Kenneth Sutton's aide-mémoire
The Zen of CSS Design by Dave Shea and Molly E. Holzschlag is a detailed exposition of the csszengarden website. It’s been a couple months’ worth of picking up and pondering, but I finally finished it a couple of weeks ago.
This book is a great resource for anyone interested in cutting-edge, standards-based web design.
Building Harlequin’s Moon puts me very much in mind of Kim Stanley Robinson’s books. Only Niven and Cooper do it in one volume. It’s a very satisfying generation-spanning hard-SF novel. I would quibble that it reads in the beginning like a character-driven book and at the end like a plot-driven book. This did make it feel a little lopsided to me. (On the other hand, I did stay up very late one night over the weekend in order to finish it.)
It was a delight to reread Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness for my reading group. There was a lot that I didn’t remember, and some of her characterizations now strike me as very dated. But that doesn’t negate the good story-telling and provocative social and psychological ideas.
The social/sexual amgibuities are still high among the things that move me in the book. For me, this is very much a love story. As I finished it (crying), I recognized the same feeling from previous reads: that something that I can’t put my finger on resonates at a very deep level for me, specifically as a gay man. Perhaps it has to do with the characters connecting through their differences rather than their similarities (although that moment in the book is presented in a somewhat male/female dichotomy–you need to read it to see the ambiguities and richness in the situation).
At any rate, it continues to rank high among books I recommend to others.
By Susan Gordon Lydon.
I loved Lydon’s The Knitting Sutra. She has a beautiful writing style. But this book just doesn’t do it for me (others, of course will find it just what they need).
Here’s an example of the very best of the writing in the book:
It has occurred to me that I am helping to knit my father out of this world. During the previous weeks, when my father knew he was dying but before he lay insensate in this hospice room, I knitted a black wool men’s sweater with thick cables that I will probably never wear. But it doesn’t seem to matter what I knit, how useless it is or inappropriate for the climate, so long as I just keep knitting.
The quiet motions of my swishing needles and slipping yarn help me sit still and attend this momentous event. It feels as though the thread connects my inner self to the reality now unfolding, which after all is as spiritual as it gets. There is no bigger mystery than life and death. I watch my father metamorphose from his powerful earthly presence to the embryonic being lying silent in the bed. I never knew before how much like birth death is. My father’s skin becomes smooth. His thoughts, his feelings, his fears and concerns are as hidden to us as a baby’s, his energy focused on the coming transformation.
I was quite disappointed at the very low knitting (or needlepoint, the
other craft she practices) content. And I’m not sure about how much
healing there is, either, except for healing her relationship with her
father–only one of three major life events she focuses on. There were
just too many differences in life experience that are reflected in her
writing: addiction, intimacy issues with men, breast cancer. I’ve read
books by women writing about their experience as women that have drawn
me in, but in this one it became more of a barrier.
As I read, I thought over and over, I should really be thinking about writing on the spirituality of handwork for a male audience. Over and over I pick up one of the currently in vogue books about knitting and spirituality and find myself set very firmly on the outside of the intended audience. Lydon never acknowledges the role of men in the history of knitting (unless you count mentioning Kaffe Fassett), prefering instead the kind of new-agey feminine mystical connection that some of the worst neo-pagan writing uses to create a connection between current practice and prehistory: “Groups of women have probably gathered to do needlework together since the dawn of time.”
I suppose I shouldn’t blame her for the absence of men in her writing, since it’s clear from early in the book that she has one, maybe two healthy close relationships with men–one her godson, only ten, and her gay brother. So after spending a long paragraph listing all the women who helped her through the horrors of breast cancer, she writes, “Not to shortchange my male friends, either, because they showed up to help in solid numbers.” But of course, she has just shortchanged her male friends.
I do hope this book reaches the audience who will be receptive to it, which I am sure exists. I just wish there was a book in this genre for which I am the audience.
The Half-Blood Prince is spectacular. Full of intrigue and surprise. Harry, although once again more likeable, is still a right prat.
I recommend that you not start Chapter 26, The Cave, unless you have time to finish the book.
Just last night I completed a re-read of the first five Harry Potter books, in preparation for The Half-Blood Prince. As a fan of both fantasy in general and the series in particular, I think they hold up rather well to re-reading. There were several bits in each volume that I hadn’t remembered, and the clever and funny bits were still clever and funny.
The versions I was reading are the UK editions, and there are a few differences in vocabulary. Points to those who can identify these terms:
Dragon’s Treasure is the sequel to Elizabeth A. Lynn’s Dragon’s Winter, but it’s readable on its own. I read Dragon’s Winter when it came out several years ago, and so I was a little hazy on the backstory in Dragon’s Treasure, but it went fine. I was happy to revisit the characters, and Lynn has left the door open for an additional volume, which I hope appears in due course.
Although the gay love angle is downplayed in Dragon’s Treasure, I’m amazed as always at the women authors who do gay relationships so well: Marion Zimmer Bradley, Mary Renault, Patricia Nell Warren. Lynn adds a bit of sado-masochism in some of her books (notably Sardonyx Net, one of her science fiction novels).
Martin Brookes’s Fly is a lighthearted romp through a serious subject. (Doc Smartypants, that terminology is just for you!)
As a genetics major, I did my share of raising, drugging, and examining fruit flies. Brookes puts this ubiquitous educational workhorse into the context of weighty advances in our understanding of genetics, speciation, embryonic development, and several human health concerns. And he does it with a wink and a nudge, while he’s at it.
Rivertyde has tagged me for the current book meme. Here are the four questions and my answers:
What is the total number of books I’ve owned? Well now, that’s extremely hard to say. I currently own around 600 books. But my book-buying life has spanned, in addition to the regular across-town moves to a new house or apartment, a move from college in Davis, California, to San Francisco; a move from SF to Philadelphia; and a move from Philly to Boston. The SF-to-Philadelphia and Philadelphia-to-Boston moves were particularly hard on the book collection. I also weed periodically. My guess is that I’ve owned at least 3,000 books.
What was the last book I bought? Literally, the last book I bought was Russell the Sheep by Rob Scotton, a picture book for ages 3–7 that I bought for my 18-month-old nephew, Russell. The last book I bought for myself was a three-book splurge: Migration: Species Imperative #2, by Julie E. Czerneda; Elantris, by Brandon Sanderson; and Building Harlequin’s Moon, by Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper.
What was the last book I read? That would be Elantris.
Five books that mean a lot to me: What a tough question–“that mean a lot” is really different from “that I like a lot.” Here’s today’s attempt at an answer:
A Description of the Qualifications Necessary to a Gospel Minister by Samuel Bownas. Advice from an eighteenth-century Quaker minister and elder. An important factor in my spiritual formation.
Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. The epitome of epic, stylish fantasy, the struggle between good and evil carried forward by the humble. Oddly enough, The Silmarillion
The Bible. What can I say? Although it’s used to justify all manner of evil, it’s also a sourcebook for liberation movements and the foundational (though now often neglected) text for my religious tradition.
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin. OK, adolescent self-discovery won out over the psychological insight or gender ambiguities of other titles by this great writer.
In This House of Brede
Tag, you’re it: Beppe, Philocrites (or maybe this would be more up the alley of Pseudophilocrites), Doc Smartypants, Not-so-fresh (feel free to reply here in the comments since this is way off-topic over there at tamponblog; or maybe bitch and snark need to get a jump on things), and Velveteen Rabbi. For good measure, I’ll also toss it over to Brian.
Brandon Sanderson’s first published novel, Elantris, is an engaging, stylish fantasy novel. The cover blurbs make much of the fact that it’s a “complete and thoroughly satisfying story in a single volume.” And it is that, although at the very end there are a couple of hints that the author might have other books in mind. I certainly hopes he returns to this world and these characters. I’d heartily recommend this book.