Working for the Monkey, Not the Man

 That's correct, folks. That says that I am the new Store Manager at the World's Only Curious George Store, reopening in April in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA. Can you believe it?!?

My sincere apologies to everyone for being MIA this month. A lot has been happening, mostly good, and including this incredible opportunity just this week. I will be taking a short blogging break while I help set up a brand, spankin'-new, store. I hope to be able to blog about that process soon, so stay tuned!

For updates on the Curious George store, check out the Curious George Store website (still under construction, but you can sign up for email updates). Hope to see you all stopping by the store!

Also, check out Whiteblack the Penguin Sees the World by Margret and H.A. Rey, a lesser known title by the Curious George creators, recently featured on Anita Silvey's Children's Book-a-Day Almanac.

Book Video Round-up

I thought it was about time I shared and discussed all the book-related and reading-related videos, whether feature-length, sitcom-length, or YouTube length I've collected over the years.

No, I am not going to be rehashing all BBC-or-otherwise produced versions of Jane Austen, the Brontes, Oscar Wilde, or videos of that nature. Maybe I'll do that some other time.

I'm more interested in discussing and promoting Stranger Than Fiction, Black Books, and other short video clips to all the literary junkies out there.

Stranger Than Fiction is a 2006 feature length film starring Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Latifah, and in probably his first almost-serious role, Will Ferrell. Four people's lives converge in this dramedy centering on Will Ferrell and his wristwatch.
One day, Will Ferrell, an IRS accountant, realizes his life is being omnisciently narrated. He cannot communicate with the author's voice, and so when the voice says, "Little did he know that this simple, seemingly innocuous act would result in his imminent death," Harold Frick (Will Ferrell) gets a little upset. He ends up seeking help in various ways, finally coming to Dustin Hoffman's character, a university professor who has basically built a career upon deconstructing the phrase "little did he know". Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) advises Harold to figure out whether he's in a comedy or a tragedy, and thus try to identify the author. Enter Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson). She's a well-known reclusive author struggling with writer's block. She's also the voice narrating Harold's life. Though Harold hasn't always loved his life or lived it to the fullest, recently his life seems to be looking up: he's pursuing hobbies, spending more time with a friend/coworker, and starting to date a law school drop-out baker (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who is a sweet and spirited character (and also incredibly sexy with her half-sleeve tattoo and anarchist attitude). Harold doesn't want to die, but can there really be any other way for Karen's latest book, Death & Taxes, to end? At the end of the day, measuring the two columns side-by-side, will Harold be living in a comedy or dying in a tragedy? A must-see for all fiction fans.




My only complaint about Black Books is that it's only 18 episodes. At three seasons, six episodes a season, that's really not enough to satisfy my craving for Bernard, Fran, and Manny. Bernard Black is an Irish curmudgeon who owns a used book shop. Fran is his best friend who owns the shop next door, and Manny is an ex-accountant turned part-time bookshop employee. Besides being witty, hysterical, and wise, there are so many great bookshop moments, and at 20 minutes an episode, you can watch one just about any time for free on Hulu. Watch a intro compilation on YouTube here.


The rest of the videos are funny book-related eye-and-ear candy. Enjoy!

Portlandia: Did You Read?




Book Dominoes



Saturday Night Live's Book Ad




For anyone who's actually worked in a bookstore:

Insert Clever Title Here

Lots of news coming from the children's lit world today.

The venerable Brian Jacques, creator of the popular Redwall series, died over the weekend at the age of 71. The BBC has a brief article on the subject and you should also check out his official website.

I have to admit I've never read a single Redwall book. Anthropomorphised animals aren't really my thing. Yet, I recognize the great value they serve, often for that reluctant reader who is looking for a great adventure but not necessarily something that might too closely imitate their own life. The combination of epic fantasy tale with good friendships written on a level accessible by younger and older readers alike. I absolutely respect the work of Brian Jacques, and sympathize with both his family and fans.


In less solemn news, my good friend and former grad school classmate, Eliza at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art runs a Monday picture book puzzler series on the official blog, Shop Talk. Stop on by for today's puzzler; theme: hugs & kisses. How many picture books can you name based on these images?

Speaking of blogs, I've been remiss in not mentioning that my grad school cohort (class of '10 from the Simmons @ The Carle, MFA in Writing Literature for Children program) has begun a new blog of our own.

Introducing the Guinea Pig Writers!

 

Each month we'll be writing on a new theme. Can you guess what February's is? We all share posting responsibilities (there are 12 of us) throughout the month; mine has already gone up, and you can read that here. Hope you like the site, follow us, tweet us, Facebook friend us, and more.

Librarians Do Lady Gaga

This is not an adult book review, but it's definitely worth a post.

Thanks to Boing Boing (and a FB friend's post) for introducing me to this video of "students and faculty from the University of Washington's Information School perform[ing] a Lady Gaga remix."

RePost: The "Good Guys" of YA Literature

This is a "repost", similar to a "retweet" on Twitter (follow me @rebf). Emily's Reading Room had an inspiring post recognizing the "good guys" of young adult fiction, as opposed to those moody, smoldering, dangerous "bad boys" everyone seems to fall for.

Some of Emily's top favorites included Gilbert Blythe from L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, Mr. Darcy from Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice, Laurie from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, and Peeta from Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games.

Obviously this made me question who my own top "good guys" of YA lit are, and these are a few names I came up with:

1. Philip Ammon from Gene Stratton-Porter's A Girl of the Limberlost, one of my top 5, all-time, desert island, favorite books. He's engaged to Edith, but he tries so hard to be a good guy and do the right thing to be worthy of loving Elnora. And of course, if I'm thinking of Philip, I have to put in Freckles, the title character from GSP's Freckles, and the Harvester, the title character from GSP's The Harvester. Really, all of her men are worthy "good guys".

2. Bookish Mac over fast and lose Charlie in Louisa May Alcott's Eight Cousins and A Rose in Bloom finally wins Rose's much-deserved love. And yes, I have a soft spot, in part, due to his bookish nature.

3. T. C. Keller from My Most Excellent Year by Steve Kruger. He loves baseball, has a great relationship with his dad, recites a standing address at the high school talent show to impress the girl, and he's cute to boot.

4. Poor Arthur Dent in A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. He didn't know what hit him when his planet was blown up, and he's dragged back and forth between one end of the universe to the other. What a relief when he finds a love interest. He deserves it after being such a good sport.

Who are your favorite good guys?

Geeks in Love

I first read this article in 2009; it refers to an event in 2008. I have yet to hear of a sweeter, real life, proposal story.

So many people condemn Valentine's Day as one of those "Hallmark holidays".

I agree that being bombarded by red, white, and pink crepe paper, cut-outs of naked baby cherubs, and heart representations of all shapes and sizes is a bit consumerist sensory overload (ahem*Christmas, anyone?*ahem), yet I have to support the sentiment behind it all. While I think we should take the time to remember those we love in ways large and small on every day of the calendar year, AND despite not having a significant other on this Valentine's Day, considering how awful humans are to each other on a daily, hourly, minute-by-minute basis as a species, how can I not believe in the goodness behind an entire day devoted to recognizing those people who embody the plethora of ways you define "love" in your own life?

To this end, I give you one example. May I present:

Geeks in Love A.K.A. How I Proposed to My Wife, by Jeremy Zilar

One year ago today on Valentine’s Day I proposed to my wife, Juliette, through a crossword puzzle in her copy of The New York Times.

Juliette loves the N.Y.T. crossword puzzle. She prefers the real paper version of the Times, organizing it by section and devouring it piece by piece, saving the arts section for last. I thought proposing via the crossword puzzle would be wonderful. All the pieces seemed to fit. We were getting ready to start a new Crossword Blog at The Times, I was probably going to be working with Will Shortz, and maybe, just maybe, I could ask him if he would run a special crossword for me. Oh, and Valentine’s Day was around the corner.

I e-mailed Will. He declined. He said he famously did this back in 1998, that he’ll probably never do it again, and that he doesn’t like to repeat ideas. However, he did give me the name of a constructor who could help: Fred Piscop. After many nights trying to build my own puzzle and failing, I e-mailed Fred.

Fred was great. I sent him a list of relevant words, clues, and description of Juliette and me. A few days later, Fred sent me his first draft. I was amazed. I did ask him to change a few words in the puzzle. BETRAY became BETTOR, and a few others changed as a result. Since this was only meant for Juliette to solve, I took liberty to modify some of Fred’s clues to be more specific to our lives. Then, I spent a few hours seeking out the crossword page template for the arts section.

The whole job took a good amount of field research. Most mornings I was up at the crack of dawn and raced downstairs to get one of the few papers available at the local bodega. Then, I would present her with her paper, carefully watch her go through each section, noting how she designed her reading habits to arrive at the crossword puzzle last. Some days she would fold the arts section up and stuff it in her bag before heading on the train. Other days, she would save it until she was ready for bed.

Finally, it all came together. I had arranged to get a copy of the arts page just after 5 p.m. when the section closed, and with the help of the art director of the travel section, I had printed out a near perfect copy of the page — the exact page the real crossword was printed on, front and back.

The day arrived. I had the ring. I woke up at 6:30 a.m., the precise time that the bodega downstairs opens, and bought a copy of The New York Times. Then, I went upstairs, and in the hallway outside the apartment, I switched out the page with the actual puzzle for the one I had created, and just to make sure it looked like part of the original run, I folded the arts section back up, pressed the fold a few times before inserting it back in to the rest of the paper right below Thursday Styles. I sneaked back into the house and proceeded to make breakfast for Juliette.

I watched as she sat there, flipping through each section, casually reading, saving the arts section for last as I had seen before. When she finally did get to the end, she made like she was going to save the crossword for the train when I stopped her and said, “Maybe you should take a look at today’s crossword puzzle. It is a special one.” She opened it up, stared at it for a few moments, then totally squealed, “Oh, my God! You made the crossword puzzle!” I swear, to this day, I have never again seen her react like that. I handed her a pen — it happened to be a pen with archival ink — and suggested she try to solve it. She hesitated for a moment because in her mind, Thursday puzzles were not very easy to solve, much less while the solver was being watched.

Within a few minutes, when she got about halfway through the puzzle and had already filled in a few words that fed into the bottom row, she smiled and told me that she could see the end of the puzzle. I let her fill in all the vertical words that filled out 62 and 63 across. When she finally filled it out, WILLYOU MARRYME, we both stared at each other for a second, unsure of what to do next. Then I asked her to marry me.

On September 5, one year after our first date, we got married in the Prospect Park Boathouse in Brooklyn. Juliette and I are now expecting our first child, due to arrive in this world around July 21, 2009.

Happy Valentine's Day

Things I Don't Need but Desperately Want

If, like me, you are an imaginary shopaholic, you will enjoy this post.

By imaginary, I mean that if I had more money, I would be a true shopaholic.

Oh, I don't count books or food. For those two categories I allow myself to spend as much (within reason-ish) as I can each day, week, month, year. Everything else is secondary.

BUT I have a very hard time resisting book- and food-related items. Especially book. See below:.











Vinyl Hardcover Book Stack Earrings, Necklace, & Pin











"Read Books, Not T-shirts" t-shirt
(Molly, I thought of you.)











Helvetica Cookie Cutters
(Hartford, if I buy these, will you make me cookies?)

And finally, the moment you've all been waiting for. The item I've been saving my pennies for, for at least the last couple of weeks:












That's right. It's a hardcover laptop case that's made to look like an old book. I drool every time I look at it.

My birthday's only a short 5.5 months away, people. Just sayin'. Also, I'll accept presents early.

Barbie-Q

Today's book rep showed me this picture on his laptop during his sales call. Totally appropriate, and entirely work-related. I made him forward it to me. I'm now sharing it with you. Tickled my funny bone; hope it tickles yours.

Sun shining = biking

I have a minor biking habit. It's minor because it's one of those things where I wish I was a really dedicated biker who could bike miles to work and back every day, or ride down really hard mountain trails without killing myself, but in reality my way-too-expensive bike sits in my living room looking cool without me. Sigh.

I do ride it, occasionally. Sometimes, when I've gotten off work early in the day, and I'm not too tired, and the sun is shining but it's not 90 degrees out, and I have no plans until later, and I feel like I should really get some exercise, and my work-out clothes/bike shorts are clean, and I can find my bike shoes, and my water bottle, sometimes when all those things happen at the same time, I take the bike out for a little ride. Usually about an hour, and it's a pretty flat ride, and I come back feeling simultaneously really good about myself and totally judging myself for thinking that was a tough bike ride.

I'm not usually that hard on myself, but there's something about biking culture that's really elitist and isolationist, and in case you didn't get it from those adjectives, really snobby. I've been told there are two kinds of bikers - those who bike for sport (road bike enthusiasts doing 50 miles in a single jaunt, hardcore mountain bikers riding down the Alps off-road, and those who compete in triathlons), and those who bike for transportation where the rusted P.O.S. you put together yourself is a status symbol of your commitment to the eco-lifestyle you're trying hard to live. I ascribe to neither of those two walks of life and therefor am left hanging awkwardly in the middle with my spandex bike shorts and lazy attitude, trying for all the world to find someone else like me so we can casually bike together.

If, like me, you wish you could go into the bike shop and be as cool as those guys/girls in there who actually know about bikes, but recognize no matter how hard you try, you'll still come off as an incompetent wannabe, or if you don't like hipsters, or if you just have a good sense of humor, you'll probably find this craigslist post from a Seattle bike shop amusing. I know I did. Thank you to the co-worker/friend who sent it to me. Owe you one, buddy.

Blog Wordle

For those of you who have not yet discovered the awesome (in the original sense of the word, actually inspiring great awe) power of www.wordle.net, you've been missing out friends.

Don't worry, I was, too, until my friend sent me the link today. It's never too late to Wordle. Here is what it came up with for this blog:



(click on it, it takes you to Wordle, where you can see it in a larger size)

What Wordles have you come up with?

Good in theory, Bad in practice

I apologize for the brief hiatus I've taken in June. Inspiration has been as difficult to come by as the time in which to take advantage of it, if it happens by. Luckily, I find myself with both inspiration and a modicum of time this morning, and so will take a moment to share my thoughts.

A friend recently introduced me to a new invention by Purex: Purex Complete 3-in-1 Laundry Sheets. These revolutionary laundry-assisting sheets release detergent during the wash cycle, then moving from the washer to the dryer with the clothes, releases a softener and static reducer during the dry cycle. While my friend has been wooed by their commercial advertisements and reputed convenience, I'm a bit more skeptical. For instance, the softener and static reducer are apparently heat-activated, and therefor able to be released only through the power of hot air in the dryer. But what if you wash a load in hot water? How does the miracle sheet know to not release it all at one time, but to save the softener/static reducer for the dry heat of the dryer rather than the wet heat of a soapy load?

I'm concerned that much like the invention of the 2-in-1 Shampoo/Conditioner of a few years ago, this new product will fall into the category of good in theory, doesn't work quite so well in practice. Perhaps it's because I have thick hair, but the shampoo/conditioner combo never seems to wash out all the way and I get left with dank, residue-coated hair (or maybe that's all in my head - no pun intended). What's to say something similar won't happen with the 3-in-1 laundry sheet? It's not just two things anymore, they've even added a third! Excuse me for not putting my complete trust in the ability of an inanimate object to act according to its designated purpose.

This is all a moot point in my own life anyway because I use Seventh Generation, environmentally friendly laundry detergent, and Bounce Free & Clear dryer sheets. I know, I know, I even go to a laundromat that has recently purchased all new environmentally friendly/more effecient washers and dryers (though that one wasn't my fault, I was perfectly happy going there when it was shady and the machines worked only half the time). Half the time I feel like a pretentious ass, but the other day I was forced to use some regular Tide on my clothes, and I swear my skin itched when I put them on after not having used chemicals in my clothes for so long, so I know it's worth it. Which really just begs the point, what sort of shit are they putting into a 3-in-1 laundry sheet to make it do what it does and how can any of that be good for you, your clothes, or the environment? Just saying. Purex, I'm onto you. You're gonna have to try a little harder to make me believe.

Lumberjack to lingerie

I'd like to discuss the versatile nature of the suspender.

*Disclaimer: because I'm not British, when I say suspender, I'm referring to the elasticized pieces of material that connect to the waistband of pants, criss-cross in the back, and attach again to the waistband in front. I am not speaking about a garter belt, though I suppose that might deserve its own post at some point, too.

How did such an innocuous clothing accessory as the suspender gain such a multifaceted personality?

When you consider suspenders started off as merely a way to hold up pants before the evermore practical belt was invented...



(which, apparently, wasn't until around WWI)





...made a reappearance as an accessory to the popular punk, tight jeans and white tee look...







...and now have morphed into something pseudo-sexy when worn by cute girls over a beater, some slutty shirt, or nothing at all, that's really quite a journey for the simple suspender to have made.



There's a certain appealing sexiness to them, when worn the right way. (No? Just me?) As in, non-lumberjack style, though I may have worn them in that way at least once myself, sadly only partially ironically. And, no, I don't find Larry King in suspenders sexy. Or Larry King sexy at all.

This picture is what started me on my recent suspender musings. I know, there's not even a display of skin, but it was something about the way the suspenders peek out and the hint of tie, and let's face it, this could probably be either a man or a woman, which is kind of sexy in itself.


This is all simply to say, don't forget the suspenders when you're rifling through your closet making the winter to spring to summer switch. I suspect they can add quite the punch to an otherwise seasoned outfit. And for all those considering a summer outdoor wedding, let's not forget we do live in farm country - suspenders on groomsmen, a must.