October 24, 2006
Dinner tonight
Tonight, I am commemorating the Hungarian Revolution by cooking a Hungarian meal for Stu, Curtis and Erin. Menu as follows: Cucumber Salad with Sour Cream (Tejfeles uborkasalata), Chicken Paprikas (Csirkepaprikas) with potato dumplings and Hungarian Apple Strudel (Almasetes) for dessert. Like most of my culinary escapades, if it’s good it will be very very good, and if it’s bad it will be horrible.
Quandary of the day: how did a package sent via surface mail by Stuart’s Mum and Dad in the Northwest of England posted on Friday October 20th appear in our mailbox on Monday October 23? The postal system has much in common with my culinary escapades, but is all the more capricious.
October 24, 2006
Board Games
Diane Setterfield is in The Globe today. Also, The Report on Business’s Board Games is out, which is particularly exciting as some of the research from the project I worked on this summer went toward it. Remember my corporate governance warrior alter-ego?
October 23, 2006
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
I think some of my insomnia last night could be attributed to the fact that I was on the cusp of finishing The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, which I’ve just got to the bottom of now. Remarkable before anything else is how positively bookish is The Thirteenth Tale. It’s such a pretty book with a pile of books gorgeously illustrated on the dustjacket, and wonderful old-school patterned endpapers. Story starts in an antiquarian bookshop, narrated by a biographer about the life of a famous writer. Numerous 19th century novels are alluded to throughout, which would be especially charming to fans to such novels. And here we’ve also got a good old-fashioned mystery, with something a bit genre about it. So Setterfield is basically appealing to dorks the world over, but the mainstream will also approve, which is probably why she’s has got herself a flying-off-the-shelves bestseller.
Now The Thirteenth Tale is not a flawless novel. It’s Setterfield’s first book, which is sometimes written all over its pages, and the prose was clunky in places. I get the sense that its charm is its greatest appeal; I certainly loved it for its bookishness. Amateur biographer Margaret Lea, raised in a bookshop, is summoned to write the biography of Vita Winter, “this century’s Dickens”. Winter doesn’t get fast to the point, and by her story, we are led round in circles. This is a story of twinship, dilapitated manor houses, incest, madwomen stowed in various parts of houses, ghosts, murderers, wayward governesses and foundlings. Setterfield plays her fairly conventional material in new and surprising ways, with excellent control as the circles begin to tighten and we zero in on all unsaid. With the sort of plot that has been twisted time and time again, Setterfield manages to twist hers in a new way and I admit that I didn’t see it coming.
I am curious to see what Setterfield will do next. How will she fare with a more conventional form of literary fiction? Will she pull off something similar in her next book? In terms of novelty, she will be hardpressed to out-do The Thirteenth Tale, and she could possibly produce something absolutely awful in an effort to do so. Her story is interesting- read her profile in The Guardian. Of course, we judge her by what she’s done, not by what she’s yet to do. Setterfield might just be a flash in the pan, but The Thirteenth Tale is still a pretty entertaining read.
October 23, 2006
According to the COED
curly-grass fern: n. a fern of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and New Jersey, schizaea pusilla, with wiry, grass-like fronds.
Is it not odd that this fern knows to only grow in places whose names start with some form of “new”, even though the places are pretty far apart and/or are separate landmasses?
October 22, 2006
Pickle Me This turns 6!
It’s a big week here in PickleTown. You’ve probably noticed that Pickle Me This has had a makeover. What you might not be aware of is that Pickle Me This turns six years old this week! Though this blog has only lived here since March 2005, we’ve have been around longer than I’ve known the word “blog”, in a variety of incarnations. Not that you’ll be able to find them easily. The last thing I need is someone airing out my filthy early-twenties-angst dirty laundry. No way. We’re all cleaner-than-clean here at Pickle Me This now, but even though our history is mostly inaccessible, it is loooong. So let us celebrate. All birthday greetings may be dropped in the comments box, of course.
October 22, 2006
Mochi sick
I thought Leah McLaren used her platform for good this week. On orgies of prizes. And the Hungarian Revolution is all over the news.
This weekend has been quiet and rainy, and I’ve been working all day since I woke up this morn. None of this bodes well for an interesting summation, but we did have sushi yesterday and it was delicious. Afterwards, we went to the Korean grocery store and got meron pan, Japanese curry and so much mochi we made ourselves sick. Friday night our basement neighbour woke us up at 4:30 screaming and crying. I could tell you more, but it only gets duller. Such is life, at the mo.
October 21, 2006
Saint Drabble
Am OUTRAGED by this sorry excuse for a review of The Sea Lady in today’s G&M. All right, not that I’ve actually read the novel in question, because as I explained previously, I am waiting to savour it. But I’ve still got a right to outrage. My two main points are these: that the review gets the main character’s name wrong throughout, and that the “review” is mainly composed of excerpts of Drabble’s prose out of context. The scant criticism seems mainly to do with too many facts and too many mermaids, and little consideration of what Drabble might have intended of her devices. This review seemed unfair to me, though I will admit I’m perhaps a bit protective.
October 20, 2006
the lawn mower that is broken
It is curious that I no longer require the use of an index and can remember that the explanation for “that vs. which” lies on page 59 of my Strunk and White, and yet I never can remember what the explanation is.
October 20, 2006
Bits
Evening rolls in earlier this time of year, and walking home down darkened streets, I am attracted to light like a moth is.
The uncanny is the flipside of reason, all that which refuses to be contained within knowledge, and so, consequently, if new learning serves to bring about further bewilderment, the Enlightenment would have been a most perplexing period indeed.
I never expected to discover myself like this, still in bed half-way through a Friday morning, with you seven hours ahead of me indefinitely, part-way around the world.
October 20, 2006
Growing up in Las Vegas, England seemed so far away
There’s lots of good pop-music news in The Guardian today. My favourite is the review of the new Robbie Williams’ album. Apparently “Rudebox” is not very good. I quote (rather extendedly, but it’s funny): “…it’s hard to think of a song more likely to curb the listener’s generosity of spirit than Rudebox’s closing “secret” track, Dickhead. A woeful sub-Eminem rant, it features Williams gallantly threatening to set his retinue of bouncers on anyone who dares to criticise his music. By the time it concludes, puzzlingly, with the singer shouting “I’ve got a bucket of shit! I’ve got a bucket of shit!”, one feels less inclined to say the kind thing than the cruel thing: you don’t need to tell me that, pal, I’ve just spent the last hour examining it.” An excerpt on Razorlight in Japan, which is exciting, because that’s where Stuart and I first saw them, and because their wonderful “America” is predicted to be the UK number one this week. And, finally, I had no idea the Killers’ new album was a mormon rock concept album.
I’m honestly so glad the forces conspired to send me two (2!) rejection letters in one day yesterday. No sense in dragging out my failures for weeks, and to buckle down and onward then. My big project has lately developed a new cohesion and I wrote a lovely little essay yesterday, and so I am not so disheartened. I’m still reading Nixon in China, and of course a novel on the side. Penelope Lively’s Heat Wave. She really is one of my favourite authors; she’s never aloof and it’s as though she conjures her stories from my preoccupations, but perhaps that’s a sort of self-absorbed way to regard them. Next up is The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, which is the most beautiful new book I’ve come across since The Middle Stories or Elegance. It has the most gorgeous endpapers. I can’t wait to read it.
Another article about the blighted East Midlands, Nottingham’s urban decay and suburban gangs (big ups the Basford massive!). Interesting from an urban development point of view, but all the same, we lived there and it wasn’t so bad.
