drupagliassotti @ June 27, 2008 # No Comment Yet
I just finished watching the A&E miniseries of Longitude, based on the book of the same name by Dava Sobel. Mmmm, over three hours featuring a few of my favorite things — tall ships, clocks and pocketwatches, and eighteenth-century costumes and sets. Not to mention Jeremy Irons, who adds visual appeal to anything.
The quest to […]
drupagliassotti @ June 24, 2008 # No Comment Yet
“I have very happy hair. No matter how serene and composed the rest of me is, no matter how grave and formal the situation, my hair is always having a party.”
— Bill Bryson, I’m a Stranger Here Myself, p. 31.
That paragraph is, quite simply, brilliant. I will never in my life write or say […]
drupagliassotti @ June 18, 2008 # No Comment Yet
I went to an author event at the local library tonight that featured Denise Hamilton and Jim Pascoe discussing the collection Los Angeles Noir (I’ve read most of the [Insert City Here] Noir collections, including that one) and writing in general. Although some of the Noir collections are less compelling than others (Toronto Noir just […]
drupagliassotti @ May 24, 2008 # No Comment Yet
Predictably Irrational (2008) by Dan Ariely ought to be required reading. Period.
At first I considered saying “for students” or “for investors,” but what Ariely’s experiments in economic behaviorism show us is how easily our minds and emotions are swayed, and his findings not only have relevance for financial decisions and policy but also for […]
drupagliassotti @ May 4, 2008 # No Comment Yet
Now, this was a book I expected to hate as soon as I opened it up and realized it was written in free verse. Sharp Teeth (2008) by Toby Barlow is a very unlikely debut novel — 308 pages of blank verse about warring werewolf packs in Los Angeles. With love story. I’d love to […]
drupagliassotti @ May 3, 2008 # No Comment Yet
I’ve had a lucky time in the library, coming up with three novels that stand out as unusually satisfying reads: Redemption, The Servants, and In the Woods. All three tell stories with deeper connotations, which seems to be what I’m in the mood for right now.
Redemption (2007) by Lee Jackson is a near-future, dystopic […]
drupagliassotti @ April 2, 2008 # No Comment Yet
I read the script for Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street back in my high-school theater arts class, which would have been ‘83 or ‘84. And now I’ve just seen the 2007 movie. I liked it. Which is disappointing. I should have loved it.
I mean, what’s not to love? Serial killers. Cannibalism. […]
drupagliassotti @ March 27, 2008 # No Comment Yet
I’m, er, a little obsessive about self-improvement and uncluttering. Back when I had a TV and a cable subscription, I loved to watch Clean Sweep. Oh, the wicked schadenfreude of groaning over other people’s horribly cluttered houses and getting a glimpse into their secret lives and hang-ups as Peter Walsh gently urged them to […]
drupagliassotti @ March 21, 2008 # 2 Comments
This week’s nonfiction:
Happier by Tal Ben Shahar is based on his Harvard class on positive psychology. It’s a short, accessible book that offers a way to consider one’s level of happiness, the impediments to it, and ways to attain it. A good introduction to the subject, although if you’ve read much positive psychology, you’ll find […]
drupagliassotti @ March 17, 2008 # No Comment Yet
“I learned recently that some 7,500 people have signed up to donate their bodies to ‘Body Worlds’ for plastination and display, a figure that makes the Body Farm’s one thousand donors seem paltry by comparison. Given that these plastic cadavers could have nearly the same longevity as nuclear waste, I can’t help but wonder two […]