Flipping Through

The latest in patterned tights. Oh, how I want...

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:20:05 -0500

The latest in patterned tights. Oh, how I want these.

tatteredcover:

Read my tights. bookriot: Wear your nerdery with pride AND style!

teachingliteracy: printed tights.

dr-tarl: bratini

The Joy of Books (X) This is very enjoyable, but if you want...

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:35:05 -0500

The Joy of Books (X)

This is very enjoyable, but if you want to watch the whole thing in sequence (as a video), you can do so here.

teachingliteracy: (by ello lovey)

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:15:42 -0500

teachingliteracy:

(by ello lovey)

If I were a banned book

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 10:43:05 -0500

If I were a banned book:

If I were a banned book, I’d be the Pigman and I’d be a Wallflower and I’d be the story of Sleeping Beauty, written under a penname. I’d kill mockingbirds and I’d talk about the things we talk about when we talk about things like death and love and sex and forever, which, as I already would have taught you, sometimes means less than forever but always mean what forever will mean to you, then, at that moment.

(via Thought Catalogue)

The Tiger is structured around the hunt, and Vaillant uses the...

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 16:35:06 -0500

The Tiger is structured around the hunt, and Vaillant uses the time between the tiger’s two kills to build up the historical narrative that is so integral to the current conflict. But, as the days grow shorter (the book takes place in the weeks leading up to Christmas) and the timeline grows tighter, the intensity of the hunt builds until you’re forced to read at breakneck speed, barely pausing to breath, because the tiger could be anywhere. When the inevitable confrontation occurs, though, Vaillant slows everything down; a second becomes a minute and, as if the page is a lens, he pans around the attack, allowing you to see it from every angle before speeding everything back up to realtime. It’s an incredible finish and it will leave you gasping.

Read the rest of my review…

Video

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 10:55:05 -0500

In The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag, the second book in...

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:46:06 -0500

In The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag, the second book in the series, Bradley took us away from Buckshaw and into the village of Bishop’s Lacey and all the gossip and memories of other people. By setting A Red Herring Without Mustard back on Buckshaw’s grounds he’s bridging what we know about the villagers with what we’re learning about the de Luce’s. Coming closer to home means seeing more of Flavia’s inner world, including how hurt she is by the meanness of her older sisters, and how much she grieves for Harriet, a mother she never knew. I’ve always thought of Flavia as distinctly Miss Marple-esque, and although that comparison stands in terms of sleuthing and poking around, Bradley takes care in his third book to remind us that she is still a little girl and, although she’s adept at solving crimes, the puzzles of life and relationships still need working out.

Read the rest of my review….

Dead Writers Club: Happy Deathday, Mr. Dahl!

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 11:54:20 -0500

Dead Writers Club: Happy Deathday, Mr. Dahl!:

deadwriters:

On this day in 1990, beloved children’s author Roald Dahl died from a blood disease at the age of 74. Apparently, Dahl was buried with his snooker cues, burgundy wine, chocolates, HB pencils and a power saw… we don’t know about you, but we cannot think of a better way to go out.

Mr. Dahl…

I think I read all of Dahl’s kids books and I’ve even made some headway into his more adult collections. I also read both of his autobiographies and the huge biography of his that came out last year (Storyteller by Donald Sturrock – it was excellent). If you want to catch up on your Dahl love but don’t have time to re-read his books today, feel free to dip into my reviews:

Fantastic Mr. Fox (published 1970)
Danny the Champion of the World (published 1977)
Boy: Tales of Childhood (published 1984)
Going Solo (published 1986)

The Paper Garden is, in my opinion, the whole package....

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 13:35:05 -0500

The Paper Garden is, in my opinion, the whole package. It’s a riveting story about a woman who, against all odds, created an art form that has never been matched; it’s a contemporary coming-of-age story about another fascinating woman; and it’s told with language and photos that so lovely it’s hard to believe they’re real. Reading The Paper Garden now, while I’m in my twenties, makes me wonder if I’m working toward something (it makes me hope I am) and I can only imagine how I’ll feel when I reread it in twenty years, or in forty years. In her search for a role model, Peacock found the ultimate woman to look up to, and in sharing her discovery, has shown herself to be quite a uniquely talented woman as well.

Finish reading over here…

I can still recite this entire poem by...

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 11:26:57 -0500

I can still recite this entire poem by memory.

theatlantic:

inothernews:

The story of In Flanders Fields, one of history’s most memorable wartime poems.

(h/t brnttecnfessns)

One of our favorites here at The Atlantic

"In its silence, a book is a challenge: it can’t lull you with surging music or deafen you with..."

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 13:36:06 -0400

“In its silence, a book is a challenge: it can’t lull you with surging music or deafen you with screeching laugh tracks or fire gunshots in your living room; you have to listen to it in your head. A book won’t move your eyes for you the way images on a screen do. It won’t move your mind unless you give it your mind, or your heart unless you put your heart in it. It won’t do the work for you. To read a story well is to follow it, to act it, to feel it, to become it—everything short of writing it, in fact. Reading is not “interactive” with a set of rules or options, as games are; reading is actual collaboration with the writer’s mind. No wonder not everybody is up to it.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin, Harper’s Magazine (via bookoasis)

This is one of the few characters I wish I got to use more on a...

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 15:12:06 -0400

This is one of the few characters I wish I got to use more on a daily basis. They are quite lovely, aren’t they?

nparts:

Just My Type: A short history of the ampersand
Much of what one needs to know about the history and beauty of a font may be found in its ampersand. Done well, an “&” is not so much a character as a creature, an animal from the deep. Or it is a character in the other sense of the word, usually a tirelessly entertaining one, perhaps an uncle with too many magic tricks.

At the New Yorker Fest talk, Diana Athill’s name...

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 11:04:11 -0400

At the New Yorker Fest talk, Diana Athill’s name didn’t come up among the panelists’ lists of writers’ writers, but I think that’s because, more than that, she’s a reader’s writer. That sounds obvious maybe (I mean, shouldn’t all writers be that?), but what I mean is that her work, and specifically Midsummer Night in the Workhouse, is the kind you can read over and over again without feeling you’ve heard it all before. Although her writing is straightforward and fairly unadorned, she manages to slide in so many details and suggestions that I think at least half of them slide off on first-read, waiting for you to come back and soak them up later. Athill’s stories are so much about the everyday, almost mundane, pieces of life that they seem new when held up for you to walk around. It’s that innocence Lahiri was talking about – that anyone will care about these snippets of life – that make Athill’s stories glow, making her a writer for readers and writers alike.

Read the rest of my review…

wildingcollections: Artist Jonathan Safran Foer discussed...

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:01:06 -0400

wildingcollections:

Artist Jonathan Safran Foer discussed making ”Tree of Codes” by removing specific segments of text from a book to craft an entirely new story.

It’s hard to talk about The Virgin Cure without making...

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 13:20:05 -0400

It’s hard to talk about The Virgin Cure without making comparisons to The Birth House, Ami McKay’s debut, because both novels have such strong central characters, and both have so much to do with the way female sexuality was controlled by men. I devoured both books in only a couple of days, but after finishing The Virgin Cure, I woke up in the middle of the night overcome by worry for Moth, who I guess I had been dreaming about. It sounds silly now, but at the time I was so concerned about what had happened that it took me a while to get back to sleep. McKay has a way of writing historical fiction in which the story is subtly transposed to modern-day by the reader. She is not anachronistic, but the stories she tells about women and sexuality are relevant and moving, and they’re stories that don’t allow you to move on simply by re-shelving the book.

Read the rest…

I do love a good bookmark.

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 10:36:29 -0400

I do love a good bookmark.

Island of Wings begins with the McKenzies arriving on Hirta and...

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 09:30:08 -0400

Island of Wings begins with the McKenzies arriving on Hirta and ends shortly after they’ve left, many years later. In many ways, the structure is that of a coming-of-age novel: Neil as a minister, the McKenzies as a family, and the island as a developing community. Read in that light, the bleakness of the narrative is softened by the suggestion that the spiral will reverse itself, and if things don’t turn around completely, the winter will end, the birds will return and life will pick up again.

Read the rest…

Cookbook Review: Chef Michael Smith's Kitchen

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 13:24:05 -0400

Cookbook Review: Chef Michael Smith's Kitchen:

The best part about reviewing cookbooks is having the excuse to break out of my usual meal routine. This one appeared on The Appetizer on Tuesday.

From the man who made his career by encouraging people to cook without a recipe comes Chef Michael Smith’s Kitchen: 100 of My Favourite Recipes. It sounds like a contradiction, but being inspired to cook with the items in your cupboards and knowing what do with them can be two different things, and this cookbook is as much a field guide as it is an instruction manual.

Read the rest on The Appetizer.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I like layered...

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 13:20:05 -0400

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I like layered narratives. I like the way different parts of the story unfold depending on who’s at the centre of the action, and I like getting to know different characters and having the opportunity to see other characters through their eyes. The tricky thing, though, is managing to maintain several characters without either forgetting about one along the way, or without having them all show up at the same party just so they can meet. The connections between the characters in Alligator are so believable that nothing seems convenient so much as natural, and the rising tension that comes at the end is thrilling because you both know and can’t quite believe what is happening. In that sense, I’m glad it took me so long to get to Alligator, because it’s a book that will keep you up all night and, like the life for Moore’s characters, not necessarily give you the exact ending you thought you were heading towards.

Read the rest…

thelifeguardlibrarian: Truly, a library alive.

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:15:30 -0400

thelifeguardlibrarian:

Truly, a library alive.