chelseagirl (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chelseagirl) wrote2006-05-30 08:20 am
chelseagirl) wrote2006-05-30 08:20 am
Entry tags:
books, real life, New Orleans
So much for my self-proclaimed hiatus -- I commented a lot *less* than I ordinarily would have and missed out on some certain-to-have-been fascinating exchanges, and yet I was never really gone. 'Cause of how that working at home thing gets a smidge lonely, though now that one of the post-semester deadlines is met and the other is underway, I can start having a real life again.
Since I haven't been posting, M. and folks from his job went to New Orleans to work for Habitat for Humanity for a week. He came back with my digital camera filled with wreckage pictures and a sense of the vastness of the destruction down there, and how little is really being done to rebuild compared to the scale of the devastation. (I'm looking at *you*, Mister President.) Also stories of accomplishments and fun, and because he was working outside in the 90s, several t-shirts on which the ink had, quite literally, run.
Met his work buds at his supervisor's cookout over the weekend. Quite liked some of them and especially the artist girlfriend of one of his bosses; think I inadvertently terrified his particular female buddy (who is literally half my age) by making the "ah, so you're the competition" joke. (Not *at all* true, or I'd never have said it.) One of the women and I went for a walk around the neighborhood, which is at the end of 3 line in Brooklyn; what does it say about NYC in this day and age that both of us suddenly became paranoid that we looked like real estate speculators?
Out to Jersey for my goddaughter's fourth b'day party. The cake was fascinating -- Maggie has serious allergies to flour, dairy and most of the things that go into cakes, and yet her mom pulled together a quite creditable one out of ingredients like barley flour and tofu. I wouldn't exactly seek out the recipe, but I got through my slice without wincing once.
Recently read: Sorcery and Cecelia, which was already on my wish-list when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
queenofthorns gave her royal seal of approval, and was terrific fun (and which has triggered many thoughts out why nineteenth century fantasies tend to be sent during the Napoleonic Wars/Regency period in greater numbers than during the high Victorian era -- speculations on that in another post soon), and The Elementary Particles, by Michel Houllebecq, which was loaned to me by someone I felt the need to be polite to and which I'd otherwise never have picked up. I've heard the author is rather dreadful, and one of his protagonists, Bruno, was likewise (I despise reading about unattractive men and their self-centered ambiguities towards the semi-attractive women who may actually agree to have sex with them, simply because they're not drop dead gorgeous), but the other protagonist, his physicist half-brother, actually had some interesting speculations on human evolution and the nature of consciousness and so forth.
Books read in May:
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (work-based reread)
Censoring Culture, ed. Atkins & Mintcheva
Return to the Whorl, Gene Wolfe
I am Legend, Richard Matheson (book group)
Lajja (Shame), Taslima Nasrin
The Girl with the Golden Eyes, Honore de Balzac (ok, it's a novella)
The Man of Feeling, Javier Marias
To Charles Fort, with Love, Caitlin Kiernan
The Court of the Midnight King, Freda Warrington
Sharpe's Trafalgar, Bernard Cornwell
Sharpe's Prey, Bernard Cornwell
The Dream of Scipio, Iain Pears
Advocacy and the Making of the Adversarial Criminal Trial 1800-1865, David J. A. Cairns
Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett
The Mount, Carol Emshwiller
His Majesty's Dragon, Naomi Novik
Anita and Me, Meera Syal
The Blue Sword, Robin McKinley
Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, Judith Butler
The Elementary Particles, Michel Houllebecq
Sorcery and Cecilia, Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer
Since I haven't been posting, M. and folks from his job went to New Orleans to work for Habitat for Humanity for a week. He came back with my digital camera filled with wreckage pictures and a sense of the vastness of the destruction down there, and how little is really being done to rebuild compared to the scale of the devastation. (I'm looking at *you*, Mister President.) Also stories of accomplishments and fun, and because he was working outside in the 90s, several t-shirts on which the ink had, quite literally, run.
Met his work buds at his supervisor's cookout over the weekend. Quite liked some of them and especially the artist girlfriend of one of his bosses; think I inadvertently terrified his particular female buddy (who is literally half my age) by making the "ah, so you're the competition" joke. (Not *at all* true, or I'd never have said it.) One of the women and I went for a walk around the neighborhood, which is at the end of 3 line in Brooklyn; what does it say about NYC in this day and age that both of us suddenly became paranoid that we looked like real estate speculators?
Out to Jersey for my goddaughter's fourth b'day party. The cake was fascinating -- Maggie has serious allergies to flour, dairy and most of the things that go into cakes, and yet her mom pulled together a quite creditable one out of ingredients like barley flour and tofu. I wouldn't exactly seek out the recipe, but I got through my slice without wincing once.
Recently read: Sorcery and Cecelia, which was already on my wish-list when
queenofthorns gave her royal seal of approval, and was terrific fun (and which has triggered many thoughts out why nineteenth century fantasies tend to be sent during the Napoleonic Wars/Regency period in greater numbers than during the high Victorian era -- speculations on that in another post soon), and The Elementary Particles, by Michel Houllebecq, which was loaned to me by someone I felt the need to be polite to and which I'd otherwise never have picked up. I've heard the author is rather dreadful, and one of his protagonists, Bruno, was likewise (I despise reading about unattractive men and their self-centered ambiguities towards the semi-attractive women who may actually agree to have sex with them, simply because they're not drop dead gorgeous), but the other protagonist, his physicist half-brother, actually had some interesting speculations on human evolution and the nature of consciousness and so forth. Books read in May:
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (work-based reread)
Censoring Culture, ed. Atkins & Mintcheva
Return to the Whorl, Gene Wolfe
I am Legend, Richard Matheson (book group)
Lajja (Shame), Taslima Nasrin
The Girl with the Golden Eyes, Honore de Balzac (ok, it's a novella)
The Man of Feeling, Javier Marias
To Charles Fort, with Love, Caitlin Kiernan
The Court of the Midnight King, Freda Warrington
Sharpe's Trafalgar, Bernard Cornwell
Sharpe's Prey, Bernard Cornwell
The Dream of Scipio, Iain Pears
Advocacy and the Making of the Adversarial Criminal Trial 1800-1865, David J. A. Cairns
Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett
The Mount, Carol Emshwiller
His Majesty's Dragon, Naomi Novik
Anita and Me, Meera Syal
The Blue Sword, Robin McKinley
Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, Judith Butler
The Elementary Particles, Michel Houllebecq
Sorcery and Cecilia, Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer
no subject
no subject
It was a great experience for him; I'm just happy he's turning into such a do-gooder.