Melissa Wiley's Blog, page 165

For Jeanne

Yup, another keel-over kid.

Mourning Cloak

(We're pretty sure.)

I love those blue dots.

Heraldry & Illumination Links

More middle ages fun.

Heraldry:

• Roger the Herald's Notes on Blazonry. Wonderful starting point for learning the language of blazonry. Sable, a lion rampant or, in chief azure three stars or. There's a game set inside a story, for helping you get the lingo down. Huge hit with Beanie.

• design your own coat of arms

• SCA heraldry primer

Illumination:

• Book of Kells
• The Fitzwilliam Museum's interactive animation about how illuminated manuscripts were made. This is extremely cool.
• SCA...

Hornby's Case for Contemporary Fiction

"The received wisdom is that novels too much of the moment won't last: but what else do we have that delves so deeply into what we were thinking and feeling at any given period? In fifty or one hundred years' times, we are, I suspect, unlikely to want to know what someone writing in 2010 had to say about the American Civil War. I don't want to put you off, if you're just writing the last paragraph of a seven-hundred-page epic about Gettysburg—I'm sure you'll win loads of prizes and so on...

FYI

I have temporarily removed the Recent Comments widget from my sidebar. I'll restore it after the LOST discussion winds down. Don't want to risk spoiling for anyone who happens to load the page.

Should have thought of this sooner!

Delicious Links for May 27, 2010

• After keeping us waiting for a century, Mark Twain will finally reveal all—The Independent

"…in November the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain's autobiography. The eventual trilogy will run to half a million words, and shed new light on the quintessentially American novelist."

• Douglas Adams: How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet (1999)

"Because the Internet is so new we still don't really...

Tap Tap Tap

That sound you hear is impatience. The UPS truck should have been here AN HOUR AGO. With the magazine that Amazon assured me would be here TWO DAYS AGO.

Don't these people know I've got a date with a Nick Hornby article?

Disgruntled.

Booknotes: The Gammage Cup

Attempting to catch up on notes about things I've recently read and enjoyed…

Of all the curiosities that had been pitched out of Fooley's balloon, the painting was the only one to fall into the Watercress River. When it had been fished out, nobody knew what it was, but fortunately Fooley had listed in his book the names of the curiosities, and when everthign else was checked off—like the family tree, the poem, the hourglass—it was obvious that the remaining item was a painting. The bath in...

When Mom Gets LOST

What happens with the mother is immersed in a big long combox discussion of her favorite TV show?

Crackers happen, that's what.

LOST

Here be spoilers, of course. Don't read this if you haven't watched the LOST finale.

Yes, the reunions made me cry, every single one of them. Jin and Sun's joy at seeing Officer Ford: one of the best moments of television ever. And: Shannon and Sayid. Claire and Charlie. James and Juliette: by then I was sobbing. You got it, Blondie.

When Jack walked into the church, I gasped with delight because for a moment there I was sure that Mr. Eko was going to appear—as a priest, of course.

Instead, I...