Hahahaha. Mrs. Tishell voices the addicted fan’s lament, season 5 finale of Doc Martin: “One moment you're together, then you're not, then you're getting married, then you're not and then she's gone, but then she comes back, and then you're going but you don't, and then you have a baby, and you're living together and then you're not, and then you're going away again and then you come back here and I can't stand it anymore!”
I saw a stunning rendition of Translunar Paradise this summer at the MAC in Birmingham. It made me want to hunt up the Yeats poem from which not just the title phrase, but also the theme--of grappling with aging--was taken. Here's a fine online version of the poem:
The Tower
Three bookstores explored while wandering around Sacramento, CA. From the Convention Center, you can hit all three in a five-mile walking loop. (Though there is also a light rail system and buses, if you plan to make a bunch of purchases.)
Time Tested Books (1114 21st Street -- between L and K streets). A friendly used book store in the Midtown area. Bright and clean. They offer a nice return plan if you plan to keep a steady flow of used books in circulation.
Beers Books (915 S Street). Sacramento's oldest bookstore, in a quieter area. A good and funky selection of used and new items. Bargain bins outside. Fun art on the wall. Yes, beer and coffee served in an adjacent cafe.
The Avid Reader (1600 Broadway). An independent seller of new books. Friendly staff, good variety and display of books. Located just south of a busy highway. On the same street with several good restaurants.
Check out this 2007 coverage of Sacramento area bookstores.
Last night I watched nine webisodes of Ark. It made me think again about the medium being the message. People bitch about the change to e-readers and PDFs. But reading screens feels no different to me than any other text encounter. I still love novels in paper form, but I like--and read as deeply--having journal articles on a screen. People also bitch about the limitations of the length of tweets, and texting, and FB status updates. But that’s a misleading argument in a couple ways. First, because people have always exchanged short written notes in class or in meetings, and across longer periods of time have swapped marginalia and edits. Verbally, people have also had ongoing conversations, phatic and otherwise, throughout a day. Now these can more easily include people on other continents, not just at the next desk or down the hall. The second way the argument about length is misleading is that half the value of tweets is that they often actually lead you to full-length articles, movies, web pages, etc. So the short tweet itself is not always the endpoint. An interactive change I do see, however, is the one created by streaming media. First the Tivo time shift affect, then the on demand and Hulu type access puts viewing on a less rigid viewing schedule. Now the prevalence of both youtube type access as well as series in web form (The Guild, Ark, etc.) have made visual narratives a small-dose, self-timed affair. I’m not going to claim it either creates or is the result of shortened attention span, but I am going to note that it allows one to use TV viewing--to incorporate it into one’s life--in different ways. It fits into different places than devoting a 30 or 60-minute chunk at the same time each week, at a single, tethered device.
Another November, another InaDWriMo. This year's goals: an extended abstract for a book chapter (1500 words) and short conference abstract (450 words, plus refs). Both due before the end of the month. This will help clear the deck for some longer writing.
Two used bookstores in Tennessee:
Lowbrow: Book Warehouse, Pigeon Forge, TN. A treat to find along 441, the main drag through town, which is otherwise mainly filled with flapjack houses and mini golf. Two floors, with a very eclectic selection—good literary prose and politics, religious books and remainders.
High brow: Burke’s Books, Memphis, TN. Wonderful. The oldest used bookstore in the state and one of the oldest independent bookstores in the country.
Two used bookstores in Las Vegas:
Lowbrow: Book Magician Rather lackluster used bookstore in a strip mall (northwest of the Strip, across for the Omelet House). Good variety of genre fiction, not much in the way of academic tomes.
High brow: Bauman Rare Books: Their website gives an apt description: “In February of 2008 we opened our third location, a gallery in the Palazzo in Las Vegas, which replicates our Madison Avenue gallery in design, inventory and exceptional customer service, but provides the added dimension of being open over twelve hours a day, seven days a week, and has the distinction of being perhaps the only place in the world where you can purchase a Shakespeare folio at 10:30 on a Saturday night.”
Returned from a family vacation, energized and ready to analyze data. The paper's sections are blocked out. I'm feeling better about the lit review. Time to stitch it all together.
