more ponderable particles

• Yay! A good source of reading recommendations. The Guardian has its critics and guest authors tell us their best books of the year. Now, if I could just get together a lot of time to read... I'm amazed at how few of these books I've heard of, much less read.
• I just finished reading Audrey Niffenegger's first novel The Time Traveler's Wife. I really liked this book. I assumed it'd be either bad science fiction or a sappy romance novel. It was neither. It was an amazing charater study wrapped in a touching story with some really interesting speculative fiction tossed in. I highly recommend this book. (And if you want to buy it from Amazon, please purchase it through my links on this page... Heh.)
• In the "you have got to be kidding" department: Meeting Tom Cruise Helps Chinese Writer Fulfill her American Dream

Since I seem to have a theme going

Anne Ishii has posted her Finger in the Throat Report #7.

Come one, come all, down to my digestive system, as I consume this very lovely work of asianica, which I am using to coin a new genre of fiction: Phonetic Asianica, or Phonetica for short.

Phonetica is self-explanatory. It's when a writer chooses to represent his/her characters phonetically. When Yummee from Fan Tan says she likes being pushed around, it reads "I rike-ee beeng pushed alound." When the complimentary hooker in Lost in Translation visits Bill Murray's hotel room, and wants to convey a desire to have her pantyhose ripped off her legs, it reads: "Lip it! Lip my hose!"

Funny? Yes. Relatable? oh, I'm sorry, rerataber? iyessss. Always applopliate? Possibry not.

I was laughing so hard by the end of this article, I had people peering into my office wondering if I was okay.

Maybe white men shouldn't write about Asia.

(via Bookslut)

miscellany

The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, Told Entirely in Emoticons

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And, for my amusement: Me. As rendered by Googlism.

mona is a fine person
mona island/planeta
mona is mocking me
mona island
mona is an ideal retreat for student travelers and groups
mona is not "busty" exactly
mona is practically flat top
mona is situated in a pleasant area of douglas just 40 yards from the promenade
mona is a truly unlikable and selfish character
mona is a murder mystery parody that doesn't have the gumption to go for the jugular
mona is the ultimate in luxury accommodation
mona is often compared to galápagos
mona is made into a useful object
mona is
mona is shown
mona is a logic
mona is located in downtown los angeles
mona is not confined to any particular project type
mona is seventeen and has nine brothers and sisters
mona is ambitious because she is smart enough to start a small delivery business to finance her pageant dues
mona is now played by minnie driver
mona is a well
mona is the most important technology in the book
mona is 5 percent
mona is a dancer and prostitute
mona is a pointless and horrific dark comedy
mona is rarely by herself
mona is dead in the water
mona is so relentlessly obnoxious she makes roseanne look like mary poppins
mona is approximately 742
mona is going to be one year old
mona is on the air
mona is going headfirst over a cliff
mona is fashion company
mona is largely due to ms
mona is no exception
mona is a solid
mona is never outrageous enough to make you fall into the sort of silly mood a film like this needs to
mona is only about 8
mona is at deirdre?s funeral
mona is the
mona is a substantial woman with an effervescent personality that pops out in loud bursts of joviality
mona is this
mona is drawn to the "glamorous" world of "little miss" beauty pageants
mona is posing near a former slaveholding fortress in west africa for a photo shoot
mona is my sister
mona is retiring and all the nannies are celebrating with her
mona is the only museum anywhere devoted exclusively to northwest art
mona is a pubescent kali on roller blades
mona is a deeply bad comedy
mona is temporarily replacing our secretary
mona is as pretty as a picture
mona is made up of 3 bunnies
mona is tickling herself" by lisa
mona is forced to run several odd jobs to pay off the fees for the pageant entries
mona is an active file system that cooperates with user processes to accomplish tasks
mona is singing and composing better than ever
mona is recognized as an ice environment and information technology specialist
mona is a woman of power
mona is a lot like watching an episode of wheel of fortune
mona is a team player
mona is a trojan horse which deletes files on drive a
mona is now shipping with drivers for windows 95/98/2000/xp/mac/wdm/asio/gsif
mona is somewhat troubled
mona is a divisive hierarchical clustering method
mona is a dark comedy parody of a whodunit
mona is the best tv sitcom i've ever paid seven bucks to see
mona is an adult shepherd mix
mona is merely a registered narcissist
mona is a faculty member at marywood university in scranton
mona is home to giant lizards that can be seen sunning themselves along the 200
mona is foremost the brainchild of bourgeau
mona is basically a very powerful add on similar to a very high end sound card that adds a whole load of flexibility to your studio
mona is the norse goddess of the moon after which monday was named
mona is that the midler character really doesn't act all that differently or all that more outrageously than anyone
mona is a novel approach to file system extensibility that provides heretofore unseen flexibility
mona is presented in a 1
mona is a detector array specialized to detect neutrons
mona is asking for help
mona is certainly self confident and is very much the terrier in personality
mona is a funny and entertaining

Some Shakespearean particles

Some tidbits on Shakespeare:

• Seems they want to dig up Will's body to see if he may have been murdered by his son-in-law.
• And there is yet another candidate in the "who really wrote Shakespeare's plays" debate. Frankly, I am in the "Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare" camp, but the debate is sometimes amusing, and there's one pretty good novel that came of it.
• And if anyone wants to get me a nice Christmas present...

Just when I think maybe we've grown up a bit...

Geez.

Now Dean Koontz is getting called to the carpet for racism. Seems he's been telling a story about letters he wrote to a Japanese businessman that included a lot of racist-sounding remarks. What really annoys me is his assertion that, "there's some political incorrectness in it, but nothing mean". Sheesh. And apparently, he's been telling this story for years!

You'd think a best-selling author would know that there are so many less controversial ways of being funny. Or maybe not.

more thought particles

A few rants, chuckles and a farewell:

• I have a few grammatical pet peeves that cause me to grind my teeth. The laziness of people to not figure out the difference between "lay" and "lie," for instance. Whenever I hear my co-worker tell her dog to "Lay down!" I have to bite my tongue. (It reminds me of the comic strip where the man tells his dog, "lay down" and the dog rolls onto its back. The man tells the dog, "speak" and the dog looks up at him and says, "that's lie down.") So when I listen to the radio, I expect a certain amount of proper word usage. I listened to Ed Gordon (an experienced interviewer and journalist) on NPR interviewing a woman about adoption, and imagine my gnashing of teeth when I hear him mis-use the word "reticent" in the phrase, "...people aren't as reticent to take in kids..." Reticent means "inclined to keep silent or uncommunicative. What he really means is reluctant, which means "struggling against; resisting." Ack.
• A chuckle from my favorite comic site: Shakespeare...
• The worst phrasebook ever written.
• And a farewell to John Fowles, dead at age 79. His book, The Magus, is still one of my all-time favorites, and I still get chills if I think about it too much.

Trying to look smart?

It turns out that one in three consumers polled in London admit that they bought books "to look intelligent." And that few actually read the books they buy.

When did reading become a matter of social appearance rather than a wonderfully enjoyable escape?

And what does it say about me that I was seen by dozens of people yesterday when I was reading Poetry Magazine?

Jessa Crispin uses this information to give guys advice on what to be seen reading. Funny stuff.

a little bit of a rant

I did hope not to use this blog as a forum for ranting, but sometimes you just have to let it out.


As an Asian-American, I'm subjected to a lot of stereotypes. Now, while the actual number of comments has diminished through the years, the fact that I still hear them remains a source of a lot of incredulity. Apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks this. James Yeh has this hilarious little commentary on stupid things people say to Asian-looking folks. And while you're at it, check out his blog. Good stuff.

I have had three proposals from complete strangers. Hello!? We aren't all mail-order brides looking for a way to stay in the country. Some of us were born here and actually speak without accents. Imagine that.

Advice: We (Asian-Americans) know that we look "exotic" and sometimes your curiousity is ovewhelming. Go ahead and ask what our background is, but please don't ask, "What are you?" My standard reply is "Human," or "Female."

Literature for the mind

A friend (whose opinion means a lot to me) recently recommended I read The Brothers Karamazov. I was never that interested in Russian literature and maybe slogging my way through War and Peace didn't help.

I stumbled across this marvelous article about Apostolos Gerasoulis, the mathematician behind the search engine "Ask Jeeves." It tells a great deal about the creation of and ideas behind the search engine, but the one part that stood out for me was the following quote:

"At first, he was a pretty bad student, until he discovered the principle of abstraction in the stories by Dostoyevsky."

A nice thing to hear about for those of us with a mathematical and literary bent.

New gadget!

I'm not usually much for gadgets, but I recently received an iPod nano for my birthday. (Yes, it wasn't long ago.)

Heh. No wonder the Apple users are such fanatics. This gadget is easy to use and great for my walks and workouts. Plus, I get the added benefit of seeing people eye it with envy. (I want an Apple computer, too, but that will be years away...)

I've already loaded 117 songs on the thing, and am deciding what part of my large CD collection I want to add. Heh. It seems I can never have too much Steely Dan.

Fun.

We pause for this baseball note...

It's not easy being a National League fan. Neal Pollack thinks so, too.

"I'm an old-fashioned National League purist. I stand firmly against the designated hitter and believe that NL games are more sophisticated and interesting. Even during the prime juice years of McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds, there was still a pitcher hitting ninth; baseball isn't baseball without the double switch."

Needed a laugh...

And I got one.

I couldn't stop laughing at Gene Weingarten's article...

Enjoy.

A Cask of Whine

Busy busy times for me -- pardon the hiatus. A few notes:

• My baby brother turned 40 yesterday. Happy birthday, David! We'll be the same age for a couple weeks now.
• I confess I could NOT finish A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. I read so many rave reviews and had friends recommend it. Heck, even the gal at the bookstore waxed rhapsodic when she saw me buying it. But I'm sorry. I found it extremely self-absorbed and so full of self-congratulatory cleverness and Gen-X-brand angst, that, after 100 pages and many derisive snorts and rolling of the eyes, I just gave up. I didn't even find the writing particularly catchy. Sorry. I just couldn't do it...
• The Giants are out of the playoffs.
• And maybe I'm just having a bad week, but does anyone else actually find this funny? (Really... I am easily amused, usually.)

Yet another biography...

It's no secret that I love Shakespeare's plays. What a lot of people don't undertand about my love of the work, however, is that it doesn't necessarily translate into a desire to read about Shakespeare himself. I do have a copy of Stephen Grenblatt's Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare in my pile of books to be read. And some kind soul gave me a copy of Harold Bloom's Shakespeare: The Invention of the Humana few years ago. (I am reluctant to admit I haven't picked it up.) But the truth is, I'd rather pick up a copy of a play and re-read it than read a biography or any treatise about his work.

But it seems that there are always new biographies coming out. I don't plan to read Peter Ackroyd's biography, despite the good press on it so far. But I am intrigued that Bill Bryson is working on his own Shakespeare bio. I adore Bryson's writing... I may have to get that one.

The Secret Life of Bees

I just finished reading Sue Monk Kidd’s novel The Secret Life of Bees. My initial reaction was that it is a beautifully written coming-of-age novel. The descriptions of the American South in the 1960s are tender and lovely.

The story revolves around Lily Owens, a 14-year-old girl growing up in Sylvan, S.C., on a peach orchard with her father and a housekeeper. The story jump starts when Rosaleen, the black housekeeper, goes into town to register to vote. She encounters some white men bent on preventing her registration, and ends up beaten and in jail. Lily helps her escape, and the two of them run away; Rosaleen from jail and Lily from her abusive father. Lily’s mother is gone, dead from a gun accident when Lily was four, that may or may not have been caused by Lily.

Lily’s only clue to anything in her dead mother’s past is a photograph and a picture of a “black Madonna” with the words “Tiburon, S.C.” scrawled on the back. So Lily and Rosaleen head to Tiburon, where they meet with three sisters who run a honey farm.

The story’s basic themes involve Lily’s search for a mother and that love transcends race. The book is beautifully written, with often poetic and achingly lovely descriptions. But, as Lily matures and searches for clues to her mother’s past, the book becomes a bit too pat. The coincidences made me wince a bit and as I pondered the book, I found myself wondering about some of the details in the book. For example, if the setting is the Deep South in 1964, why didn’t anyone say anything when Lily and Zach drove into town? There’s a big fuss about a group of black teens throwing a bottle, but none of the white men involved in the fracas mention Lily. Wasn’t this less than ten years after the murder of Emmett Till, who was lynched for allegedly talking to a white woman?

I enjoyed the book, though it is not usually the sort I like to read. It is rare when I pick up a book that is aimed at the “chick lit” crowd. This book is not necessarily in that category, but the marketing of it seems to be towards the same group. The writing is exceptional, however, and I would recommend it just for the beauty of the prose.

A couple excerpts:

“When I looked up through the web of trees, the night fell over me, and for a moment I lost my boundaries, feeling like the sky was my own skin and the moon was my heart beating up there in the dark. Lightning came, not jagged but in soft, golden licks across the sky.”

“The first week at August’s was a consolation, a pure relief. The world will give you that once in a while, a brief time-out; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life.”

The joy of reading

Yesterday was the first day of school for my kids. I woke to cool air and Morning Edition on the radio. On Mondays they air a series called This I Believe. It is a series of audio essays by various people, famous and not-so-famous, speaking about what they believe.

This morning's essay was from Rick Moody about The Joy and Enthusiasm of Reading.

"I believe in the absolute and unlimited liberty of reading. I believe in wandering through the stacks and picking out the first thing that strikes me. I believe in choosing books based on the dust jacket. I believe in reading books because others dislike them or find them dangerous. I believe in choosing the hardest book imaginable. I believe in reading up on what others have to say about this difficult book, and then making up my own mind."

What a wonderful beginning to a day.

Unstable Particles

• In accordance with The Lynne Truss Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, the press is having a hard time deciding whether to go with the official version, or be grammatically correct.


• Shakespeare Was, Like, The Ultimate Rapper.


• Kit Weinert gives us Rules for Modern Poets to Live and Maybe Roast By, and he does it beautifully…


• “Really, rhyme or not rhyme isn’t the issue for a poem. What matters is whether a poem is good or not, true or not”

Useless research

I've stumbled across some odd, useless and obvious "studies" done in the name of serious science, but I've finally found one that is obvious as well as apt!

Now I know my profession has a less-than-exciting reputation, but I have never felt the need to justify it. Heck, I can easily get a job almost anywhere. But it's funny how so many accountants get defensive about the work they do.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales provided a robust defence of its members.

A spokesman said: "The area of tax accountancy is anything but dull. Our members get to work in all sectors of the economy, including small businesses and the media and entertainment industries.

"Many of our members lead varied and interesting lives, taking part in activities such as trekking around the Alps for charity and being involved in local community projects, such as working in deprived areas. "

Some of them can even write...

Summer fun!

August 18th is Bad Poetry Day.

Like we need a day for it... I believe there is more bad poetry around then there is any other art form. I realize this is subjective, but it's just too easy to do.

In fact, let's try it! Send a bad poem to cordelia248(at)yahoo(dot)com (in the proper formatting, of course), and I'll post the finest (worst) here.

Go write!

And I'll be back intermittently until the kids start school. Sorry for the days of silence.

An essay by a poet

I have mentioned before that I have a difficult time writing prose. I lack the organization and the sense of pacing to write much prose.

Vivé Griffith writes an amazingly beautiful essay in The Gettysburg Review that illuminates many of these feelings on why and how I write:

"I never learned how to tell a story. Try as I might, I can never quite place a beginning, a middle, an ending on things. I get confused, and my endings become beginnings, my middles endings. Or I forget what happened and make something up. Or I think I can see the full sequence, but I get impatient on the way there.

I have learned instead to create moments. I am in love with moments."

Her love of moments is illustrated in the the subject of the essay, her father. She uses her poet's sense of word-painting to give us a sad, sweet picture of him.

"Here’s the thing: my father uses my poems to sell timeshare. He sits across those cheap metal folding tables that seem to be a staple in every timeshare office and says, “Let me show you a poem my daughter wrote.”

What kind of poems sell timeshare?"

It is this sort of writing that sets my fingers itching to write. We'll see if it helps...