This and That Book Report

Skull Kill Krew #1 (Marvel Comics, $3.99) Adam Felber has written a comic book! I'm not sure what it's about, but hey! Brainwashed cows who regain their memories and wreck havoc on the universe? Who doesn't want to read about that? You can find it at your local comic bookshop.


HarperStudio has partnered with the Freedom to Write and International Programs at PEN American Center to publish Burn This Book, a collection of essays about censorship and literature in response to oppression, which goes on sale May 12. Edited by Toni Morrison, the volume features an A-list of contributors including Paul Auster, Nadine Gordimer, Pico Iyer, Francine Prose, Salman Rushdie, and John Updike.

The result is Burn This Book, a small volume whose essays range widely in tone and subject, yet all address the common theme of freedom of expression. Morrison's contribution explains why suppressing the voice of opposition is a hallmark of dictatorships: "Authoritarian regimes, dictators, despots are often, but not always, fools," she writes. "But none is foolish enough to give perceptive, dissident writers free range to publish their judgments or follow their creative instincts. They know they do so at their own peril."
Francine Prose balks at leaden overtly political fiction and art, and instead makes a case for "something more unexpected." Pico Iyer tells of a "bright, resourceful, well-educated" trishaw driver in Myanmar, stifled in a country where intelligence is "something to be feared and can best be used by giving oneself to something other than words and ideas."

A petition to stop censorship and more information about the book is available at the right to read.


Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man's Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science, by Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scigliano (Smithsonian Books, 286 pp., $26.95)

This promises to be a fascinating book, the life story of the oceanographer and UW professor, Curtis Ebbesmeyer. I've been watching his work ever since Ridley Pearson talked about asking his help while researching the tidal flows for his novel, Undercurrents. You've probably heard the quirky stories over the years, those shipping containers of 80,000 Nike shoes that washed overboard and how they came in with the tides along the West Coast and the rest of the world. Or that time millions of little yellow rubber duckies were lost at sea and became more popular than Japanese glass floats. Or more recently, the 6 human feet that have washed up in the Queen Charlotte Islands.

You can listen to a podcast of Prof Ebbesmeyer on KUOW.


democommie finally contributes to the Book Report! His brings us this lovely review from Nordette at blogher. I don't want to sell you this book. I want you to go buy it from the ladies at Thistle Farms, where all proceeds benefit their good works.

Find Your Way Home: Words from the Street, Wisdom from the Heart.

The Women of Magdalene wrote this book with the founder of the Magdalene community in Nashville, Tenn., Becca Stevens, an Episcopalian priest. You may be aware this organization under the name Thistle Farms through the marketing of its handmade candles and bath and body products.


Thistle Farms is a non-profit business run by women who have survived lives of violence, prostitution, and abuse. Thistle Farms products are hand-made by the very women they benefit. All proceeds go back into Thistle Farms and the residential program, Magdalene. Into every product goes the belief that freedom starts with healing and love can change lives.

UPDATED: Just for Bukko!

Um, Maura Liasson?

STFU!

Seriously. This is what we get to listen to about the alarming rise of gun nuts and idiots going all Ca-razy about shooting up the um, occupying forces?


Really. I mean it. STFU!

I conquered the Kitchener Stitch by doing it backwards

There's a new baby I'm knitting for. Her name is Kai. I need some advice on buttons. Please vote in comments. Or, mail me two or three cool buttons. Thnx!

OMG! This is going to be good!

thanks Shini!

April is Poetry month

Half Moon, Small Cloud, John Updike

Caught out in daylight, a rabbit’s
transparent pallor, the moon
is paired with a cloud of equal weight:
the heavenly congruence startles.

For what is the moon, that it haunts us,
this impudent companion immigrated
from the system’s less fortunate margins,
the realm of dust collected in orbs?

We grow up as children with it, a nursemaid
of a bonneted sort, round-faced and kind,
not burning too close like parents, or too far
to spare even a glance, like movie stars.

No star but in the zodiac of stars,
a stranger there, too big, it begs for love
(the man in it) and yet is diaphanous,
its thereness as mysterious as ours.


sign up for a poem a day from Knopf.
photo

Play Ball!

That great harbinger of Spring is upon us. Yes, Baseball's Opening Day. All teams start out even, and all may have hopes now of later October glory. So I've spent some devouring Rob Neyer's new book, Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends: The Truth, The Lies, and Everything Else (Simon and Schuster $16.00). Rob is one the most well-regarded of baseball writers and analysts. He began his career as a protegee of Bill James (who wrote the introduction to this book), and much of his previous work is stat-driven. His previous books also have equally long titles, which you can see at his website.

Needless to say, as a baseball fan, I have always enjoyed his work. This book actually is a series of short essays about the baseball myths and legends that have grown out of the game's years and decades of good stories. Rob asks the question "Did this really happen" of many of them. Did Billy Martin outplay Jackie Robinson every time they met in Series play? Did Negro Leaguer Gene Benson really know Cleveland's second baseman, Johnny Beradino, out of baseball and into his acting career? Was Freddy Lynn the clutch hitter he think he was? Did Leo Durocher really steal Babe Ruth's watch? And did Babe Ruth really call his shot?

The story, in case you don't know it from the truly awful movies made about Ruth's life, is that in 1932 World Series, the Yankees swept the Cubs in four games where there was much bench jockeying between the teams. In the fifth inning, Ruth came up to hit against Charlie Root, a pitcher not known for being a nice guy on the mound. Legend has it that Ruth, with two strikes on him, dramatically pointed to the bleachers, indicating that the next pitch would be deposited there. And on his swing, he indeed homered. But did it really happen? Neyer examines all the eye-witness accounts, and while not completely debunking the story, suggests that it wasn't such a grand gesture. (Root always maintained if the Babe had done so, he, Root, would have knocked Ruth down on the next pitch). Ruth probably held up a finger to indicate that he had one more swing. (By the way, even if you are not a baseball fan, Robert Creamer's biography of Ruth, The Babe, is a great read. Ruth is the stuff of legend and it is a shame the movies gave him such bad Hollywood treatment. One starred William Bendix and the other John Goodman; I recommend Max Gail's one man show, The Babe, which, I'm afraid, isn't on the Youtubes).

Rob's book is available from Jackson Street Books and other fine independent bookstores.

Here's hoping your favorite team is beaten by the Seattle Mariners in the playoffs and World Series this year.

I hear democommie is planning to throw out the first pitch of this season. Let's hope it's a strike.