Help keep Lorem Ipsum Bookstore in business!

Posted on November 17, 2009
Filed Under Blather, Literary, the 'hood | Leave a Comment

Local independent bookstore, Lorem Ipsum, is in danger of going out of business. They’ve found a new home, but need to sell 5,000 $10 certificates, each good for any book priced $20 or less, in the next 10 days. They have an online store, and I’ve already found a few things in their stock that I’ve been looking for. Help them out! http://www.loremipsumbooks.com/fb/

Some Things I Love

Posted on October 1, 2009
Filed Under Blather, Literary, dining, me and my brain, the 'hood, the telly | 5 Comments

Kim did a post like this, and I’ve been wanting to do one myself. Mine will be sillier than hers because some of the things I love are pretty silly.

Kashi Heart to Heart Oat Flakes and Wild Blueberry Clusters


So yummy–tastes like a really good blueberry muffin.

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Guru: The Indian Caterer


Oh my, this is incredibly good Indian food–fresh and delicious, not run of the mill. And so cheap!!! And it’s practically around the corner from our house.

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The Strand Bookstore



It’s sprawling, it’s packed with books, it’s a Manhattan classic right in Union Square. They’ve kept up with the times–they have an excellent web site on which I’ve discovered a bunch of books–and at the same time they’ve maintained a sort of old school presence in their main store. The last few times I’ve been in New York, I’ve spent hours there–sometimes over multiple visits. The last time I was at the main store, I went to collect some books I’d ordered online. Of course, I had to browse, and ended up adding a few to my pre-ordered stack. They sell new and used, remainders, review copies, and rare books. They have a great art section on the second floor, and there’s a sizable children’s section that I’ve never really properly investigated. Their prices are generally very good. Their book bags are awesome, too. If their onesies came in slightly more appealing patterns, Rainey would already have one.

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Arrested Development



Ez and I don’t watch a lot of television, but we do watch a lot of DVDs. Like many people, we missed Arrested Development when it first aired. That was our loss. We just finished watching the whole series on DVD and we love it! Funny stuff. I’m sure we’ll see the film, though I’m a LITTLE worried that it won’t live up to the series.

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Casa Silva Sauvignon Gris 2006



We tasted this wine at Dave’s Fresh Pasta and we really like it. It’s got this sort of tangy, almost effervescent quality.
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My computer has been unreliable of late–hardware problem, we think–so I’ll end this post here. I’ll have to make this a series as I think of other things I like enough to blog about them.

Friday timestamp

Posted on February 6, 2009
Filed Under Blather, Literary, the pusses | 1 Comment

It’s a pretty cold day, but it’s supposed to warm up this weekend. It should be a good weekend for walking around, which I am very much looking forward to doing. Ezra’s birthday was Monday, and though we grabbed a bite to eat, I’m hoping to properly celebrate my sweetie’s birthday this weekend. So we’ll have reasonable weather for that–in February, no less!

Moments ago I was the lucky recipient of a fishy cat bath. Thank you, Suki. I love you, too.

I don’t have much to do for work today. I’m waiting for a lot of things to come in from authors and clients. I did get a new project recently, and I have a feeling a bunch of work will be arriving on my doorstep all at once. Typical!


A Mercy I’m reading Toni Morrison’s latest novel, A Mercy. I like it, but I’m already almost 75% of the way done with the book and I feel as though it’s just getting started. I guess it’s sort of a novella. It feels a bit like a very long short story. I’ll have to see how it goes before I give a final verdict. I am enjoying it. It definitely pulls in a lot of Morrison’s typical themes and devices–a triad of women, female friendship, a woman’s (potentially–we’ll see what happens>) destructive love/attraction to a man, naming and identity, the creation of a self and an identity (especially after slavery strips away an existing past/identity), etc. That makes it fun for me, with all of the bits and pieces from my thesis still bumping around in my head. I have a feeling this book won’t be as satisfying as a book like Song of Solomon. It just doesn’t seem like it’s going to go that far–it hasn’t engrossed me that much yet. But I still think it’s pretty good and maybe easier to get into than any of Morrison’s novels since Jazz.

If you want to have a look at what I’ve read and am reading, my little home at Goodreads is a good place to start (a lot of you probably already know about it). You can find me and my books there, and I update it pretty frequently. Everybody should join, methinks! It’s easy (I swear) and free and I enjoy seeing what people are reading!

New Toni Morrison novel coming November 11th

Posted on October 21, 2008
Filed Under Blather, Literary | Leave a Comment

It’s called A Mercy, and it’s being described as a sort of companion novel to Beloved.

The Calamity, a book review with which some of you will disagree

Posted on July 30, 2008
Filed Under Blather, Literary, friends, me and my brain, rant | 2 Comments

A few days ago I finished Special Topics in Calamity Physics. It was a strange book for me, because it was a page-turner (at least, some of it was), but the writing style annoyed me, and overall I ended up really disappointed.


I didn’t believe any of the characters. There’s little in the story that I could relate to my own life–and I don’t just mean in terms of things that happen, because lots of things happen in lots of books that have nothing to do with my life. I feel like the author tried too hard to describe everything so that she didn’t leave room to fill in anything–at least, nothing superficial. Somehow, even after all of that, I felt like the characters lacked any sort of depth. With all the glowing reviews at the front of the book, I would have guessed that the main character would be appealing. She’s not. I found her annoying, not very believable, and pretty stupid for how smart she’s supposed to be. I kept trying to give a lot of characters a pass, because they’re supposed to be smarty-pants high schoolers, but it just doesn’t work. And the adults don’t act like adults, either. The things they say and do with the young people are just totally implausible. Okay, maybe one or two oddball characters would act strangely with kids, but all of them? It just doesn’t work.

And the similes!! No, the LISTS of similes. It was painful.

Shortly before I finished the book, I was talking to Amy, who read and enjoyed the book–though she had some issues with it, too. We were talking about bad similes in books, and she said something about a book she’d read (not this one, or so she thought, anyway) having a ridiculous simile that compared someone’s eyes to olives. Well, lo and behold, toward the end of Special Topics, the narrator compares someone’s eyes to olives. I guess maybe in this case it’s supposed to be funny. It isn’t the worst bit of the book, though. It isn’t even so much that all the similes are bad, it’s that there are too many of them… The author couldn’t just pick a few of the most poetic and spot-on ones or find some other way of describing things.

And all the endless referencing and faux referencing… it isn’t clever, it’s annoying. I hate all that b.s..

For all of the supposed unpredictability of the book, I feel like I totally nailed the ending long before it happened.

It isn’t a painful read in that somehow most of the time it flows (except in the part where the main character is supposedly figuring everything out–which to me felt too convenient and very boring), but her writing is often painful in other ways. There’s something self-congratulatory about it that’s really off-putting. I can’t recommend it. Read Donna Tartt or something instead.

Eurotrip 2007-2008: Day Four, New Year’s Day in Berlin and Leipzig

Posted on January 22, 2008
Filed Under Blather, Literary, daytripping, dining, wide world of vacation | Leave a Comment

It’s always a little strange to be vacationing somewhere on a holiday when everything is closed. But it’s sort of like the firecracker thing–it’s a unique experience. I suppose it’s a bit easier to do the natural thing when everything is closed and just wander and explore when it’s 60 or 70 degrees rather than 20 or 30. But I’m not complaining. And besides, it snowed a little!

The remains of the New Year’s revelry were everywhere–on every street and in every neighborhood.



You have to understand that Berlin’s streets–at least most of what we saw–are normally very clean and free of random litter. Usually the streets bear the stamp of human-imposed order. The shells of firecrackers and empty champagne bottles showed a different side of Berlin.

This was the day we planned to spend in Leipzig. We decided to wander around Sophienstrasse in Mitte a little before getting our train. Travel guides make a big deal about the Hackescher Hofe near there, which is supposed to be this cute little series of Jugendstil courtyards, but I found it to be a somewhat soul-less series of shops, with just a little of the promised charm. I really feel like I missed something. It must be totally different on a normal day when everything is open. Sophienstrasse was quite cute, though. It’s just a little street, but there were a few cute little bars and restaurants and some adorable toy shops. We decided to return on Wednesday, once we were back in Berlin.


New Year’s Day on Sophienstrasse in Mitte


Puppets on Sophienstrasse

Trains for Leipzig leave from the big central train station, the Hauptbahnhof. Like some of the other big stations in Berlin, it’s vast and shiny and new, with several open (and therefore chilly) levels of shops and cafes. We cut it a bit close and ended up missing the train we’d hoped to take, so we had to wait an hour for the next one. That gave us time to grab a sandwich (baguette mit kase was like my mantra) and look around a little.

The train to Leipzig was another example of German efficiency and smart engineering. Little LCD panels above each row of seats indicated seat number and the duration of the booked passenger’s trip (Berlin to Munich, for example). Since we didn’t have reserved seats for our journey as we’d missed the first train, those little signs helped to indicate to us which seats we could grab. For the start of our journey we watched the snow go by. Once we got just a little further South the snow thinned and disappeared. The ride only took about an hour.

Leipzig is considerably smaller than Berlin, and it feels a bit less vibrant. I’m sure some of our impression of the place was due to the fact that it was New Year’s Day and a lot of places weren’t open. Our hotel was just down the street from the train station. Because we were visiting off-season, we ended up in possibly the nicest hotel in town (and our reservation was upgraded to boot). It was odd, though. The hotel was right next to a big abandoned building that must have once been a pretty grand place, but which is now covered in graffiti. That has its own sort of charm, I guess, but it makes for a weird juxtaposition. I suppose it’s one of the best examples of what Leipzig is like–fallen, degraded grandeur next to restored and somewhat modernized grandeur.


Abandoned building (left) next to our hotel (right) [Photo borrowed from Ezra]

After settling into our room we wandered the streets, taking everything in. We landed at an old coffee house called Riquet. Had we had a little more preparation time for this trip, we might have realized in advance how cool this place was, but we ended up there regardless. It has a little bit of a Viennese flavor, with dark wood interior and rich little coffees and cakes. It was a bit smoky, too (and the cafes in Vienna were always smoky!). I loved the old clock behind the counter, which chimed like a clock you’d expect to find in some stately old manor.


Riquet in Leipzig

We had coffees and shared a delicious slice of raspberry chocolate cake. Then it was off for more wandering.


Lights in Leipzig

Pretty much the only places open were cafes, bars, and restaurants. What little prep I did for this part of our journey led us to seek out the Madlerpassage, for the Faust-themed Mephisto Bar and Auerbach’s Keller. The story goes that Goethe refers to Auerbach’s Keller, an old (we’re talking 1500s here) underground beer hall/restaurant, in Faust. Mephisto is Auerbach’s Keller’s campy companion bar. Now, I know these places are touristy and Mephisto is certainly a little goofy, but it does its thing awfully well. Everything is in deep tones–red leather, dark wood. The walls are lined with books and devilish little items. We sat near a little statue of a female demon who was, er, displaying her posterior in our direction (very cheeky). At random intervals, a loud cackling erupts and a demonic face appears in the mirror on the wall. A thunderous noise and a puff of smoke seep out from the ceiling and a framed picture on the wall begins to sway. (Ezra theorized that the bartender controlled it all via some button behind the bar.)


Mephisto

We had our dinner at Auerbach’s Keller, where I was pleased to be able to eat more or less authentic German food that was also vegetarian (I had noodles with a tomato gratin, served with a nice big helping of spinach). It was really very good.


Auerbach’s Keller

After dinner we did a bit of walking. I can’t remember where I read it, but apparently Leipzig is the site for a big gothic fest. I can totally see why. Besides all the Faustian goodies, it’s wonderfully dark and old. There are winding streets and craggy old buildings. It’s very shadowy and the streetlamps at night are not particularly bright. You half expect some ghoul to pop out at you from behind a building–but it’s not really at all scary.

We passed a few antiquarian booksellers with some really impressive things in their windows. Maybe someday we’ll go back when those shops are open.

We finished off our day with a drink in the hotel wine bar. The walls of the wine bar were lined with what appeared to be panels from champagne crates, signed by famous guests including the members of REM, Pink, Van Morrison, and (Ezra requires me to mention this) Roger Whitaker. It was another reminder of the sweet digs in which we found ourselves.

Song of the Day

Hospitality-Eighth Avenue 

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