Still alive and well in New York City, subject of the following lovely passage (and many others) in Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale
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Via bagoffarts, coldtortuga, and dmyersta:

( These are the top 106 books most often marked as 'unread' by LibraryThing's users (as of whatever day this meme got started because I sure didn't double-check LibraryThing today). Bold indicates what I've read, italics what I started but couldn't finish, and strike through what I couldn't stand. )

I haven't seen any lightning, but even if I do, it will not keep me away from the next-to-last session of Urban Farm. (Yay Urban Farm! Best class ever! I am going to miss it so much that I am looking into volunteering at one of Eugene's community gardens after the end of the term, just to get my "really big garden that I share with a bunch of ( Read more... )

I'm reading The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter by Peter Singer and Jim Mason, and it might be my favorite piece of "when in doubt, don't eat the animal product" propaganda to date (besides cookbooks, anyway). But I just got to the chapter on eating out, and I'm a little worried, because of this passage:
( Oh please don't be endorsing whiny bitchitude. All y'all: Be kind to waitstaff, especially when they put up with your shit. This has been a public service announcement. )

You, reading this. Fun Home by Allison Bechdel. Read it now, if you haven't already. I literally laughed and cried at once.

Kisses,
-Tracy

In case there was any doubt in your mind as to whether I'm a giant dork, the fact that I'm spending my day off organizing our bookshelves ought to help with that indecision problem of yours. The object of the game is to eventually dedicate a shelf to books I haven't finished reading yet, so it'll stare at me when I'm on the couch wasting time ( Read more... )

"I think," Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, "that when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all that I didn't do. All that I might have been and couldn't be. All the choices I didn't make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that ( Read more... )

...I maybe learned from Pippi Longstocking:

"That is why we are here," said the teacher, "to be good and kind to other people."

Pippi stood on her head on the horse's back and waved her legs in the air. "Heigh-ho," said she, "then why are the other people here?"

---Astrid Lindgren, Pippi Goes on Board, "Pippi Goes to the School Picnic", p. 56

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Meme: page 123, 5th sentence, next 3 sentences.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

I'm rereading Cordelia's Honor for the nth time, because it's like nummy delicious crack, and I've decided it needs to be a feature film, at least in my happy imaginations. So far I've decided it stars Nicole Kidman and George Clooney, although that's mostly because I'd probably watch either of them brushing their teeth and really want to see them ( Read more... )