baby baby fallin' in love

5 Pic 5riday

Are the cicadas attacking everyone or is it just me?

pic I can't tell if this is real or fake.

Monkey saves Puppy.

Cleaning Big Ben. Not as big as I thought.

Cat with 4 ears????

Summer Reading Roundup: Far North

This is the cover of Wolf Whistle by Lewis Nordan, one of my favorite books, and what I tried to draw your attention to via highlighting or some kind of very simple text-boxing (but couldn't, because apparently this computer doesn't have a thing that will do that) is the review in the middle: "Six words of advice: Read him. Read him. Read him."

I always laughed at that review, but it's the best I can come up with right now for Marcel Theroux's Far North. I blew through this one in like two days, and I wish it would go on f

orever or that the author would write 100 sequels. Read it, read it, read it!

Again without going too much into detail, Far North's protagonist is the sheriff of an abandoned town in Siberia settled by Quaker Americans during what seems like our lifetime. Then, later in our lifetimes, the earth heats up until there's famine and disease everywhere except the Arctic Circle, so the peaceful Quaker towns they'd settled are overrun with basically everyone in the world who can make it north to look for food. Nuts!

Don't read the NYT review of this book, by the way: it's favorable enough but the reviewer gives away some exciting twists in the plot and gets a few details wrong. Which is a bad combo! I had the luxury of reading this without having heard or read anything about it before--so everything was a surprise, and I liked it that way. I should also say that this was impressive because/despite I'd never read the other big apocalyptic-dystopia books (The Road, The Stand, etc.) and this was all fresh.

Sooooooo, Far North gets an A and might be the best book I've read all summer??????????

Busy week!

There's a lot going on this week, all over the country. Here are 3 events I've considered, yet I can only make it to one...can you guess which one????

11th Annual Gathering of the Juggalos (August 12-15, Cave-in-Rock, Illinois)

The Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting (August 11-15, Washington, D.C.)

U.S. Masters Swimming's 2010 Summer Nationals (August 9-12, San Juan, Puerto Rico)

Summer Reading Roundup: Eating Animals

I'd never read anything by Jonathan Safran Foer before, but I was always drawn to his cover art. Eating Animals was no different, plus it was on a topic that matters to me, and I may have bought it for Robert this Christmas because I wanted to read it. Well folks, I finally got around to reading it, a mere 7 months later!

I get preachy enough on JOP that I'll spare you a point-by-point summary of this book, but you should know that it is really good, really thoroughly researched, really well written, and I am vividly sicked-out by the bacon that just a few weeks ago I (a "vegetarian") ate.

The premise is that we all know animal slaughter is disgusting; we all know factory farming is wrong. The information is there for all of us and nobody doubts how awful factory farms are for us, for the environment, for communities, and finally for the animals. So why do we ignore that and keep eating meat? "Because it tastes good." Weak! Don't start with the "protein" junk, either. Americans get way too much protein and it has a lot to do with our cancer incidence.

But don't take my word for it! Eating Animals, which is a quick, page-turning read, gets the solidest A.