The Next Leader of N. Korea?

Itchycoo Park.

Hidden clues to failure

One of my favorite book sellers is a mostly-remainder place called Daedalus Books. They have a web presence, of course, but I also get print catalogs, and I always enjoy going through them, looking for books that cater to my strange set of interests but not to a large enough audience that they were a success in the market. (Kind of the at-home version of going to the old Afterwords store, RIP).

Anyway, not to make this too long and drawn out, it's always amusing to speculate on the reasons why a book that was published at, say, $39.95, is available from Daedalus for $3.98. Some, however, don't require speculation. Consider the following, quoted from the most recent catalog:

• Are men necessary? By Maureen Dowd.
  
• Glass: A Portrait, by Robert Maycock. "Philip Glass occupies a unique place in modern classical composition." Yes, yes he does. Quite Unique.
  
• Horse Housekeeping: Everything you need to know to keep a horse at home, by Margaret and Michael Korda.
  
• Mimomania: Music and Gesture in Nineteenth Century Opera, by Mary Ann Smart. "Mimomania is a thoughtful meditation on the persistence and transformation of the musical mimicry of bodily gesture ..." I got your bodily gesture right here!
  
• The Quotable Farm Animal, Ed. by Amy Glaser
  
• The Whole Hog: Exploring the Extraordinary Potential of Pigs, by Lyall Watson
  
• The Bastard Boy, by James Wilson. "Who is the Bastard Boy, and why are so many people intent on keeping Ned from finding him?"
  
• Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter, by Blaize Clement. "Checking in on her favorite gray Abyssinian cat, Ghost, she's found a man drowned in the cat's water bowl."
  
• Gascoyne, by Stanley Crawford. "... hunting down the killer -- last seen slithering away from the crime scene in a tree sloth costume ..."
  
• Hanna's Daughters, by Marianne Fredricksson. "This sweeping story traces 100 years of Scandinavian history ..."
  
• (And my favorite this month) The Last Templar, by Raymond Khoury. "... the book leaps (from the 13th century) to post- 9/11 Manhattan, when four horsemen in Templar garb burst into the Metropolitan Museum of Art and make off with ..."
  

This sort of thing helps explain why modern yoof don't read much, anymore.

Oddly ... odd

I don't exactly know why this product struck me ... it was listed on Amazon, among a raft of "multi-function devices." Somehow, it just looks over the line -- like too much function, jammed into a single machine. Not sure; maybe it doesn't strike anyone else that way, but I thought it was funny. It looks as though it were something that would go terribly haywire in the middle of the night, maybe in a thunderstorm, and start frying up catfish or something, carrying out some function you never knew it had. Or spitting out pictures of other people's children.

Anyway, got a dog here on my office couch, so I better attend to her. She doesn't look as though she needs therapy, but you never know ...

Recent Reading

(Updated 2008 06 15)
Once again, on the assumption that anyone gives a damn, here are some things from the recent reading list:

• War At Sea in the Ironclad Age, by Richard Hill. A nice little paperback survey of the transitional era of naval architecture (roughly 1860 to 1905), when countries were still working out the best uses of armor and steam. Although I don't actually know any steampunks, I would think this book would be a must read for them. (Ever wonder what a Scotch Boiler is? You'll find pictures and explanations here.) Odd, 3-D maps of various obscure naval battles, too, like Lissa, the Yellow Sea, and the bombardment of Sveaborg.
  
• Counselor: a life at the edge of history, by Ted Sorensen. Sorensen was "Kennedy's speech writer," as virtually all descriptions of him begin, but he was much more, essentially an intellectual troubleshooter for JFK. If you're a fan of the 50's and 60's, as I am, you may want to give this a shot, despite the occasionally self-justifying passages.
  
• My Battle of Algiers: a memoir, by Ted Morgan. Morgan is the author formerly known as Sanche de Gramont, a name he changed in the process of severing his connections with his native France and generally well-born origins. Another 50's book, complementary to St. Michael and the dragon; Memoirs of a paratrooper, by Pierre Leulliette, unfortunately out of print.
  
• Wars of National Liberation, by Daniel Moran. One of the John Keegan-edited Smithsonian History of Warfare series. Moran writes like an historian, unfortunately, with the last chapter (on recent insurgencies and their like) being especially weedy -- almost as though he was trying not to take any very recognizable position, since we don't know who's going to "win" yet, in places like Afghanistan, Chechnya, et al. But on the earlier conflicts, including Algeria, Indochina, and Africa, it's at least a useful survey. Nice maps, too.
  

Upcoming reading (as in, books I'm about to start)

• An Edge in the Kitchen, by Chad Ward. A big, beautifully researched book on cutlery. If you cook, you need to know this stuff.
  
• Literary Feasts, edited by Sean Brand. A collection of meals from literature, sent by my son and daughter-in-law for Father's day. Looks great.
  

Another Euphemism

The current issue of the Kermit Lynch Wine Merchants newsletter includes an article titled "MEDITERRANEAN BARBECUE REDS." Italian outdoor pinkos? Spanish paella partisans? Lebanese lamb chop liberals?

Market Day

It's Saturday morning in America, to paraphrase the Great Communicator.

Kamper Van Season is Back With Us

Another successful transaction in the wilds of Pinckney.

What do you want to be?

The last page essay in today's NYT book review is a letter from Beijing from an English teacher, Mike Meyer. It describes the government's frantic efforts to get large numbers of their citizens English-fluent by the time of the Olympics. Strongly recommended reading, including this charming bit:

"... when I asked my students about their [career] aspirations, the first boy yelled, 'When I grow up, I want to be a foreigner!'"

Factory Five GTMs making nice noises

Found this on the Factory Five site.

Feeding spaghetti to a dog and laughing