crooked house

Scratch Map

Cool: the Scratch Map. Just scratch off the countries you've visited. David's birthday is on Sunday. This is going to be one of his presents. Scratch that. The shipping and duties to Canada are more than the price of the map itself.

Keel's Simple Diary

This Keel's Simple Diary looks like a lot of fun. Via paper tastebuds.

The Accidents of Youth: Consisting of Short Histories, Calculated to Improve the Moral Conduct of Children, and Warm them of the Many Dangers to which they are Exposed

While searching through vintage images, I found this children's book, published in 1819, that Luke would love. I am afraid to show it to him, though, as he's already so morbid. I will show you, however, as long as you promise not to take it too seriously: The Accidents of Youth: Consisting of Short Histories, Calculated to Improve the Moral Conduct of Children, and Warm them of the Many Dangers to which they are Exposed. Isn't that the best title ever?

Here is your tip of the day: don't climb any trees.

Aw Shucks, I'm No Angel.

While browsing vintage images today for a new project, I became enamoured with this image of two angels from a vintage Italian postcard found on The Graphics Fairy blog:

Sara pointed out that the one on the right looks like Luke. I didn't initially make the connection but wow, does it ever. His father made it immediately. Luke insists it looks nothing like him "because it's a girl." He also insists he never sat up and announced "Roast beef! Roast beef!" at 3 a.m. the other night -- but he did. And it does.

I was also very taken with the title of this old book:

 

What do you think Shucks: A Story for Boys could be about?

My Sartorialist

This sixteen-year-old was featured the other day on The Sartorialist. He posted her as an antidote to the "constant media parade of Britneys and Lindsays." Very nice. I followed A Cup of Joe's link to the site and then spent ages scrolling through his posts. I'm not very much into fashion but he makes me want to pay more attention to it (but not more money on it). Although he's as devoted to skinny people as the rest of the media. Show me some fashionable fat people!

Here's my own Sartorialist shot of Luke in one of my favourite of his outfits. He insists on pulling his hat way down over his ears (otherwise "it hurts") and so he ends up looking like an orphaned waif from the 1930s:

Reading Notes: The Imperfectionists, The Go-Between, and Just Kids

The Imperfectionists: A Novel by Tom Rachman. I'd call this a collection of linked short stories rather than a novel. Christopher Buckley raved about this book for the Times, declaring he was particularly impressed by the structure, which surprises me. I think it'd be easier to write a novel this way. But maybe that's just me. The subject matter, the lives of employees and readers of an international newspaper -- and that newspaper's rise and fall -- is very timely. What better way to get coverage in the traditional media's shrinking review pages? Still, a very readable and entertaining book.

The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley. I happened across a mention of this book in a piece on five books about childhood innocence and thought it might make a good addition to my list of the best books about childhood. (I need to update that list.) The Go-Between, published in 1953, is written from the perspective of an adult but this is an adult who remembers astonishingly well just what it was like to be thirteen in the year 1900. And the year is key -- for a reader in 2010, that thirteen-year-old is unbelievably naive. I kept thinking the plot might work today but only if the protagonist was maybe 9 or 10 years old instead of thirteen. Still, this is a terrific, eminently readable book and I highly recommend it, even though it is certainly overwrought and almost unforgivably melodramatic. Read it when you are in an overwrought, melodramatic mood. Interesting note: this is the book that begins with the famous lines: The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there. They do indeed.

Just Kids by Patti Smith. I didn't know much about Patti Smith or Robert Mapplethorpe until I read this sweet memoir of their early romance and lifelong friendship. The jacket copy says that Smith was given the Commander of the Order des Arts et des Lettres  by the French Minister of Culture, France's highest honour for artists, in 2005 and I was struck by how her writing, which is elegant, formal, and melancholy, seems very French. It almost reads like a translation of something from the French. As I read, I discovered that she is, or was, very fond of French poets, particularly Rimbaud, so this began to make a kind of sense. She comes across as a bit of a delicate flower in this book which seems at odds with her rock and roll persona and her androgynous crow mystique -- I suppose all that makes for an intriguing contradiction. I was impressed by how devoted the pair were to the idea of making art. And less impressed by their deliberate political forays into the art world. There's a lot of name dropping. There was a definite sense that Smith and Mapplethorpe were  interested in being inspired by other, more successful artists rather than using them in order to get famous themselves but there was a lot of the latter going on, too, I think. That was disappointing -- I like the idea of artists focusing only on their art, and not on how to promote themselves.