http://cathleenschine.com The Blog of Cathleen Schine Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:31:02 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I do miss independent bookstores. But I'm also lucky because I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and the Barnes and Nobles up here are awfully good ones. Still, a person misses a person's local little bookstore. And a person often ends up ordering books on line. Especially ... http://cathleenschine.com/2008/07/18/better_world/ Midnight's Children won the 2008 Booker of Bookers Prize.(click here) I was thinking of Midnight's Children, on eof my most beloved novels, yesterday as I watched Ghandi on TV. Reading it, all those many years ago, was a revelation, not just about India, but about novels. Reading Rushdie for the ... http://cathleenschine.com/2008/07/14/midnights_children/ Here is my friend the wonderful writer Ariel Levy on her brand new GREEN ROOF! Don't you want a GREEN ROOF? I do. It provides excellent insulation and thereby saves energy and money; it helps with storm runoff and so keeps our oceans clean; you now get a tax credit ... http://cathleenschine.com/2008/07/07/green_beauty/ We rented a mini-van and drove up to Hamilton, NY to pick up a Plycraft chair we bought on ebay and we took the lovely scenic Taconic Parkway. Unfortunately, part of the scenery, in among the wildflowers, was a surprising number of state policemen, one of whom surprised us indeed ... http://cathleenschine.com/2008/07/03/speeding_to_morris_ny/ I have been in Westport, CT, sniffing the air trying to discover the source of the most sublime June air, and I've narrowed it down to what I think are Locust Trees (thank you, Nancy) about which, wikipedia tells me, William Carlos Williams wrote a poem that I must now ... http://cathleenschine.com/2008/06/25/second_annual_linden_tree_day_first_locust_tree_day/ Thank you, 3quarks daily! Yes, you give me poetry and essays about black holes, but you also give me this: click here! www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXT2E9Ccc8A http://cathleenschine.com/2008/05/19/salvador_dali_on_whats_my_line/ I did a reading in San Francisco that was a fundraiser for a group called Rocketdog. Rocketdog takes older, less obviously adoptable dogs and finds homes for them. The Booksmith is one of the country's few remaining independent bookstores. Her is a picture of my handsome, attentive, gracious Rocketdog host, ... http://cathleenschine.com/2008/05/17/rocketdog_and_the_booksmith/ A while ago Verlyn Klinkenborg wrote about Angela Thirkell in his column and I was jealous that he liked her so much because I had tried to read her stuff years ago and found it annoying and twee. But my friend Jeanette recently hunted up a bunch of the novels ... http://cathleenschine.com/2008/05/11/angela_thirkell_on_mothers_day/ I was staying at a friend's house when someone emailed me about an article she was translating from Italian into English which quoted some parts of Rameau's Niece. The translator asked me to check some passages so that she would not be translating back into English from the Italian what ... http://cathleenschine.com/2008/04/25/book_worms/ I have noticed that instead of hearing "no problem" (the uncooperative taxi driver's mantra) all the time, I have started to hear a much more spiritually melodious phrase: "No worries." This is the refrain to soothe the anxious Jew. I thought it sounded laid back and Carribean, but Janet assures ... http://cathleenschine.com/2008/04/25/no_worries/