8 posts tagged “vox hunt”

Books:  Show us a great children's book.

Well, really more for teens than children, per se - the heroine is turning 14. But would be fine for adventurous readers around sixth grade age. I read this a few months ago, when I was 30, and loved it a lot... it's very near to Diana Wynne Jones's work. (Which I've also been reading a lot of lately, and meaning to post about.)

Show us something fluffy. 

This is only, like, the canine love of my life! :D My dog Arwen. She's a Shetland Sheepdog. This picture was taken when she was about a year old; now she's 5. She basically still looks like this, with more fluff around her ears and a slightly darker "mask" around her eyes. Arwen is extremely intelligent - it takes getting a trick right once for her to learn it - and a great watchdog. She has warm little brown eyes and a sweet expression. But she's shy, and doesn't like to have her picture taken, so this will have to do.

 

Video: Show us a movie or show that you absolutely can't stand watching.
Submitted by Ross.

I'll show you one of each. Both these things irritate AND nauseate me, which is a very special combination.

 

 

 

Hocus Pocus is, at least, creative, not smarmy... it just happens that the witch characters in it are like nails on the chalkboard of my mind in almost every possible way. (Well, except for the part where Sarah Jessica Parker starts shouting, "Amok! Amok!" - that's kind of entertaining.)

7th Heaven, on the other hand, is a pernicious, pandering piece of crappy pablum that should have been cancelled years ago, but managed to sludge along for more than a decade. As far as I know, it's gone this year. GOOD RIDDANCE. (I do have a few friends who used to love to watch it... to make fun of it. I've only just started to forgive Jessica Biel for her appearance on this show, and only because she's been good in everything else in which I've seen her.)

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go clean my brain.

Video: Show us some amazing costumes from a TV show, film, music video or performance.

I can't show you anything better than Kabuki. I never saw any Kabuki before a few years ago, when I caught a lengthy special that was shown on either Ovation or Trio (and which I haven't seen since). Something about its strange beauty clutches at my throat.

 

 

Outside of Japan, YouTube may actually be the best place to see Kabuki. The public library in my area has been voted the best in the country several times, including last year, but they have almost no recordings of Kabuki aside from a few minutes shown in a half-hour special on Japanese culture, which also covers Noh and Bunraku. Noh kind of creeps me out, but Bunraku is interesting if you give it a chance.

I've been meaning to post the following for a few days, and since it's marginally related (there are samurai in Kabuki, right?), I'll make it part of this post. Blame Colbert.

 

Samurai Song

When I had no roof I made
Audacity my roof. When I had
No supper my eyes dined.

When I had no eyes I listened.
When I had no ears I thought.
When I had no thought I waited.

When I had no father I made
Care my father. When I had
No mother I embraced order.

When I had no friend I made
Quiet my friend. When I had no
Enemy I opposed my body.

When I had no temple I made
My voice my temple. I have
No priest, my tongue is my choir.

When I have no means fortune
Is my means. When I have
Nothing, death will be my fortune.

Need is my tactic, detachment
Is my strategy. When I had
No lover I courted my sleep.

- Robert Pinsky

Book:  Show us a great non-fiction book.

 

The elegant cover design above, which I think might be the UK edition, is much nicer than the design on the copy I have:

Picard is an elderly lady; this was her first book, but she followed it with Dr. Johnson's London and Elizabeth's London. I have all three in hardcover. Restoration London is a compendium of surprising facts, arranged by topic, that show readers both how close we are to the people of 350 years ago, and how very far apart. The only books I've read that were similar were the History of Private Life series published around 1990, but this one is just as concerned with relaying the sights and sounds of a famous city as with explaining the arrangements of typical households. Picard's voice is elegant and witty, but matter-of-fact. I know of several other works of popular history that I could recommend, but I usually start here.

If you're not into history, maybe you like art? My fiance got me this book for my birthday two years ago:

 

 

I'm also enjoying this book, Beautiful Evidence, which I have been meaning to post about. It was recommended by Staceyjoy of Red Lipstick. It's a difficult book to explain, and not a particularly easy read, but it's interesting and lovely. The author's aim is to show how to best use visual presentations of information. Among his examples are pages from the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (which I probably just misspelled), Galileo's published observations of Jupiter, a map showing directions to a Kyoto school of flower arranging, the Diamond Sutra, an interesting ninth-century drawing of a centaur whose body is formed by shaped text, a map published in the mid-nineteenth century that shows Napoleon's advance into Russia and the concurrent troop losses, and several engravings and woodcuts by Durer. Even if you wind up uninterested in the text, it's glorious to page through, big and colorful, printed on thick creamy paper.

 

Video: Show us a documentary or film based on a true story that really moved you.

You can catch this on channels like HBO and IFC or Sundance once in a while. It's a documentary about a transgendered man, Robert, who is dying of untreatable ovarian cancer. This would be ironic if it weren't so damn sad. The film follows him and his partner, a trans woman named Lola Cola, as well as various friends and family, in the last months of his life. I cried buckets and buckets at the end.

The only documentary that made me cry more in recent memory was a special that the Discovery channels run now and then... sometimes on TLC, sometimes on Discovery Health, etc. It's called The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off & is about a totally charming and funny guy named Jonny Kennedy, who lived his entire life with a severe skin disease. But while The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off is extraordinarily moving, I think Southern Comfort has more social relevance.

(I should add that I am, in one way, a shallow person: I usually try to avoid TV shows and movies that I think will be upsetting. So plenty is under my radar: Born Into Brothels, for example, and the recent movie about Sophie Scholl, a young woman who was tried, sentenced, and executed within a few days of distributing anti-Nazi propaganda in WW2 Germany. I know about these things but I would rather not watch movies about them. This is a shift in the last few years. Until pretty recently, I was up for anything challenging and/or reeking of human misery or emotional extremes. Bring it on! It's Serious Art! But it was really bad for me, personally... anxious depressives shouldn't watch things that make them more anxious and depressed. So I don't, anymore.)

Book: Show us one of your favorite works of fiction.

I could probably do this every day for months. I read, like, A LOT. I don't even put everything I read on my Vox, or on my crafting Vox (I put almost all of the craft books over there, unless I fall deeply in love with one, in which case I will also list it here).

 

 

 

I love this particular book because... it's not remotely realistic, and if it were classified by genre, people would probably argue about whether it's science fiction or fantasy. It has two storylines, which initially seem unrelated, and it's unexpectedly devastating. It's full of ideas, it sticks to its own rules, and it ends the only way it can end. Murakami has other books I love and a few to which I'm indifferent, but while Norwegian Wood fights for my affection, I loved this one first and I think I will always love it best. I read it when I was three miles of bad road. Six, maybe. There were a few others that helped straighten me out more, but this one opened new vistas as far as the type of books I read and the qualities I appreciate in writing.

The top four that are currently over in the book column were in contention for inclusion here - the two I've already mentioned, plus Jonathan Carroll's Sleeping in Flame (which everyone should read) and Angela Carter's Love (which is a very unpleasant book that I loved a decade ago, when I think I was maybe more like ten miles of bad road). Stories of intense emotional violence and mental unbalance attracted me, and Love seriously qualifies as both. However, I haven't read either in a long time... I'm relatively certain that I would still like Sleeping in Flame almost as much as I did when I read it, but I'm not sure about Love.

I forgot to list Nicholas Christopher's Veronica, another book I loved when I read it. But it's been 11 years; maybe I will feel differently if I try it again.

I am enjoying Against the Day, now, but it is very slow going. I didn't read any Pynchon until a year or so ago, when I fell head-over-heels for The Crying of Lot 49. There's so much I love about that book that I won't even try to write about it just now, except to say that for me the highlight was "The Postman's Tragedy."

Video: Show us your favorite commercial of all time.
Submitted by Jane of Art.

 

"You can't have her! I LOVE her!... Weeping, weeping!"

Lately, I'm also pretty fond of this one:

 

"Prancing nougat in the meadow!"