Did you miss me? I have not been blogging for a bit. This is because I am hibernating, like a bear — or a chipmunk. It is quite frankly amazing that any of us live through winter here in the upper reaches of the Midwest at all. Whose brilliant idea was it to leave equatorial Africa, anyway? But fascinating things do happen in wintertime. For a good dose of stellar improbability, I recommend reading an old(er) book that I really liked: Winter World, by Bernd Heinrich.
I snapped this up when it was new (in 2001), but am only now telling you about it. I know, I’m like that. The rest of these delightful literary indulgences are things that I missed when they were new because I was hanging out under my rock. If you missed them too, haste to remedy that.
Jeanette Winterson
Her new memoir is wonderful. But then, all of her 
things are wonderful, as I discovered when, upon finishing the ARC of Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, I embarked on a program of obsessively reading of all her other stuff. The Passion is my favorite, set in France & Venice during the Napoleonic wars. It is at once a deeply sensory book (you feel like you can smell the chicken cooking and feel the snow and move with the sway of an
imagined gondola) and a deftly philosophical one. Wry lyricism abounds. Wow, that’s a pretentious sentence – but how many times do you get to say, “Wry lyricism abounds”? Twice, apparently.
The Rumpus
It’s an on-line literary magazine! One that I, happily, can sometimes read at work under the pretext of staying up-to-date (which we know is a sham – see rock, above). Anyway, it is witty and fun and has real writers saying real things on a regular basis. Also: comics. I love comics.
We Will Measure Our Loss
Penguin stopped letting libraries lend their eBooks a week or so ago. This is not really news now. But this *is* a compelling portrait of changing technologies and how they affect people at all levels of society.
More Web-based Fun
Lindy West writes a film column for the Seattle Stranger. She is incredibly funny. My favorite article involves that inexplicable cinema-atrocity, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace in 3-D. It made me laugh out loud on a day when even smiling did not seem to be in the cards. I caution you against her drinking game, though (she is right – and no one likes to have their stomach pumped). Sometimes West’s reviews can be a leetle too raunchy for me, but then, I do live under that rock.
From movies to TV
Did you see the BBC series, Black Books? You should. Watch the pilot episode. The later ones are heavy on the slapstick, but that first one… oh, pure comedy gold.
Marymcdonald's Blog 