Ordinary People

I have lately (in the last several years) become a fan of memoirs by "regular" people who have interesting things to say that aren't necessarily heart- and gut-wrenching. That is, they aren't about some heroic struggle against insurmountable odds or some horrible illness. I've read about a woman who used to be a model and now runs a vintage clothing store, a woman whose life story and family history are told by the clothes in her closet, a young man who celebrates his wife who died much too soon and the music they shared, and a college student with a passion for kungfu that was strong enough to compel him to travel to China to study with Shaolin monks.

All of these books are proof that you certainly don't need to be famous to lead an interesting life. The fascination with famous people is their presumed distance from "the rest of us," but the interest in these memoirs by people who are not famous comes from the connection with someone who may have had interesting or unusual experiences but is nevertheless a whole lot like the person reading the book.

Many readers, myself included, look for "real" characters in the fiction that they read and criticize authors or works which do not deliver or don't live up to expectations. Well, the people in these memoirs are decidedly real, and the stories they tell certainly make for entertaining reading without having to be sensationalized tell-all confessions.

Passing it on

Part of my daily cyberspace ritual is to check the online journal of Neil Gaiman and the most recent entry bears a bit of sad news--the wonderful book shop DreamHaven Books in Minneapolis suffered a rather damaging break-in.

It's tough enough to be an independent bookseller in this era of Barnes & Noble superstores and amazon.com without adding malicious vandalism and thievery into the mix, so Neil--being a patron and big fan of DreamHaven--has put the word out that spending your book dollars at DreamHaven will have an immediate, direct, positive impact.

DreamHaven is definitely a science fiction, fantasy and comics sort of a place, and, as Neil mentions, they tend to have things on their shelves that you can't find really anywhere but in a small, dedicated independent book shop. You can find them at www.dreamhavenbooks.com and if you are also a fan of Neil Gaiman, try www.neilgaiman.net, although if you are a fan of Neil Gaiman, you probably have read the original blog entry.

Of course, far more people will read Neil's blog than this one, but on the off chance that someone or two folks show up here, I figured that they ought to know, and even if the books of DreamHaven aren't your cup of tea, I am sure that they would be happy to help you send a gift certificate to someone you know who might or should be a DreamHaven patron.

So, if you have made it this far, go check them out.

Applied Education

The NPR show "Marketplace" had a segment about a unique business program at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont. In this era of rising education costs and big cutbacks by even bigger corporations, this kind of entrpreneurial encouragment might just be the key to the future. Click here to listen to the radio spot.

Never bring home a Tasmanian Devil

The 8/21/06 entry of Neil Gaiman's blog is quite entertaining. Most of it is a description of a day in the life of his assistant Lorraine, written by Lorraine herself. She writes about the trials and tribulations and joy and entertainment of working for a hard-working, multi-tasking, idiosyncratic, and very popular writer. She ought to be included in one of those books which are collections of "Day in the Life" journals of women from all sorts of walks of life.

One of those things you never knew you couldn't live without

Yesterday I had a few minutes to waste before work, so I wandered through my local Borders Express (formerly known as Waldenbooks). They seem to rearrange things in that store fairly often, so I usually take a look at the overall layout to see if what, if anything, has changed. As I passed to tiny biography section, the word "mockingbird" caught my eye.

"It can't be," I thought.

But it was.

Someone--a fellow named Charles J. Shields--has finally written what looks like a comprehensive biography of Harper Lee. Based on a brief perusal of the dust jacket flaps, it does not look as if Mr. Shields actually spoke to the famously reclusive author (although she did recently write a letter to Oprah's magazine), but I would guess that he wouldn't have had access to the people and information that he did without at leat her tacit approval.

Apparently quite a bit of the book is devoted to Lee's relationship with Truman Capote and her involvement in the research and writing of In Cold Blood. I had forgotten that she played such a major role in the production of that book.

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my all time favorite books, and I am sure that there are many, *many* people who would say the same thing. I tend to read it in uncertain or frustrating times of my life. I take comfort in the fact that no matter how many times I read it certain facts remain true. Miss Maudie's house always burns down. Atticus always defends Tom Robinson. Boo Radley always comes out.

It takes me about three and a half hours to read, which means that I probably have about twenty hours invested in the book. Sadly, it's not quite as much time as I have invested in watching the original Star Wars trilogy. :)

Aspiring Fashionista

Generally speaking, I am a jeans and t-shirts sort of a girl. Or pajamas (pyjamas?). Really comfy lounging about pjs. But every once in a while I experience bouts of girliness, and it's not just the urge to dress like a girl. It's the urge to dress like a *fashionable* girl. I have a severe weakness for extremely girly shoes, although my feet strngly prefer that I wear sneakers or clogs with no heel, and I usually oblige them.

Women's fashion does not make a lot of sense to me. It's more expensive, less well made, and doesn't get marked down as deeply or as often as men's fashion. Sizes make no sense either. Take a size 6, for example. Six what? What is being quantified with this number? Men get waist and inseam and sleeve length and neck measurments, and usually there isn't a whole lot of variation. I have items in my closet that are a size 2 and items that are a size 12.

Then there are the problems that are specific to me which make it difficult to find women's clothing that actually fits me. The top half of me is significantly larger than the bottom half, so it is difficult to find a dress that fits. If it fits in the hips, chances are that I can't get it zipped past the bottom of my rib cage. Pants are always too long. Even before the notion of wearing giant shoes with everything became popular, pants were too long. I bought a pair of jeans the other day (for $15 because I'm all about the clearance sales) which declared themselves to be a siz 4 ANK, meaning size four with an inseam that should reach the ankles. They reach beyond my ankles and past my heels. But they are comfortable, despite being girl jeans.

Nor am I curvy enough for women's pants most of the time. Depending on how you look at it, either my waist doesn't go in enough, or my hips don't go out enough. Part of that has to do with a need for some exercise to reduce the midsection a bit, but even when I was thinner, women's pants that fit in the hips were always uncomfortably tight in the waist. The slight lowering of the waist line was a godsend for me. I don't like pants to be too low because then I fear that they will simply fall off because I don't have the hips to hold them up, but about an inch below my belly button usually fits pretty well. It is my understanding, however, that waistlines are going back up again, so I need to stock up while I can. On the bright side, I should be able to find some fabulous deals!

When it comes to shirts, espcially those that button all the way up or down (depending on what part of the country you are from), it's all about those first buttons below the neckline. Often the shirt fits otherwise (except that the sleeves are too long because my arms suffer the same deficiency as my legs--the only thing long about me is my fingers, which, along with my small hands, just makes it difficult to find a pair of gloves that fits properly), but those buttons are under undue strain. On the other hand, if the buttons are safe, the rest of the shirt looks baggy.

The inspriation for this rant is a book I started reading on Monday and have almost finished--Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown by Adena Halpern. I noticed the book while I was looking for Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabath Gilbert. The title amused me, so I started reading the introduction. I have kept a number of articles of clothing because of their sentimental value, and Halpern's wish that she could have a closet for the articles of clothing which have had the most meaning in her life spoke to me clearly, so despite the fact that, being a new release, the book is still in hardcover--and I really have no business spending money on books at all (much less brand new hardcovers)--it came home with me.

Since fashion changes so frequently and every time period--these days usually broken down into decades--has a distinct look, I don't know how universal Halpern's book is. That is, I nod along with most everything she says because we are about the same age, so all of the fads she refers to are familiar to me. Someone ten years younger or ten years older probably wouldn't understand the reference to neon parachute pants. On the other hand, most women can identify with the teenage anguish of needing the current "must-have" item and the mortification of being the only one without it. Or the fabulous outfit that you bought just to make yourself feel good even though you will probably never have an occasion worthy of it, but when you are feeling down, you wear it around the house while chatting on the phone or paying bills or reading a book because it makes you feel better.

Women often have a very personal, intimate relationship with their wardrobes. Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown is about that relationship.

The Power of the Printed Word

A recent jaunt through my friendly neighborhood bookstore found me paging through Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow. Eastern Standard Tribe also caught my eye. Cory Doctorow has his own web site--www.craphound.com--and all of his books are available as free downloads and licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons. There it was, all of the information I needed to get the books I was looking at absolutely free of charge, and yet, I still walked out with books. There is just something about the smoothness of the cover with its unique artwork, the texture of the pages, that "new book" smell. The concept of the electronic book readers, such as the Sony Portable Reader, intrigues me as a fun gadget, but somehow it's just not the same if there aren't pages to turn and passages to underline and margins to annotate.


Incidentally, I am about sixty pages into Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, and am reminded of Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. Weird, but good.