bookish

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wow, wow, wow. here are some titillating things from the world of books:

a literary map of manhattan, from the new york times

the book cover archive: an archive of book cover designs for the purpose of appreciation and categorization. this site is insane. i could spend hours and hours here, reveling in all of the gorgeousness.

i want to work here: graywolf press, hometown heroes.

megan wilson! holy gesundheit! bill hader, the impressionist from snl, was on late night with jimmy fallon a while back, and at one point, he slipped into a sort of accidental impression of a television writer, before realizing that he was doing an impression of somebody whom no one else would possibly recognize. awesome. this is a little how i feel about megan wilson and her incredible book covers.

yes.

i am intrigued by the penguin blog. not totally convinced, but intrigued. and this just rocks.

have i mentioned my love for salon's literary guide to the world? some of the essays and suggestions are a little uninspired (mordecai richler is the best they could come up with for montreal? really?), and there are a lot more places i'd like to see represented, but the feature is still getting on its feet, and i'm completely loving the concept.

editorial anonymous was like porn for me when i worked in publishing.

"Digital technology presents many challenges for authors, bookstores, publishers, and book distributors. It is also creating some remarkable opportunities. I don’t have the answers, but I’m optimistic we can figure it out together. Let’s talk." a solid statement from the casual optimist.

i'm also on goodreads. so far i've been using it mostly for personal organization - keeping track of what i've read, what i want to read, recommendations, categories - which is good enough for me, though i'm always looking for friends. any takers?

"For some reason this summer feels especially Anne of Green Gables to me, and all I want to do is plop down with Rainbow Valley and Rilla of Ingelside and think about the Pied Piper and the War Effort and weep." another summer manifesto from amanda at first milk.

*** All images designed and owned by Megan Wilson

"i will daydream about avocado."

time for a summer manifesto, perhaps?

can't beat fresh wildflowers. gorgeous tigerlilies that grow alongside the highway by the house.

hot and humid all weekend. i love watching the train. it gives a feeling of adventure and movement to standing still.

things i read this week: big fish - daniel wallace; true north - kimberly kafka; true history of the kelly gang - peter carey.
--kelly gang = strongly recommended. big fish = worth it, but i actually prefer the more lively film version. north = meh, okay if you're in an alaska kind of mood, but not a great story or high-quality writing.

virginia sky

"Remember that you make your own reality. You don't have to stay in a little shell that was hammered out for you from childhood. We're all conditioned to live the way our parents want us to live, and that turns people into serial killers sometimes. At a certain point you have to come out and live your life the way you want to live it."

sweet!

Spirograph Magnets from Polymath Design Lab on Etsy

wildlife

we get centipedes, spiders, ants, wasps, ticks, and gosh-all else in the way of entomological life...but the butterflies just about make up for it.

last weekend...

...I did a wee bit of sightseeing. Though it was "as hot as Hades," as they say down here, I took a little hike down an old Civil War trail to a Confederate encampment. There wasn't too much to see beyond the degraded wooden frame of a hut, but it was quite something to imagine hundreds of soldiers tramping through the same trail some hundred-and-fifty years ago.

The woods themselves were kind of spooky - very shaded and muted from outside sounds, with old (modern) wooden furniture and a burned-out car frame abandoned along the trail.

Then on to the Gilmore Cabin, a small log home built adjacent to Montpelier in the 1860s by a freed slave, George Gilmore.

I was actually surprised by the cabin's interior, which was much roomier and brighter than I would have thought.

There were a lot of touching details, like the actual buttons Mrs. Gilmore used in her work as a seamstress, childrens toys and dolls, and a little cloth checkerboard.

In the woods a few hundred yards beyond the cabin there was a group of Civil War re-enactors building a log hut similar, presumably, to the ones that had actually been there during the war.

finally, some photos of my little homestead

the house, painted signature duPont green

the front yard - there used to be an esso station next door

the backyard. note the intense humidity

when it rains...

...it rains really, really hard.

i mean that literally, by the way. no metaphors here.

grasping, i guess. seriously, though, it is about as hot as the devil's bowels here in central virginia. the humidity! my god! i was told that the climate here is typically more temperate than that of minneapolis, but this feels worse than the heat waves in southern turkey, hotter than vietnam in may. oy.

and the rain, like i said. she doth pour. mostly in the morning and at night, big heaping torrents of water, smashing down with more volume and force than i thought possible outside of junger tales and hurricane paths.

does it sound like i'm complaining? i don't think i am. well, technically, yes, but it's more simple observation. awe. i am awe-struck by this wild weather.

today i slept till some ungodly hour, took a teensy post-rain whambam humidity walk around the proverbial block (ie: down a dirt road). took a few photos, but my camera lens got too fogged up to continue. lounged around. finished alice mcdermott's charming billy; started eucalyptus, by murray bail. good summer reading. billy was dense and surprisingly slow-going, but also lovely, and admirably simple in its evocation of complexity. much better than the amazon reviews would have you believe.

also: i'm adding marfa to the to-go list. i likes me some donald judd.

omg. omg. omg.

and...does everyone else know about the curiosity shoppe? how could i have missed this repository of hipster covetability?

Greetings from the O.C.!

Orange County, Virginia, that is.

Job: good
Apartment: good (it's actually a tenant house from the early 1900s)
All: is well

Missing G, perhaps wishing for a car every now and then, a dvd player might be nice, but basically no complaints. I'm being kept very busy during the day, and the nights are my own. Mammoth reading, letter writing (if you want some snail mail love, send me your address), and somehow I'm still not bored. But, then again, I didn't think I would be.

I can see the Blue Ridge Mountains from my bedroom window. The days are hot and humid, but not overwhelming. Sometimes it rains. The Piedmont red clay is beautiful. Tonight I may go to something called a rumble, where I'm told there'll be drag racing.

Yesterday at Target I saw an Amish woman buying a hand-held electronic game. Here are some names of places I passed on the drive here: Hen and Bacon Lane; Moomaw; Lick River; Bumpass; and Little Potato Crick.

The local public library won't give me a card to check out books because I'm only here temporarily. So much for supporting visiting scholars. If that weren't reason enough to loathe them, I also noticed a stack of books kept on a shelf behind the main desk - shelved there because they feature sinful subjects like witchcraft, vampirism, spellcasting...tattoos...and...anatomy? I'm still wrapping my mind around the idea that libraries like that actually exist.

Downtown Orange is a maze of one-ways and road closures. That said, they do have a local bus called the TOOT. And yesterday while waiting in line to buy a single spatula at Goodwill, two people invited me to go ahead of them in line. The accents are cute. Near my house is a placard commemorating the train wreck at Fat Nancy. Fat Nancy is the name of a person. There are many, many horses, and people are apparently very interested in fox hunting, horse jumping, and racing jack russell terriers. Drivers are happy to yield the right of way. Confederate glory is a major source of civic pride, and if anyone is interested in Confederate bullets, tiny grey-coated toy soldiers, recreated antebellum gowns in toile, or a miniature bust of Robert E. Lee, I can hook you up. Also intrigued by ghost walks.

That's what I've got for now. Photos to come, hopefully.

If my baby were not out in the wilds of northern Minnesota, we would be working on this list. Soon.

I am back in the States. At home for another week or so before heading down to Virginia. Coffee and mini donuts. Art fair. Library books. Whalesongs, colonial Manhattan, Twilight, pop-culture etymology.

No pictures for now.

Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge, en route to Derry

en route from belfast to derry

claddagh ring from grafton street, dublin