Think!!!

Apparently it takes medical research and the advice of an M.D. to clue people in to the fact that many of the gadgets we use so constantly these days (she says as she sits at her computer), may not be that great for us! There was a piece on the Today Show yesterday about how people's hands cramp and their necks get horrible crinks from texting and bending at an awkward angle over their Blackberries; how hearing is being affected--adversely--by the loud, close-range barrage of music from i-pod buds inserted into ears; how backs, necks, hands and wrists are twisted because of lack of ergonomic correctness at the computer.

What worries me most about the above "reveleations" aren't the facts, themselves, but that money was spent researching this bit of self-evident information, because the general populace is too eeeeeediotic to realize this on their own, and then--heaven forbid--actually do something about it. Good God, wake up! You'll be amazed what you can learn if you pay just a little attention to what you do every day. Neck hurt? Ears ringing? Bum too big? There are probably little changes in your life that will not only reverse the symptoms, but also make you a lot happier. Just think...and stop being so damned lazy!!!

Lecture over.
~Fischlipps

Oh, and while you're out...

...the kids should be reading, too, right? The good people at the American Booksellers Association have already compiled their Summer 2006 Booksense picks. These will keep your younguns entertained for awhile.

What To Do...

There's always so much going on around Boston that it's tough to choose what to spend your precious little time on. As far as readings go, this is my advice:

At the Booksmith in Brookine:
Wednesday April 26 7PM
RICH COHEN - Sweet and Low
Rich Cohen is the bestselling author of Tough Jews and The Avengers. He was also disinherited from millions when his grandfather - patriarch of the Brooklyn-based Sweet & Low empire - passed on. Droll and declarative, Sweet and Low is the effervescent tale of post-war Jewish Brooklyn, dieting trends in America, corruption, a small business that became a windfall, and a family that became an unnatural disaster.

At Newtonville Books(...in Newtonville, yes):

The debut novel from the author of the highly regarded and acclaimed collection, Esther Stories.

Truthfully, I'm not a big fan of short stories, so I can't tell you much about Peter Orner. However, I trust Tim Huggins' taste in authors and books and think that lots ofyou may, too. Add to that the fact that this evening is part of the "Books and Brews" series, so afterwards you can go with the author and all his local fans, for a beer! Great way to get a kind of intellectual jump on the weekend, no?

If you're still not sure, here's what Booklist said about this novel...
"Talk about stories never told. Larry Kaplanski from Cincinnati is a volunteer teacher in a small, rough all-boys Catholic school in the Namibian desert in 1991, just after independence. He shares a shack with colleagues and is in love with beautiful Mavala Shikongo, who is a kindergarten teacher and veteran guerilla fighter from the antiapartheid 'struggle.' The weight of the brutal colonial and apartheid past is always there, but the freedom story is never reverential, and the taut vignettes, anguished and sometimes hilarious, are about ordinary people now. The novel is more situation than story, but there are scenes that will stay with you forever: the three illegal refugee children from across the border, who only want school, and then are gone after three days; the drought stories; the fence building (Why? How?); the farce of the Cincinnati community that sends an old broken piano "for the adorable little school somewhere in deepest Africa." Orner, a prizewinning short story writer, has lived in Namibia, and his debut novel brings close those far from the centers of power. Hazel Rochman"

Get on out and support your local, indie bookstores!
~Fischlipps

I wish I could say...

I've been on vacation. Of course, I could lie...it is my blog, after all. But had I been away, I'd have different things to report. Best news so far? "Fischlipps" has been spotted by one of the big boy blogs. That of...The Sandmonkey. I have to admit, I'm still getting up to speed on my blog lore, but it's a fact that sm's is one of the best. If you don't believe me, believe him!

Awwwww, poor writers!

I was on my way home tonight, listening to a re-run of "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross and she was interviewing author Stephen McCauley. It was an interesting enough conversation until he got to the writing-is-hell part. I'm so tired of hearing authors say that, are you? Writing isn't something that people can't not do because they're raking in big money. It's something one does for love. You do it because you must. And what came to me tonight is that it's possibly not the writing that's so excruciating, the introspection it takes that freaks people out. Don't they realize that if they got better at that, they could probably save a lot of money on shrinks and anti-depressants? Not to mention, put most of their relationships on a much more mature level.

Being able to make a living at writing is a privilege. Stop whining about it!

When are words not enough?

How many words do you think there are in the English language? Well, I suppose it would depend first on what qualifies as "English" to you. This guy figgers there are almost a million...

All those words.

But sometimes it's good to have pictures, too...

I just saw a group of books for young children that I really like. They come from a publisher in--not surprisingly--California, called Dawn Publications.

Dawn is a publishing house dedicated to introducing children to nature. They do it through books that are simply written and gorgeously illustrated. One entitled Forest Bright, Forest Night won the 2006 Teacher's Choice Award and will lead your little ones through 24 hours in the woods, showing the balance woodland creatures strike, and even challenging the young reader to learn how to count, learn what the numbers 1-10 look like, and learn when and where the different animals sleep. More on Dawn's books next time...

More like Unctuous Metcalfe

Oh_my_God, what a bore!!! The only good thing I can say about The Natural History of Uncas Metcalfe by Betsey Osborne (sorry, Bets) is that I read it to the bitter--and it is--end. Why a writer as adept with words as Betsey Osborne, would pen a book as hopeless and frustrating as this, is a mystery to me. When NHUM (and that's how the "hero" goes through life) comes out in May, I'd advise that you not add it to your summer reading list, unless you enjoy stories about stubborn, self-centered, weak and inscrutable older men. Thing is, this man Uncas, is supposed to be 65, behaves as if he were 80, and from my calculations, he shouldn't have been much more than 55. Nonetheless, he and his wife trade quips that my parents, in their 80's, might have employed...had they been less cool.

I don't know. Maybe Betsey is older and expressing her exasperation with "kids" these days, with their proclivity towards bad grammar and worse manners? Even at my age, those things bother me, but were I to publicly bitch about them, I think I'd use a more engaging vehicle. But it gets worse: Uncas routinely ignores and emotionally shuts out his wife, who's laid up in bed on account of an accident at a book fair (If you've never been to one, I guess you wouldn't understand just how dangerous they can be.), but he makes a friend and confidant of a young woman whom he then gets mildly skeeved out by when he discovers she's a lesbian. He has unnerving encounters with a local nursery owner who's peeved because Uncas wouldn't help him grow pot to ease his dying father's pain, but who treats Uncas's wife with nothing but respect and kindness. It just didn't make sense to me.

In its defense, it got some great blurbs from Stephen J. Dubner, author of Freakonomics; Roxana Robinson, author of Sweetwater; and Katharine Weber, author of The Little Women.
I will at least agree that it was well-written. The impotence of Uncas Metcalfe seeped out of every page of the book. I'm just not sure why I spent hours of my precious time reading about someone with few, if any, redeeming qualities, who to the last word, never seems to learn from his mistakes.

There are just too many other books to read...

~Fischlipps