Versions of this story have appeared on various blogs, in the MWA Edgar Awards program guide, and I’ve used it as a speech for library fund-raisers. My first memory is literally of my mother’s forefinger running beneath the words “Once upon a time, in a faraway land, lived a beautiful princess named Snow White. She…
Read more How My Mother and Josephine Tey Led me into a Life of Crime
Remember this? Recently, Wired Magazine ran a story about ham radio operators. Some excerpts: In a world of taken-for-granted torrents of e-mails, instant messages and Skype video-chats, there is a purity and a richness in the shared experience of exchanging “73s” during a live “QSO” with strangers on another continent. …the hobby has captivated royalty…
Because, as John writes on his Whatever blog here, “someone had to do it, and why not me.” John Scalzi, you will remember, wrote the wonderful Old Man’s War, and on May 10th will publish Fuzzy Nation, an update of H. Beam Piper’s classic, Little Fuzzy. I’ll be first in line at the bookstore.
Must-see TV for storytellers. And in case you didn’t know, this is what Ira Glass does better than almost anyone else on the planet.
Read more What Ira Glass does better than anyone else on the planet.
Take a look inside editor John M. Carrera's Pictorial Webster's: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities
and tell me you don't lust after your own copy.
I could while away many a dark winter hour with a mug of cocoa at my elbow and that book on my knee...
# Permanent link to A is for Accumbent Cotyledons
From the February 4th event, sponsored by the Friends of the Juneau Public Libraries.
“Fruit Cart!” An expletive used by knowledgeable film buffs during any chase scene involving a foreign or ethnic locale, reflecting their certainty that a fruit cart will be overturned during the chase, and an angry peddler will run into the middle of the street to shake his fist at the hero’s departing vehicle. (Of all…
It takes about five minutes to read through this book. I wish I could have laughed longer, but I couldn't have laughed harder.
A great gag gift or stocking stuffer. Click here to buy it on Amazon.
# Permanent link to The Dinosaur’s Lament
One of the greatest little museums ever, worth the trip to Haines all by itself. Make sure they show you the Tlingit war hammer they found when they were digging out the foundation for the building, too.
Interview with author Pat Conroy on NPR, about his new book, My Reading Life.
As a child growing up in a military family, Conroy learned from his mother that books could be his constant companions as the family shuttled from Marine base to Marine base.
"What I remember about her, from the very earliest time of my life, is her reading to me," Conroy tells NPR's Scott Simon. "She had a great tone, a warm style, a terrific Southern accent. She read us lots of poetry ... I can still hear her voice." She read him Gone With the Wind, and gave all the roles to family members--Melanie Wilkes was an aunt, Frank Kennedy was an uncle.
Reading was a refuge for him, both emotionally and physically. Conroy's father wouldn't hit him when he was reading; he thought his son was studying and approved of it. "It was the one place you could go to get away from his fists," says Conroy. "And it worked every time."
# Permanent link to “Conroy’s father wouldn’t hit him when he was reading…”
