Did you know that the BBC does a big April Fools’ Day thing every year, planting spoof stories among the real ones? I didn’t. So a couple days ago, when I read the news headline about Nepal’s ban on the manufacture and sale of alcohol during the upcoming elections, I wrote to Cheryl to express my sympathies. She e-mailed back, “It was an April fool joke.” Minutes later she wrote again: “Well, it WAS an April fool joke. Now it’s real.”
I wonder how much The Beeb spent on the story about the newly discovered species of penguins that flies south for the winter. The nature video featured Terry Jones narrating as the birds flew across polar ice caps and landed among toucans in the rainforest. Thanks for telling me about it, Lulu.
I generally prefer printed matter to online material, and next to my bed the stack of books continues to grow. I’m still reading 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann, a fabulous writer. I have a hard time with histories, but he rewards my attention not only with original insights but subtle wit:
“The Taino Indians, Columbus reported after his first voyage, “firmly believed that I, with my ships and men, came from the heavens…” On Columbus’s later voyages, his crew happily accepted godhood—until the Taino began empirically testing their divinity by forcing their heads underwater for long periods to see if the Spanish were, as gods should be, immortal.”
Here are some of the other unfinished or altogether unread books in my bedside tower:
- Swann’s Way (Marcel Proust, two copies)
- Proust’s Way (Roger Shattuck)
- Basic Spanish Grammar
- Chekhov: Comic Stories (I don’t think they’re very funny)
- In Search of Myths & Heroes: Exploring Four Epic Legends of the World
- American Silence (by my ex-husband)
- Several books about Nepal and Tibet
- Don’t Make Me Think: Web Usability
- Steel Drivin’ Man: John Henry (Scott Reynolds Nelson)
- The Heights of Macchu Picchu (Pablo Neruda)
- The Southern Ladies: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830–1930
- Shamans, Witches and Maya Priests
- May It Please the Court: Transcripts of 23 Live Recordings of Landmark Cases Argued Before the Supreme Court (Irons & Guitton)
- Martín Chambi: [Peru] Photographs 1920–1950
- Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language
- Handwriting in America
- The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century
- How the Other Half Lives (Jacob Riis)
- Murder in Shakespeare’s England
- Man Without a Country (Kurt Vonnegut)
- The Cloud-Spotter’s Guide (surprisingly delightful guide)
- To Save Her Life: Disappearance, Deliverance and the United States in Guatemala
- A Grief Observed (C. S. Lewis)
- Getting Beyond Beginner’s Spanish
- Close Range (Annie Proulx)
- The Art Therapy Sourcebook
- The Snow Leopard (Peter Matthiessen)
- Woman: An Intimate Geography
- South America on a Shoestring
- Color: A Natural History of the Palette
There’s even the occasional newage, self-helpy title mixed in there, including Field Guide to Dreams, The Living I-Ching, The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers, and Is It Me or My Meds. And some photography books. And…
I am genuinely interested: if you are reading this (and I doubt you are) would you please add a comment listing the books that are next to your bed? That would make me happy, to read that.
I’m feeling unloved now, so I’m going out to buy chocolate (and eat worms).
I don’t really have that much time for free reading, sadly. And I have only two books next to my bed:
‘Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim’ by David Sedaris (which I stole from you, by the way. I’ll bring it back eventually)
& ‘Bloody Bones’ by Laurel K. Hamilton.
Now, under my bed:
‘An Introduction to the Languages of the World’ by Anatole V. Lyovin
‘The Wadsworth Anthology of Drama’
‘Candide’ by Voltaire
‘Multilingualism in the English-Speaking World’ by Viv Edwards
‘Bilingualism’ by Suzanne Romaine
‘Tragedy: A Very Short Introduction’ by Adrian Poole
‘Diccionario Espaí±ol-Inglí©s’
‘The World’s Major Languages’ by Bernard Comrie
‘Short Fiction, Classic and Contemporary’ by Charles Bohner and Lyman Grant
and about fifty-thousand more.
(Some of those make very nice bedtime reading, when I have the spare energy, but they’re mostly too large to fit *next* to my bed, you see.)
Well, not exactly near my bed, but in the general vicinity:
Stories from the New Yorker, 1950-1960
Type & Typography by Phil Baines & Andrew Haslam
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Ubuntu Linux for Dummes by Paul G. Sery
Javascript for the World Wide Web by Tom Negrino & Dori Smith
Starting out with C++: Early Objects by Tony Gaddis & others
Things That Make Us Smart by Donald A. Norman
The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
The Twilight of the Golds by Jonathan Tolins
TCP/IP Network Administration by Craig Hunt
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki
Professional CSS Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design by Christopher Schmitt & others
The Triumph of the Ethernet by Urs von Burg
Information Rules by Carl Shapiro & Hal R. Varian
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
The Trail by Franz Kafka
and a stack of poems to edit.
I’m a big nerd.
I’m currently working my way through:
The latest issue of The Economist (Oooo! Indonesia at Crossroads! Wow!)
Northern Lights (Also known as The Golden Compass) by Philip Pullman
The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold
Craze; Gin and debauchery in an Age of Reason by Jessica Warner
Quicksilver; Book 1 of the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson
Normally I’ll be gnawing on a few more history/popular science/econ books, but they’re currently all boxed up. I’ve a copy of The Forgotten Man by Amity Shales just waiting for me to add to my queue.
Oh, and I’ve just recently finished Everything Bad is Good For You by Steven Johnson, which does in the first chapter what I’d been thinking I could write a whole book on. Really quite excellent.
Thanks for your replies, guys. Gin and debauchery sound like good fun. Bloody bones, too. Ubuntu Linux seems less of a barrel of laughs.
Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box
Annie Proulx, Heart Songs
Anne Patchett, Truth and Beauty
John R. Searle, The Mystery of Conciousness
Wayne Franklin, James Fennimore Cooper(Early Years)
Paul Stamets, Micelium Running
1000 Tattoos, Ed. Henk Schiffmacher
Description De I’Gypte,
Alchemy and Mysticism, Alexander Roob
1000Nudes, Uwe Scheid Collection
Big Sur and The Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch, Henry Miller
The Flowering of New England, 1815-1865, Brooks
Today was beauty, Sunlight, warmth, cold ocean, mean low tide, sea Anemonies, muscles, rock climbers, sea water mist, naked people, muscles, fat, penises, breasts, pubic hair, mostly white skin, hats, sand and large rocks, A clothed young woman with a boogie board asks if I am numb, regarding the cold water, only my balls I answer, but maybe the rest of me too, I can’t tell, what a pretty day in California.
Hi, Ginna,
I woke up @ 5:30 with a headache planning to take an aspirin and climb back into bed. My glass of water is next to me, but it’s your blog that kept me from going back to bed. Now it’s too late.
You are so funny. Gecka’s movie! I would like to hear a lot more about your j classes or lectures, but that is probably a conversation.
By my bed is little to nothing. My bed has become the place where I sleep, I can hardly read at all any more. I blame the computer.
Crossword puzzles. The Week. Donna Leon mysteries. The No 1 Ladies Detective book(s). The Sunday NYTimes. That’s the active side of my bed. On the other side are the dusty hopefuls. So dusty that I can’t remember what they are except Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck. The other unread stuff includes poetry, a couple of books about poverty.
This says something. Shame. I have been writing, though, and wrote my first so so hard to do op-ed on racism. Thank you for your blog. I love it. Love it.