Update Just to Update, 1st Week of Sept 2014 Edition

1. I'm about a third of the way into Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. How I missed this one until now, I have no idea. It's a peculiar book: takes place in the early 1800s in an alternate England where magic still exists, though only two "practical" magicians remain, other magicians being merely "theoretical," reading up on the history and theory without actually doing any magic. At the beginning of the book, actually performing magic is considered a bit improper, though thrilling.
Anyway, I'm very much enjoying it so far. If you know the end, don't tell me!

2. Today I'm listening to Hank Williams over and over. A friend made mention of the song "I Saw the Light," and his version is the one that plays in my head as soon as I see those words. Listening to him is bittersweet now: this is music I listened to as a kid until every word is part of me...but now that I'm more familiar with the hard, short life he led, I can't help hearing double-meanings in so many of these songs, and it tears at my heart. Love his voice, though.

3. Tomorrow I'm going to do something that scares me, rather. I've been a regular blood donor for several years now, but yesterday I got a call/plea from the Puget Sound Blood Center asking me to consider donating platelets. This requires being hooked to a machine for several hours: blood goes to a cell separating machine that collects platelets, and then red blood cells are returned. This is WAY, WAY creepier than merely bleeding into a bag. I'm a pro at bleeding into a bag at this point. I have a 2 gallon pin to prove it. But a) the nice blood center lady said they're at "emergency" levels, and b) I accidentally totally missed my last appointment to donate, so I have guilt. So...off we go. Maybe I can include it in a story someday.

Added bonus: totally legit excuse to sit on my rear reading a book for several hours on Saturday.

4. I appear to have been conclusively adopted by a desk, whether I like it or not. It's a sturdy but unattractive thing that used to be a nurse's station at a gynecology/urology practice, just to add to its charm. (Everybody, CRINGE!) I got it for free when I helped some of the folks there move to a new building.

In a lot of ways, it's an ideal desk for me: it has a file drawer plus another drawer for junk, a pull out work-surface for times when I need more paper space, a big built-in space for organizing documents, plenty of book space up above. However, the lamp on the underside broke, so it's dark. Also it's ugly. And did I mention ugly? I thought to maybe sell it and eventually replace with something slightly more of my own choice, but no bites. Beyond conning friends into helping me haul it to Goodwill, I seem to be stuck with it. And I'm beginning to think I'm not meant to get rid of it. It seems to be My Destiny.

So I guess I'm going to try to find a new LED light to mount on the underside of the hutch bit. And maybe I can pretty it up. Somehow. Maybe I can cover it in decorative duct tape. That would go along with my milk crate and garage sale rejects motif.

5. I've been posting a bit more poetry and such over on my reflections-and-thoughts blog, Thorns and Blossoms. Some of it's a repeat of what I've posted here, but not all, so check it out if you've a mind to.

Throwback Thursday: The Hardy Boys and the Search for the Squeaky Baritone

Cheating today: this post originally went a few Augusts ago, but I'm stealing it because I don't have time to write a new one this week.

The Davies Memorial Library in the town where I grew up was and remains a sort of time capsule. It resides in the space above the town offices and post office, the top floor in a smallish old building with creaky wood floors. Most of the time the big green wooden front door that brings you directly into the library is locked, so instead you go in by way of the more or less modernized offices downstairs, past the sounds of printers and phones and people talking, and then up, up into a hushed and dusty space where the years have stopped in their tracks. It smells like fragrant old wood, like an old violin case, and the mustiness of old books. Huge old paneled windows let in slanted sunlight, the disturbed dust floating in the light, making the rays seem like a physical thing. In the main room, there is a fireplace and off-limits horsehair stuffed furniture, and a glass case filled with antiquities. An iron spiral staircase disappears into what I now guess is an attic; when I was little, I used to have nightmares about what was at the top of those stairs, behind the closed door.

Most of the children's section resides in a few built-in wooden bookcases against one wall, with stairs built beneath so even the shortest patrons can reach. There are some new books by now, I suppose, but at least when I was little, they mostly dated back years. Decades. While other kids were reading The Babysitters Club and Judy Blume and whatever else was popular in the late eighties and early nineties, we read boys' adventure stories from early in the century, and the Bobbsey Twins, the Happy Hollisters, L. Frank Baum, Thornton Burgess, Tom Swift, and the original Hardy Boys books: brown bound volumes with crackly yellowed pages. We'd collect a stack of books, and then Mom or I would write the titles and authors down carefully in the notebook on the desk. There were no punch cards or a full-time librarian or anything like that: the library works on an honor system, and you just write down a list of what you've got, and bring 'em back when you're done.

Although most of us were (and are!) voracious readers in our own right, Mom read many of these books aloud to us. She was a master of reading aloud: all the characters had unique voices, mannerisms; some had quirky accents. Her voice would rise in excitement at some points, or drop to a secretive near-whisper. She made those books come alive. We liked the slang in the Hardy Boys books, and repeated it ourselves. "Good night!" we'd exclaim. "Aww, nuts..." "Gee, that's swell!"

When we later came across the remade versions from the sixties and later, we were appalled and disgusted. In many cases, they shared nothing with the original books but the titles. They were tamer; more PC, I suppose, but not nearly as much fun.

After all these years, I've forgotten almost all details of the books. But there was one in particular I'd been wanting to find again at some point. I had the vague impression that there was diving involved in some way, but that's all. And one of the characters was a fellow named Mr. Perry. Mom gave him a high-pitched, rather querulous voice that stood out from all the others. And then...about halfway through the book, she read something he said, and then stopped short. She blinked, and then read slowly (I paraphrase, and probably confabulate), "he boomed in his hearty baritone voice." And then she cracked up. And we cracked up. Even the younger kids who may not have understood the discrepancy couldn't have helped laughing once Mom started. Her laughter was contagious: she'd laugh until she was breathless, and tears streamed down her cheeks.

I can't actually recall if she changed his voice or just left it--with the mismatched adjectives creeping in here and there, to our amusement. But it inadvertently turned a minor character and a not particularly spectacular book into a memorable one. When my little brother got an orange kitten at around that time, he instantly named it--Mr. Perry.

(As a side note, when Mr. Perry was a few months old, he went after a toad. Toads secrete a poison--it's about their only defense--and it made him foam at the mouth and otherwise sick. He was rushed to the vet, and in the process of examination he was discovered to be a she. Ben renamed her Peri Ozma, Ozma being of course after the princess in L. Frank Baum's Oz books. Meanwhile, many of the little kids got the impression that licking a toad could cause one to change sex. Oh dear....)

I know the Mr. Perry book was nothing special, but I've still been wanting to track it down. Every few years I'd wander around the internet hoping someone had a detailed enough synopsis that I'd be able to figure out it. And it has finally happened. Thanks to various wikis, I've identified it as The Secret Warning. Not only that, but there's a company reprinting the original series, so I can get a new copy. It's on my list. I don't expect much of it, reading it as an adult and without the circumstances surrounding the first reading. But at least I'll have the satisfaction of having solved a long-standing mystery.

Not Dead Yet

Reason #1 I haven't been blogging: I've been obsessively practicing mandolin and learning new tunes.  Tunes I've learned since the beginning of November:


OK, I confess, I'd played Banish Misfortune before, but not memorized it, so maybe that one's a lie.  Still, not bad all told, if I do say so myself.  And most of them, I know well enough to play at the local Irish session, without toooo many stumbles.  However, the list of commonly played tunes they gave me when I first started attending is sixty tunes long, and it seems like people toss out new ones every week, so this list is a drop in the bucket.  I still have a lot of work cut out for me.  Fun work, though, for the most part, with the exception of Lark in the Morning Jig.  Don't ask me why, but I developed an instant antipathy for that tune.  Maybe I'm not as much of a morning person as I thought I was.  But I'll beat the Lark yet.

Reason #2 I haven't been blogging: I've been sucked down the e-reader rabbit hole.

Quite a number of family members have obtained Kindles over the past few months and all have been raving about them.  And these days, you can borrow library books on them, which knocks down one of the mental barriers I'd set up against them.  The selection of library e-books isn't great, but it's growing.  And Kindles have come down a lot in price.  A few years ago, they were what, $350?  Now, they're under a hundred. 

I got to play with my sister-in-law's new Kindle Touch for awhile over Christmas, and then when I was at Target on New Year's Eve, they had a returned one marked down to $69.  Plus I had a Target gift card.  Plus I am weak.  It came home with me.  Ended up having a bad USB cable, but my phone uses the same cable so I could charge it straight off, and Amazon customer service was happy to send a replacement for the original.  Good deal.

I have to say, I'm smitten.  There is much to be said for the ability to carry many, many large, heavy books in one bitty package, and the ability to request any classic (and a lot of other stuff) for free at the touch of a coupla buttons, without even getting off the couch.  Also, it's lighter and more comfortable to hold than a lot of big books, lays flat, and I can lazily turn pages with one hand whilst eating lunch or what have you.  I haven't bought much yet, aside from Mr. Speegle's short story collection, and Life of Pi, which I've been wanting to read for awhile and which I got for a dollar as one of the "special offers."  But I've gone through half a dozen library books with more in the queue, plus have a bunch of classics and out-of-print goodies waiting in the wings. (First up, some lighter reading: lotsa PG Wodehouse and a smattering of Mary Roberts Rinehart mysteries.)

It doesn't replace real books by any means.  There are still an awful lot of things not available for Kindle, for one thing, and I'm still likely to drag home large stacks of cheap used books, which isn't an option for e-books.  Still, I'm seriously pleased with the little thing.

Anyhow, between reading and music, I've barely had time for things like, oh, bathing, let alone blogging.  What did I miss?  Are we there yet?

These Books are my Friends

A Long Expected Rereading

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, 

Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, 

Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, 

One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne 

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. 

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, 

One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them 

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

I first read J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy when I was about thirteen.  Sometimes I wish I could go back to that first read-through, recapture that first wonder.  It took my breath away: that vast world with all its many races, cultures, languages; the varied landscapes, the maps and runes, the staggering scope of the history.  Although it's an often criticized aspect, I loved the richness of the many layered names for people, places and things. I warmed to to the innocent, comfort-loving hobbits, felt for them as they left innocence and comfort far behind in order to do what needed to be done.  I felt the panic of being chased by Black Riders, by evil unknown.  I felt the awe and wonder of the hobbits at Rivendell; like them, I wanted to linger, listening to the songs and stories of the wise, unthinkably long-lived elves.  And then, at Rivendell, just when the adventure seemed about to end, the true quest began, filled with danger, beauty, darkness, love and friendship--and an ultimate victory that, as is so often the case, is nevertheless touched by sorrow and pain.  And along the way, I fell deeply in love most particularly with two characters: the sweet, ever-faithful hobbit Samwise Gamgee, and the brave, wise, and utterly romantic Knight of Gondor, Faramir. (Ladies: just try reading his scene with Eowyn in the Houses of Healing without swooning a little...)

I don't need to go through every detail of the entire story.  Those who have read it are likely already wandering there in their minds.  Those who haven't...really should. 

It's a long story in its own right, but for better or worse, I quite literally would not be where I am right now without these books.  You could say they were, in a very real sense, entwined in my own destiny.  And it had been too long since I last read them.

Today, I begin the adventure anew, starting with Frodo and Bilbo's birthday, which happens to fall--funnily enough--on September the 22nd.  When I was planning to set aside some time for this reread, it seemed an appropriate day to begin the journey once again.  I am very much looking forward to it.

Of Powell's, Poetry, and Paper

An odd assortment of titles, perhaps--mystery, sci-fi, poetry--but it's my kind of odd!

Paper bounty: Clairefontaine staple-bound notebook, Rhodia staple-bound notebook, Leuchtturm 1917

Leuchtturm as compared with a Moleskine--the Leuchtturm (top) is slightly wider.

Blurb from the back of the Leuchtturm 1917

Letters, Lists, and Letteras

March 19, 2011

Current Pencil Related Reading

1. Bear with me for a moment on this first one...there is pencil content, I swear!

If you've never read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, I would like to highly recommend it.  It is so wonderfully, richly written.  The characters are heartbreakingly real in all their hopes and all their flaws, moments of beauty and joy, shattered dreams and struggles.  It feels almost like a very vivid biography rather than a novel...and to a great extent, I suspect it to be just that in disguise.

It takes place in the few decades of the 1900s, and the primary character is Francie Nolan, an intelligent, sensitive, imaginative little girl growing up in a poor Brooklyn neighborhood.  Her imagination is a blessing and a curse to her: there's one particularly poignant scene in the first part of the book where she and her brother are waiting in line with other poor people to buy stale bread from the bakery--loads are brought back from the local stores and sold at a cut rate price, first come, first served.  As they're waiting, she observes a group of old men sitting in the back, enjoying the warmth for awhile before joining the line fighting for the bread.  She focuses on one man in particular, dirty and shabby and with holes in his shoes and ugly, thick-nailed toes peeking out, and thinks about the fact that once upon a time, he must have been a sweet little baby with little pink toes that his mother loved to kiss.  Once he was a young man, and went courting.  And so on.  She imagines his whole life...and then the current moment barrels down on her, the way he is now, the seemingly inescapable result of poverty--and she suddenly feels that if she doesn't get away immediately, she will find herself instantly changed in the same way.  She is thrown into such a panic that she has to rush out of the room.

More than anything, she wants to learn; she wants to know.  She can't wait to go to school, to meet other children, to be given knowledge.  There is pencil content here, too:

Most of all, she wanted "school supplies": a notebook and tablet and a pencil box with a sliding top filled with new pencils, and eraser, a little tin pencil sharpener made in the shape of a cannon, a pen wiper and a six-inch, soft-wood, yellow ruler.

I'm intrigued by the pencil sharpener in particular.  I wonder, were tin novelty sharpeners common right then, or was this a fond childhood memory on the author's part?

But there's no actual mention of her getting such a thing right then, and when she gets to school she is unable to make friends, has to share a desk meant for one person with another student, and is treated with contempt by most of her teachers because of her impoverished background.  The students are given a single pencil to use during the day, which is taken back from them after use:

She accepted with pride the pencil the monitor passed out to her in the morning and reluctantly surrendered it to another monitor at three o'clock.

If that doesn't make you appreciate the modern world and the relative wealth we all possess...!

OK, so the pencil content isn't a reason in and of itself to read this book...but it does make me smile.

2. More on-topic, the next library book on my to-be-read pile is Henry Petroski's work, The Pencil.  It contains a full and detailed history of pencils, and the men whose names now grace so many of our favorites--Dixon, for example, and Eberhard Faber, and Faber-Castell.  It explains mysteries such as why (in the US, at least) most pencils are yellow.  From what I can tell in flipping through it, it gets a little technical in places (lots of detail on the development of lead composition, for example, and the mechanisms in early mechanical pencils), but nonetheless it appears to be a must-read for any lovers of writing instruments.  I'm looking forward to it.

As a final note, I just got my hands on some General's Semi-Hex pencils.  I look forward to playing with them over the next little bit.  Woo-hoo!

Paperback Throwdown

Something just a little out of my usual realm today: a journey through some paperback cover art.

I kinda sorta collect old mysteries, particularly Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Rex Stout, and a small handful of others, plus a few sci-fi books here and there. Most of these books are paperbacks, because a) I'm cheap, and b) they tend to be far more common than hardback editions. Paperbacks aren't as durable, of course, *but* they do have one bonus feature: while hard cover volumes tend to have long ago lost any dust cover and thus their original artwork, paperbacks can't ditch the original cover, for better or worse. They're stuck with their original artwork, cheesy or lurid or bizarre as it may be.

Old sci-fi paperbacks in particular are known for being...odd. There are many with strange, brightly colored covers, often with motifs that seem to have no real connection to the actual story. Heinlein covers tend to be especially odd, in my experience. This particular one is tame compared with the last library book of his I checked out. Woo-hoo for pink sea-dragons!


Then there's C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength. I've read this book practically every other year since high school, and I still couldn't tell you what the cover is supposed to be about. I mean...what's with the painting of what is apparently bouncing orange balls and bolts of flying black lightning? No clue.


Mysteries seem to do different things by decade and depending on the publisher's whims at that point in time. There is a whole series of Nero Wolfe books with cover art that could *all* be titled "Still Life With a Gun". Usually a revolver, but not always. They liked to mix things up, those cover artists of old.


My favorite in this series: revolver plus chocolate. Nice.


There's another whole series of Nero Wolfe books with gobs of fake blood as a major component of every single cover picture. Apparently there was a special on red paint that decade. Or something.


Many of the older Agatha Christie covers go along with the classic Still Life With a Gun motif, though in painting form rather than photography. And no, I cannot explain the GIGANTIC syringe and watch and revolver on Appointment with Death's cover. Or maybe they aren't gigantic, in which case that's a very tiny maze and skeleton and gate and trees. I tried to figure it out, but it just gave me a headache.


Revolver and dagger and jooolry. And burning candle. All carefully balanced without falling over. And without setting the house on fire.


Because of the cover art, I sometimes end up with two copies of the exact same book. This is partly because it means I can't remember if I already own a given book, since they look completely different, and partly because it's just fun to compare. For example, here's an old copy of Agatha Christie's Ordeal by Innocence. It's very worn, but if you look closely, you can make out the sort of 1930s style car, the woman's elegant hair style.


And, for contrast, another edition. Can you guess which decade this is from? (Nice hairdo, huh?)


And then there is this little gem, one glimpse of which is sure to make a teetotaler of even the hardest drinking guest.


A closeup of the scary cover thing. Isn't she lovely?


I'll finish off with a Dashiell Hammett cover, which I love just for its complete over-the-top-ness.


It's like an old movie trailer in one image: "Guns! Girls! Fast cars! Kidnapping! MURDER!!!"

TMI, F. Scott, mini-NaNo Blah Blah

1. TMI
Ugh...yesterday I went in for a combined appointment for dental cleaning and an orthodontics adjustment. From basic braces, I am now being initiated into the joys of the ever-so-charmingly named "power chains," which are supposed to close the gaps where teeth were yanked more quickly; and elastics (rubber bands, really) which attach to my eye teeth top and bottom to help move my bite into the right place. The requisite pushing and prodding involved in all this left me sore and cranky, though they're good folks and as gentle as possible. You can replicate the experience, if so desired, by getting someone to kick you in the teeth half a dozen times, and then wrapping a big rubber band around your head top to bottom so you can't open your mouth more than a quarter inch without pressure. Go on, try it! It's fun! Bonus: the elastics are very obvious. 'Cause regular braces weren't dorky enough.

Seriously though, I *am* grateful (and blessed) to be in a place where I can afford to finally do this, before I had more problems. And even after just the five months or so since I started this whole process, the dental hygienist was thrilled that she could actually *see* all my teeth. They were too crowded to get at before.

But it'll be awful nice when it's done. Still a long way to go, but it's happening.

2. F. Scott Fitzgerald
If you're the sort of person who tends naturally toward "melancholy," you should probably avoid reading F. Scott Fitzgerald. If you *must* read F. Scott Fitzgerald, for goodness' sake avoid Tender is the Night. Even just *reading* it will make you feel unsettled, slightly drunk, and a bit insane. But oh, I do love his writing. OK, so his characters are pretty much all miserable, immoral, shallow (yet beautiful and charming) people who I would avoid in real life--as if I'd move in the circles of the rich and famous to begin with. But I'm still drawn in by his writing. His stories are like oversaturated photos: unreal and a little disorienting, but compelling. He uses the most exquisite words, and uses them exquisitely. The often quoted line from the very end of The Great Gatsby is a good example:

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Even out of context, I love that.

Tender is the Night is not a happy book. It's not a nice book. Nobody ends well. But I couldn't help liking it all the same.

3. NaNo
I quick-and-dirty PDFed another big chunk of my manuscript this morning since I had to be in before hours to do server maintenance. Just made images without trying to OCR. I figure it's good enough for a backup. Considering I've not been able to resist scribbling notes and corrections all over my pages (I'd forget 'em if I waited until I finished), I'm not sure I'll be able to OCR anyhoo.

The story is...well...moving. Slowly. I'd do better with an extra hour in the morning. Unfortunately, I don't have a time turner. I will say this: one nice thing about having a writer in the story is that I can stick in occasional venting sessions, but in his voice, and actually add to my word count. Handy. I'll probably have to edit them down a bit in the rewrite, but some of them are dead-on and very well said. Bravo, Marty.

Update just to update

1. I've been reading Leif Enger's Peace Like a River. I'm about halfway through at this point, and I have to say, if it continues to be as good as it's been so far, this may be one of the best books I've ever read. It's one of those books where you're on edge, holding your breath all the way through, thinking that sooner or later it'll let you down, because it's too good to be true. He's definitely a writer's writer--beautiful poetic prose, lots of literary references sprinkled throughout (in a very comfortable unpretentious way that makes me want to read any of the references I'm missing). Oh, and typewriter content, too. Gotta love that.

2. Unlike other typospherians, I have not finished last year's NaNoWriMo novel. I'd kind of set it aside, but now I'm motivated/guilted to *maybe* try and get the last few chapters done before starting all over again. If I went at it NaNo style, I could do it. I'm torn between that and thinking on this year's project. But who needs planning anyhow, right?

Oh, and congrats to Mike!

3. Saturday is my birthday. That's probably part of why I've been a bit of a gloomy Gus lately. It'd be nice if I could have a party without racking up a bigger age number, but I think it's gonna be the other way around. However, I did get a very cool early birthday present from my Dad when he was in the area a few weeks back: Volume I and III of The Waltz Books. And not just *any* Volume I and III: he gave me the original copies we've used over the years--the first one in particular has some wear on it. OK, so it isn't decades old, but we got it when all of us (him included) were really starting to get into playing music, and it includes notes on when we started to learn each tune, bowings and chords that worked better, other notes in the margins...lots of memories there. We played music out of them while he was here (mostly him on fiddle, me on mando), and he said he'd either buy me copies or let me have the good old marked up books. I'm a sentimental fool, what can I say? ;-)

So maybe for my birthday, I'll lock myself in and alternate Neo-ing with mando-ing until either the story or my fingers are finished....

Library haul!

Thanks for all the reading suggestions, folks! Some of the ones I looked for either weren't available at the local library (but can be requested from others in the system, which I do a lot), or were checked out...but I still came away with a decent stack today....



Oh, and for the record, they're sitting on thedoghouse, which my dog likes to climb up on and dig at, hence the busted shingles. It ain't pretty, but the light was better out there....

Pyelem G Vudhaus??

Apparently there are now some pretty fanatical Russian Wodehouse fans.

Natalya Trauberg sounds like an amazing woman:

That there is a Wodehouse fellowship at all, though, is largely thanks to Natalya Trauberg. A self-taught English speaker, the 79-year-old former dissident risked transportation to the gulags under Stalin for translating the theological works of C S Lewis and G K Chesterton in samizdat.

Can you imagine the sort of stories she could tell? Fascinating.