David Denby: Snark
This slim volume doesn't always succeed with its argument against the virtues of snark, but I definitely see where Denby is coming from. He wants a world where people think before they speak, where insults hit their target with wit, a sense of context and forethought. I know I thought more about how to temper my own snarky tendencies after reading this long essay, and at the very least, Denby's tome should spark necessary - and maybe even snark-free - discussion.
Hallie Ephron: Never Tell a Lie: A Novel of Suspense
Ephron's first solo fiction outing finds suspense in seemingly unlikely territory, but the suburban town where heavily pregnant Ivy and her husband David live proves to be most dangerous after a chance run-in with Melinda, an old high school acquaintance - and pregnant as well. Then she goes missing. And then the book becomes awfully hard to stop reading because Ephron is a page-turning expert who has plenty to say about the joys and pain of impending motherhood.
Ilana Stanger-Ross: Sima's Undergarments for Women
How could I not adore this? It's a debut novel set in Boro Park and features a mature woman who owns an undergarment shop that caters to those of all ages and ethnicities, but really shines an inward light upon her secret shame and empty marriage when a young Israeli girl, brimming with life, arrives to turn everything upside down. The conflicts are meted out in fine detail, and Sima - the aforementioned propreitor - is all too believable in what she holds back, how she feels and what she does, no matter how wrong-headed those actions might be. This book is a rare little bird that should have a chance to spread its wings widely and at great distance.
Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo: Roseanna (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)
The first of Sjowall/Wahloo's legendary series featuring Swedish police detective Martin Beck was recently reissued, giving me good reason to finally read what I'd meant to for years. It's astounding and a classic, as is the follow up THE MAN WHO WENT UP IN SMOKE, because the authors do not waste a single word. Economy and subtlety, not to mention a methodical approach to detection and clear opinions on the state of Swedish society, is on fine display. I'd read the other eight books now but I'm trying to pace myself.
Tanguy Viel: Beyond Suspicion: A Novel
This is a hard-bitten, unnerving piece of work, largely and unjustly overlooked by me until I stumbled across it in a bookstore and, thinking I'd read a few pages, finished most of it standing up and the rest in a nearby chair. There are two couples, a brother and a sister with respective partners. There are weddings and love affairs, secret schemes and violent twists. And there is betrayal, oh so much betrayal. Viel's writing is so crisp it practically singes with blackness, and his outlook is arch and bleak. I do like discovering new authors, don't you?
Okay, so a while back I wondered whether it was such a good idea to place James Wood on a pedestal, and that knowing what he thinks on or does with things that have nothing whatsoever to do with literature would be good. This is a welcome start, but Guitar Hero is so clearly next on the to-do list...
Vacation, btw, is more or less done. More soon.
(via)
Because at this rate, it might be the only way to iron this mess out...
I can see how this would happen, but come on, this is funny:
Two notices were delivered by GEZ, a licence-collecting agency, which threatened to mount legal action against the literary hero, who is best known for his poem Ode to Joy, which was put to music by Beethoven, unless he quickly settled his monthly €17 (£14) bill.
They were sent to a primary school bearing Schiller's name in Weigsdorf-Köblitz, a town in the eastern state of Saxony.
The second came despite the school's headteacher sending the agency a letter informing them that "the addressee is no longer in a position to listen to the radio or watch television".
GEZ replied saying Schiller would only be exempt if he could prove he did not own television or radio sets.
After the confusion was settled, a spokesman for the agency apologised. "We have to deal with such a huge amount of data, that something like this can happen, and the name Friedrich Schiller is not so unusual that it stood out as strange," she told The Guardian. "We will now alter his status in our computer system."
Because as we all know, the computer is never wrong!
Well, not for the guy who tried to set his up, I suppose:
A man who chose "Lloyds is pants" as his telephone banking password said he found it had been changed by a member of staff to "no it's not".
Steve Jetley, from Shrewsbury, said he chose the password after falling out with Lloyds TSB over insurance that came free with an account.
He said he was then banned from changing it back or to another password of "Barclays is better".
The bank apologised and said the staff member no longer worked there.
All because of a travel insurance dispute...
It even has third-act plot twists:
PORTLAND, Ore. - When Susan Kuhnhausen returned home from work one day earlier this month, she encountered an intruder wielding a claw hammer. After a struggle, the 51-year-old nurse fended off her attacker by strangling him with her bare hands.
Neighbors praised the woman for her bravery, and investigators said they believed the dead man — Edward Dalton Haffey — was burglarizing Kuhnhausen’s home.
But after an investigation, police now say the intruder Kuhnhausen strangled was apparently a hit man hired by her estranged husband — Michael James Kuhnhausen Sr. — to kill her.
Although if it was a movie it would turn out the hitman and the woman actually knew each other previously, but right, this is real life...
In Act One of this story, a 57 year old woman has her dead pitbull, Booger, cloned in South Korea. Five times over.
In Act Two, the story is reported all over the world, and Bernann McKinney attracts fame and celebrity in many corners - including Britain.
Which brings us to Act Three, the discovery of McKinney's previous life:
The secret life of the owner of the first cloned pet dog has started to emerge after she was unmasked as the “manacled Mormon” kidnapper Joyce McKinney.
The middle-aged blonde calling herself Bernann McKinney made headlines this week when five identical puppies were created using an ear from her dead pitbull.
Confronted with allegations yesterday, she denied being the woman who fled an Old Bailey trial in the 1970s accused of kidnapping her former lover at gunpoint, handcuffing him to a bed and forcing him to have sex.
However, a resident of Joyce McKinney’s home town of Newland, North Carolina, who saw footage of the woman with the cloning scientists in South Korea, told The Times: “That’s her. That is the woman I am familiar with.”
More here and here. I wonder if she will face trial now? (thanks, Jenny D!)
Why does this seem to me the perfect story right before a long weekend?
Police say an Appleton family is still recovering from a scary incident early Wednesday morning when a man covered with barbecue sauce was in their basement.
Investigators say 35-year-old Aaron Maurice broke into the family's home on North Wilmer while they were sleeping around 4:30 A.M.
Not only was it frightening but police say it was very strange. At the time of the break-in, police say Maurice was whistling and covered in barbecue sauce.
When police asked Maurice why he was in the house, he said he was on the run from the
government. And about the barbecue sauce: "The officers asked him that.
He told the officers that it was urban camouflage." Well, that's one way to put it...
The town of Gerald, Missouri was one of many small towns struggling to overcome the scourge that is methamphetamine. So when a stranger with a Federal badge came to town, the higher-ups welcomed him with open arms and the arrest rate went up. WAY up. Then everything came crashing down, as the NYT reported yesterday:
Those whose homes were searched, though, grumbled about a peculiar change in what they understood — mainly from television — to be the law.
They said the agent, a man some had come to know as “Sergeant Bill,” boasted that he did not need search warrants to enter their homes because he worked for the federal government.
But after a reporter for the local weekly newspaper made a few calls about that claim, Gerald’s antidrug campaign abruptly fell apart after less than five months. Sergeant Bill, it turned out, was no federal agent, but Bill A. Jakob, an unemployed former trucking company owner, a former security guard, a former wedding minister and a former small-town cop from 23 miles down the road.
Mr. Jakob, 36, is now the subject of a criminal investigation by federal authorities, and he is likely to face charges related to impersonating a law enforcement officer, his lawyer said.
There are a ton of questions, like why Jakob would go to such lengths to impersonate a federal agents, how so many were taken in, and who gets first dibs on turning this into a novel. (Thanks to SP for the link)
Okay, so I am a negligent hockey fan who doesn't even live in Canada anymore. But HOW HOW HOW can "Hockey Night in Canada" exist without its theme song? This is an outrage!
A "saddened" CBC formally announced Friday it is dropping the popular theme song to Hockey Night in Canada because of a contract dispute with its composer - but the death knell for the country's "second national anthem" hasn't sounded just yet.
Shortly after issuing a statement expressing his "huge disappointment" that no deal could be reached with composer Dolores Claman and her Toronto agent John Ciccone before a 5 p.m. deadline, CBC Sports executive director Scott Moore told Canwest News Service the network would "never say never" to restarting negotiations if there was a chance of keeping the famous trumpet fanfare on the air.
"If, in a future time, they would like to come back to the table . . . I guess it's an important enough cultural icon that we would consider it," Moore said. "You can never say never."
And so the long-running feud over the theme's use on the country's flagship sports program appears to be headed for overtime - even after the CBC declared an end to the 40-year tradition that has produced what is probably the country's second best-known tune after O Canada.
So with the theme song allegedly gone, now CBC can go ahead with some new contest inviting prospective songwriters to come up with a new theme. I predict the network will magically find some money to pay Claman and the theme will be back on the airwaves by October. The Winnipeg Sun's Tom Brodbeck agrees:
It's not a matter of if the pointy-headed bureaucrats will sign a new deal to ensure Canada's second national anthem is used to open CBC's first televised NHL game next season, it's a matter of when.
Canadians don't rally around many issues with the kind of rage required to effect change at the national level.
We're a lethargic, accepting lot most of the time, not easily moved to storm the Bastille with pitchforks and baseball bats.
But take away our hockey sticks -- or cancel the Hockey Night in Canada theme song, same thing -- and a March of a Million Hockey Nuts sporting Don Cherry masks will descend upon Parliament Hill with more vengeance than an angry mob of Winnipeggers about to lose their NHL franchise.
Cancelling the HNIC theme song is like telling Canadians they can't drink beer anymore. You might as well try to ban street hockey.
Except, um, they did in my hometown....but the sentiment still applies.
