READIN

Sunday, August 5th, 2007

🦋 A day well spent?

Hm. All morning I'm feeling like there's something I ought to be doing but I can't work out what it is. I finished and installed the bench -- will post a picture of it later, when Ellen brings the camera home -- and a piece of fence I was working on -- I could not find my bottle of linseed oil so I went over to Home Depot this morning and bought a can of Watco Teak Oil, which seems like it ought to work pretty well -- it gave the oak bench a nice color. Swept the patio, walked the dogs, tidied the kitchen.

Well, for want of knowing what to do I think I will sit out on my new bench with some coffee and read more Snow. (I'm enjoying the pace at which I'm reading it, which I think would feel too slow with a lot of books.)

Update:Here's the pictures of the bench.

posted afternoon of August 5th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Garden bench

Saturday, August 4th, 2007

🦋 A day well spent

This morning I finished up a woodworking project that has been sitting in my basement for a week or so -- it is an oaken bench that will go in my front yard next to the garden -- tomorrow I will take it outside and put linseed oil on it.

Bob and Greg came over in the afternoon and we played some music, including a very nice version of "House of the Rising Sun" -- I have finally persuaded Bob to play it in 4/4 time (like Dylan) instead of (I think) 6/8, like The Animals, which sounds corny to my ear, at least when done by somebody who is not The Animals.

posted evening of August 4th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Music

Friday, August third, 2007

🦋 Spoilers

I am thinking a lot as I read Snow about how to structure the reading diary so as to avoid revealing important plot points, while still talking about my reaction to the story as it unfolds. I think I'm doing that pretty well.

posted afternoon of August third, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Snow

🦋 The Heart of Snow

Chapters 27, 28, 29 of Snow: The story is changing in important ways here. A lot that has only been hinted at is coming out into the open, along with an affirmation (in 27, "Only much later would he realize that -- apart from Necip -- everyone he met in Kars spoke the same code") that what is in the open is not necessarily the whole story. The narrator, who has been gradually insinuating himself into the story since Chapter 1, now has an identity and a history. And unmasks himself, saying near the end of 29, "Here, perhaps, we have arrived at the heart of our story." The story is about Pamuk the novelist trying to understand the "difficult and painful life" of his character Ka.

posted afternoon of August third, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Orhan Pamuk

🦋 Moominsummer Madness

I am reading Sylvia Moominsummer Madness for bedtime stories now, not sure if this is the first or second time we have reread it. Last night, she was absolutely loving the bit with Snufkin getting his revenge on the Park Warden, it seemed like she remembered it very clearly from last time (at least a year ago).

Anyways, I want to put together a Moominpost for KIDLIT but I haven't figured out quite what yet. It seems to me like reading diaries belong on this site -- after all that is the primary purpose I had in mind when I created READIN -- and that site is more for analysis. There should be analysis of this particular book and of the series in general; I'm not quite sure yet, where to start.

posted morning of August third, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Moomins

🦋 Development

I am finding the writing for a blog with comments (over at KIDLIT) very satisfying -- at least at this early date -- and it solidifies my resolve to add comments to this site.

I have ordered a new server, from Sub300, so that should be arriving soon. Once it comes, I will have both it and my current server (which is on its last legs, so to speak) on line for a while, figure out enough PHP to clone the current site (though probably not bother with the blogroll) using PHP and MySql in place of ASP and flat files. Once I do that, I will change www.READIN.com to point to the new server, junk the old server. And start working on the redesign.

I got a lot of ideas about rendering groups of associated posts and comments thereto. I will put these ideas together in a READIN redesign -- hopefully a community of commenters will start to come together over here. If not I may have to find a community that wants my software because I think it will look pretty cool.

posted morning of August third, 2007: Respond

Thursday, August second, 2007

🦋 Great directors

Bergman died recently. I have only watched Wild Strawberries, which I absolutely loved, and The Seventh Seal, which I thought was very beautiful but way too static for it to draw me in, and Fanny and Alexander, which I just couldn't sit through for want of any plot line that I could see. I have The Virgin Spring and Smiles of a Summer Night on my Netflix queue and am looking forward to watching them.

But that's not what I wanted to blog about; instead I wanted to mention this mashup of Bergman and Kurosawa, which I thought of while I was reading Roy's post on Bergman: The Seven Seals: The story of a lonely Norse marine biologist in mediæval Sweden, and his quest to repopulate his aquarium -- decimated by the black death and rogue warlords -- along with his bumbling furry sidekicks.

posted morning of August second, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Wild Strawberries

Wednesday, August first, 2007

🦋 KIDLIT

Neato -- four years into my time as a "blogger", I have joined a "group blog" for the first time. I'm posting about children's books at KIDLIT. Should be fun.

posted afternoon of August first, 2007: Respond

Monday, July 30th, 2007

Chapter 26 is hilariously funny, the satire much broader and more self-evident. (Until the last page anyway; I'm not totally sure what is happening there but Pamuk seems to be pulling back from the humor.) Ka is poking dry fun at Blue and at himself, and he has been given permission to do so -- Kadife tells him, "You're a dervish; Blue says so. He believes God has graced you with lifelong innocence."

The days in this story seem extraordinarily long -- this is only the afternoon of the second full day Ka has been in Kars.

posted evening of July 30th, 2007: Respond

Sunday, July 29th, 2007

🦋 Random 11

(Or, the Creeping Hegemony of Robyn Hitchcock)

I was listening to The Last Waltz on my computer this evening and I suddenly thought, why don't I see what happens if I use the "shuffle" feature in iTunes?

1. "Weary Day" by the Delmore Brothers, performed by John Miller. This is on a compilation called String Theory, that I got as a pledge premium from WFMU, and it is without question the best thing I have ever gotten from a public radio station in return for a contribution.
2. "This is How it Feels" by Robyn Hitchcock, from "Moss Elixir". Funny -- this is the last song on the record and I haven't really noticed it before.
3. "Muleskinner Blues" performed by Old & In The Way, from "Breakdown".
4. intersong chat from Robyn Hitchcock's July 1st concert at Three Kings Pub -- including the line, "no amount of moon landings could compensate for the Beatles breaking up."
5. "Railway Shoes" by Robyn Hitchcock, from "Live at the Cambridge Folk Festival". Hmm...
6. "Let's Go Thundering" by Robyn Hitchcock, from the March 14, 1997 show at the Knitting Factory. A very nice performance.
7. A track whose title I do not know, from the end of a Taj Mahal compilation Janis gave me.
8. "Lonesome Blues" by Henry Williams and Eddy Anthony, from the compilation "Violin, Sing the Blues to Me". This is one of the best records around.
9. "She Belongs to Me" by Bob Dylan, performed by Robyn Hitchcock, from the November 14, 2004 show at Maxwell's. I'm not generally a big fan of Hitchcock's Dylan covers but this one has some nice moments.
10. "Ñawi (Kichwa)" by Yarina, from "Ñawi". Yarina performed at Sylvia's school last year, and I bought their CD. Fantastic rhythms.
11. "Opus 57" by the David Grisman Quintet, from the October 3, 1997 show at Somerville Theater. A long piece that starts out kind of dull but gets a lot more interesting.

I turned the shuffle feature off a couple of songs later, when it got to the Carter Family, which I'm listening to now.

posted evening of July 29th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about random tunes

Previous posts
Archives