crooked house

Friday Links

Beautiful tree house.

"She wore raspberries and grapes."

Maud on literary prizes.

Do you think snaggle teeth will become this popular here?

Watch this gorgeous moonrise in real time.

If you were a character on Downton Abbey, who would you be?

I love the idea of Literary Citizenship, the fact that there is a course on the topic, and I agree that everyone who does anything should have a website.

Elizabeth Gilbert disagrees with Philip Roth and says that writing is a sweet gig.

Some great shots of toddlers, for ideas.

Jenny McCarthy, who often seem batshit crazy, thinks SAHMs should receive a salary. This is an idea I happen to agree with, and think it could happen as a result of some sort of income-splitting when it comes to taxes. And I think it should apply to whichever parent stays home.

Things That Caught My Eye This Week

According to some people, the end of the world is scheduled for tomorrow. It's also my dear friend Maud's 40th birthday.

A book commits suicide...

Equal opportunity onesies.

If you haven't already read Melinda Taub's Sound of Music piece on McSweeney's, you must.

A list of nearly 100 pieces of fantastic journalism from 2010 -- there should be some good reading there.

In a Very Good Mood

Yay! The Kindle is now available in Canada! I've been annoyed with Amazon ever since the e-reader came out because it wasn't available here. And now it is. Jeff Bezos may think he invented this thing but I thought it up in the late 90s. And on Christmas day I expect to finally hold it in my hot little hands. Come to me, my preciousssssss.

 

Also just in time for Christmas, a cardboard fireplace. Via swiss miss.

 

This poster (via BB-Blog) puts me right back in the family car with my mom and younger brother, all of us belting out John Denver songs. I do an especially dramatic rendition of the one that goes "I am the EAGLE, I live in high country... I am the HAWK and there's BLOOD on my feathers but time is still turning, they soon will be dry-y-y!" If you're lucky, maybe I'll do a video and post it. (And by "lucky" I mean "unfortunate.")

My Parents Were Awesome, a site featuring photos of people's parents when they were younger, looks like fun. I have some good pictures around here I could submit. Although my parents are still awesome. (Hi Mom!)

And the obligatory photo of one of my kids:

 

Sylvie likes to eat.

Take A Look: Roman and London Are Burning, Horrible Histories, Enchanted Hunters, Bird Music, Phantom Towns and More.

Alas, these firescreens featuring Rome and London burning are only prototypes, not yet for sale. Via BB-blog.

Speaking of Rome burning, I ordered a bunch of Horrible Histories, ostensibly for Luke and Sylvie for Christmas. Really, until they're old enough, they're for me. I was inspired by When We Were Romans, one of the library books I picked up a few days ago. I can't recommend When We Were Romans enough -- written from the point of view of a nine-year-old boy, it belongs on my list of the best books that evoke childhood for adults.

Maria Tatar's Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood sounds excellent. Can't wait to get my hands on a copy. And look! She has a blog. Now if only Harvard would follow Yale's example and offer her children's literature course online. (Must remember to tell David about this new Yale offering: Craig White's Listening to Music.)

I have my eye on Mike Sacks's And Here's the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on their Craft, too. It's reviewed favourably here.

Also via BB-blog, check this out:

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Jarbas Agnelli saw a newspaper photograph of birds on wires and decided to compose music based on the birds' position. Lovely and haunting. I also enjoy Agnelli's short films about his baby daughter, The Mini Adventures of Nina 1, 2, and 3.

This is neat: apparently phantom places, mostly streets but in this case a whole town, sometimes appear on maps. The town of Argleton in Lancashire appears only on Google maps. I can relate to the guy who felt compelled to walk to where it's supposed to be. That's exactly what I'd do:

"I started to weave this amazing fantasy about the place, an alternative universe, a Narnia-like world. I was really fascinated by the appearance of a non-existent place that the internet had the power to make real and give a semi-existence."

When Mr Bayfield reached Argleton – which appears on Google Maps between Aughton and Aughton Park – he found just acres of green, empty fields.

Via Gwenda on twitter.

Also on the topic of maps, take a look at these amazing map cut-outs of New York and Paris.

Take A Look: A Selfish Giant Armchair, Sequels to Books Whose Authors Are Dead, The Insides of Security Envelopes, And The Dullest Horror Movies Ever

Oscar Wilde's "The Selfish Giant" in the form of an armchair by artist Hannah Wilmot. Via.

Laurie Halse Anderson on how to write a picture book. Via.

Dracula, Winnie-the-Pooh, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy all get new sequels by someone other than their (dead) original authors. I'm curious, at least about Return to the Hundred Acre Wood and And Another Thing..., but have not yet read anything like this that actually worked.

Pictorial Webster's: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities (via) looks gorgeous. Bookmaker John M. Carrera restored engravings from 19th century Webster's dictionaries and compiled them in this book. Stamps and wall cards are available, too. It's like a professional version of one of William Davies King's odd hobbies. King, whose Collections of Nothing I read last weekend, has a number of collections of the kinds of things most people would throw out -- one of them is a notebook full of images like these that he cut out of second-hand dictionaries. He also has a collection of the beautiful insides of security envelopes. My only complaint about the book was that I wanted more pictures. And if not pictures, then the address of a website featuring some of his collections.

Speaking of the insides of security envelopes, Design Sponge has a great tutorial about how to turn those envelopes inside out.

I just added The Man Who Lost His Head, to our Christmas wishlist, thanks to Betsy. And Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, thanks to CAAF. It sounds intriguing, despite the fact that the construction of that subtitle sounds like something FakeAPStylebook might mandate: " 'How the Relentless Promotion of ... Has Undermined America' is a little-used and useful subtitle."

And this morning's twitter fun? Dullest Horror Movies Ever. "Children with Corns," "The Exersaucer," "Benign Cyst," "The Potatoes Have Eyes," "The Curds," "Accountant on Elm Street," "A Lien," and "Resident Card" are some of mine. But my very favourite is fredricktoo's "The Blog."

Quick Housekeeping Note

I've decided to add a list of links called "Take a Look" in the left sidebar. Like Maud's Remainders column, it's meant to be a place for all those things that catch my eye but, for whatever reason, don't get a full blog post devoted to them. Unfortunately, unlike Maud's Remainders, if you read this site via Bloglines, you won't see it because Bloglines doesn't pick up the lists in Typepad's sidebars. You probably won't see it if you view the site with other types of readers, either. Sorry about that. If I ever win the lottery, I'll hire a tech person to figure it all out.

So far, the "Take a Look" list features just two links -- one to an Official Tooth Fairy Kit, the other to the instructions for making an anatomically correct paper heart for Valentine's Day.

Quick Links

Irene Gammel's excellent Anne of Green Gables is reviewed at Bookforum. Via light reading.

Top 10 Creative Responses to Junk Mail.

10 Great Countercultural Children's Books. Thanks, Mary.

From World Preschool Mom, Staple-free Paper Chains. I love the way these look but wow, they require a lot of preparatory cutting out.

In The Horn Book, a teacher writes about teachers in children's literature.

Lucky Gwenda is reading Laura Miller's The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia. Isn't the cover pretty?

Maud makes me want to read Claire Keegan's Walk the Blue Fields.

Luke and I just borrowed Sarah Dyer's excellent  Clementine and Mungo from the library. I was distracted by the familiar oddness of the two little creatures -- I kept trying to figure out what kind of animal they are. And then finally gave up.

Quick Links

Nell Casey writes about how, in their respective memoirs, both Obama and McCain focus more on their fathers than their mothers.

Roald Dahl was a sex-crazed spy. Via Maud. Also via Maud (for the two of  you who don't read her yourselves), here are the scrapbooks of Lewis Carroll. I've only just begun browsing them and haven't found anything too exciting yet. Let me know if you do.

I only managed to catch this CBC radio show devoted to unusual and/or really terrific covers of songs twice this summer but thanks to the Under the Covers archive, I can listen to them all online while I'm on the treadmill. They don't have Sunday's show up just yet but it was stellar -- it featured Jeff Buckley singing Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," Rufus Wainwright doing John Lennon's "Across the Universe," and K.D. Lang covering Jane Siberry's "Love Is Everything." And a bunch of other people I didn't recognize doing a kick ass job of singing songs I did, but I can't remember any of them now. Just keep checking the site. And enjoy the older episodes in the meantime. While I was listening I started to wonder which song has been covered the most -- "Imagine" maybe? And I also seem to remember that there's a documentary film out there devoted to the most covered song ever but I can't find it so maybe I'm making that up.

On the excellent Writers and Company, also from CBC radio, Eleanor Wachtel talks about Simone de Beauvoir with documentary filmmaker Madeleine Gobeil, Hazel Rowley (author of Tête-à-Tête: The Tumultous Lives & Loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre), Nancy K. Miller (author of But Enough About Me: Why We Read Other People's Lives, Bequest and Betrayal, and Getting Personal), and Toril Moi (author of Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman).

Quick Links: Books that Would Make Good Movies, Anne of Green Gables, Books for Geeks, and the Discovery of Diana Wynne Jones

I missed a lot of great stuff online while we were gone and there's no way I'm ever going to catch up. (And Luke, Grandpa and I spent the day in Halifax at the Buskers Festival, where we witnessed a man swallow an extremely long green balloon. I'm still worried about that guy.) But here are a few things I personally have managed to take in. Maybe they're still new to you, too.

Maud lists Ten Novels and Short Stories That Would Make Good Movies. I would run to the theatre to see a movie version of Divided Kingdom. And you know we have to ration trips to the movie theatre around here, thanks to Luke.

Gwenda discusses beauty and mischief in Anne of Green Gableson NPR. I'm wondering about that introduction by Jack Zipes in the new Modern Library edition of the book -- I already have at least a couple of editions of Anne, is that intro worth forking over the money for another one?  And I'm right in the middle of  Irene Gammel's excellent Looking for Anne: How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed Up a Literary Classic -- it's full of fascinating tidbits for Anne fans. Watch for a full post on it soon.

How many books have you read from this list of 50 Books Every Geek Should Read? Well, I can say that I've read most of the fiction. And I can also say: oh that wretched A Brief History of Time.

Somehow I missed Diana Wynne Jones as a kid. I just picked up a copy of Charmed Life -- and inhaled it. Happily, there are several more books in the series. And now I know where Kelly Link got the title for her Magic for Beginners.

More later. I've got to google that trick and find out just where that long green balloon went...

Quick Links: Flora Watching Television, Lemonade Stands, Anne Carroll Moore Vs. Stuart Little, and the Thraliana, Ancestor of the Blog

Photographer Colin Pantall's pictures of his daughter Flora are beautiful, especially the two sofa portrait series, in which she is captured watching television. I love that dreamy, mesmerized look children get when they're staring at the TV. It's probably not healthy -- but it's pretty. And quiet. Via A Cup of Jo. (In this photo Flora looks a bit like a modern Alice Liddell as The Beggar Maid.)

Also from Jo, these interviews with children selling lemonade. Years ago I read in some schmaltzy book -- maybe that one full of notes of advice from a father to his college-bound son -- that you should always stop and make a purchase at the lemonade stands of children. I try to remember to do that. It always makes the day better even if the lemonade is undrinkable. And check out Inc. Magazine's Best Lemonade Stand in America contest.

Maud points to this article in the New Yorker about first children's librarian Anne Carroll Moore's opposition to E.B. White's Stuart Little. As I've mentioned before -- Moore, who was enormously influential in children's publishing, was also opposed to much of Margaret Wise Brown's early work.

Christina Hardyment's Dream Babies mentions Hester Thrale, a woman I first encountered a few years ago in Francine Prose's The Lives of the Muses-- apparently Thrale was the muse of Samuel Johnson. According to Hardyment "[Thrale] found the time to record immensely detailed observations on her thirteen children [in her diary or Family Book] and clearly found them fascinating -- in a much more objective, guilt-free way than most parents manage today. She liked some, loathed others, and accepted their differences philosophically, all within the umbrella of her general caring." Googling Thrale in search of that Family Book (with no luck), I came across mention of her Thraliana, which is

...a collection of Hester Lynch Thrale’s thoughts, experiences and some of her verses from this period of her life. It was important because it was almost, if not quite, the first English Ana... undoubtedly modelled after the many French anas with which she was familiar, and which she extravagantly liked...

The English commonplace-book was still to be met with in Hester Thrale's day (although its vogue was already going out), but its character was distinct from the Ana, being a collection of pious or beautiful quotations, rather than anecdotes of living people and treasures of wit.

It sounds as if the Ana was a direct ancestor of the blog. Here are a few brief selections. And here is a book of extracts, compiled by Charles Hughes who, unfortunately, likes to insert himself constantly into the text. I suppose it's more a book about the Thraliana than the Thraliana itself.