enright, Return to Gone-Away Lake
Neil Gaiman, Coraline
Neil Gaiman, Sandman, vol. 1
Karen Hesse, Stowaway
James Howe, The Misfits
Irene Hunt, Across Five Aprils
Jean Kerr, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
Joseph Krumgold, ...And Now Miguel
Linda Sue Park, A Single Shard
J.K. Rowlings, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Lemony Snicket, Slippery Slope
Jerry Spinelli, Crash
Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl
Donald Zochert, Laura: the Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Sixty-one short stories, including six audio
Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings
Marjorie Barnard, The Lottery
Julian Barnes, Trespass
Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Amy Bloom, Sleepwalking
Elizabeth Bowen, Her Table Spread
Elizabeth Bowen, The Happy Autumn Fields
Antonia S. Byatt, The July Ghost
Antonia S. Byatt, The Stone Woman
Angela Carter, Peter and the Wolf
Willa Silbert Cather, Paul's Case: A Study in Temperament
Kate Chopin, The Storm
Anita Desai, Private Tuition by Mr. Bose
Janet Frame, Swans
Mavis Gallant, The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street
Jane Gardam, The Weeping Child
Ellen Gilchrist, Revenge
Nadine Gordimer, Six Feet of the Country
Bradley Trevor Greive, The Meaning Of Life
Georgina Hammick, The Dying Room
Bessie Head, Looking for a Rain God
Zora Neale Hurston, Drenched in Light
Zora Neale Hurston, John Redding Goes to Sea
Zora Neale Hurston, Muttsy
Zora Neale Hurston, Sweat
Zora Neale Hurston, The Conscience of the Court
Zora Neale Hurston, The Gilded Six-Bits
Rachel Ingalls, Third Time Lucky
Anna Kavan, An Unpleasant Reminder.
A.L. Kennedy, Friday Payday
Jamaica Kincaid, What I Have Been Doing Lately
Doris Lessing, The De Wets Come to Kloof Grange.
Shena Mackay, Cloud-Cuckoo-Land
Katherine Mansfield, The Daughters of the Late Colonel
Katherine Mansfield, The Man without a Temperament
Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh
Lorrie More, Places to Look for Your Mind
Alice Munro, Miles City, Montana
Haruki Murakami, Hunting Knife
Suniti Namjoshi, Three Feminist Fables
Flannery O'Connor, Everything That Rises Must Converge
Grace Paley, The Loudest Voice
Dorothy Parker, Here We Are.
Katherine Anne Porter, Rope
Jean Rhys, Let Them Call It Jazz
José Saramago, The Tale of the Unknown Island
Helen Simpson, Labour
Pauline Smith, The Sisters
Stevie Smith, Sunday at Home.
Ahdaf Soueif, The Wedding of Zeina
Muriel Spark, The First Year of My Life
Jean Stafford, A Summer Day
Elizabeth Taylor, Mr. Wharton
Rose Tremain, The Candle Maker
Alice Walker, Everyday Use
Marina Warner, Ariadne after Naxos
Fay Weldon, Weekend
Eudora Welty, Why I Live at the P.O.
Edith Wharton, Souls Belated
Antonia White, The House of Clouds
Virginia Woolf, Solid Objects
