Salem's Lot

Although I have been in Logan Airport since 6:30am, I'll be entertained by one of the best books ever to read on Halloween - Salem's Lot. Boo!

Ready to Wear?

I love this quotation:

"Trendiness can be measured by what one chooses to wear. Style is determined by what one chooses to ignore."

From "A Trend Without a Leg to Stand On" - The Washington Post 10/27/2006

Beantown

All expenses-paid business trips with the opportunity for sight-seeing rock. I am in Boston this week in order to help train our new clients at the Boston Public Library. I have already had some great food and a very happy visit to the Museum of Fine Arts this evening. In a little over an hour I saw stuff by Gilbert Stuart, Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Diane Arbus, Robert Rauschenburg, Andy Warhol, Whistler, and John Singer Sargent.

My favorite though was by an artist I haven't heard of before - William Rimmer. His painting, Flight and Pursuit, was very eerie. Click on the title link if you want some more information and an image. In any case, I loved going to the museum at eight at night. It was pretty much us and the local art students.

Under the Banner of Heaven & The Information

I am currently reading Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. He also wrote Into Thin Air and Into the Wild. Under the Banner of Heaven is about Mormonism, and more specifically, Mormon fundamenalists that practice polygamy. It was written a couple of years ago, but talks a lot about the group under Warren Jeffs (who just got busted for his huge polygamy group) as well as the guy who abducted Elizabth Smart. Krakauer also goes into the history of Mormonism, starting with Joseph Smith's visitation byt the angel Moroni. It is a VERY interesting book, and hard to put down. My mom said a lot of the way they treat women reminded her of the characters in The Handmaid's Tale, which is an awesome book. One of the women mentioned in Krakauer's book was married to a guy who became fundamentalist, and it got so that she wasn't allowed to handle money, dirve a car, or speak to people outside of their family unless he was there. Her husband even spanked her when she did something "wrong."

Coming up on the list will be No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy for the CSI Book Club, as well as Wicked and Storm Front (Dresden Files series) for The Arcanum.

I also got a lovely surprise present from my very dear friend Jenny. An Amazon box was waiting on my doorstep yesterday, and when I opened it it was the new Beck album, The Information. She has the best taste in music, and has introduced me to so many incredible things. I love her dearly.

Peaches & Bats

I am lucky to have a job that lets me learn interesting but hardly useless information. While researching ancient Chinese art the other day I saw a picture of a gorgeous piece of porcelain decorated with peaches and bats. Sort of an odd combination, but one that I definitely take delight in, being that I like mysterious things. Anyway, I read about the history of the "fruit bats" and it turns out the mystery was solved as follows:

"Peaches are symbols of longevity, and the chinese character for bat, "fu", sounds like the character for "blessings" when pronounced. Therefore, bats + peaches = "May you possess both blessings and longevity." - From AsianArt.org - http://www.asianart.org/hiddenmeanings.htm

Pretty cool.

October Post

I was just thinking how long it had been since I had posted, when I was inspired today by a friend who was kind enough to share her wonderful blog with me! It's been a happy and fairly busy 3 or so weeks, which is always good. I visited a dear friend of mine and her family 2 weeks ago. She was looking beautiful. We had not seen each other since last December, so it was a blessing to have that weekend with her. I also had a lazy time last weekend ordering miniature wallpaper for my dollhouse, shopping with my sister (been doing way too much of that lately, but I won't have a 28 year old body forever, so I may as well enjoy it!), going to the Furniture Factory on a full moonlit night to see Backyard Trash, taking a fall afternoon hike on the mountain, and cooking dinner with my sibs. I also have a ton of e-mail to catch up on - so if any of you are reading this that are owed a reply, you are hanging over me like a spectre, so don't worry :-)

I have also been reading a lot, big surprise. It helps to keep me sane. I finished The Sunne in Splendour a couple of weeks ago. Now I have been jumping around my stack of library books, plus some stuff I just picked up at Barnes & Noble. ;-) Here's a recap if anyone is interested:

The Introvert Advantage - I don't normally troll the self-help aisle, but I became fascinated with the idea of the introverted personality and all that entails a couple of years ago when I found out I was one. Now it is so nice to read authoritative information on it and say "whew, I'm not a misanthrope after all, and it's ok to like to be alone."

Bitchfest - 10 years of the best of Bitch magazine articles - really good stuff!

Good Women - Three novellas by an English author, really fantastic. I loved "Garden Guerillas" the best.

Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, 19th annual collection - This is an absolute integral part of my book collection. I have been collecting these every year for over ten years now. Enough said.

AA Gill is Away - Read this now. You really can, it's on the web. This guy is incredible. http://www.travelintelligence.net/php/writers/writ.php?id=22 It is a series of travel articles, mostly done from 1999-2001 - not what you think though. I can't do it justice in words, just read them. He could write about a burlap sack and you would be enlightened. Hands down favorite essay is "Mad in Japan." Second is "Hunforgiven."

Rumspringa - Rent the documentary The Devil's Playground if you can't get the book right away. The author did them as companions to each other. The Amish have a coming-of-age ritual called Rumspringa (literally means "running around"). At about age 16, if the kids choose to so, they can go absolutely wild. Drugs, sex, drinking, you name it. The idea is that you expose yourself to this, you can make a more informed decision to be baptized into the church. Some take a few years. Some never want to go back and join the "English" world. The catch is that you are cut off from the community forever. I haven't finished it yet, but it's fascinating.

Also picked up but not yet read - may have to come back to:

Music Lust (along the same vein as Book Lust) - Interesting enough to read through, although great as a reference.

Rejuvenile: Kickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes, and the Reinvention of the American Grownup

What to Eat - Marion Nestle is really cool.

A Dash of Daring: Carmel Snow and Her Life in Fashion, Art, and Letters

Whew. Enough to keep me busy, but of course I have my eye on more. I am dying to read two short story collections by Margaret Atwood that I just discovered:

The Tent

Moral Disorder and Other Stories.

Amazon wishlists are awesome. I can keep up with what I want to read there, and just see if the library has them. I also want to read:

Pay the Piper: A Rock n' Roll Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen
The Unruly Life of Woody Allen
The Last of Her Kind
Edgar Allen Poe & the Jukebox
Suite Francaise
My Latest Grievance