Roger Ebert Surprise

When it comes to cinema he isn't fit to shine Pauline Kael's spitoon, but this is a surprisingly engaging one-stop takedown of Intelligent Design, the latest iteration of Creationism.

Cover Blurb of the Week...nay, YEAR

I priced a book last week, don't remember the details, but the NYT described the author thusly on the verso:

The Grahame Greene of Paraguay

You don't say!

silver linings

There isn't anything I hate more than being sick, except possibly customers who stomp in yelling WARE'S UR NONFICTION SECTION! before spitting up down their fronts and passing out into the sale cart.
Happily I'm generally healthy as a plow horse.

But there's one guilty pleasure to be extracted even from a fever.

With enough blankets you can find a point of perfect equilibrium, where your body is shivering but your brain can tell you're warm.

If you keep your balance you can coast along on its strange frictionless verge for a good ways before tipping and sliding down into the sauna again.


Ok, it's a slim straw to cling to, but I'm working on being a 'glass half full' kind of guy!

Cut wins!

The Hair Poll has closed, the readers have spoken!

Now I just need to find a stylist who won't make a dog's breakfast out of it.

diseased

As a rough estimate I've slept 20 hours out of the last 24, and I still feel like ASS.

We had a fine evening with Devirts, Meggsie & Simey and I thought I was just hung over, a predictable aftereffect of mixing wine and gin.

Alas, it was something more insidious.

The cherry on top of this poop sundae is agreeing to cover for the boss today.

I guess I'll just sit here shivering until relief comes.

gratz pelf!

He is now being repped by hotshot NYC agency Bret Adams Ltd.

My prediction that he will be one of those overnight success stories 25 years in the making is looking better every day!

bibliophile omnibus

Book Design Review's Best Book Covers of 2008
(my vote goes for Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room. Although I did buy a copy of Sharp Teeth for the store just because the cover was so great.)

Project Foodie's
10 Best Baking Cookbooks

NPR's 10 Best Cookbooks
I highly recommend Bittman's How to Cook Everything, although they're cheating a bit listing the 10th Anniversary Edition.

NYT's 10 best illustrated children's books

NPR's Best Gift Books (aka What To Get People You Don't Really Know But Have to Buy Something For)

and a selection of Best Books of the Year lists:

Various literary figures chime in at the London Times.

The Globe & Mail offers 100 reasons to give thanks.

The NYT follows suit.

Publisher's Weekly sounds off

Christan Science Monitor's top ten nonfiction books

Amazon's selection


makes me wish I had a few spare minutes to read ANYTHING.

A couple of good books I managed to read this year pre-Fuss, although not necessarily published in 2008:

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters. The best historical novel I've ever read, completely satisfying.

Counting Heads by David Marusek. The most original SF novel I've read since William Gibson's Neuromancer back in the 80's.

Seductions of Rice, which is technically a cookbook but is part autobiography and part travelogue.

Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon. A genuine literary talent who regularly strolls through the slums of genre fiction- my kinda guy!

Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb. I hate numbers and 'the market'- compelling me to not only finish but recommend a book examining both is a prodigious feat of writing.