A quiet night, a stack of books, a tuna melt on rye

I don't know how well known this youtube video is outside of New Orleans.



It was doing the rounds here about a year ago because we have all shopped at that Walmart (it's the Tchoupitoulas street if anyone cares).

Anyway, my co-historic analyst likes to look at the NOPD crime reports during lunch. Today they reported that the "singer" in that video was in a multi-hour standoff with the police yesterday after threatening to kill his neighbor. That lead us of a youtube search to see if he had any other songs which ultimately resulted in this, an acoustic version of Wally World. We we cracking up for a good 10 minutes.



I can even.

( Q4: Book you hate )

First off, thanks for the podcast recs. I will be checking them out!

Next, I've been watching Playing Shakespeare which appears to be a television documentary from the 80s with lots of well respected actors and actresses. I'm finding it pretty interesting, but what I've really come away from the program with is a sense of awe at just how intelligent some of them seem (mostly Ian McKellen and Ben Kingsley). It is really rather refreshing to be impressed with someone out of character instead of kind of cringing. Now I want to see ALL THE PLAYS, which would be easier if my lot in life was not to have Macbeth playing near me all the time and rarely anything else -- I don't know what is up with that.

And then Book!Meme Day Two:

The book you want to read next
( Hmm. Let's see )

In my voice thing, I talked about the latest book I'm reading which is Alex Miller's Journey to the Stone Country.  My mother gave to to me on my last trip home thinking I would enjoy it, which I am.  The people in it share my profession and more surprisingly share the aspect of it I'm in.  They are doing cultural survey ahead of a planned reservoir.  Of course there are differences -- I would never do that much camping (but then I don't camp), and there is a lot more "ped" survey (field walking) than I ever get to do, but every once in while a bit jumps out at me as something I or my co-workers would do or say.  Particularly one portion when two characters are arguing over whether or not early European settlement sites are equally deserving of conservation.  Oh, the historic vs. pre-historic debate. 


Anyway, here's a passage I enjoyed...
"It's the decay and abandonment that moves us in the first place, isn't it? About places like this? It's what makes them so poignant for us.  When we conserve them they lose all that.  We polish them up and cherish them.  We banish their ghosts and make them safe for the future.  We falsify them.  Conserved things become part of our present.  They become ordinary. The very thing we set out to conserve is the thing we inevitably destroy.  We keep the fabric but we lose the spirit.  It's one thing to record the past, but it's something else to conserve it.  I'm not sure I believe in the conservation of places like this."

Does anyone else use Goodreads?  I like it as a way to keep track of the books I read each year -- much better than my old word document method.  Anyway, I've been a member of the Adults reading Young Adult Fiction group (called Wildthings) for about a year now.  I think I'm in the minority in that group due to the fact that I am neither a teacher nor a mother, but reading through the messages has prompted me to thank my mother numerous times over the last year for the way she raised me. 

Many of the people (mostly women) who post in the group do so because they read every book their child reads in order to  make sure the themes are appropriate.  Now, I'm not a mother, so I can only come at this situation from the view point of the child, but I would have stopped reading or I would have become the biggest sneak imaginable -- hiding every book I found regardless of how "appropriate" it might have been.  Then again,  I am and have always been a very private person. 

I come from a huge family of readers.  We trade books all the time.  No family get together is complete without an exchange of books accompanied by an "I think you'll like this,"  if fact every time I visit my parents I am greeted by a new stack of books in my childhood room, things my parents have read since the last time I was home and think I might like.  My grandmother does the same thing but with articles which can be sent through the mail.  Still, all through my childhood I can only remember reading two things around the same time as my mother: Christy when the television series came out and Anne of Green Gables and its sequels right before we went to Prince Edward Island on vacation.  The first book even involves an instance of Statutory rape, but there was never a sense that I couldn't read it or that we needed to have a "very special" discussion about it.  I was allowed to read whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and trusted to get things or not get them. 

So, once again -- thank you Mom (and Dad) for your hands off approach to my reading material growing up.  Thank you for taking me to the library often, and for letting me check out anything that looked interesting. 

So lately I've been obsessed with Goodreads.  I'm not big on social networking sites except when the make something easier for me.  I like Ravelry for finding knitting patterns and Goodreads for finding books, and there is nothing I like better than a good book.  Anyway, the obsession came in when I joined the group "Wild Things" which is all about young adult books.  They're running a challenge (which my co-workers have decided to call a scavenger hunt) where you read books to finish certain tasks like a book based on a fairy tale, or a book published in the year you were born.  Each task is assigned a certain number of points and ties in points are settled by number of pages read.  Long story short, I've read five books since Monday. 

I keep meaning to post things and then forgetting, which results in lots of blank space.  So, instead of just leaving it off as I usually do, there is a chance that I will add my weekend in a quick succession of posts.  You have been warned. 

First off, Wednesday night was the inaugural meeting of the "Open Hat Book Club."  The hat being open not the book club itself.  I'm pleased to report that my method of choosing books worked every bit as well as I thought it would.  When Arynne first shared that she was going to start a reading group I suggest that each member submit two books to the list.  The first would be a book they had already read and thought that everyone else should read.  The second would be a book that they wanted to read.  I used to phrase that second one as a book they always wanted to read, but that wording tends to make people feel that they have to choose classics which is not at all the point.  Thankfully, we did in fact have a group with diverse reading tastes, as I had hoped, so our list runs the gamut.  There's fiction and non-fiction, biography, children's lit, a graphic novel, some classics, some best sellers, and even some trash.  Okay, I know I shouldn't pass judgment, but really, The Cheerleader !?

Our first book is Alexandra Fuller's Don't Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood. I've already procured my copy (mostly because the Borders had neither the DVD for the newest Jane Eyre nor that of the Casanova miniseries which is what I wanted to spend my gift cards on), and will be starting my new reading adventure this ten-day.

I believe my book I think everyone should read is sceduled third.  I can't wait.  I submitted 84 Charing Cross Road.  I really wanted it to be the first book because nothing starts off a club about books like read a book about the love of books.  But, mostly I just want everyone to love Helene Hanff.  I'm on a one woman crusade (a pretty pitiful one at that) to get my favorite book, Letter from New York, back into print.  I'm sure that crusade will have about as much luck as the one to re-introduce the word "fortnight" into American-English. 

And here is another meme that is going around everywhere.  I got it from mcgarrygirl78 and loversandtrends.  Anyway this one is about books - yea books!
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)


*Edited to fix the strange italics problem*

    I've recently started re-reading children's fiction, beloved by myself or others.  I started with the librivox recording of Louisa May Alcott's . 
 
I plan to continue this trend with the rest of the Anne books (I'm currently working on Anne of Avonlea), and was wondering if anyone had other suggestions.