(no subject)

Happy birthday fox1013! I hope it's spectacular, and full of friends and presents and birthday cookies.

And now a question for the collective wisdom:

Does anyone know of a cheat that would let you friends-lock all your back entries at once? (It's not for me, in case you were wondering.)

Finally, my socks keep sliding around so that the seam hits me right on the side of my baby toe, and it hurts, and I can't find my favourite pen. Today is just a day for petty irritations. What's bothering you today?

[Fic] I first came to Canada on the trail of a Mountie (Due South/Twitch City)

For marginalia, just because.

I First Came To Canada on the Trail of a Mountie
Frannie/Hope (Due South/Twitch City)

( And he says, Frannie, you get homesick if you stay at Cousin Carlotta's. )

Booktalk

Anthony Bourdain Kitchen Confidential

I can't believe I haven't read this book before. I guess I can thank FOX (the bastards!) for casting people I loved and getting me excited about the show, which was very funny and was then CANCELLED (the bastards!), all of which made me read this book. Which was fabulous. (And which, if you missed all the hoopla a while back, is an exposé of what happens behind the scenes at gourmet restaurants, a story of excess and addiction, and a paen to the love of cooking.) Bourdain is an opinionated and charismatic writer, and I couldn't put the book down.

Elizabeth Crane All This Heavenly Glory

Just like vestra, I loved this book. Technically a book of short stories revolving around a woman named Charlotte, it's really more like a novel that jumps around in time, giving anecdotes from her life and just basically being wordy and clever and funny and brilliant and sometimes completely dead-on to my life. Yeah.

Valerie Frankel The Girlfriend Curse

It's like the HBO version of chicklit - everything's just slightly more foul-mouthed and quirky. The girlfriend curse refers to the fact that every one of Peg's boyfriends get married -- to someone else -- within 6 months of breaking up with her. So she decides to leave New York and buys a house in rural Vermont. But on the way up there, she meets a guy on the train, and decides to follow him and the potential nookie, despite the fact that he's going to a relationship camp for singles looking to break bad patterns. The book was ok, with some funny moments, but it was very heavy on the clichés. Eh.

Robert Holdstock Mythago Wood

This fantasy novel, about an ancient forest that houses mythical archetypes, and the family who gets drawn into that world, reminded me very much of Tam Lin in the writing style. With both of them I found that, despite the first person narrative, I felt very removed from what was happening. But unlike with Tam Lin, I didn't find the story here particularly interesting either. It took me a surprisingly long time to read, mostly, I think, because I just didn't care much.

Sarah Vowell The Partly Cloudy Patriot

It's people like Sarah Vowell who make me want to be a writer. In this book of essays, she is funny, sarcastic, passionately interested, political, familiar, geeky, and above all, very enjoyable to read.

One of my favourite lines: "From the Spanish exportation of Aztec cacao, and the Dutch invention of the chemical process for making coca, on down to the capitalist empire of Hershey, PA, and the lifestyle marketing of Seattle's Starbucks, the modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top. No wonder it costs so much."