Melissa Wiley's Blog, page 162
June 29, 2010
Listing
Byatt's The Children's Book. There is much to say. I can't, yet. I finished it on Saturday and I couldn't even look at another book on Sunday. Yesterday I picked up something I've already read: Delderfield's To Serve Them All My Days. It begins at the end of World War I (which is where the Byatt ends) with a shell-shocked Welsh soldier taking a teaching post at a remote school for boys in North Devon. I think I felt a little shell-shocked myself after Byatt's dark epic and, like David...
June 25, 2010
The Diamond Age
I mentioned Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age in my last post. I've added a brief and hopefully not-too-spoilery synopsis in the comments, with caveats, if you're interested.
This image won't center and that is killing me.
June 24, 2010
No, Seriously, I Mean It
No more lists! Enough with the booklists! I just found two more library books on my nightstand, titles I left off this morning's library list:
For the Win by Cory Doctorow
Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce (I think I heard about this at Semicolon)
(What? Two books is not a list. Okay, it's a veryshortlist. Fine.)
And the library website informs me I have at least three more books in transit: a Scott Westerfield novel, another by Cory Doctorow, and the just-released Bamboo People by Mitali Perkins.
So...
Kind of a Boring Post, This
The cold is passing; has mostly passed. Thanks. I'm cleaning closets and the refrigerator. The Children's Book still has me in its grip. Last night I didn't even start thinking about dinner until about ten minutes past dinnertime. I threw together a slapdash meal of the last foodlike substances I could find in the house: some broccoli, some ramen noodles (lightly seasoned, no broth, the world's cheapest side dish), and thin slices of deli ham fried on the pancake griddle. We had a big laugh, ...
June 23, 2010
Pass the Echinacea
The Shakespeare Club and choir performances went wonderfully well on Saturday.
On Sunday, every member of this family came down with a raging cold.
Eight people burn through a lot of Kleenex, let me tell you. Small forests have died in service to this virus.
We have stayed home all week, so far. Beanie, who wants to learn Japanese, is watching a lot of GenkiJapan.net. I learned to count to ten in Japanese yesterday, quite by accident.
We also discovered LiveMocha, a language-learning program...
June 21, 2010
Booknotes: Byatt's The Children's Book
Olive was sometimes frightened by the relentlessly busy inventiveness of her brain. It was good and consoling that it earned money, real bankable cheques in real envelopes. That anchored it in the real world. And the real world sprouted stories wherever she looked at it. Benedict Fludd's watery pot on the turn of the stair, for instance. She looked casually at the translucent tadpoles and had invented a whole water-world of swimming water-nymphs threatened by a huge water-snake, or maybe by...
June 18, 2010
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Wicked AWESOME, that is.
Fake blood? Check.
Warts for the witches? Check.
Severed thumb? (Made from Sculpey.) Check.
I think we're ready. See you tomorrow, when the hurlyburly's done.
June 17, 2010
Emergent Reader
Rilla, who is four years old now, pointed to the garland (made by Lesley) that hangs between our living room and kitchen. "I can read that," she announced matter-of-factly.
"It says, 'Please—be—on—this—roof.'"
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the Trailer
I just watched the trailer for the new Narnia movie. Dawn Treader is is one of my favorite Narnia books and I've been anxious about the movie; so much potential for getting it wrong; so many things I desperately want them to get right.
I don't know…some worrisome glimpses there. Looks like they've added a conflict subplot for Edmund—back in England, the war is on, and they won't let a mere "squirt" join up. "But I'm a king!" he huffs to Lucy. Argh. Even worse, later in the trailer the...
