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The Thin Red Line

The Thin Red Line
A library clerk writes about unusual, inteesting and noteworthy books

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Articles

Tokyo Cancelled Practically Perfect Hep-Cats
2007-09-20 00:37:00
Sunset falls as ferry crosses Eliot Bayundated photograph by Joel FarmerToday's pic is for Ron, who admired the ferry pic I previously posted. I confess that today's books have all three been on my couch in varying stages of being read for a couple of weeks now and were not in my mind connected until Blog Rush advised that I could improve my click through rate with catchier headlines. My apologies to anyone who clicked through expecting a sensational story about a local government summarily executing exceptional jazz singers.Compared to Chaucer's Cantebury Tales, Tokyo Cancelled is a novel about delayed travelers entertaining each other by telling stories. A flight to Tokyo is diverted by weather and lands unexpectedly in an un-named city (presumably Delhi, India) where they find that an economic conference and the protests it has drawn have created a shortage of hotel rooms. Eventually all but thirteen of the planes passengers are dispatched to various accommodation...
More About: Cats , Perfect , Ally , Ancel

Cookbook Roundup
2007-09-18 16:08:00
No, work wasn't that bad, though it was a long week and I am glad to be to my Tuesday/Wednesday "weekend". I am continuing to upload and sort through Joel's old image files and found the above amongst many, many, many other things. Thought it was cute enough to pass along.Today's book theme is cookbooks. It's funny, I love to read cookbooks and am always bringing home any that seem interesting or unusual, though I almost never copy or try any of the recipes, although sometimes I do get ideas that I then improvise from. So the appeal for me is mostly visceral, a kind of food porn. And Dishing is certainly an appropriate cookbook for gawking. (You would not want to actually cook from it.) Kathy Casey, who styles herself "Seattle's Culinary Diva", and whom I have not previously heard of begins with an introduction that advises simplifying dinner parties and making less work for yourself. She then goes on to present exceptionally complex and la...
More About: Roundup , Cookbook

Remembering Erma
2007-09-12 15:41:00
Yesterday was a bit overwhelming with SOOOO many posters on so many blogs all commemorating 9/11 with memorials from the heart felt and personal to the polemic and political, and representing most all points of view. The above is my nominee for the best memorial. (Sadly I have forgotten where it is from and will update and give credit where due when I figure it out.)With all that heavy, heavy I felt it was a day to laugh as well as cry and was so pleased to have come across Forever Erma last week, a compendium of her best loved columns including her first from 1963 and her last from 1996 and covering a range of themes and dates in between.I first started reading Erma's newspaper columns when I was in junior high school. I know it was supposed to be for women, but I always found Erma's writing to be about families and houses and her humor accessible and entertaining. And when I read her, I laugh OUT LOUD. REALLY LOUD. Most all of the included columns were familiar ...
More About: Remembering , Erin

DSL Desire
2007-09-11 21:34:00
And then it went fast.Yesterday afternoon a not particularly humpy UPS guy (Ron quipped 'I thought that was illegal') dropped off a box from Earthlink. David came over after work and he and Ron fiddled with things a bit and today we have broadband again, wireless networked to two computers. We are thrilled with the speed. David was very pleased he got it to work after not being able to get the laptop online on Linux a couple of weeks back. (The latest on that is that we will try re-installing XP and see if we can't get the lappy onto our wireless as well.)I previously read and blogged about Jed Horne's Katrina Book Breach Of Faith and recently happened upon this 2005 title detailing the story of Curtis Kyls who was arrested for the 1984 murder of Dolores Dye in a supermarket parking lot. The cover blurbs compare it to In Cold Blood and Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil, and it does read like a novel, a real page turner. Kyls, who insisted all along that...

Friday....must mean Jambalaya
2007-09-08 04:37:00
Ron teased me that the only reason I picked up The Naked Soldier was in hopes there would be pictures of naked soldiers inside, which is as good a theory as any. (Honestly I don't know why I decided to read it.) Tony Sloane was a lower class 18 year old from rural England who decided on a whim to join the French Foreign Legion. This book is a memoir of his 5 years of service in that famous army. To be honest, I found his story appalling. The early chapters relate the intense abuse that new recruits to the Legion are systematically subjected to, while the later chapters relate how the recruits become "cold blooded killers" who routinely subject not only new recruits but also the general population of various African countries to unimaginably horrific treatment. Unless you are interested in reading about lawless, reckless and unspeakably cruel young men, this one is NOT recommended.I was shelving in the 910's this afternoon and came across a post-Katrina travel guide ...
More About: Friday , Jambalaya , Jamba , Alaya

Homo Domesticus
2007-09-05 10:20:00
Hope it was a Happy Labor Day. I celebrated my paid holiday by staying home and doing not much of anything apart from reading and watching most of the fifth season of The West Wing on DVD. Yesterday I had a follow up doctor's appointment. My blood pressure is improved, though still too high and they are starting me on a statin drug and a second BP medicine, though I will not be able to fill the scrips and start taking them until pay day on Thursday.Meanwhile an e-mail from Earthlink indicates that our phone service will be switched over and our DSL turned on on September 1oth, which we are all looking forward to.Homo Dome sticus is one of Ron's selections that I ended up reading as well. David Valdes Greenwood, a writer and writing teacher in the Boston area has penned a memoir of his marriage to his husband, Jason and their adoption of a daughter, Lily. The writing is quite funny at times, though Ron seemed to laugh out loud at it rather more than I did. It was n...

Milk Glass Moon
2007-09-01 03:05:00
A relatively slow and easy day at work. Returns were light, though having been heavy all week there is still a lot of back log to shelve. Looking forward to my paid holiday Monday, though I still do have to work Saturday and Sunday.Ron called Earthlink today and ordered our DSL. They told him the self install kit should arrive in about a week. Not sure when he said the service will be connected. We have a wireless router that David gave us and wireless adapters for two of our three puters (the third will be hardwired) so I think we are ready. Definitely looking forward to having broadband again. Ron decided to refrain from buying the used Macbook this month but I suspect he will end up getting it at some point.I finished Milk Glass Moon and liked it very much. This is the third in a series of four books about Ave Maria Mulligan MacChesney, the pharmacist in Big Stone Gap, Virginia. The plot this time focuses on her daughter, Etta, growing up and moving to Italy ...

The Frozen Toe Guide To Real Alaskan Livin'
2007-08-31 04:33:00
A nice, quiet day off when nothing happened. I did go back to the lab today for my fasting blood draw and some more of my test results were posted. A different test suggests that my diabetes isn't as good as the first tests suggested and Ron thinks I may end up having to take diabetes meds after all, but it is definitely much better than I had thought so I'm still glad about that. Got a shrink appointment for 9/11 and re-scheduled my next dentist appy for later in the month.The Linux books Ron got from the library mostly seem to pertain to Red Hat, and I now know just how I would solve the modem problem if I were using that but still no clue how to fix it in SUSE which is what we have. We have finally decided to go ahead and get DSL and set up a wireless network so the problem may soon become getting it to use the wireless rather than the modem, and who knows it may actually work.Today's book oddity is, well, odd. Brookelyn Bellinger's Frozen Toe Guid e is equal pa...
More About: Real

109
2007-08-30 03:17:00
So I had my first doctor appointment today. BP way too high, as expected. (The nurse looked at the BP read out and said something like 'you're lucky you haven't had a stroke with that number' and I piped right back 'oh, but if I had I'd have gone to the hospital and they would have had to help me. I'm not here getting meds cuz I suddenly realized I need them. I'm here cuz I suddenly got insurance; a memo on the receptionist's bulletin board instructs her to collect a minimum $125 from the uninsured before allowing them to see a doc.) Got a scrip for Atenolol, the same BP med I used to take. Told him about my history of diabetes and that I have been off meds for 2+ years and unable to afford to eat right and predicted my blood sugar would be 300+ (which is was when I was first diagnosed a few years back). Went down to the lab for blood draw, then back to exam room. Doc came in a few mins later and told us it was 113. Shock. No diabetes meds for now. ...

Ubuntu?
2007-08-28 02:24:00
Busy Monday at work. Returns were very heavy and I worked my butt off. We had a new substitute working today and I was asked to show her the ropes and answer her questions. Katika was very nice and that made the busy day go by quicker.No progress on the laptop front. Ron has not yet gotten the books he ordered from the library and honestly I haven't the energy or enthusiasm to look for an answer online. My friend Brett says that SUSE Linux is extremely powerful but you have to know how to tell it exactly what to do. Unfortunately he is living over the mountains in Omak, WA with his hubby these days and thus not available to come try his hand at fixing it. He suggested we try instead Ubutnu, a more user-friendly version of Linux. Not only is this software a free download, they will even send it to you free on CD without even a shipping charge. I went ahead and ordered it. If we don't come up with another solution before it arrives, I suppose I will try ...
More About: Ubuntu

Home To Big Stone Gap
2007-08-27 06:34:00
Work was very busy today, as is becoming the norm for Sundays. We weren't really overwhelmed with people, but returns were very heavy and we could not scan and put things away as fast as they came in.No new news on the computer front. We are still trying to figure out how to get the dialer program under Linux to communicate with the modem (Ron has placed holds for several more library books and we have both been reading Linux help sites online). In the meantime, I am still using Joel's old desktop in a corner of the kitchen and trying to refrain from bitching about it. (Ron has been eying used Mac notebooks online and may well buy one RSN.)Summer before last, just after Joel died, my mother had to have open heart surgery and I flew to Houston to visit with her before the operation and to be there when she woke up afterwards. The operation was a success and Mom is doing quite well. When I was getting ready to leave to fly back home to Seattle I perused Mom's bookshe...
More About: Home , Stone , Tone

I HATE computers!!!
2007-08-25 13:54:00
So David came over around 10pm, armed with CD's and ready to do battle with our old laptop. The hacked verion of OSX seemed to install effortlessly, but when it was done and we popped the CD out the machine would not boot at all. We tried installing Linux from David's discs, spent much time fiddling with it but could not get it to install. Ron had brought home a book on Linux from the library. We popped in the disc included with the book and eventually got it loaded. Then we went to try to get online and the fun really began.David fussed with it until almost 2am before crying uncle and going home. Ron then took over and fussed with it for another hour or so (and was lost to the world, so involved with the damn thing he got). Then I finally got mad. They treated me like I was too stupid to possibly know anything about installing software but neither of them could get the damned thing to dial up. Ron went to bed mad. It seems to recognize the modem but aft...
More About: Computers , Hate

Puter Probs
2007-08-25 00:24:00
So yesterday I was all set to post, had picked out a couple of books even and was ready to roll when something Odd happened. The laptop is weirding out. It connects to the Internet, but then the browser can't connect to any address. In Firefox, the word "Done" appears in the status bar and the page is otherwise blank. IE and Safari both display an "unknown error" message. My first thought since the problem was consistent across all three browsers was that it was problem a DNS problem on Earthlink's end, but we logged in to Earthlink from the roommate's computer and it loads all pages fine. The antivirus and AdAware can't find anything, so we have not been able to fix it. Ron spent much of yesterday evening on the phone with his techy friend David, who is supposed to come over after work tonight (unless His boyfriend calls, in which case he will be over tomorrow) and David and Ron are talking about installing either Hackintosh or Linux in hopes of getting the l...

I can hear
2007-08-23 01:36:00
Today is my 50th post to this blog. Clearly I have not managed to do the daily book report I had (rather ambitiously is seems in retrospect) originally planned to do, but this tiny milestone is progress and already I find I really like being able to look back and see what I was thinking about and writing about before.A big part of my procrastination about taking the hearing aids to be fixed was my reluctance to drive to downtown Seattle and deal with the traffic and expensive parking so I was very happy that we were able to be seen by the audiologist at Virginia Mason's Federal Way campus, which is only about ten miles. The audiologist was very helpful. We sent one of the aids back to the factory for repair and she was able to service the other one and get it working. She also gave me a loaner to replace the one sent to the factory. It was great being able to hear ambient sounds (a door opening, the clank of the seat belt buckle hitting the door of the car, etc). On t...
More About: Hear

Monday, Monday
2007-08-20 13:50:00
Sunday was as expected a busy, hectic day. We are getting huge volumes of returns and have a lot of material backed up to be shelved. To make sure it was a completely sucky day, my hearing aid died at the beginning of the shift. The switch is broken and it will not turn on or off and regardless of the non-setting it constantly makes a deep pitched banging noise, which is usually the signal for a dying battery. Have to disconnect the battery to get it to be quiet. It always un-nerves me when I have to be out in public when my ear is out and I can't hear at all. And to top it all off, my toothache, which had been on hiatus is back tonight with a vengence, and I am out of the Vicodin my dentist gave me a couple of weeks ago. So for the first time ever on this job, I am calling in sick today and going to try to get my hearing aids fixed. Tomorrow I have a dentist appointment and will hopefully get more pain meds and by Thursday will feel up to going back to work. Fe...
More About: Monday

A Land Called Honalee
2007-08-19 02:52:00
Work is, well, work. Somehow I let a week slip away from me without posting, and really only one book caught my eye during that time. I did finally get my copy of Pan's Labyrinth, a movie that Nina mentioned on her blog awhile back. I played it and sat through it, but it never did grab me and was mostly background. On my day's off I did watch the entire seventh season of The West Wing on DVD. I always liked that show and enjoyed it, though 24 episodes at once is past the OD point. I also watched three episodes from season 5 of The Sopranos, and have another three episodes waiting to watch.A dragon lives forever, but not so little girls and boys.Painted wings and giant's rings make way for other toys.One gray night it happened, Jackie Paper came no moreAnd Puff, that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.So of course the book that would get my attention would of course also make me cry all damned afternoon. Joel was a huge Peter, Paul and Mary fan and sev...
More About: Land

Sunday, Sunday
2007-08-13 04:01:00
whew. was very busy for a Sunday today. my manager thinks it is getting progressively busier every Sunday and thinks it will get even busier once school starts back up and I fear she is right. so much for the easy day. i do like the work but my arthritis hurt by 3:30 and I was glad to be off at 5:15. had to go to downtown Tacoma to run an errand after work and glad to finally be home and relaxing.Today's most interesting find was Soul Kitchen by Poppy Z. Brite. This novel comes directly before D*U*C*K*. I had not thought about looking for the previous books in the series but decided to give this a whirl, reading the series backwards.I am also re-reading Boy's Life and enjoying it immensely. We have a feature at PCLS called Books Plus To Go where we offer multiple copies of newly released trade paperback versions of last seasons best sellers in a big rack at the front. It's a great place to grab something quick to read on a 30 minute lunch break. Wh...

Hungry Planet/Beggars and Choosers
2007-08-12 15:10:00
Ron and I went out with a couple of friends to a Chinese buffet last night (I pigged out on the king crab legs among other things) and seeing table after table laid out with all kinds of wonderful food brought to mind Hungry Planet , an over-sized pictorial book that documents what thirty families in twenty-four countries eat in a week.Each family is photographed with their weeks' worth of groceries. It is a study in contrasts. From the family in a refugee camp in Chad shown sitting on a blanket with a few small bags of grain that are their ration from a relief organization to the North Carolina family who's weekly haul includes two large pizzas and lots of fast food containers or the Greenland family who hunt the walrus, duck and polar bear featured prominently on their table. Each family is profiled and you get a real sense of who these people are and why they eat as they do. Interspersed with the family stories are essays by a number of other authors on such topics as "...
More About: Anet , Beggars

Moon Pies And Movie Stars
2007-08-09 09:39:00
My two days off passed quickly if not productively. I did go to the dentist yesterday, for the first time in Years. My teeth need a Lot of work, but I am glad to have at least started on it. (My next of many appointments to come is on the 21st.) And the dentist did give me a scrip for Vicodin, which definitely helps. Ron did do a load of laundry yesterday, though not the big catch up of lotsa laundry I had planned. And maybe tomorrow I will manage to go get the haircut that was the other thing on my agenda.After reading and blogging about the history of Moon Pies last week, this book caught my eye while shelving in New Fiction. Moon Pies and Movie Stars is a comic novel set in the 1970's about Ruby Kinkade, a widow in Devine, Texas (pop 847) who runs the local bowling alley and is raising her daughter Violet's two children after Violet mysteriously disappeared four years ago. One day Violet is spotted in a television commercial and Ruby and her sister Loralva s...
More About: Movie Stars

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