The Other Side of Wonderland

BookList 2008

2008-05-25T20:22:00.003-05:00

I've been meaning, for quite a while now, to post the list of books I've been reading. For some reason at the start of the year I decided to keep a list of all the book I read this year, by month. So- now that we're nearly at the halfway point of the year and I have a bit of spare time- here goes:

January

***Mammoth, John Varley
****Lucky You, Carl Hiaasen
*****The Android’s Dream, Jon Scalzi
****Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure, Dave Gorman
****A Spot of Bother, Mark Haddon
***The Alphabet of Manliness, Maddox
*****Old Man’s War, John Scalzi
***Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
****Mayflower, Nathaniel Philbrick
****Sabriel, Garth Nix
*****The Used World, Haven Kimmel
****Boogers Are My Beat, Dave Barry

February

****Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris
****Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs
***Boomsday, Christopher Buckley
***Piece of Work, Laura Zigman
****N-Space, Larry Niven
*****Bluebeard, Kurt Vonnegut
****No Way to Treat a First Lady, Christopher Buckley
***Mirror, Mirror, Gregory Macguire
****Wickett’s Remedy, Myla Goldberg
***Ten Thousand Islands, Randy Wayne White

March

****Possible Side Effects, Augusten Burroughs
***Out To Pasture, Effie Leland Wilder
****Ya-Yas in Bloom, Rebecca Wells
****Quite a Year for Plums, Bailey White
*****The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, Lauren Willig
***The Children, Edith Wharton
*****Square Foot Gardening, Mel Bartholomew
***The Top 10 Myths About Evolution, Cameron M. Smith & Charles Sullivan
**What We Don’t Know About Children, Simona Vinci
***Lady Oracle, Margaret Atwood
***Plainsong, Kent Haruf
*****The Sweet Potato Queens’ 1st Big-Ass Novel, Jill Conner Browne
***The Hawks of Delamere, Edwards Marston
*****Kindred, Octavia E. Butler
*****Elantris, Brendon Sanderson

April

***Gentlemen of the Road, Michael Chabon
*****The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdös and the Search for Mathematical Truth, Paul Hoffman
****Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norell, Susanna Clarke
*****Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer

May

*****The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, Yann Martel
*****King Dork, Frank Portman
****Beka Cooper: Terrier, Tamora Pierce
***After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away, Joyce Carol Oates
***The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman
****Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse, Phyllis Diller
***Insanity, Illinois, Mark Sumner
*****CancerVixen, Marisa Acocella Marchetto

I'm really happy with the diversity this list shows, and while I've gotten busy with work a couple of times and let my reading lapse, I nonetheless am enojoying the leisure time that it takes to read something like Johnathon Strange and Mr. Norell, now that I have graduated.

Dry

2008-03-01T20:59:00.002-06:00

I enjoy reading about people who were/ are alcoholics. Augusten Burroughs, giving away his dog because he can't be beotherred to stay sober long enough to train or take care of the poor beast? Ha ha, I'm so glad that's not me!

It is, of course. It's me without my husband. It's me without the one thing, the one person who turns me into a human being. I haven't entirely figured out what this means to me - on the one hand, I'm still pretty close to being that drunk, and I think to myself, "God, if only I was rich - if I was super rich, I wouldn't have to deal with any of this shit, I could just be rich and drunk all the time and who would give a fuck?" And then there's the answer: Ryan would care, and he is the one who makes my life worth living, so I guess I'd better goddamn well shape up and stop drinking so much. And there it is: every time I imagine a bottle of smooth, delicious vodka (approximately every 18 minutes), there is Ryan's face: looking not angry, but sort of confused, and sad. And I can't explain what's wrong to him when I'm drunk, so I guess whatever is going on I have to be able to explain sober. That's the challenge, every day. Call me in a decade and see if it's this hard.

Vegetarian Gourmet

2007-06-15T21:04:00.000-05:00

There is something that I've been longing for for quite a while: a gourmet vegetarian magazine. Don't get me wrong, I love my Vegetarian Times, and it certainly fills a need, but it is aimed more at vegetarians in general. I want a magazine like Food&Wine, which is filled with high-end, lustworthy cookware and chef's tools, and offers gourmet recipes and articles on hot new ingredients and cuisines. I want a magazine for the true vegetarian foodie. I want to know how to use the latest tools and ingredients in my own cooking. I want to know how to eat incredibly well around the world. I want restaurant reviews that tell me which chefs can create something more than a fancy salad for my meal. I want to put an end to things like the first recipe in the "vegetarian slideshow" on Food&Wine magazine's website -- a delectable-looking Polenta Gratin with Spinach and Wild Mushrooms which calls for 3/4 cup chicken stock. Come on. That's not even trying.

Also, I totally want to write for this imaginary magazine.

DNA

2007-05-08T17:28:00.000-05:00

I am currently smack dab in the middle of reading The Salmon of Doubt, which is a collection of Douglas Adams' speeches, columns, articles, and musings, as well as most of The Salmon of Doubt itself, which was going to be his next novel. (I bought the book as an early wedding present for myself, and I was going to save it for the honeymoon, but frankly, how could you have an unread Douglas Adams novel in your house and not start devouring it immediately?)

I'm a little bit struck dumb by how important and incredible this book is, and extremely frustrated at Adams' early death. Somehow for the Hitchhiker's Guide has always been something of a book out of time; in other words, it just exists and is wonderful and in a way it is so good, the characters so rich and realistic and hilarious and fallible and perfect that I basically had no need to know anything about the other (other than to read everything else he has ever written). (Creepily interesting side note: I couldn't remember how to spell "fallible", as I always seem to misspell it as "falliable", so I typed my incorrect version into Google to see what it would suggest. The very first result that pops up is a BBC site for h2g2, which is the business/ website/ encyclopedia co-created by Douglas Adams.)

So, back to my original point (if it can be said that I had one): I was pretty shocked and saddened to learn that Douglas Adams died in 2001, and was not even 50 years old when he died. I'm mad at myself for not appreciating him more when he was alive, although I'm not sure precisely how that would have made a difference. I'm mostly just mad that now I can't read the hilarious novels, speeches, columns, articles, and musings that he could have written.

Read The Salmon of Doubt. It's worth it.

On top of the world

2007-04-30T15:34:00.000-05:00

I'm feeling pretty much invincible right now. (and then, as soon as I typed that sentence, I had a momentary email quandry which knocked a bit of the wind out of my invincibility, but I'll manage).

Things are going really well with my freelance career. I recently received my first good paycheck for a job, which was extremely exciting and gratifying. I've also got a couple more jobs lined up, so I'm feeling very competent. It's been an extremely productive day so far - I took my first final, returned all of my textbooks, took out about 4 loads of garbage, started a load of dishes (which made no discernable dent in the pile of dirty ones), mailed the thank you notes from my second bridal shower, crafted my first ever invoice, created a skype account, and now I'm returning some emails about potential writing jobs. I love feeling so useful. Plus I walked to the mailbox and bought some locally grown produce on the way home, so I'm feeling pretty good about that. Is there no end to what I can accomplish today? (Answer to the rhetorical question: I'm not sure if I can make myself finish my final portfolio or study for my other final exam)

The wedding is less than two weeks away now, and I'm getting impatient. People keep asking me if I'm nervous. Uh, no.... I definitely picked the right guy.

Planet Earth

2007-04-22T21:29:00.000-05:00

Ryan and I have been watching Planet Earth very sporadically, partly because we know that Mom & Andy are Tivoing it all to burn for us later (minus commercials). Still, every time we turn it on it is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. It feels like connections every second; like I'd never have to strew anything but this. Just watching the past 10 minutes or so, we've talked about Latin, humourous scientific names, music, "marine snow", spiders, sea spiders, ant lions, and Jamiroquai (don't ask). I can't wait to have kids to share this stuff with.
I'm actually looking up humourous scientific names right now, I wonder if there was something in the Annals of Improbable Research about that?

2006-08-12T22:17:00.000-05:00

I used to think that I had to be drunk, or stoned, or otherwise out of my mind in order to write - I used to believe that creativity flowed only from tragedy. Now, however, now I know that no matter how dark the night was in which I wrote, it was always hope that held the pen.

2006-04-12T13:57:00.000-05:00

My favorite kind of insult is the kind where, after you insult someone, you have to explain that it wasn't a compliment. Not where you're all like, "Nice pants, jerk," because that's too easy, but where you're like, "That new haircut makes you look like a real hipster. And I don't mean that as a compliment."

It's like a double insult, because not only do you call someone names, but then you don't even allow their ego the easy out of convincing themselves it was really a comment on their excellent taste and style. Very nice.

2006-01-27T00:04:00.000-06:00

I feel out of sorts tonight. I'm in love with Google.

Ryan is out of town, visiting his uncle in Omaha, so I'm alone for the weekend. It's a really bizarre feeling; not quite lonely, but yearning perhaps? Wistful? I know he's out there, not that far away (nothing a couple hours worth of driving couldn't fix), but it's still weird to have to go to bed by myself. I haven't done that in a while, at least not without knowing that he would be home soon to crawl in bed beside me and press his butt against mine (we've always slept butt-to-butt, don't ask me why). I don't know if I'll be able to sleep without the backgroup snoring noise.

2006-01-26T23:54:00.000-06:00

the phrase "new-fangled" is now old-fashioned.

A safer place

2006-01-16T18:36:00.000-06:00

I think the thing I really enjoy most about the recent bombing in Pakistan is all the statements about how some people "regret that civilians were killed, but we have to do what we can to take out high-ranking Al Queda members." The apparently logical consequence being that if we don't "take out" the Al Queda members, then they will cause further attacks which will kill civilians. So in other words, we have to kill civilians in order to keep other people from killing civilians.

This whole situation just raises so many questions for me. Would it have been okay to kill 18 innocent people if they had been Americans? What if they were British? How many people is it okay to kill if it means you take out an Al Queda member? What if you think that the person was a member of Al Queda, but it turns out you were mistaken? What if the Pakistani government begins bombing - very specifically, so that they only kill the target and maybe a handful of other people who were in the area at the time - high-ranking member of the CIA, who after all have been responsible for the deaths of innocent Pakistanis? What's ok? How many innocent people is it okay to kill in order to make the world a safer place? And who is the world then safe for?

Missing Motzart

2006-01-15T22:01:00.000-06:00

I just finished watching the AKC/ Eukanuba National Championship (dog show), and the Alaskan Malamute won Best in Show. And I know it's been more than a year and a half since Motzart died, but for a minute I forgot, and I wanted to go hug him and tell him that he was practically a winner (he was a Great Dane/ Malamute/ Akita mix, and an incredible dog). I miss the bejeezus out of him.

sweet dreams

2006-01-10T23:43:00.000-06:00

I've had dreams about murder the past two nights in a row. I'm not sure if that means anything.
The first dream was one I think I had before - it seemed familiar while I was dreaming it, and I'm not sure if it was really lucid dreaming (I don't think I really knew I was dreaming at the time) I nonetheless knew how everything was going to end. Is there such a thing as foreshadowing, precognition in your sleep? This dream had more of a wistful feel than a horrified one, as the people (a group of girls of which I may or may not have been a part) who were murdered were able to "come back" once or twice, in some form not quite ghostly but certainly no longer alive. The most poignant part was when one of the last girls (played by Katherine Moennig in my dream) to be killed came back, and was visiting her mother - the girl no longer lived at home, and for some reason was prone to long absences, and so her mother didn't know that she was dead. She thought her daughter was just dropping in for a visit, and at the end of their time together, the girl had to tell her mother to get someone to check her apartment - not to do it by herself.

The dream I had last night is less clear in my mind, more chaotic and confused. It was all about accidents, and mistaken identity, and good guys who have to do something bad, or think that they have to, to protect themselves. It ended with the "main character" forcing the ostensible "bad guys" into some sort of acid swamp where they would die a horrible death, leaving behind no bodies and no evidence. At the very last moment, however, something/ someone intervened, saving the good guy from becoming a murderer, but also catching him in the act of becoming a bad guy.

Op-ed

2006-01-09T17:05:00.000-06:00

I was listening to NPR this afternoon, where they were discussing the Alito confirmation hearings, and one of the guests was discussing Alito's record in terms of abortion rights. Now, I didn't hear the guest's introduction, so I don't know if he was speaking form a conservative or a liberal standpoint, but he pointed out, as a positive thing, that Alito is not the type to make a radical attack on Roe v. Wade, but instead he favors minor, incremental changes that makes it easier for states to regulate abortions.
That seems like a bad thing to me.
Big, radical attacks on Roe v. Wade are easy to spot and fairly easy to defend against. I really don't believe that there is a huge segment of the population wanting to reverse the past 30 years, to set women's rights back more than three decades. But tiny, incremental changes in law? That barely deal with abortions themselves and focus instead on allowing states to slowly hack away at a woman's reproductive rights? People today are so busy that even those who truly care and actively want to protect their rights can be hard-pressed to notice things like that. I'm a lot more worried about Alito eroding rights over the course of decades than I am about some random psycho campaigning on a "Don't Kill Babies" platform.

2006-01-02T20:26:00.000-06:00

Inaugural post.

I need to write more.