Sitting shiva for Sendak and Yauch. Really way way too overaffected by both deaths. It's unseemly, how sad I am. It's like my childhood and adolescence both died within three days. And adulthood fucking sucks. So.

This is a placeholder for the eventual post to come about how ridiculous it is to write a book that depends entirely on a convincing definition of "fascism" that ENTIRELY SKIPS OVER THE YEARS 1922-1943 IN ITALY UNDER MUSSOLINI. I mean, that's just STAGGERING. "Let's write a book about fascism but not mention what actually HAPPENED UNDER FASCIST ( Read more... )

I'm finally reading Liberal Fascism, by Jonah Goldberg -- it didn't take very long for me to work my way to the top of the request list in the Madison Public Library system, which makes me think that a whole lot of people read about one chapter, realized the book was just as silly as all its publicity made it out to be, and returned it within a ( Read more... )

I was extremely disappointed with the Lee Siegel interview on The Daily Show last week. To recap, Lee Siegel is a writer for the New Republic who wrote some really crappy blog post about Jon Stewart, then sockpuppeted his way through the comments talking about how Lee Siegel is an authentic American hero, and you guyz r totally teh suck, so shut ( Read more... )

Sometimes, in my more brainfarty moments, I mix up Harold and Allan Bloom. This is unfortunate, since Allan Bloom was all Straussy, so I should really keep that straight if I'm going to be taken seriously when I blather about neocons. The best way to distinguish between the two? Harold Bloom tried to fuck Naomi Wolf when she was his student. ( Read more... )

The slash fic community suddenly feels totally validated. Dumbledore/Grindelwald OTP.

ETA:


( Read more... )

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). As usual, bold what you have read, italicise that you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk to those you've read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list. (For the record, I take exception ( Read more... )

*pet*

*petpetpet*

"g00glyeyes*

*dopeygrin*

Soon...

Aw, Madeleine L'Engle died. I was never as big a fan of hers as my sister was, but I loved Wrinkle in Time and got a kick out of the fact that she went to St. John the Divine, down the street from me. R.I.P.

Some British TV presenter is probably going to get fired for "spoiling" Harry Potter on air. Look, folks, I understand -- nobody wants to get spoiled for the ending of a book. But firing someone for it? This has officially gone too far. People need to chill the fuck out. Besides, there's no one big "thing" to reveal from the end of the book, ( Read more... )