Hour One of Dewey’s readathon:

Pages read: 138
Total pages read so far: 138
Time spent reading: 45 minutes
Total time so far: 45 minutes
Books read: Warren Dotz, Light of India, a conflagration of Indian matchbox art
Total number of books so far: 1

Although naive, perhaps, or even primitive by some standards, vintage Indian matchbox labels captivate with their unselfconscious charm, bold use of color, and often sly sense of humor. Today, they are valued as much for their culturally revealing subject matter as for their staggering variety and visual appeal and finally are taking their rightful place in India’s rich graphic design tradition.

You can read my full review here.

Well, this is it. At 9 am my time Dewey’s 24-hour readathon begins. That’s in a half hour as I type this. I’ll try to participate for about half of that time, since I need a good night’s sleep before tomorrow.

As it happens, this is a great day for this as far as I’m concerned. My husband’s spending the day buried in his own marathon of campaign-building for a new roleplaying game that starts tomorrow. We did the grocery shopping last night and made cookies last night to take to the game (chocolate chip oatmeal!). Later I’ll take a break to finish up some bread baking (to take to the game, too).

I have my coffee in-hand (very important prerequisite). I don’t have a set agenda for what I’ll read, but here’s what I’m thinking so far. Obviously all of my reads will come from this list, since those are the books I’m a little behind on right now. I may focus on some of the shorter books in an effort to feel a sense of accomplishment by shortening that list, but I will probably also alternate that with reading sections of The Gift of Rain, which is a beautiful book but a bit of a slow read for me. Clearly I won’t be cruising through the cookbooks since that requires more cooking than reading!

Just yesterday and the day before I happened to get beta keys to two really nifty games, so I admit I’m having a little difficulty resisting the urge to play those at all today. (Speaking of which, I just had to run off and reset my skill training in Eve Online to take me through the next two days.) But I’m going to have so much fun reading I expect that won’t last long.

First on the agenda: Light of India, by Warren Dotz, described as “a conflagration of Indian matchbox art.” You could call that cheating since it’s more art than words, but I call that getting a gentle start to the day. Now to go check my Warcraft auctions as a way to keep myself busy until the start time in 15 minutes…

Just a reminder that Dewey’s 24-hour readathon is this Saturday the 20th! You don’t have to be available for all 24 hours to participate; part of the day is fine. It starts at 9 am Eastern time in the US (my time zone); I’ll probably be a bit late to the party so I can get groceries done. Here’s some of the most important info from that post for readers:

People who sign up to be readers are committing to reading books, posting updates in their blogs, and if they need breaks, visiting the blogs of other readers and encouraging them. The most hardcore among us will stay up the entire 24 hours and do nothing but read and update, even going so far as to skip showering and eat meals while reading. However, not all of us are that hardcore, and it’s ok for you to customize this readathon to meet your needs. … All I ask is that you be honest in your updates, and that’s about the only rule for readers.

Updating for Readers: This should be individually customized. If you want to spend 5 or 10 minutes updating each hour or every 3 hours, that’s great. If you want to update whenever you feel like you need a break from reading, that’s great, too. If you want to just read and read for 24 hours straight and then write one big update, that’s also great. You do what works for you, ok?

Suggested format for updating: Again, customize this as you wish, but I suggest updating about what you’re reading, how many pages you’ve read since your last update, and how much time you’ve spent reading since your last update. You may want to keep a running total of time spent reading, number of books read and pages read; this could make you eligible for some prize drawings. Updates might also be your typical book reviews, once you finish something.

I’ll probably do little updates frequently, although I might do several per post so as not to clutter things up too much.

So I’ll see you tomorrow!

This week’s BTT touched on Typography. As usual I went around reading a bunch of the entries, because it’s a fun way to spend a little time while drinking my coffee and you never know what entertaining stories you’ll encounter. This week I was lucky enough to come upon book-a-rama’s entry, which included the following video (NSFW language!) on “the impotence of proofreading”. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Chris, for sharing this with us!

Today’s Booking through Thursday:

You may or may not have seen my post at Punctuality Rules Tuesday, about a book I recently bought that had the actual TITLE misspelled on the spine of the book. A glaring typographical error that really (really!) should have been caught. So, using that as a springboard, today’s question: What’s the worst typographical error you’ve ever found in (or on) a book?

The worst single typographical error is difficult for me to answer, since that would require me to have a better memory than I do. However, I definitely know which book had the worst typographical errors in general! I’ll quote a few pieces of my review here, but feel free to check out the entire Review of Myth, Magic, and Metaphor, a journey into the heart of creativity, by Pat Daly. It’s one of the incredibly rare one-star reviews I’ve ever given out. Here’s a taste of it for you:

Around the time when the author starts talking about mythology and metaphor and symbolism, things get strange. There are comments thrown out that make no kind of logical sense whatsoever, no matter how you look at them. Maybe they made perfect sense in a missing context or with additional information, but as it is they just confuse. If anyone can explain to me what on earth this is supposed to mean, I’ll be very grateful: “The Cherokee Indians have a symbol with a star in the middle. The star has seven points and ends with the number 9!”

This is also about the time when she starts making contradictory statements. For instance, she insists that science and technology require inspiration and creativity to get anywhere (which I agree with), and yet says that the more cognitive society gets, the less creative it gets. These two things seem directly contradictory. She says at one point, “Unlike animals, man had a brain…” Animals don’t have brains? Someone should tell the biologists!

It’s about two-thirds of the way through the book that she starts doing this. There’s even a page on which she repeats the same quote twice in two paragraphs, not to mention a whole bunch of missing, wrong, or weird punctuation marks that confuse the quotes a bit. What, did her editor quit part-way through the book? Or did she just not bother with an editor, and gave up editing it herself part-way through?

Not all of that is typographical—mostly the last part—but you get the idea. Repeating the same quote twice in two paragraphs was one that got me, along with all the odd punctuation. I promise I’m not normally so vicious in my reviews, but this book… this book honestly deserved it.

Edited to add: I almost forgot! My favorite errors, of course, are those that are unintentionally funny, and you tend to get those when someone has trusted their word processor’s spell checker too much. This happened to be the case in a book I finished last night, Nathalie Mallet’s The Princes of the Golden Cage. Really neat premise and plot, but she definitely leaned too hard on the spell-checker. Anyway, the most memorable example of this was the man who “raked” his brain instead of “wracking” it. Ow what a painful image!

First off, today’s book review is of Tosca Reno’s The Eat-Clean Diet. Soon I’ll be following that up with her companion Eat-Clean Cookbook, in another week or so most likely.

I’m being a little foolish right now and reading two fiction books at once, since I got a bit slowed down on one and decided I needed something lighter to break it up with.

Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for literature, and I just love her reaction:

The ol’ girl definitely has some perspective on life!

Check out This is the Life: the creepy October edition of the monthly Carnival of Books! If you’re looking for a chilling Fall read, you’ll find some great recommendations collected for you there. Certainly it’ll occupy a windy Monday morning.

Thanks to a super-low-fat diet I’m feeling a lot better, if still waiting for the doc to call me with the results of tests. But it does mean I should be getting back to accomplishing something other than sleeping! I hope to review Tosca Reno’s The Eat-Clean Diet this week, and of course I’ve started catching up a little on the blogs I like to read.

See you all soon!

Mmmmmm. I reviewed Michael Turback’s Mocha this morning. Good stuff. For various reasons the review also links to two other reviews in the blog: one on Turback’s Hot Chocolate, which I also highly recommend picking up a copy of, and one of a particular variety of Swiss Miss cocoa. The latter might seem an odd thing to review, but I do recommend reading Jeffrey’s accounting of it, as it’s quite hysterical.

In totally unrelated thoughts, since I don’t have much brainpower these days I’ve been playing a bit more EVE Online. It took me a while to find a corp. I tried one based on chatting for a while with the guy who was running it, but quickly discovered that while he was a decent guy, some of the other folks in the corp seemed to think it was a guys’ locker room in there. Things that guys won’t say in front of women in person because they’re far too offensive just fly past online; it often seems like when online, most guys assume everyone they run into is just like them in terms of age and gender, and speak on that assumption.

So, I dropped that corp. Not that the NPC corp was much better, but at least there it was easier to ignore people. I figured if I held out long enough I’d find something decent, and I think I finally have. My husband and I just ended up in a corp started by some retired military folk. Funny how I always end up gaming with military and retired military people. By and large so far they tend to be relaxed-yet-focused, and fun without being juvenile and offensive. After all, I don’t mind swearing and trash talk; it’s misogyny, racism and the like that I won’t stand for.

Edited to add: Courtesy of my new corp I’ve been introduced to the delights of 1,001 things Mr. Welch can no longer do during an RPG. It’s tough to pick excerpts with which to convince you to go take a look, because nearly every other item on the list is pretty damn funny. But these are my favorites of the last five minutes, so here you go:

412. I will not try to skip to the main boss dressed like a singing telegram.
521. I will not convince the entire party to play Amish for the cyberpunk campaign.
552. If my character’s drow wife finds I let my neice appear in a Gnomes Gone Wild Video, my death will not even warrant a saving throw.
579. “Pimp out my Death Star” is not a real show, and I’d better believe Grand Moff Tarkin knows this.
616. Even if they are the same cliched acid for blood aliens, can’t load my shotgun with baking powder.
727. Cannot singlehandedly make Starfleet Academy the #1 party school in the Alpha Quadrant.

This is my alt

…a distinct lack of keeping up with everyone’s blogs and my own reviewing and such this week. I’m trying to make it to my tests on Thursday without having to rush the date to the doctor’s, and it’s taking some trial and error to figure out what I can eat without having serious problems. As it turns out I’m extremely glad I happened to have review copies of Tosca Reno’s Eat Clean Diet and Eat Clean Diet Cookbook—it’s perfect super-low-fat food, which is just right when I’m potentially having gallbladder problems. It’s also surprisingly delicious so far. Most such diet cookbooks are on the bland side for my taste, but so far these aren’t. There’s a parchment-baked fish recipe in there that’s wonderful, despite the fact that white fish isn’t my favorite. There’s also a very simple roasted salmon recipe that’s wonderful.

Along those lines, if you’re having problems with fatty food making you sick, umm, salmon is a REALLY BAD idea. You’d think that’d be obvious, of course. But there I am thinking, salmon’s all healthy, a bit will be fine, right? *groan* Thus ensued much pain and a day of mild fever. (I never claimed to be a rocket scientist, and when I’m tired I’m even worse.) Never got above 99.5 F; if it had broken 100 I probably would have been heading straight for the doctor’s. Anyway, since then I’ve been going back and forth between normal and 99.5, and eating super-low-fat food. We made oat bran bread this weekend from Whole Grain Breads and that was PERFECT.

One thing I find really surprising about all this is how much my body & brain conspire to make me do what’s right. For the most part, with a few exceptions that fool my taste buds (such as the aforementioned salmon), fatty or oily food doesn’t even sound good, much less taste good.

But, I’m also really exhausted through all of this, so I’m getting almost nothing done. I’m sleeping more than anything. I think that’s probably the most frustrating part, as I have a bunch of books I want to read & review, T-shirts to make, a project to work on, gardening I want to do. The cats worry over me, which is really cute. I wake up from a nap sleeping on my side and find one on curled up on my hip and the other on my side.

I am hoping, however, to review Michael Turback’s Mocha tomorrow. I did manage to slip one not-too-fatty last recipe in this weekend (well okay, I also sipped it really slowly and had it in several sittings) and I think we’ve made enough out of the book to review it at this point.

Anyway, none of this is meant to be whining, since gallbladder problems are common and generally not very serious (assuming that’s what’s going on, which seems likely). Partly I’m babbling out of tiredness and partly I wanted to make sure folks weren’t left thinking I’d just abandoned the various things I should be getting done.

This time I couldn’t resist snagging an animal meme from bookeywookey. I don’t normally do this much memeing, but I’m too tired to think of anything more interesting this week.

An interesting animal I had:

My first pet was a gerbil, and I had two cats growing up. Hands-down, though, the most interesting animals have been our two current cats, both Cornish Rexes. We got them because neither of us reacts nearly as strongly to them as to normal cats. We read up on them first, though, so we knew they were a bit… different… than other cats. They’re very chatty, for one, and extremely high-energy. (Someone remind me not to get Rexes when I’m old, okay? I’d never be able to keep up.) They both have allergies, unfortunately, and one of them has asthma. They’re just the most affectionate cats I’ve ever met, though, and incredibly clever, if not always so bright.

One of my favorite cleverness stories regarding our cats: They were still kittens, and we’d just gotten them fixed. Of course this was a lot harder on Selene than Cahlash since it’s a much more invasive surgery for girls. We were keeping the two of them confined to our room until they healed up a little so they didn’t rip their stitches or anything. Selene was curled up on my husband’s lap and clearly just wanted to rest, but Cahlash apparently had a lot of pent-up energy from being cooped up at the vet’s. Well, he kept trying to pounce on her, and we kept pulling him off of her. Being the clever girl that she is (she’s more clever than her brother), she took a half-hearted swipe at his butt and watched carefully as we pulled him off of her again when he tried to retaliate. Then she hauled off and—WHACK!—swatted his ass hard! That’s when we realized we were going to have to separate them for the duration.

And yes, this is typical of their antics!

An interesting animal I ate:

I’ve had bison, ostrich, escargot, squid, octopus… I’ve had many of the weird things that you can at least get in relatively normal US markets or restaurants. When I visited New Orleans years ago with my then-fiancee (now husband), we went to a wonderful restaurant where we had, among other things, rabbit and, if I recall correctly, alligator. The manager at some point passed our table and commented with a grin, “we’re having all the fuzzy little animals tonight, aren’t we?” We loved that place.

An interesting animal you’ve seen in the Museum, library, or its natural habitat:

I love cheetahs, and got to watch some at the Smithsonian zoo not too long ago.

An interesting thing I did with or to an animal:

Now there’s an odd question! I suppose the closest thing I can think of is the way our cats deliberately teach us little games. Like, sometimes Cahlash races my husband to the bathroom in the morning—over and over, getting carried back out again each time, until either Jeffrey wins or Cahlash’s attention wanders. Selene, on the other hand, has taught me her own morning ritual. She sits on my right knee while I eat breakfast, and then almost always wants to be held on my left shoulder and cuddled. When I pick her up from my knee she’ll start turning her body in that direction to make it easier for me.

a favorite literary animal (that can be a literary character or a whole piece about an animal):

Darn it, that’s three mentions in two weeks of How it was with Dooms! If this doesn’t get people reading that, nothing will.

I also love Moggett the cat in Garth Nix’s Abhorsen trilogy. While he does provide some amount of comic relief, he’s also kind of scary at times, so he isn’t your stereotypical YA fiction animal.

Anyway, Jeffrey’s coming back from yet another week of business travel this afternoon, and then it’s off to figure out how to eat almost-no-fat for a week (and apparently in the 24 hours before the ultrasound I have to eat entirely fat-free, joy) without going crazy. This turns out to be a great time to have a review copy of Tosca Reno’s The Eat-Clean Diet.

I’m almost as stubborn as my cat

Bear with me for a moment while I quote from a post I made a few days ago:

Insta-food sucks. I end up living off of the stuff when my husband is out of town on business, as he was last week, and it really really sucks. At least the stuff from Trader Joe’s isn’t half bad, but last week I ended up eating stuff from the regular grocery store, and it was so horrid and fat-filled that the very idea of it made me feel nauseous by the end of the week. Yes, that was despite trying to pick my insta-food fairly carefully.

Okay, it hit the point where I finally realized that it’s not normal to feel that nauseous after having fatty foods, and I couldn’t chalk it up to a newfound aversion to unhealthy foods any more. So in one week I go for an ultrasound to find out if I’m having gallstone troubles.

In the meantime, I have to say for anyone else having this problem (since I’ve now read up on it enough to know that there are a lot of people with gallstone trouble out there), that a nice cup of instant miso soup is very settling to the stomach under these circumstances, even when you’ve hit the point where plain oatmeal made with 2% milk is kind of sickeningly fatty (next time I’ll just make it with water).

Well, nothing like having incentive to get healthy, particularly when you have difficulty with self-motivation. I consider this a well-earned kick in the ass from life. Anyway, if you’re wondering why I’m so slow lately about dropping by and commenting on blogs and the like, this is why.