Let me repeat this for my own edification: I RAN 2 MILES TODAY!! OMFG!!
- Mood:
accomplished
Author: Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor
Themes/Topics: Medical Trauma, Capacity of the Human Brain
This is a life-changing read. I am going to recommend/buy it for many people in my life. The beginning can be a little science heavy, and for someone whose interests lie elsewhere, it was a little tough. I highly recommend trying some of it on audio because it is easier to pay attention, and also, it is read by the author who has a clear passion for the material. This novel illustrates the recovery possible of the brain after a stroke, but it is so much more than that: it illuminates the possibilities we have inside ourselves to grow from within our own minds.
Title: The Lovely Bones
Author: Alice Sebold
Themes/Topics: Murder, Heaven, Love/Loss
Wow. This novel hit me hard. It is a powerful tale of murder and the aftermath it leaves to those that survive and are left to pick-up the pieces. Even so, the murder is just the pathway that allows the author to convey an interesting take on the afterlife which leaves you wondering...what if?
British mother to young son: No, I want you to wear shoes on the subway.
British son: But I'm already barefoot, so what does it matter?
--American Museum of Natural History
You can understand the punter's (surely ironic) point: Tweedy's band, Wilco, all but exemplify the unnamed outfit referred to in his song "The Late Greats", about a fantastic rock group whose music never gets played on the radio. That's no longer the case with Wilco, but they remain something of a cult favourite, albeit a cult large enough to pack out the Forum.
A handful of songs further into the set, Tweedy engages the audience in some mild banter about whether American or British crowds ( Read more... )
View full article here
Romanticism is Reed's third book of photographs. It is a series of landscapes, entirely in black and white. Inspiration for the title came from the 19th-century Romantic painter, Caspar David Friedrich. "We had lined up the photographs we liked and I was shown a painting, by him. I said that's it, that's Romanticism. That's not to say that I think I am him, but it was the impetus for the idea."
As in Friedrich's painting, there is an ethereal quality to Reed's work, a sense of the divine ( Read more... )
View full article here
The good news is that there is ample compensation for whatever Collision lacks in originality: plausibly interesting characters and an excellent script (by Anthony Horowitz and Michael A Walker), taut, pacy direction by Marc Evans and plenty of fine performances by a very good cast.
The ever-excellent Douglas Henshall plays the investigating detective
inspector, required to give the case closer scrutiny than a pile-up on the
A12 would normally receive in the Metropolitan ( Read more... )
View full article here
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian will be the first film that comes with the experimental content as it releases to public on December 1. A free downloadable application for Mac, PC or iPhone users will allow them to get info about the movie on a separate screen.
FoxPop is the result of a collaboration between Fox and Spot411, an interactive entertainment company, which issued a statement that 80 percent of people who watched movies on DVD tend to do research about ( Read more... )
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My feelings on this are mixed. It's beautifully written and captures the spirit of the time period. Joe, Sammy, Rosa, and the rest of the wide cast are alive and vibrant. I can see why Chabon won the Pulitzer for this work. However, sometimes he went into exhaustive detail. In the middle of a scene it will dive into a three page history of the comic book, or a particular setting that never returned. Sometimes the perspective changes were dizzying as well, diving into characters we only see for a few pages. It felt as though the author had so much good material, he had to make sure all of it made it into the finished product. Yes, it was interesting stuff, but an info dump is still an info dump and it detracted from the flow of the story. It's worth reading, but not keeping.
- Mood:
curious
Stranger: Hey, big dick!
Black guy: Hey, what's up guy. Not big dick anymore, small dick! (motions with hand)
Stranger: Not what that girl told me last night, haha.
Black guy: Well, alright, take care.
--Union Square
Overheard by: Brandon
Title: Foreigner
Author: C.J. Cherryh
Year: 1994
# of pages: 423
Date read: 10/7/2009
Rating: 3*/5 = good
Description:
"It had been nearly five centuries since the starship Phoenix, lost in space and desperately searching for the nearest G5 star, had encountered the planet of the atevi. On this alien world, law was kept by the use of registed assassination, alliances were defined by individual loyalties not geographical borders, and war became inevitable once humans and one faction of atevi established a working relationship. It was a war that humans had no chance of winning on this planet so many light-years from home.
Now, nearly two hundred years after that conflict, humanity has traded its advanced technology for peace and an island refuge that no atevi will ever visit. Then the sole human the treaty allows into atevi society is marked for an assassin's bullet. The work of an isolated lunatic?. . .The interests of a particular faction?. . .Or the consequence of one human's fondness for a species which has fourteen words for betrayal and not a ingle word for love?
My thoughts:
This was a very good science fiction novel about different cultures interacting. I liked how Bren Cameron has to figure out what's going on without inadvertently offending his atevi hosts. I look forward to learning what happens next in the second book in the series, Invader.
Title: Foreigner
Author: C.J. Cherryh
Year: 1994
# of pages: 423
Date read: 10/7/2009
Rating: 3*/5 = good
Description:
"It had been nearly five centuries since the starship Phoenix, lost in space and desperately searching for the nearest G5 star, had encountered the planet of the atevi. On this alien world, law was kept by the use of registed assassination, alliances were defined by individual loyalties not geographical borders, and war became inevitable once humans and one faction of atevi established a working relationship. It was a war that humans had no chance of winning on this planet so many light-years from home.
Now, nearly two hundred years after that conflict, humanity has traded its advanced technology for peace and an island refuge that no atevi will ever visit. Then the sole human the treaty allows into atevi society is marked for an assassin's bullet. The work of an isolated lunatic?. . .The interests of a particular faction?. . .Or the consequence of one human's fondness for a species which has fourteen words for betrayal and not a ingle word for love?
My thoughts:
This was a very good science fiction novel about different cultures interacting. I liked how Bren Cameron has to figure out what's going on without inadvertently offending his atevi hosts. I look forward to learning what happens next in the second book in the series, Invader.
First came news of the axing of the ubiquitous Stephen Fry's monumentally twee comedy drama Kingdom. Then, on Monday, up popped the decidedly not-ubiquitous-enough Robbie Coltrane, taking on his first small-screen role in three years in the entirely comforting Murderland.
That may seem an odd way to describe a three-part crime thriller suffused with
psychiatric trauma and sexual deviance, until you count the nostalgic glow
induced by watching Coltrane as DI Douglas Hain. ( Read more... )
View full article here
</poll-1660> This entry was originally posted at http://jonquil.dreamwidth.org/897535.htm
On to Month 7, the Month of No Meat! So far it's going fine. Well, except for when i forget that i'm not supposed to be eating meat. Like this morning when Silas brought home fried chicken and i happily indulged in a drumstick or the other night when we had gorgeous beefy, French Onion Soup at Erica and Tal's house. Completely slipped my mind until well after the fact. Ah well, it's the thought that counts, right? No...if it was the thought that counted no one would ever buy birthday gifts and we'd all just say "I thought about you today" and we'd be satisfied with that.
Anyway, the rest of the month, with the exception of turkey on Thanksgiving, i'm going meat-free. And by "meat-free" i mean anything that walks on legs or flies in the air. Fish are exempt, mostly because Silas and I are going to all-you-can-eat sushi with my dad tomorrow night and i do not want to be stuck with cucumber rolls, delicious though they may be. This honestly shouldn't be a crushing challenge. I'll often go for several days without eating meat and not even realize it. Besides, my love of veggies and tofu and other meat-free products should more than make up for the lack of flesh. Provided i can remember. If you and i happen to be out for lunch and i try to order a BLT or a plate of chicken nachos, please, stop me.
NaNo workcount: zero. Le sigh.
Tomorrow night is the AGM of the Friends of the Earth Group I am half-arsedly trying to join. It would be a cool thing to go to, but I am feeling pretty flighty about stuff.
I wish I had something interesting to fill in this white space with. Work was fine, fun even. I got compliments on my skin, which I suspect is down to my inadvertent kicking of my coffee addiction. With the flu, I couldn't face drinking it. Take a look at my lj name and guess how I feel about that. My favourite vice, I miss you so much already. Give me a week and I'll be back on the jittery pony, wearing those fetching green-black under eye circles as medals of honour.
@McMer314: Amused that the health care bill is about as long as Harry Potter 5. Except that people actually read HP5. http://bit.ly/JQqWG
@vromans: Linda Bukowski said that Charles cried at the end of Star Wars. "It was something about Chewbacca."
@theBDR: I was going to take my daughter to the public library today, but, you know, socialism...(Oh, and by the by, we're on Twitter, too.)
Dad: Wow! Look at all these paintings! Right here in the open, even if it rains. Pretty cool, huh?
Eight-year-old: I want my ice cream. You said I could have ice cream.
--Governors Island
When the project began in 1978, Courant was concerned that while artists or filmmakers were happy behind the camera, there were very few captured in front of the lens. So he embarked on a project to record artistic people he knew, filming each one for three minutes and 25 seconds. At first, his subjects were his friends. But over time, he moved on to the great and the good.
Cinématon, which will be shown in Avignon this month and in Paris in January, may well be the only art project to ( Read more... )
View full article here
The Club Dumas
Arturo Pérez-Reverte
The Club Dumas brings together bibliophilia, The Three Musketeers, devil worship, and murder in a brilliant mystery with a definite gothic flavor.
I loved The Club Dumas! Not only am I a sucker for anything with a hint of gothic, but having recently read and whole-heartedly loved The Three Musketeers I especially loved the parallells with that wonderful classic.
The style was very similar to Carlos Ruiz Zafon's Shadow of the Wind. I'm not sure if the similarity is due to the Spanish culture, (both authors are Spanish), language translation, or some other factor. I am sure, though, that if you enjoyed one you would enjoy the other; and if you've never read either, I highly recommend them! You need not be a fan of Dumas or even familiar with his work to enjoy The Club Dumas. It's just a terrific, suspenseful, exciting read as it is.
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50bookchallenge :: ardaigle : Books 32 & 33 [+0] ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif)
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ti_artsandenter :: the_independent : Wilco, Forum, London [+1] - ti_artsandenter :: the_independent : Lou Reed: Photographer [+1]
- ti_artsandenter :: bviner : Last Night's Television - Collision, ITV1; The Execution of Gary Glitter, Channel 4 [+3]
- ti_artsandenter :: the_independent : FoxPop to bring interactive features to DVD viewing experience [+1]
- 50bookchallenge :: slimequeen : #93: "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" by Michael Chabon [+0]
- overheardnyc : ...Whatever Your Name Is. [+0]
- bookshare :: jo_scrawls : Review: Wicked: Witch & Curse by Nancy Holder & Debbie Viguié - Part 2: Curse [+0]
- 50bookchallenge :: krinek : 49. Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh [+0]
- 100ormorebooks :: krinek : 49. Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh [+0]
- ti_artsandenter :: the_independent : Murderland, ITV1Modern Family, Sky 1 [+1]
- jonquil : World-shaking question [+18]
- autumnbottom : Year of Lent, month 7 (i think) [+2]
- oddnumbereven : The lack of words [+2]
- inkwell_bkstr : 3 Choice Tweets [+0]
- overheardnyc : Most Kids Love Ice Cream and Hate Art; Deal With It [+0]
- ti_artsandenter :: the_independent : 150 hours and counting: the world's longest film goes on [+1]
- 50bookchallenge :: misstreebc : # 75 The Club Dumas [+2]