let's stumble towards success and pack some snacks for little breaks

"I expect you just thought it. You're always thinking things." He felt rather superior because he himself didn't ever think at all.

--from "Mary Poppins Comes Back"

List ten books you own[1], that you haven't given the attention they deserve[2]. Mark with an asterisk those you haven't even begun reading.

[1] It's okay if a housemate (or equivalent) owns them, as long as you consider them part of a permanent joint collection.
[2] Specifically excluded are your "OMG I've only re-read this sixteen times when it deserves to be re-read ELEVENTY BILLION TIMES!!!!11" books.

My list is as follows:

1. Common Sense, by Thomas Paine
2. The Second Book of Go, by Richard Bozulich
3. Crasswords, edited by Francis Heaney
4. Harry Potter à l'école des sorciers, by J.K. Rowling, translated by Jean-François Ménard (French translation of the first Harry Potter book)
*5. ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石, by J.K. Rowling, translated by Matsuoka Yuko (Japanese translation of the first Harry Potter book)
6. Le petit prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
*7. The Color Atlas of Human Anatomy, edited by Vanio Vannini and Giulano Pogliani, translated by Richard Jolly
8. The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins
9. The Bullwhip Book, by Andrew Conway
*10. The Age of Reason, by Jean-Paul Sartre, translated by Eric Sutton

Okay, gotta do my part to spread the news about this. Amazon has removed sales rankings from a bunch of GLBT books, citing their "adult" nature. It sounds like they've deranked a few hardcore heterosexual erotica books too, but most of the straight sex has been left alone. Some details here. Neil Gaiman weighed in over on his Twitter, and a bunch of other folks are pissed off too.

I'm writing an e-mail to Amazon letting them know that I'm not cool with this. I encourage you to do the same, and spread the word about what's going on.

I've been called a crazy irrational tree-hugger without any respect for facts, and I've been called a cold scientific-minded student who can't accept anything without published evidence. Some people tease me about being vegan and enjoying pagan gatherings; others hear a description of the Whole Earth Festival and express astonishment that I would be caught dead at such a wifty event.

I've been aware of this odd discrepancy for some time, but it's been particularly noticeable recently because of the ramifications of certain people perceiving me as one way or the other. I've been learning about self-presentation and judgment of others in social psychology, and that's definitely helped me understand what's going on here. People behave differently in different situations. In a classroom situation, or with people who are more analytical in general, I'm going to try to be as rational and objective as I can, and I'm going to question people's assumptions. If I'm at the Gaia Goddess Gathering in the middle of the woods, I'm not going to argue cartography with the chick in the tie-dye scarf who's drawing energy and passion from the south. Scientific research isn't about wifty stuff, and hippie culture isn't about empirical testing. And people who see me in one of those situations are not likely to see me in the other.

The most interesting thing about this for me is that they're not making a mistake by seeing me one way or the other. The way I present myself has everything to do with others' impressions of me as a person. The problem only arises when someone refuses to acknowledge evidence that other aspects of me exist (as has definitely happened from both sides of this particular dichotomy). That's the fundamental attribution error, and it's a pain in the ass.

I desperately want to reread The Phantom Tollbooth now.

I met my roommate's dad last night. At one point, he made a comment about the books on my shelf being an interesting collection. I only let myself bring one box of books, so I had to cut it down to the absolute essentials--a combination of can't-live-without favorites and books I've been meaning to read. Here are the ones that made the cut:

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
the Douay-Rheims edition of the Bible
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
a copy of the Koran
Mind Fuck by Manna Francis
a Japanese copy of the first Harry Potter book
a French copy of the first Harry Potter book
a French-English dictionary
a book of French poetry
The Little Prince in French
The Little Prince in English
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving
The Cider House Rules by John Irving
The Bromeliad Trilogy by Terry Pratchett
Strata by Terry Pratchett
Angry Candy by Harlan Ellison
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams
Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss
Holes by Louis Sachar
The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre
Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
The Dialogues of Plato
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Bullwhip Book by Andrew Conway
Common Sense by Thomas Paine

Yeah, I can see why a Long Island businessman might find this shelf unusual.

So, J.K. Rowling has outed Dumbledore. One of the most believable yet least-written pairings in HP fandom has now been officially declared canon.

There are two things I love about this: first, the news itself, and second, the fact that kat_nano saw fit to call me at 6:45 in the morning yesterday to share it with me. I have awesome friends.

Now I'm tempted to start a petition to Rowling for a D/G prequel. Who's with me?

At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill

"And if it is love, it is a curiously inefficient force, urge and halt, the both at the same time. I want, but nothing I can propose would satisfy this wanting. I can't say what it is I want, not anything much, not even to fuck him particularly, if at all. Simply I want. Earnestly, most hurriedly, wretchedly want."

This book came highly recommended, but I almost gave up a few chapters in. It's packed with century-old Irish slang and political references to a historical period I'm not familiar with. About 160 pages in, though, it got a lot more interesting, and it got hard to put down near the end.

The Angel's Command by Brian Jacques

I used to love the Redwall books when I was little, and with good reason. The first five books or so of the series were great. After that, it started feeling like all the stories had been done before. Brian Jacques' problem is that he doesn't know when to stop. I really enjoyed "Castaways of the Flying Dutchman," but this sequel was much less believable and felt like a Redwall book redone with human characters.

Grampa Jack by Rocky L. Doubenmier

This book was written by Grandma's hairdresser, so I didn't have high expectations, but really... if a manuscript makes it to a library bookshelf, wouldn't you expect things like the difference between "foul" and "fowl" to have been ironed out somewhere along the way? The story wasn't terrible, but the horrific punctuation, spelling, and grammar made it impossible to enjoy, and the main character being kind of an asshole didn't help.

Absence Unexpected by William Robinson

This book is that juggling mystery I was planning for NaNoWriMo, only written remarkably badly. I'm still going to do something juggling-related, but I can't do a murder mystery now. If I was going to plagiarize, I'd pick a decent writer to steal from.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

"I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we've dressed him up, or is it dressed him down? He's a regular peppermint stick now, all sugar crystal and saccharine, when he isn't making veiled references to certain commercial products that every worshipper absolutely needs."

I'm not sure how I managed to get through seventeen years on the planet without reading this, but I did. I finally picked it up because there was a book discussion about it at the library. I didn't make it to the discussion, unfortunately, but I did read the book. It was fascinating to think about the political and cultural motivations behind the book, and how its meaning has changed and yet remained static over the last fifty years.

The English Patient by Michal Ondaatje

"She had grown older. And he loved her more now than he had loved her when he had understood her better, when she was the product of her parents... Years before, he had tried to imagine her as an adult but had invented someone with qualities moulded out of her community. Not this wonderful stranger he could love more deeply because she was made up of nothing he had provided."

Normally, I love books that skip around the story, giving you bits and pieces until finally it all comes together. But this one took that idea a little too far, I think. It was hard to get into it because of all the tense changes and random snippets and characters arbitrarily speaking with or without quotation marks. I did love Kip's story, though. I got the movie on Netflix in the hopes that the story would work better on film, but it was a bit of a disappointment- too much focus on the Almásy/Katharine relationship, which I didn't really care about, and not nearly enough on Kip and Hana.


Also, speaking of books, holy shit am I excited about this. I will post a more detailed why-you-should-read-this-book entry at some point.

Happy birthday, Harry. I'm glad the book was released a week after my seventeenth birthday instead of a week before; I finally caught up to you in age, right at the very end.

I suppose it's really over now, isn't it?

I had very little time to pack food this morning, and ended up grabbing whatever was closest on my way out the door, which happened to be an avocado, a container of leftover potatoes, and two energy bars. juvernaz, it kinda reminds me of Rachel's lemonade/Wheat Thins/pickles/spoon lunch, which is still making me giggle every time I think of it. I didn't remember silverware, though (even though, unlike her, I had something that required it). Anyway, the potatoes had been baked in oil, and there was some garlic-and-herb-infused oil left in the Tupperware when I'd finished eating. I mentioned to Mark that I wished I had some bread to mop it up with... and he pulled half a loaf of bread out of his backpack and handed it to me.

God, I love my friends.

In other news, I am officially caught up on my flist. I'd been running about 10 pages behind since the week of the quadruple mocha. Now I will know things such as Kurt Vonnegut's death and the Virginia Tech shootings just after they happen, and not fail to hear about them until fifteen hours later. Which is more sad, that I rely on my flist for news or that I check my flist often enough that fifteen hours is a long stretch of time?

I'm still reading "Dr. Seuss Goes to War," and I started Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions" this morning. I'm about halfway through it now, even with multiple distractions, like classes. I didn't expect it to be such an easy read. Richard's annotations aren't adding to my enjoyment of it, though. I should've gotten a copy from the library instead of borrowing it from him, especially as I haven't spoken to him in over a month and returning it is going to be awkward.

Bill's mom is here. I'm not going to have much of a chance to hang out with her, aside from tomorrow evening; I have a big history project due tomorrow, so I'll be finishing that tonight, and I'm working all weekend.

No news from colleges yet. *sigh*

EDIT: Oh yeah, and guess what Clay managed to do with the Wiimote? Break the hundred-year-old living room window, that's what. My brother, people. Give him a hand.

If anyone can figure out a way to search Google for (or simply produce the title of) a well-known or influential book that is not Catcher in the Rye or Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and was published on July 16th of any year, I will love you forever. The sooner the better.