Category: literature

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What It Is: 7/6/09

What I’m reading: I finished The Hunter, and I’m waiting for delivery of David Mazzucchelli’s decade-in-the-making comic, Asterios Polyp. (Boy, do I hate the term “graphic novel.”)

What I’m listening to: My new Mad Mix CD, “Stix Stigma,” which I’ve started sending out to select friends.

What I’m watching: Apollo 13, Roman Holiday, and Federer’s impossibly long Wimbledon finals match against Andy Roddick. Congrats, Rog!

What I’m drinking: Plymouth & Q Tonic.

What Rufus is up to: A little of this, a little of that. Basically, back to the old days. I even left him for a full work-day (about 9 hours), and he was just fine.

Where I’m going: Maybe down to the shore for a day with my brother and his family. Maybe to the Frick or the Met, to see some art.

What I’m happy about: That I finished the July/August ish of the magazine  last Thursday and then managed to win my Fight With the Forsythia over the weekend! Since I’m taking this week off from work, perhaps I’ll engage the Battle of the Mulch. (Actually, I have a To Do list of about 20 projects, chores, and errands; I’ll have to juggle those with spending time with my aforementioned brother and his family, who are here to visit for the week.)

What I’m sad about: Even Gil Thorp has a Twitter feed, and I still refuse to use that site/service. It really is my first “you goddamn kids and your crazy new technologies!” moment. Our IT dept. set one up for each of our magazines, so I evidently have to start posting things there during the workday, in order to boost traffic to our site. I’m thinking posting “Whoa! I’m editing now!”, “I should probably cut down on the office pretzels”, “I’m going to stand up now.”

What I’m worried about: That something going tragically awry if I rent a chipper to take care of the forsythia branches. That said, I did manage to reclaim around 225 square feet of my backyard, so I’ll take the risk to life and limb.

What I’m pondering: If I stop posting on this blog regularly in order to focus on a few topics that deserve long-form essays, will I discover that I’m not really capable of insightful writing and be forced to admit to my own puerility?

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Worse than Ezra

Ahoy, ahoy, dear readers! I’m way too busy reading pharmaco financials and analyst reports to spend much time blogging. Updates will be pretty light until July 4thish. (Of course there’ll be an Unrequired Reading this Friday! Don’t be silly!)

Just so you get your fix, the 0-fer of the week is . . . Ezra Pound!

Now I gotta get back to work. Later!

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What It Is: 6/22/09

What I’m reading: Plutarch’s lives of Timoleon and Aemilius Paulus, and Seth’s amazing comic about Canadian designer Thoreau MacDonald (it’s in an anthology called Kramers Ergot 7). Reading that strip after his George Sprott and Wimbledon Green books (the latter of which I reread on Saturday), it struck me just how much Seth’s work has grown in recent years, and how much of it seems to be a response to the work of other top-flight cartoonists of this era. My pal Tom has a great interview with Seth that explores this topic, but the MacDonald pages, even more than George Sprott, really drive home the point that Seth’s response to “the competition” (especially Chris Ware) is to make better and better work. I’m not sure he would’ve made the leaps he’s made without it.

What I’m listening to: Greatest hits collection of Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam, after reading this short post by Ta-Nehisi Coates. (He thought she was high yellow?)

What I’m watching: The Original Kings of Comedy, Big Night, Futurama: The Beast With a Billion Backs, Manhattan and Hot Rod, the latter of which was inspired by its recent My Year of Flops writeup.

What I’m drinking: Miller’s & Q Tonic

What Rufus is up to: Getting the last of his stitches out, learning how to hang out by himself again, and building up his stamina. I can’t believe we went 3 weeks without a walk outside of the yard. I’m glad it’s not hot out.

Where I’m going: Pharmaland. Lots and lots of Top Companies profiles to write!

What I’m happy about: That it’s not raining right now.

What I’m sad about: That my dad got pasted with an attack of gout this weekend, which means we have to put off our Father’s Day lunch till next Sunday. And that we’ll have to take the red wine off the menu.

What I’m worried about: Getting all of those profiles written and then laid out in time to put the issue to bed by July 2.

What I’m pondering: Whether crystal meth would help with that.

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0-fer 20th century edition

Because I’m not some commie pinko, I don’t listen to NPR. So I don’t know if Dick Meyer has worthwhile literary opinions or not. What I do know is that he posted this list of his top English-language novels written last century.

He organized the list in terms of “how much the book hit me, moved me, made me see — and how it stuck with me.” He listed Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man at #1, and History of Love by Nicole Krauss (0-fer!) at #100.

I, on the other hand, reorganized his list in terms of whether I’ve read ’em, whether I’ve at least read something by the author, and whether they’re on my 0-fer list.

Since some authors have multiple books on his list, the 0-fer numbers won’t add up to 100, but hey:

I’ve read 32 of the books on his list, at least something by 12 other authors, and my 0-fer list is a remarkable 50 titles! (but only 45 authors, because of dupes)

Wanna see what’s what? Just click “more”!

Continue reading “0-fer 20th century edition”

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BEA 0-fer

This NYTimes article on Book Expo America was pretty funny. On the one hand, e-books on the Amazon Kindle are ridiculed by Tina Brown for costing “that paltry, pitiful sum” of $9.99.

On the other hand, Sherman Alexie is a complete douchebag:

At a panel of authors speaking mainly to independent booksellers, Sherman Alexie, the National Book Award-winning author of “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” said he refused to allow his novels to be made available in digital form. He called the expensive reading devices “elitist” and declared that when he saw a woman sitting on the plane with a Kindle on his flight to New York, “I wanted to hit her.”

First thing: a quick Amazon search shows that several of Alexie’s books are available in Kindle editions.

Second thing: he is, to reiterate, a complete douchebag and I’m glad to say I’ve never read a word of his writing.

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What It Is: 6/1/09

What I’m reading: The first three installments of Chris Ware’s “Rusty Brown” book, and some of Plutarch’s life of Alcibiades.

What I’m listening to: Quadrophenia.

What I’m watching: Back-to-back-to-back episodes of Reno 911!, The Wrestler, and, once again, the most entertaining movie ever: Kung Fu Hustle.

What I’m drinking: Plymouth & Q Tonic.

What Rufus is up to: Still recovering from his wounds. He’s scheduled for surgery on Tuesday morning to stitch up more of the damage. I feel a little guilty about my sense of relief that someone else will be taking care of him for a few hours. Outside of an hour or so this weekend when I went out to a surgical supplies store to look for better bandaging & protection materials for him, I’ve pretty much been joined at the hip with Rufus since I got home from Atlanta 10 days ago. As penance for this, I’ll have to deal with him having a new set of stitches and a reduced allowance of physical activity, just when he’s got a ton of energy back and has finally returned to doing his little mealtime pirouette-dance.

Where I’m going: Nowhere. See above.

What I’m happy about: That the vet was so excited about Ru’s current stage of recovery at last Friday’s followup. Also, my pals Ian & Jess came to visit this weekend. We chilled out, ate some of my wife’s fine cooking, watched the aforementioned most entertaining movie ever (two new converts: yay!), and just shot the breeze. They were quite happy not to go out and do stuff, given that they drove 8 hours to get here on Friday and had another 8-hour haul Sunday to get back to VA. I was also pretty happy to get the June issue wrapped up by deadline.

What I’m sad about: That I have to jump right into the July/August issue.

What I’m worried about: That the owners of the dog that attacked Rufus won’t pay his vet bills, forcing me to get my lawyer involved. They haven’t said this yet; they just haven’t responded to my note and the first three bills.

What I’m pondering: Why the use of athletic tape, which is really effective in keep Rufus’ bandages from slipping, also has to cause him so much pain when I change it out.

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Il Miglior Gatsby

You’re probably too polite to admit that your tired of all these Rufus posts, but what can I do?

I know! I can post links to this four-part essay by Susan Bell on how Max Perkins & F. Scott Fitzgerald edited The Great Gatsby: one, two, three and four! Enjoy!

And I promise that tomorrow’s Unrequired Reading collection will be Rufus-free!