I’ve liked his stuff for years. His written-for-adults work isn’t bad, but his stuff for kids is fabulous! The picture books are surprisingly subversive (as far as young kids’ lit goes), and the novels for young adults are mind-bogglingly clever.
Just when I thought he couldn’t get any cooler, he does this. Yup, he’s publishing his latest book online (for free), before the print version is released.
Reflecting: On how the lottery of life placed me where I am today. How fortunate I am to have been born into a time and place where my basic needs are easily met and a wealth of opportunity lies before me. I do not have to worry about having clean water to drink, for example, nor must I scrounge for food or firewood every day. But millions of people do, and this site can give you a sense of what living conditions are like in other countries.
Watching: The HBO series Game of Thrones. For the most part, the casting is spot-on, though as a longtime fan of the book series I am already annoyed by some changes that have been made. I understand that when adapting a work of this scope and complexity for the screen, some changes must be made. But some changes just grate on me, especially as relating to character development.* One thing I love, though, is the title sequence. Very nicely done.
Laughing: At this image. And at another visual commentary on Stupid Ned Stark.
Looking up: At the sky and wishing the East Coast didn’t have so much light pollution. To get a really good view of the night sky, I’ll have to content myself with this interactive 360-degree image. The official description (“The Photopic Sky Survey is a 5,000 megapixel photograph of the entire night sky stitched together from 37,440 exposures”) doesn’t quite do it justice. It is pretty amazing. For more information on this project, head directly to the Photopic Sky Survey main page.
Eating: Lots of lettuce and arugula from our garden. The peas have just started to appear (Sylvia sampled the first one straight off the vine today), so i expect we’ll be eating lots of those soon enough.
Reading: Moloka’i, by Alan Brennert. It starts with a seven-year-old girl being sent, alone, to a leper colony in the 1890s. Her parting from her parents and family—knowing that she’d never seen most of them again—is heart-rending. She makes a life for herself on Moloka’i, though, and even finds happiness. In spite of the topic, this isn’t really a “heavy” read, and the narrative is compelling enough that I raced through it pretty quickly.
Thinking: About the Pledge of Allegiance and how, for the most part, it is uncritically taught and learned.
__________
* SPOILER ALERT!!!
Why, for example, are Cersei and (especially) Jaime portrayed so sympathetically here? Why, for crying out loud, didn’t the actor playing Tywin shave his head? Tywin’s baldness is an essential part of his character! Grrrr. For info on a few of the (many) other changes HBO has made, look here.
Reading: The Plot Against America
Also reading: The Dark Is Rising sequence, by Susan Cooper. Actually, I’m listening to these: the three of us are listening to the audio books together (great for long car rides, and for evenings spent playing with Legos in the den after dinner). We’ve gotten through three of the five books, and Sylvia loves them. So much, in fact, that we started having “Wouldn’t it be nice to take a trip to Cornwall soon?” discussions before we realized that such a trip isn’t in our budget right now. Soon, I hope.
Mucking about with: Google Body.
Knitting: It’s been quite some time (months and months!) since I did a knitting update. Over the winter months I completed several small projects:
I also knit a February Lady Sweater for myself. I cast on in January, but I did happen to knit most of it in February. Since I finished it, I’ve worn it at least three days each week—I really love it.
BONUS: All of this knitting was done with stash yarn. WOOT! Up next on my plate: a February Lady (Kid?) Sweater for Sylvia. I think I’ll just take the grown-up pattern and knit the smallest size in sportweight (instead of worsted). That ought to fit her, I think. Unfortunately, I don’t have suitable yarn for this (she wants blue, and I’m thinking of something that’s mostly cotton), so I’ll actually have to buy some for this project.
Watching: The Secret of Kells. One of the most visually stunning films I’ve seen in a long time.
__________
* And one of those friends was the person who gave me some of that yarn about four years ago. She gave me three balls of Baby Cashmerino in a deep red color, and that turned out to be just the right amount to make one scarf for her and an identical one for myself.
Ever since my eyes and ears were polluted with Rush Limbaugh’s attempts to speak “Chinese,” I’ve been needing a good unicorn chaser.
And here it is: Daniel Pinkwater’s Lizard Music
Pinkwater is one of my favorite authors. I think every kid—and adult—should read his stuff.
By changes to the copyright law, that is.
The Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University Law School published an article on how changes in 1978 to the U.S. copyright law have affected us all. For the worse.
Works published or produced in 1954 that would have gone into the public domain on January 1, 2011, will now remain under copyright until 2050. This includes books, movies, musical compositions, and some scientific articles. The article also argues that up to 85% of the works produced in 1982 would also have entered the public domain a few days ago (assuming their copyrights weren’t renewed).
Most of this stuff falls in the category “orphan works”—that is, their copyright owners can’t be found. So these things get used less frequently because no one know who they belong to (and no one wants to get sued for illegal use). Sounds like a bureaucratic mess.
Years ago, Jan taught me the adage “There’s no movie that can’t be improved by adding ninjas to it–even movies that already have ninjas.” After reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,
She remembered the lead ammunition in her pocket and offered it to him. “Your balls, Mr. Darcy?” He reached out and closed her hand around them, and offered, “They belong to you, Miss Bennet.”
If you can get past the idea that the Bennet sisters studied “the deadly arts” of zombie slaying with Shaolin masters in China (maybe reading this just-published prequel
Remembering: To say “Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit” as soon as I woke up on 1 March.
Reading: Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed. This book is about naked mole rats, so even though it’s by an author whose other work I find fairly unimpressive, I was pretty sure I’d love this one before I even cracked the cover. In this tale, one naked mole rat who likes to wear clothes is criticized by other naked mole rats who think that clothes are weird and that everyone should be naked. In the end, they all agree that it’s okay to have different perspectives on clothing. The best part is that the book doesn’t fall back onto a trite ending in which everyone is wearing clothes. There are still plenty of naked naked mole rats around!
Watching: All of Red Dwarf (the original version, not the let’s-cut-some-material-to-make-room-for-more-special-effects version that came out a few years ago) from start to finish. I love this show.
Resisting: An urge to call people who annoy me “smeghead.”
Speaking of smegheads: I’ve noticed that whenever I send an e-mail to my senators and congressional representative, the only one who requires a “prove you’re not spam” test on the submission form is the one Republican in the bunch. I wonder if this party-line divide is true elsewhere or just in my district.
Not caring about: The Olympics. In short, the Olympics are now nothing more than a huge expression of nationalism and competitions that are more between technologies than between skilled humans. How many millions of dollars go into, say, getting the strap attachment on a helmet just so in order to cut down on wind drag by 0.00000005 percent? It just seems like such a waste of money and effort to me.
Chuckling: About this joke: “Two cats decided to have a swimming contest across the English Channel. One was an English cat called One Two Three. The other was a French cat called Un Deux Trois. One Two Three cat won the race. Un Deux Trois cat sank. “
Reading: Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America’s Soul, by Edward Humes. This book is about the 2005 decision by the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, to force biology classes to teach about intelligent design and how this decision tore apart a small community and eventually led to a civil lawsuit. I loved this book. It is meticulously researched, mostly even-handed (though it’s clear where the author’s sympathies lie), and engagingly written. Not once did I feel like I was slogging through these 400 pages. While reading this I found myself repeatedly shocked that people could stoop to name-calling, hate-mongering, and fear-fostering supposedly in the name of religious belief. The thought that occurred to me is that such belief must rest on shaky ground indeed for people to feel so threatened by any challenge to them.
Watching: Lost in Austen. Once I convinced myself to suspend my disbelief about some points (e.g., a woman who gets transported from 21st-century London to the world of Pride and Prejudice still has her makeup fully intact every morning when she wakes up in early-19th-century England?), I found this movie to be lots of fun. At first I thought it was going to follow formula: “Oh, she’s messed up something that’s supposed to happen in the book, and now she has to fix it.” But I was pleasantly surprised to see the mess-ups pile on top of each other and get so unwieldy that it seems impossible for her to fix them. Now that’s a challenge! And if you want to know how it all turns out, you’ll have to watch it yourself.
Eating: Homemade spinach pakora. Even Sylvia likes them, which surprises me to no end. She calls them “chewies.”
