*Amazon

The reason for my * in my last post after Amazon is that I've made myself a pledge. I will no longer buy books from Amazon in any way.

Why? I'm sure you've heard of their recent $5 off, use independent bookshops as storefronts tactics. Well instead of using Amazon in bookshops to find out how I can get it cheaper, I use all of Amazon's info and then hunt the book down in a physical bookshop. Sure the costs of my eating up some bandwidth are probably nothing for this corporate giant that devours everything in its wake like some extra creepy Miyazaki cartoon characters, but you know what, it makes me feel better.

It makes me able to walk into a bookshop and not be afraid to look the owner, who I know from having many friends in the bookselling business in the eye. I'm not the type to exit any bookshop without a purchase, but a few times yes, for an expensive or new book in hardback I've resorted to Amazon to save a few euros,pounds, or dollars. I'll be doing this no more. And, I'll be asking my friends to join me.

One day I might have to somehow be a slave to the beast that is Amazon, but that day isn't now. I also sincerely hope that when that days comes there will be other alternatives for writers, for readers, and for consumers in general.

Until then, Amazon can kiss my ass. How dare you take money out of the hands of small business owners? How dare you encourage people to go into these physical bookshops, take up space, time, and the money that is spent on just keeping these shops open, and then simultaneously gather data? That's what you're really doing. The money you're losing in the promotion is nothing compared to the value of the information you're getting from every person who logs on to Amazon to do this price check.

Quite frankly I hope the publishing establishment and independent publishers serve your greedy ass up on a platter.

I spend a tremendous amount of money on books. If you want to join me in my Amazon boycott, please visit your local bookshops and spend your money there or search out the independent bookshops who have migrated to the web.

This means that I'll also have to give up ABEBooks, which is now owned by Amazon, so if you have any similar sites to suggest that aren't Amazon owned, would welcome any suggestions.

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Book Trailers & Amazon Rant

I've never watched a book trailer, so this is my first and maybe I'm lucky that this is my first because I love it!

The Terry Gilliam-esque trailer made me look up the book on Amazon*. I read the reviews. I looked up the writer Ben Marcus on Wikipedia. I sort of want to read this book now.

But maybe this was just an exceptional book trailer. So I decided to look up a few more.

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

Super Sad Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

Now Westerfeld's trailer sort of reminds me of trailer for a video game, but Shteyngart's despite a cameo from James Franco doesn't make me want to read the book. I'd give Westerfeld's a look based on the trailer, but maybe I wouldn't buy it.

Now Shteyngart's isn't the only book trailer with some star appeal. This book trailer for Jessica Brody's "The Karma Club" has a cameo by none other than Deepak Chopra, which makes sense since it's about karma and all.

Overall book trailers aren't all that different than movie trailers, except of course it's a harder sell for a book trailer. Not to mention that much like seeing a movie before a book is allowed to be entirely conceived of by your own imagination, a trailer for a book is someone else's imaginings, but maybe that doesn't matter. I'd have to read one of these books to see and if I had to choose out of these trailers, I think I'd go with the last book trailer for Ransom Rigg's "Miss Peregrine Home for Peculiar Children".

If you'd like to find out why I put a * after Amazon, you'll have to read my next post!

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This Is Only a Test.

I wanted to rehaul the blog so I decided to try Blogger's new Dynamic Views template, so I'm going to give it a go for a free days. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section or on Twitter @lafemmeflaneuse.

So far I really like the "Magazine" and the "Flipcard" views. I think the final look would feature this more heavily. One thing I'm already missing though is the LinkWithin widget that places 3 pics/posts at the end of each post that sort of relates to whichever post is being read.

At the moment there's no option for other gadgets or widgets either, which is seriously disappointing. I've been thinking about writing my own CSS for Blogger for quite some time, but with so many template options out there, I haven't seen the point of brushing up on my CSS, but maybe after this I will.

Let me know what you think and which of the tabs are your favourites. The most important thing of course being which format doesn't ruin your enjoyment of reading the blog?

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Me, You, and My Desk

My desk last week...

Last week I tweeted this pic of my desk, which is really a dining table, and still not nearly large nor strong enough to endure what I inflict upon it from slumping, to spilling beverages, and of course all the books that I pile on it.

I'm a creature of habit if I'm allowed to be. I keep my ashtray and ciggies always on the left (I can still type damn fast with just my right hand); coffee cup always on the right, just above my Traveler's Notebook opened up to whatever notes or drawings I'm working from; while the remote for the stereo goes on the left, my phone goes on the right.

Oh and I enjoy working on my old trusty backup computer and have for long enough now that I've completely forgotten to call the place and send it back because it's still under warranty (the HD wheel came off the groove is what I'd bet on).

And then everyone other spot is for books, books, books!

So here's the list that is currently taking up residence on my desk.

JRR Tolkien - Tree Leaf, Smith of Wootton Major, & The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth

Olaf Stapledon - Starmaker

Eliphas Levi - The History of Magic

Joseph Campbell - The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Wannée - Kook Boek (A Dutch cookbook from the 50's)

Simon Winchester - The Professor and The Madman

J.L. Borges  - Extraordinary Tales, Collected Fictions, The Book of Fantasy

Robertson Davies - High Spirits

Isabel Allende - The House of The Spirits

Vincent van Gogh - Selected Letters

Melissa Franklin - Nymphs, Horses, & Athletes

Thomas de Quincey - Confessions of An Opium Eater 

Nabokov - Lectures on Literature

Comte de Lautremont - Les chants de Maldoror

Herman Hesse - Siddhartha

Sylvia Plath - Ariel

Jeryzi Kosinski - The Painted Bird

Stieg Larsson - The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Iona and Peter Opie - The Classic Fairy Tales

Haruki Murakami - 1Q84 (still unfinished)

Now these are just the books that end up my desk.  There are also piles of books that were once on the desk and are now on the chair or stacked on top of the chessboard or put on the bookshelf in such a way that I'll be able to find it easily. 

The only reason why I'm bringing this up at all is because I recently watched a fascinating little film with Alan Moore, who, after seeing this picture went to the top of my list of people I'd like to discuss books with. Not only because Moore is undoubtedly brilliant and probably has some crazy books that I might never know otherwise, but because let's face it Alan Moore might actually be a wizard capable of alchemy. If he's not, then no one else on earth comes as close as he does.

Now that's a small amount of books, but it's a visual clue too. When books become stacked in messy piles it means there's books to stack in messy piles. Books that are separated from the others for reasons known only to the one who selects them.

The reason I chose these books that I must have within immediate grasp varies. Sometimes it's because I like the style of how the writer writes such as with Nabokov. Or the book could simply have a good opening line (The first line of Tolkien's The Hobbit being my favourite from any book.). Or the subject matter is intriguing.  Then there are the books that are for reference. Or the books that are "bibles" like Campbell's and The Golden Bough.

In a book of conversations between Borges and Richard Burgin, Borges says that deep down to be a writer is to be a sort of librarian. I do not disagree with this and would in fact go one step further and say that the right book can be a sort of "grimoire" that helps the writer cast their spell (and like any magic, one needs practise and will likely turn out some toads).

For me that lightning clap - where I fall in love with a word or sentence or style or character or in the best cases the story itself - happens with a happy frequency.

In the course of writing this blog post another Borges book has made it on to the desk. I've just noticed a copy of W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn hiding under a stack. A book on Korean folklore. And I'm itching to pull down Bullfinch's  Age of the Fable...

When I go over to the bookshelves so I don't forget this time to add it to the collection I remember I also wanted to peek at Italo Calvino's Italian Fairy Tales again and look up some archetypes in Vol. 12 of Jung's Collected Works and then it was oh, I forgot I had that book and this book...

Poor desk. It's groaning again. And for all of you who read the blog in 2011, I just wanted to say a big thank you. You kept me coming back to my desk - and though it didn't amount to a book, it kept me writing, and I'm very grateful for that!

Happy New Year!

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Dearest George - In Memory of George Whitman

Dearest George,

Tonight I run my hands against the soft mylar plastic that guards a beloved possession of mine; my first edition, first printing of E.B. White's Trumpet of the Swan. I always meant to ask you when I saw you at the shop; when you whispered in my ear that you would turn your head if I wanted to steal that book I wanted but was in the library, so it wasn't for sale; and when you'd pass through the main room of your flat when one of your friends would host a Sunday afternoon tea - did you remember me? I came in with a man you called a giant. You teased him about being too tall while I jumped on one of the beds, which you told me had real bed bugs in them. You handed me the book and told me I should read it. I didn't understand you. I didn't speak English yet. That giant of a man was my father Henri, and he translated what you said to me while I was merely disappointed it wasn't a book I could go home and read.

A few years later I left on a plane for America. I had a rather strict British English tutor. She's the reason why I spell some words with the British spelling, though honestly the way the Irish speak English is sort of my favourite. Once I had a basic understanding of the language and some vocabulary I started to read the book my father bought for me in your shop.

Over my lifetime of thirty off odd (you would have appreciated that typo) years I've been given a lot of recommendations about which books I should and shouldn't read. Now I don't think you peered down at the younger me and saw into my soul or anything. I know you just thought it was a good book for any child. And it was.

I fell in love with Louis right away. Every time I see a swan I see Louis with his trumpet and his chalkboard tied around his graceful downy neck and a stick of chalk stuck in his bill. I'm old enough now to know most swans are bastards. Classic not judging books by their covers, no matter how beautiful those covers may be. I live along the canal and when two swans were in trouble, I paid a hefty sum of money to have them transported to a cleaner, safer place. I went to the store and bought them lettuce and watercress - it wasn't the Ritz, but I did it out of love.

I did it out of love for a bird in a work of fiction.

When I moved back to France and settled in Paris it was natural that I should return there. Upstairs amongst the bookshelves I fell in love. Not just with the books that would never be for sale, but really in love with a man who will always be the love of my life. Sometimes Colette would run through frantically looking for you. I used to put treats in my pockets for her, explaining to my dog they were for Colette. I always gave her love because she was an extension of you to me. I know you loved her, though for a long time you called her Kitty, and like you she was always going from person to person excitedly. Sometimes just to poke you with a cold nose; sometimes for a belly scratch. It depended on her mood. You were like that too.

I will miss you George. I will miss all that you stood for. I will miss all that your bookstore meant to this city and to all us writers and readers and lovers of characters. It was a sort of home to me. It was the place where my dreams started coming true.

You and your spirit lives on in all of us who have been to your little spot at kilometer zero and had the priviledge of taking away with us some small smudge of dust or volume that like you will always remain with us.

Good-bye George and hello.
Ama

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Homemade ricotta - Champagne vinegar

Ricotta is really expensive in French grocery stores. I'm not sure why this is exactly, but I do think that it has something to do with the fact that the French opt for bechamel sauce for lasagnas over ricotta. I can't stand bechamel saue. I have never tasted a bechamel sauce that had cooked the flour off properly, but even after some practice in my own kitchen, I simply just don't like it. If there are virtues to bechamel sauce of which I am unaware, please enlighten me.

Sure I could pop into one or two of my favourite Italian epiceries here in Paris for freshly made ricotta, but why bother when you can make it very easily in your own kitchen?

The key ingredient to my homemade ricotta is champagne vinegar.

Like tightrope walking, cooking high quality food is all about balance. I recently learned that one of the biggest mistakes home cooks make is not having the right balance of acid in a dish. In ricotta the acid comes from lemon and white vinegar. Using champagne vinegar makes a much better tasting ricotta, but you an also use it in dressing, marinades, and adding a splash to homemade marinara elevates the flavours.

Champagne vinegar is not made from champagne, but from the same grapes used in making champagne. Cost-wise you should expect to shell out about 10 euros a bottle, but stored properly a bottle can last quite a long time since you don't use a lot of it. For those abroad you can buy this lovely brand for about $10 here

All the Beaufor wine based vinegars are worth a look. I also love their red wine raspberry vinegar.

The recipe I use for homemade ricotta is courtesy of Gourmet magazine.  I have tried recipes from other sources, but this one is truly lovely. It calls for 3 T of freshly squeezed lemon juice, but I use 2 T of fresh lemon juice, then 1 T of the champagne vinegar.

You will need:

A heavy sauce pan (and this is an instance where if you have a copper sauce pan you need to bust it out copper + anything with lemon = better)

A large sieve & cheesecloth

2 quarts (1,89L) of whole milk
1 cup (237 ml) of heavy cream
1/2 tsp salt
2 T fresh lemon juice (and a little zest)
1 T champagne vinegar

Line a large sieve with a layer of heavy-duty (fine-mesh) cheesecloth and place it over a large bowl.

Slowly bring milk, cream, and salt to a rolling boil in a 6-quart heavy pot over moderate heat, stirring occasionally to prevent scorching. Add lemon juice and champagne vinegar, then reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring constantly, until the mixture curdles, about 2 minutes. 

Pour the mixture into the lined sieve and let it drain 1 hour. After discarding the liquid, chill the ricotta, covered; it will keep in the refrigerator 2 days.

Here is the tasty finished product, perfect for any recipe that calls for ricotta but also delicious with fruit, honey, and slivered almonds.

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The End of the Silver(berg) Age

When I heard Ira Silverberg got offered the job of Literary Director of the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts), I was simultaneously overjoyed and depressed. Ira and another agent, Betsy Lerner, have always been on the top of my Agent Wishlist.

Publisher's Marketplace broke the news on Twitter, linking to this Observer article that Ira huad accepted the offer. It's good news for books and the authors who will benefit from having him at the NEA and bad news for all us would-be writers who hoped to send our queries to Sterling Lord Literistic, Silverberg's home since 2008 before his departure.

But why am I so sad about losing an agent that I may have never had a shot with? Simply put, Silverberg understands writers and what makes a work worthwhile or not. Every thing I've ever read about the man suggests that if Ira believed in you he would go to bat for you and what new writer wouldn't want that energy and devotion to their work?

As a writer I think I fall through the gaps somewhere. Where I'm not sure because I'm still struggling not to find my voice, because I am certain to the core that I have a unique voice. I'm just not sure it's a voice that people necessarily want to hear. I'm not going to be commerical or I am. I can't know until my book is printed and I see the response of the reading public.

Ira was always the go to guy if you were gay or a freak or didn't "fit" somehow. He had a talent for making a square peg fit into the round hole. I always thought he'd be at some agency somewhere, wearing paisley, and that when my query came along - well, I'm a realist so I imagined it going several ways.

1. That my work wouldn't be good enough and I'd get some email rejection.
2. That he'd ask for a few pages and then tell me my work wasn't good enough.
3. That he'd look at my work and see a hint of promise and take me under his wing.
4. That my query would be ignored entirely.

Of course what I wanted most isn't on that list, but what are writers if not dreamers? We fuel our fires with whatever scrap we can get our hands on. Or at least I do. One word of encouragement can keep me going for quite awhile. I always thought this would be one of my biggest strengths in my literary endeavours and it is.

So maybe me & Ira won't be kismet. I've learned from this that all the hope in the world isn't going to make literary success happen. You need hope, luck, talent, hard work, and especially discipline. And maybe it's good news in a way. Maybe instead of sending Mr. Silverberg a query I've something new to aspire to. An NEA grant awarded to me by Ira Silverberg.

Congratulations Mr. Silverberg, I really mean it. I'll stop being such a selfish bitch now.

By finding this picture I also found an interesting blog by another writer. Check it out here.

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More Thoughts on 1Q84

I was greatly anticipating Murakami's 1Q84. I received the first copy via Amazon damaged, so it stalled my reading. When the replacement copy arrived, I let it sit on the shelf. I read reviews, that was my mistake. I normally don't read reviews until after I read a book, especially one as long 1Q84.

Every other language edition of 1Q84 (an homage to Orwell supposedly), got three volumes except the English translation which got one volume and two translators Philip Gabriel (who translated Norweigan Wood, Kafka on the Shore) and Jay Rubin. There was money to be made. The publisher, Alfred K. Knopf, wasn't going to take any chances.

Murakami dislikes talking through a translator, but obviously he needs to depend on translators for his work. Murakami was surprised when Sam Anderson, from the New York Times set the massive tome before him. He called it a "telephone book". He might not have even written it if he knew what it would become. You can read more of Anderson's article, "The Fierce Imagination of Haruki Murakami" here.

Now I'm not finished and I probably would have thrown it aside by now, but when people talk about Murakami's "cult following" I have to admit I've sampled the Kool-Aid. I've been a long time fan of Japanese literature and count Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow especially), Soseki, and Kawabata amongst my short list of favourite authors of all time. Murakami's fascination with Kafka, Nabokov, and Vonnegut is one I share and can understand. What lover of the English language, who isn't a native speaker and wants to write a great book wouldn't appreciate Nabokov to the core? Nabokov mastered the English language and made it his bitch. As a non-native (albeit fairly fluent) English speaker he is an inspiration.

Aside from that, I wanted to read this book so badly that I actually ordered it. I have many thousands of books (in total I'm hovering at just about 19,000 at the moment, though I only have space for about 3,000 of them in my house with the rest sitting in storage) and am always adding to my library, but I rarely buy new books because I need to eat and pay bills too.

I was a bit overwhelmed with 1Q84's size. I've read William Gaddis' Recognitions, another massive tome (though of undeniable genius, let's be clear, it might be the best book I've ever read), and though it took me quite awhile because of how hectic my life was at the time, I barely noticed turning the pages and when I got to the end I wanted more.

1Q84 didn't grab me right from the beginning. Not like Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World did or The Wind Up Bird Chronicles. Nor was I as unhappy with the first 60 or so pages as I was with Kafka on the Shore, my least favourite of Murakami's works.

I turned to Monsieur Redacteur over the following lines of 1Q84:

Aomame turned her back on her silent audience and, with careful steps, began to descend the emergency stairway, feeling the chill of the crude metal rungs against the soles of her feet. Also chilling was the early April breeze, which swept her hair back now and then, revealing her misshapen ear.

(Chapter 1, page 12)

All those commas. "Silent audience". Just before Aomame is talking to her "audience", but we know she's all alone. There is no audience silent or non-silent. Except us, the readers. She "descends" down the emergency stairwell barefooted, talks about buying some new stockings. Bor-ing. As a woman I've had those sorts of practical conversations with myself a billion times. But it's the "Also chilling" sentence in that paragraph that bothers me most.

I asked Monsieur Redacteur wouldn't it be a better sentence if it read: "The chilling April breeze swept her hair back now and then revealing a misshapen ear".

His reply was, "maybe, but then you didn't write the book did you?"

Which brings me to Tengo's part of the story.

Tengo is rewriting someone else's book. He initially is resistant to do so. Then it overcomes him. He develops a hunger to rewrite Air Chrysalis. He begins after buying a word processor. A Fujitsu word processor, paper, and ribbons. It reminds the reader we're not reading a book set in the world of today. A computer is a new thing, that much is made obvious during Tengo and Komatsu's conversation about buying one. A chance for a tryst with his married girlfriend, ten years Tengo's senior, is lost due to her "woman problems", but not missed. Tengo wants to get started right away.

"but his feelings were already moving in the direction of rewriting Air Chrysalis. Ideas were welling up inside him like lifeforms stirring in a primordial sea.  This way, I'm no different from Komatsu, he thought. Nothing has been formally settled, and already my feelings are headed in that direction on their own."

Chapter 6, pages 65 - 71 Tengo talks about the process of rewriting. About style, strengthening and fortifying passages. I do not see Tengo, not really. I see Murakami. I see him before his word processor. I see Murakami channeling a world that is not real, listening to the stories of that world and rewriting them. It's the closest I've ever felt to him. I take every line as a message. The sheer discipline that Tengo-Murakami shows inspires me.

These passages thankfully kept me reading. Yes there are parts where the text feels sloppy and yes I'm inclined to think it's because something was "lost in translation", but an earlier message in Chapter 1 in bolded text on page 12 now comes back to haunt me:

Don't let appearances fool you. There's always only one reality.

1Q84 is structurally an odd book. It's an expansion of one of Murakami's short stories, "On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning". I refuse to read it before finishing 1Q84, but you can read it here. 1Q84 has two faces, one of a girl on the front and one of a boy on the back. The first chapter started with Aomame and the second chapter with Tengo and it has so far remained this way. Each chapter a break from the characters in the chapter before with a subtle suggestion that eventually they will converge. There is only one moon.


Monsieur Redacteur being an astrophysicist I naturally ask, "is there any phenomenon where it could look like there are two moons in the sky?" "Maybe on a cloudy day when the moon is obscured, but normally no there's not", he answers.


I won't be able to stop reading now. Regardless of Murakami's flaws, whether those flaws are his or due to translation, I no longer care. If anything what this book has given back to me is something I thought I lost only recently. The ability to read not because I'm halfway through my life and all I see are the books I haven't read but should - but the hunger.

A page from the original manuscript with notes by Philip Gabriel.

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The Line Between Genius & Madness

Monsieur Redacteur sent me to our local English bookshop to grab Simon Winchester's "The Professor and The Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary". Obviously any title with "madman", "murder", and "insanity" captures one's attention, but the story that Winchester tells of Dr. James Murray's first encounter with Dr. W.C. Minor after the latter submitted 10,000 words to the committee overseeing the making of the OED holds it.

I won't ruin the entire story by blabbing away, but the real "twist" of this book is its intimate look at the fine line between genius and madness.

In 2009 scientists found a link to genius and madness on a genetic level. The gene, called neuregulin 1 plays an important role in brain development, but a variant of the gene is linked to schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder and more importantly, creativity.

Volunteers who were more creative and had achieved more success related to their creative outputs were found to have the variant of neureglin 1. Less creative volunteers did not.

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has spent four decades studying the creative process with the end conclusion that "madness" may have no role in heightening creative output. Psychologist Robert Weisberg, who studied the manic periods of composer Robert Schumann, had similar results.

When mania struck, Schumann wrote more great pieces—but he also turned out more ordinary ones, too. Mania "jacks up the energy level," Weisberg points out, "but it doesn't give the person access to ideas that he or she wouldn't have had otherwise."

It's entirely possible, Weisberg notes, that the elevated rates of mental disorders among artistic geniuses comes about as a result of the creative lifestyle, which hardly provides emotional stability. Many artists struggle against poverty and public indifference in their lifetime or if they achieve recognition it becomes a struggle to live up to their own "hype".

Dali, often considered a mad genius, had this to say: "There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.” 

Strindberg, Kafka, Plath, van Gogh, Wittgenstein - all displayed "madness". Simply reading Plath's "The Bell Jar" will give you an intimate look at the link between the creative process and the tendency to self-destruct.

Dryden expressed it first and most concisely in Absalom and Achitophel, concluding his allegorical portrait of the Earl of Shaftesbury with the celebrated couplet: "Great wits are sure to madness near allied/ And thin partitions do their bounds divide."

If you'd like to do some further reading  here's a list of works by "madmen" (and women):

Inferno, August Strindberg - is by far the craziest of his works.  

Heaven and Hell, Emanuel Swedenborg about his ability to communicate with angels is pretty nuts too.

The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, Salvador Dali's diaries/memories. It is a truly fascinating look into Dali's life and work.

The Blind Owl, Sadegh Hedayat. You can read my blog post about this book here.

Exegesis, Philip K. Dick. It's not so much a book as a filing cabinet of things he collected maniacally regarding a vision he had in 1974. Valis, was born from this bout of "madness" and may just be his best book.

Une saison en enfer, Arthur Rimbaud. He switched from absinthe to opium and gave the world this work of maddening genius.

Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs. He doesn't even remember writing it.

Les Chants de Malador, Comte de Lautremont. "God grant that the reader, emboldened and having become at present as fierce as what he is reading, find, without loss of bearings, his way, his wild and treacherous passage through the desolate swamps of these sombre, poison-soaked pages; for, unless he should bring to his reading a rigorous logic and a sustained mental effort at least as strong as his distrust, the lethal fumes of this book shall dissolve his soul as water does sugar."

When Rabbit Howls, Truddi Chase. Written by a woman who was diagnose with 60+ multiple personalities.

Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, William Styron. Not only did Stryon write Sophie's Choice, but his Parisian bout of madness was inspired by Strindberg's Inferno.

Do you know any other similar books to recommend?

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Another Galaxy Post...

I showed up late for the party. Not fashionable late as I usually do, but since the Galaxy has been out in France since June of this year I basically showed up after all the booze had run out.

But getting my Galaxy S2 later has its advantages. Android Market is now teeming with apps. After consulting my few friends who use a Android device of some kind (apparently there is a subculture of "geeks" who use iPhone over Android called "iGeeks"), I've spent the past few days scooping out what's out there and I kept a list.

I should mention I have paid for no apps yet. Tho I have been tempted to pay for Angry Birds just to remove the ads.

Apps I Like:

ColorNote
ColorNote is a Post-It app for your phone that allows you to post notes to yourself on your home screen(s). My only complaint is that it lacks a "ping" feature to remind you.

AK Notepad
You can use this app as a standard notepad, but you can also create checklists for yourself and set reminders for specific times. I've been using it to remind me I need to write.

SoundBoard Pro Extreme
I tried a lot of soundboard apps and this is by far the best. It has 8 farting noises, gunfire, bomb explosions, people laughing, and a nice slow, sardonic clap.

Alarm Clock Plus
This app lets you store multiple alarms and gives you an option of requiring the correct answer to a  math problem to snooze or dismiss alarms. Easy gave me double digit addition questions this morning. Very hard gave me something similar to this:

(1723 - 132) x 2

I tested it wide awake and it wasn't easy, so I think I'll be setting it for something a little easier or else the alarm is going to go off forever...

The app also gives you a nice digital display of the time, your location, and the weather for the week.

Advanced English Dictionary & Thesaurus
Now if I'm going to pay for an app, it probably won't be for a dictionary or thesaurus. I had previously installed Merriam Webster's Dictionary and Thesaurus apps separately, but someone recommended this one and it works. It asks you to download the entire word database to use it offline, but I haven't bothered to do that yet.

Anti-virus
No telling yet if this is a goodie or a baddie, but it was free and had very good reviews.

CalorieCounter
I quite like this app, but I'm not too familiar with it yet. It does allow you to scan barcodes of food items, which worked on a box of Golden Grahams so well I didn't eat any for breakfast this morning. After inputting my dinner meal, I found out I had 43% of my daily intake left to consume - or not. It has the traditional US-market oriented features like restaurants, fast food chains, and prepackaged foods. I rarely eat out and almost never cook from a box, so I'll get less from those features of the app, but so far so good.

I'm waiting to see if after a few days if it will help me track my weight in the sense that it will tell me how long at my current calorie intake and exercise schedule it will take me to reach my goal weight, but so far it doesn't look like that is one of the features, which is a big bummer.

Marvel Comics / DC Comics
Fairly standard. You can buy comics, review, get news, and every now and then preview a freebie.

Google
Google's various apps are rather fun. I use Gmail,Goggles,Maps,and Docs.

Apps I Love:

These are harder to find. I love Angry Birds but it eats up a lot of my time. I am on the line between like and love with Evernote, but I can tell you honestly I didn't like Springpad one bit. The app I'm loving the most right now is Thinking Space. I have barely begun to use it, but being able to map out my ideas while I'm sitting on a train (it's 45 minutes to Paris) is going to make me very happy.

Now hate is a strong word, but here's the app I hate. Samsung's Kies.

I was only using it to move my music to my phone, but did it ever piss me off. I was using wi-fi to transfer music. Kies didn't recognise all my music - fine, there's some problem with the ID3, normal stuff. I kept transferring. An hour went by. It moved 7 songs. I plugged in my phone via USB. It took ages for the phone and my computer to settle their difference, i.e. for the drivers for the phone to download. Then Kies told me I needed to update the firmware, but that I didn't have enough space. I tried to resolve the space issue. The update kept failing. As did my patience.

In the end I opted to drag and drop music into the folder for my phone under media. Not all songs copied. Not all the artwork copied. It drove me nuts until 4 in the morning.

Now I have music on my phone, but it's not ideal. I'm holding out for news on the release of Google Music, which will offer a cloud service that will allow you to stream up to 20,000 songs to your phone anywhere. In the meantime, I'll just put up with my current situation, but it's rather frustrating. I have this big feeling Samsung knew there was going to be an issue because of how entrenched iTunes became, but couldn't figure out a reasonable solution because I think they're waiting for Google Music to release worldwide too.

My friend who gave me the phone for my birthday suggested I use Spotify, so I downloaded the app as a trial. The minute I didn't have wi-fi the streaming went to crap. The 3G was too slow so the song kept buffering, ruining what should have been a beautiful foggy walk around the grounds of the chateau de Fontainebleau whilst listening to Joy Division's "Atmosphere". Ten euros a month is a lot given I'm not going to be listening away from home all that often.

So after less than a week, I'm rather pleased with this new bit of tech I'm carrying around. I'll be using it more and more to blog little bits of Paris and my life, but it has most definitely solidified my addiction to Twitter.

I already bought an uninteresting case for my phone and they're aren't as many choices for cases as there are for the iPhone (a tiny shelf at FNAC, the French version of Best Buy for SG2 vs. an entire massive wall for the iPhone), but here are some I'm coveting should I ever want a change.

To my friends who read this blog, yes I already subjected you to this barrage on FB, I know. I'm sorry.

Because it has superpowers.And because DC hasn't made one for Wonder Woman.

Koala bear that looks more like a panda.

Koala that looks more like a bear, but like a 8-bit version of Winnie the Pooh.

All examples from Amazon or Mobifun.



















 

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Please forgive me while I play with my new toy

As I may have mentioned, I was gifted with the Samsung Galaxy SII. So far it might be love.

Much to the confusion of Monsieur Redacteur, I took my phone on an official day out to test a few things.

The day's winner for apps was FX Camera. I love the effects. I bought a Diana+ two years ago, never figured out how to use it, and regretted giving it away albeit to someone who will use it - ever since.

But no more. This app is FANTASTIC!

Here are some of the photographic results. These were taken around the grounds of the chateau of Fontainebleau.

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The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Compared to his bibliography (which seems to merit its own Wikipedia page), I have a rather unimpressive collection of (Vladimir Vladimirovich) Nabokov's works. My first edition of "Lolita" is a well-worn 1st American edition. Published by G.P. Putnam & Sons in August of 1958, "Lolita" went to a third printing in a matter of days and sold a 100,000 copies in three weeks. Originally published by The Olympia Press in 1955. The 5,000 original Olympia Press copies sold out; prompted Graham Greene to declare it one of the three best books of 1955; and ended the career of one of the first people in Britain (Nigel Nicolson) who dared to publish what many considered "pornography". (You can read more about Lolita and The Olympia Press here.)

In April 1947 Nabokov wrote to Edmund Wilson that: "I am writing ... a short novel about a man who liked little girls—and it's going to be called The Kingdom by the Sea...." It wasn't Nabokov's first attempt at writing on the subject. "The Enchanter", "A Nursery Tale", "Laughter in the Dark", and the third chapter of "The Gift" outlines what was to come eight years later.

Nabokov and Edmund Wilson wrote to each other extensively. Nabokov wrote to Wilson to ask him what English books he should read to teach a class at Cornell. Wilson recommended Dickens' "Bleak House" and "Little Dorrit" and Jane Austen.

Nabokov scoffed. He didn't like female novelists. "Thanks for suggestion concerning my fiction course. I dislike Jane, and am prejudiced, in fact, against all women writers.  They are in another class.  Could never see anything in Pride and Prejudice....I shall take Stevension instead of Jane A."

Wilson pressed him. "You are mistaken about Jane Austen. I think you ought to read Mansfield Park....She is, in my opinion, one of the half dozen greatest English writers (the others being Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, Keats, and Dickens)."

Nabokov later wrote back to Wilson, "....I have obtained Mansfield Park and I think I shall use it too in my course.  Thanks for these most useful suggestions." Six months later, he wrote to Wilson again singing a different tune.

"I want to make my mid-term report on the two books you suggested I should discuss with my students. In connection with Mansfield Park I had them read the works mentioned by the characters in the novel - the two first canto of "Lay of the Last Minstrel", Cowper's "The Task, passages from King Henry the Eighth, Crabbe's tale "The Parring Hour", bits of Johnson's The Idler, Browne's address to "A Pipe of Tobacco" (Imitation of Pope), Sterne's Sentimental Journey (the whole "gate-and-no-key" passage comes from there - and the starling) and of course Lovers' Vows in Mrs. Inchblad's inimitable translation (a scream)....I think I had more fun than my class."

But the real reason why I'm currently obsessed with Nabokov, is because re-reading "Lolita" reminded me that it is a work of genius by a man who mastered the English language - and it wasn't even his mother tongue! Reading his Lectures on Literature is just my way of seeking out my newest inspiration-sensei for more wisdom.

And here's a real gem that would alone make me glad that somehow this book is in my library:

“Literature was not born the day when a boy crying "wolf, wolf" came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying "wolf, wolf" and there was no wolf behind him.” 

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Save Community

One of my favourite Abed "moments" is from the episode where he got the news that his favourite show "Cougar Town" was being moved to midseason.  Poor Abed was devastated and now in the wake of the news that "Community" has met with the same midseason fate, I'm beginning to wonder if it wasn't show creator Dan Harmon's way of telling us what was to come.

It's not my style to get uppity. As a fan of shows like "Better Off Ted" and "Arrested Development" I'm used to networks sacrificing quality shows on the altar of ratings. I know it's a business, but I think it's bad business to axe a show that has dedicated superfans like Community obviously does.

Maybe NBC doesn't understand exactly what they have in their hands or maybe I just don't get why every single human being on the planet doesn't watch Community. So I decided to rewatch Season 1 to see if Community could pass my ultimate test: Can it be watched over and over again?

Yes. Yes, it can.

 The show's pilot opens with students milling about campus. A skinny bald man is making as ass out of himself with a boombox.  He announces over the PA system that he's the dean of a - "loser college" - a boy in a varsity football jacket scanning a bullentin board looks up as if his name's been called - "for remedial teens and 20 something dropouts" - a blond girl looks up angrily as if she's been insulted- "middle aged divorcees" - an older lady holding too tight to her purse is pointed out- "and old people keeping their minds active as they circle the drain of eternity" - the white-haired bespectacled Pierce Hawthorne makes a Fletch face.

Community's pilot episode is one of the cleverest introductions of characters to ever grace the small screen. 1 minute, 18 seconds in and we've met the Dean, Troy, Britta, Shirley, and Pierce.

In the shadows a shorter man MicroMachine's his life story to a taller man. His name's Abed by the way. The other guy's Jeff Winger though he can't be bothered to introduce himself. The taller guy wants an inroad to the hot girl in Spanish class. Abed gives Jeff the jist in rapid fire. Jeff sees his value. Annie shows up later, uninvited.

In a mere episode those individual characters become a "community" and I became a fan. I tried to watch with clinical eyes, but I really Britta'd it up. I got distracted by all my laughing.

For three seasons I have not learned Spanish with the study group of the show Community. Hearing that the show was being moved to midseason I ranted and raved on Twitter. I had just started to realise, in part thanks to Twitter, that behind the show there is a man some call Dan Harmon and he's a fucking genius.

So why shouldn't Community be canceled? I could go on and on about the show's merits; it's cleverness; the brilliant people involved with the show - but would it help? Being a clever show is obviously the kiss of death in a land where people don't see the value of using your thinking cap while watching the boob tube.

Maybe there's no saving Community, but that hasn't stopped me from tweeting and going so far as to create a Twibbon campaign. If it means anything to the cast, crew, and the one they call Dan Harmon - I've decided to support Community.

(Holds up sign that reads Immunity for Community.)

I went for rhyme over clarity.

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Honey 2, the Dangers of Insomnia

I ended up taking a nap yesterday, which pretty much threw off my entire day. When I finally headed off to Bedfordshire at 2 am, I couldn't sleep. So I decided to watch Honey 2.

I confess, I love dance movies. I watch them all, good or bad, because at one point I was ready to quit college because I made the cuts to callbacks to potentially dance on Janet Jackson's tour. I didn't make second callbacks, but I was pretty proud of myself. I went on contented to teach hip hop aerobics and giving salsa and tango lessons until I started having my heart problems.

So of course I had to watch Honey 2. I've had my eye on Laurieann Gibson's moves long before she appeared in the first Honey starring Jessica Alba, which is based on her life (like Jennifer Lopez, Gibson was a Fly Girl on In Living Color). I loved her choreography. Now she's worked with Lady Gaga, who isn't a great natural dancer (which is another reason why she's no Madonna to me). But Gibson is a natural dancer. She moved her body about 3 times in all of Honey 2 and you just see it. Her body moves like it was dancing all along and you just couldn't see it.

Now don't get me wrong, the dance moves in Honey 2 were sometimes top notch, but a lot of the moves are pretty standard across the genre of "street dancing". If you remember the scene in Flashdance where Jennifer Beale's character picks up some breakdancing moves then consider that during the 80's, this was a popular thing to do. Madonna stole the idea off the New York streets for her video and it's been a common "scene" in dance films ever since.

My main problem with the film is they chose an actress over a true dancer. I tend to classify dancers into two groups: jumpers and spinners. I'm a good spinner. I can pirouette 5 times without trying for example, but I am not the best jumper. A good friend of mine who trained with Alvin Ailey is an amazing jumper.

Now Kat Graham is sassy and she's a beautiful girl, but other than shaking her ass she really can't dance. She can't jump and she most definitely can't spin. I think it's ridiculous to have a movie where other dancers are doing complicated jumps, spins, and precise movement and all you can do is, to quote Missy Elliot from Honey, "look like you dance back up for Heather Hunter".

As far as dance movies go, Honey 2 sucked. It sucked so bad I went to sleep, woke up, and still felt like I needed to blog about how bad it is.

The only redeeming aspect of this film for me was the one crew that beat out the steps on their bodies & with their feet. I am so out of touch I don't even know what it's called, but here's a video. These boys were fresh. The Asian crew wasn't bad either, so fast forward through all the non-dance parts is my advice.

Okay, so there's a few non-Asian boys too.

If you're an aspiring dancer keep on dancing. If you're the person who makes the decisions for films like Honey 2, please hire an actress who can actually dance or get better dance doubles.

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Updates & Steinbeck

Friday morning I moved my laptop from the coffee table to the dining table and heard an odd sound. My computer rebooted and then couldn't boot up the hard drive.

It sounded a bit like a car in the throws of a breakdown. I prayed, caressed the key riddled dash, and told her she could do it. She can't. She didn't. She needs a hard drive transplant. She is not the little computer that could.

It never fails that some sort of disaster strikes me when I'm getting in my groove. When I'm about - to quote  a  song from my youth, "put the needle on the record when the drums beats go like this" - thankfully there's a crap Acer backup computer with a wonky backspace key to help me through this latest shit storm.

I took a deep breath, made some chicken & sausage gumbo (delish!), some peanut butter blossoms with out-of-date Hershey Kisses, and tried not see it as yet another sign that my writing is not meant to be.

Neil Gaiman, a hero of mine - writes everything in longhand, I told myself. I know this because (@)Neil himself confirmed it to me on Twitter.

It was near my birthday. I just bought The Graveyard Book. It was like the greatest birthday present ever that Neil Gaiman (who I appreciate more for his non-comic book stuff, though Sandman was pretty fucking cool), directly shared his process with me. It works for Neil and my image of him sitting in front of a massive blank tome by candlelight like the monks in Eco's "The Name of the Rose" except without the killing and what I'll assume is a lot less Sean Connery (connerie meaning bullshit in French btw).

If you wonder why I blog  - why I often lay my soul bare on the Internet about writing and all the things I manage to do when I'm not trying to write -  well it's because of Neil Gaiman. Discovering his blog basically changed my life. There's a link on the blogroll.

I couldn't get my momentum back Friday or Saturday despite the comfort of a back up computer.

I go through phases. I like notebooks, but until I found my Midori Traveler's Notebook I basically bought every notebook I saw, wrote a few sentences, and the minute I didn't like those sentences I bought and/or started a new notebook. New idea, new notebook used to be my way of thinking. I sort of got around my bad habit by buying myself a notebook I love. If you want to know why, read you can read my rave here.

And that's the thing. I use my notebooks. I collage. I write longhand. I use index cards (à la Nabokov). I use blank sheets of paper; yellow legal pads; post-its galore to draw, write phrases, type phrases with an old manual typewriter. I have a lot of "methods" because I admit I'm falsely obsessed with the Muses, inspiration, blah,blah fuckity blah.

I hate my own conneries and excuses. I hate that I'm unable to discipline myself the way I have in the past to get shit done. 

I am filled with this sort of dread that because writing hasn't come easily to me, as many other things have, that I'm never going to get it done. It's why I'm superstitious (i.e. why I talk to my computer like she's Christine when actually she's not a she at all as HAL is genderless). It's why I struggle. It's why I'm constantly looking for answers to how to write although I know that there are no answers. It's like I don't trust myself, so I need to affirm this with the words of real writers, of which I am sad to say despite advice that if I'm simply writing I am a writer, I do not feel I am.


So here is my affirmation for today. Sundays are generally the days I wake up late and then Coco comes for his English lesson. I try to make a lot of coffee and stay in the swing of things after the lesson is over, but it's tough. I have just asked Monsieur Redacteur if he can't go to Coco's house to give the lesson. He gets it. I'm chomping at the bit.


And maybe it's just a bit of Sean Connery, but sometimes things like this help.


"I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.."

          Dear Writer:

          Although it must be a thousand years ago that I sat in a class in story writing at Stanford, I remember the experience very clearly. I was bright-eyes and bushy-brained and prepared to absorb the secret formula for writing good short stories, even great short stories. This illusion was canceled very quickly. The only way to write a good short story, we were told, is to write a good short story. Only after it is written can it be taken apart to see how it was done. It is a most difficult form, as we were told, and the proof lies in how very few great short stories there are in the world.

          The basic rule given us was simple and heartbreaking. A story to be effective had to convey something from the writer to the reader, and the power of its offering was the measure of its excellence. Outside of that, there were no rules. A story could be about anything and could use any means and any technique at all - so long as it was effective. As a subhead to this rule, it seemed to be necessary for the writer to know what he wanted to say, in short, what he was talking about. As an exercise we were to try reducing the meat of our story to one sentence, for only then could we know it well enough to enlarge it to three- or six- or ten-thousand words.

          So there went the magic formula, the secret ingredient. With no more than that, we were set on the desolate, lonely path of the writer. And we must have turned in some abysmally bad stories. If I had expected to be discovered in a full bloom of excellence, the grades given my efforts quickly disillusioned me. And if I felt unjustly criticized, the judgments of editors for many years afterward upheld my teacher's side, not mine. The low grades on my college stories were echoed in the rejection slips, in the hundreds of rejection slips.

          It seemed unfair. I could read a fine story and could even know how it was done. Why could I not then do it myself? Well, I couldn't, and maybe it's because no two stories dare be alike. Over the years I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.

          If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that makes a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story.

          It is not so very hard to judge a story after it is written, but, after many years, to start a story still scares me to death. I will go so far as to say that the writer who not scared is happily unaware of the remote and tantalizing majesty of the medium.

          I remember one last piece of advice given me. It was during the exuberance of the rich and frantic '20s, and I was going out into that world to try and to be a writer.

          I was told, "It's going to take a long time, and you haven't got any money. Maybe it would be better if you could go to Europe."

          "Why?" I asked.

          "Because in Europe poverty is a misfortune, but in America it is shameful. I wonder whether or not you can stand the shame of being poor."

          It wasn't too long afterward that the depression came. Then everyone was poor and it was no shame anymore. And so I will never know whether or not I could have stood it. But surely my teacher was right about one thing. It took a long time - a very long time. And it is still going on, and it has never got easier.

          She told me it wouldn't.

    1963

That was written by one of my other heroes, the writer John Steinbeck. 

 


I love this newspaper clipping. "America was proud of its front porch until John Steinbeck showed the backyard".

I still remember when I realised that this cartoon was actually referencing Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men":

I still remember the first time I read "The Pearl". I remember struggling through "Grapes of Wrath", feeling pretty bedraggled by the words that seemed to my 14 year old self heavy and covered with baked earth that hid from me some meaning that I somehow understood of hardship and futility like tilling soil that blows away like the wind and isn't even strong enough to hold on to something by its root.

That lonely desolate path that Steinbeck speaks of isn't that lonely or at least it has never seemed that way to me. I've always sort of seen myself as a would-be hero on a quest. I imagine the end will be something akin to the ending of Michael Ende's "Neverending Story". I will find out like Sebastian I am making a book come to life. Then I'll soar around in my fantasyland on my luck dragon, wave to a tortoise, and see Artax again.

Tickity-tock, goes my cat plate clock. I have five minutes to tell you a little story, about this cat plate. It's a plate with different cats in various poses around the lip that the old Chinese man who owns an odd little shop on the Place de Torcy (Paris 18e, Marx Dormoy) turned into a clock. It is now three minutes to a grey tabby or, as other people might call it, eleven-fifty seven.

This clock was originally intended to be a Christmas gift for someone who turned out to be a real bitch. It sat around the house, it's mechanisms threatening to break, and so I finally put it up over the door for safe keeping. She really was/is a bitch and I now consider the cat clock my compensation for bitchiness inflicted.

I am going to, as we say in French, stop des conneries.

In the words of The Thing, one of Stan Lee's genius characters from the Fantastic Four, "it's clobberin' time!"

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