With the typical bluntness of many Russian authors — but none of the complex sentence structure and pretense of Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, for instance, IMHO — the reader climbs into Shukov’s (as he’s called) shoes. His cold, cold boots stuffed with rags, which he is allowed to dry on the stove every third night. We put on his scanty and ragged clothing (anything more than regulation will be taken away) against the chill, and our muscles ache from the hard work of laying bricks in weather so frigid that the mortar freezes if the work’s not completed quickly. The turnip broth turns cold on the table and the bread freezes solid.

Did I mention it’s cold? Siberian cold? Yes? Perhaps I stress this fact because I read this book, the WHOLE book, during a very slow day of volunteering for the El Paso County primary elections, held in a room whose AC was powerful enough to personally contribute to global warning. The volunteer next to me pulled up his hood. I rubbed my hands between my legs as I read. I felt Shukov’s pain.

As, of course, the reader is meant to. The book was one of the first that told the inside story of the Soviet work camps, and was therefore quite shocking and influential. Today, it remains so, but for different reasons. Yes, the gulag depicted is an awful place to be: I’d chose hell over this place, because I’d rather sweat to death than feel ice crystals forming in my blood. But what I found amazing was Shukov and his fellow prisoner’s attitudes toward their imprisonment. Illustrating the ultimate in human adaptation, they don’t rail against their unjust treatment. There’s nothing to be done, after all. They get by, they trade cigarettes, they finagle extra meal portions, they stamp their feet in the cold, they pester the guards. Although I’m hardly an expert, their attitude of basic survival — even cheerful survival when they can — seems so very Soviet. They allow themselves to be molded be the camp, accepting what they cannot change. They work the system when they can, but they sigh and let the system work them when they can’t. They’ve seen what disobedience causes, and it’s often not worth the high price. In other words, they accept that they’re pawns in a machine that eats pawns for breakfast, so they squeeze joy out of camaraderie, nicotine and the absence of pain.

Read in honor of the author, who died Aug. 3, 2008. I’m sorry only his passing caused me to take up his work, which I find clean, concise and cutting. Oh and cold. Very, very cold. Brrr.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Book club selection

But I’m self-aggrandizing, I know. The sharp, artful voice and aching melancholy of Cormac McCarthy has been there since he set pen to page, continued to be there as he won the National Book Award and wasn’t discovered when MY eyes met his words. All the Pretty Horses, written in 1992, proves that. However, I can’t help but feel again that I have stumbled upon something momentous, something meant just for me in a small way, something beautiful that will make my eyes twinkle and my voice sigh when I try to convey just how remarkable an accomplishment All the Pretty Horses is.

But McCarthy describes that startling feeling of discovery better than me in his stark, biting dialog.

“I never knowed there was such a place as this.
I guess there’s probably every kind of place you can think of.
Rawlins nodded. I wouldn’t have thought of this one, he said.”

In this case, the two main characters — teenagers from Texas ranches who travel into Mexico looking for work as cowboys — have found a level of pain and misery and degradation previously unimaginable. Their coming-of-age trek has been blown off course by the harsh desert wind, slapped about by the hand of fate, which knocks out of them the idea that they’re entitled success, happiness, even life. It all begins with a chance meeting with a younger stranger who claims his name is Blevins, and that one chance snowballs through love, talent, destiny, friendship, hope and crushing loss until we wind up in a place that’s brutal and bloody yet truthful.

And somehow beautiful:

“He picked out the smallest doe among them and shot her … The sky was dark and a cold wind ran through the bajada and in the dying light a cold blue cast had turned the doe’s eyes to but one thing more of the things she lay among in the darkening landscape. Grass and blood. Blood and stone. Stone and dark medallions that the first flat drops of rain caused upon them. He remembered Alejandra and the sadness he’d first seen in the slope of her shoulders which he’d presumed to understand and of which he knew nothing and he felt a loneliness he’d not known since he was a child and he felt wholly alien to the world although he loved it still. He thought the world’s heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world’s pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower.”

Only McCarthy could explain to me this masculine strength and honor and adventure so deftly, me! Who usually shies away from Westerns and is allergic to horses. Even I can see how the stark lines (and again, stark prose) of the landscape and of these characters’ lives are somehow more telling, more primal than every flowery, curl-i-que tale. The latter rely on embellishment and literary trickery to establish depth. Whereas the pure, beautiful depth of McCarthy’s work aches in your bones and raises goosebumps on your skin.

I’m afraid to say there’s going to be lots more Cormac McCarthy on my plate and on my bookshelves in the future. Anyone know which one I should tackle next?

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Buy the hardcover

I can’t, however, stop myself from thinking that certain books are more audio-y. I wouldn’t want to hear something dense or intellectual through my earbuds, because I’m usually exercising, painting, sewing or otherwise physically engaged while listening, unable to give it my full attention. So audiobooks are my vacation stories: historical fiction, westerns, sci fi, chick lit. My version of a summer blockbuster movie — pure entertainment and a gripping tale.

This work of science fiction didn’t disappoint. It’s the story of three modern-age childhood friends who experience a unique era of the Earth, when some sort of field thingy blots out the stars and places the planet in a static time-warp thingy. (For descriptions of the plot that don’t involve the word “thingy,” pick up the book. HE makes it all make sense.) In other words, while only minutes go by on Earth, thousands of years pass in the outside universe. Suddenly, the fact that the sun will go supernova in a few billion years becomes vitally important, and human culture reacts in such interesting ways when they know their days are numbered and they’re powerless to stop it.

“Or are they?” says the blockbuster movie announcer man in his booming voice. The three main characters march toward their doom, each doing their own thing to change the world’s destiny, and a terrific suspense (and suspense of disbelief) builds. It was really a fun story, a tale that ended in a nice sequence opp that I might just download next time around.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars - Book club vacation reading

Does free speech tend to move toward the truth or away from it? When does it evolve into a better collective understanding? When does it collapse into the Babel of trolling, the pointless and eristic game of talking the other guy into crying “uncle”? Is the effort to control what’s said always a form of censorship, or might certain rules be compatible with our notions of free speech?

One promising answer comes from the computer scientist Jon Postel, now known as “god of the Internet” for the influence he exercised over the emerging network. In 1981, he formulated what’s known as Postel’s Law: “Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others.” Originally intended to foster “interoperability,” the ability of multiple computer systems to understand one another, Postel’s Law is now recognized as having wider applications. To build a robust global network with no central authority, engineers were encouraged to write code that could “speak” as clearly as possible yet “listen” to the widest possible range of other speakers, including those who do not conform perfectly to the rules of the road. The human equivalent of this robustness is a combination of eloquence and tolerance — the spirit of good conversation. Trolls embody the opposite principle. They are liberal in what they do and conservative in what they construe as acceptable behavior from others. You, the troll says, are not worthy of my understanding; I, therefore, will do everything I can to confound you.

Via Shakesville.

The romance of the Old West with modern luxury in Kings Deer
BY KATE JONUSKA - SPRINGSHOUSES.COM

It was 1891 in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona, deep in the Gold Rush era of the American West, and Jacob Waltz lay dying. With his last indrawn breathe, the legend says, he told a friend about the location of a gold mine he’d found, drawing a map to the treasure trove of riches the mine contained. But she never tracked down the treasure, nor could the dozens of others who sought it.

So the fanciful and fascinating legend of the Lost Dutchman Mine began, and so it spins out to this day, perfectly encapsulating modern Americans’ idea of the Old West: rugged, romantic, epic and slightly whimsical.

But in this week’s spotlight home in Pine Creek, historical inspiration from tales of the Old West combine with modern style to create a different kind of gold mine: a home that tastefully mixes splashes of western style and high-end building materials. In short, a treasure for any family, listed by Mark Pledger of Prudential Professional REALTORS for $1.2 million.

“We call this whimsical rustic elegance,” says the seller, walking through the front yard with its wagon-wheel bench, scattered authentic ore carts and an artfully placed wagon, bleaching in the sun. The sellers spent a good six figures on the custom landscaping because, she explains, “There was the standard three trees over here, three trees over there and rocks and weeds. I wanted it to feel like Colorado.”

CLICK HERE to read this article, which printed in Springs Houses on August 2, 2008.

Classes teaching real-life skills equip teens for
adulthood’s true challenges
By Kate Jonuska

You’ve graduated high school. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200. Hold on … do you even know how to earn $200, or how to budget that $200 for rent, food and entertainment?

Despite all the quadratic equations, sentence diagrams and the periodic table of the elements that high school drills into the head of teenagers, are they truly prepared for the Game of Life, able to handle all the random “CHANCE” cards that could be thrown their way?

A teen who has taken advantage of any family- and consumer-science classes — electives teaching real-life skills to fill the scary gap between book learning and adult reality — may be ahead of the game.

“When you can get information that you can accumulate for your own experience and lifetime goals, why not get it?” asks Lori McManigal, the family- and consumer-science liaison for School District 11. “It’s the overwhelming feeling of helping improve lives.”

Food and Nutrition, Relationships, Child and Adolescent Development, Independent Living: These are just a few of the many classes that offer teenagers lessons usually learned in the school of hard knocks, such as how to buy a reliable used car, cultivate good credit, have a healthy relationship or find a meal without consulting a drive-thru window.

In other words, the class covers many of the pitfalls young adults face, helping them avoid mistakes — such as bankruptcy, divorce or obesity — they might otherwise spend years correcting.

“People are realizing some of these (family- and consumer-science) skills are necessary, but don’t really know how to fit it in yet … We’re so governed by the CSAPs and test scores and all that,” says Palmer High School teacher Sharon Nemeth. Of her Relationships class, she says, “By the end of the class, every kid will say this class should be required.”

CLICK HERE to read a PDF of this article, which published in the July 2008 Pikes Peak Parent magazine.

There’s a hole in my neighborhood down which of late I cannot help but fall…
And I’ll bring you further roses
But it does you no good
And it does me no good
And it does you no good

More songs and more info about this British band at http://www.elbow.co.uk.

It is the story — duh — of Oscar Wao, the first-generation son of a single mother from the Dominican Republic. While the Dominicans (especially the men) have a reputation for masculine prowess and womanizing (I don’t know Spanish that well, but the book must have at least six Spanish words for pussy vagina), Oscar is instead an overweight and over-vocabularied nerd of the highest degree. Sci Fi and fantasy novels, comic books, anime: You name it, Oscar loves it, and the narrator inserts these great nerd references whenever humanly possible. Check out the geek speak when describing the binding thread of the Oscar’s family’s story, a supposed curse or fuku placed on Oscar’s grandfather but common in many Dominican stories:

“It’s important to remember that fuku doesn’t always strike like lightning. Sometimes it works patiently, drowning a nigger by degrees, like with the Admiral or the U.S. in paddies outside Saigon. Sometimes it’s slow and sometimes it’s fast. It’s doomish in that way, makes it harder to put a finger on, to brace yourself against. But be assured: like Darkseid’s Omega Effect, the Morgoth’s bane, no matter how many turns and digressions this shit might take, it always — and I mean always — gets its man. “

Yes, this book won the Pulitzer Prize. And yes, it cusses like this on almost every page. And hell yes, I love what the world of literature is coming to. (No sarcasm here. I promise.) Diaz can be simultaneous crass and erudite. While cussing can often be juvenile, Diaz uses it like a cultural weapon and proves he’s doing it deftly, purposefully. The below, for instance, is a description of Oscar’s mother as a girl:

“I mean, what straight middle-aged brother had not attempted to regenerate himself through the alchemy of young pussy. And if what she often said to her daughter was true, Beli had some of the finest pussy around. The sexy isthmus of her waist alone could have launched a thousand yolas.”

An allusion to Helen of Troy and the word pussy on the same page? With vocab biggies like isthmus and alchemy? Wow, or rather Wao.

And while Oscar may be a lumbering, pitiful and heart-rendingly sweet geek, he’s still a Dominican, passionately interested in women, who thinks girls “were the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega, the DC and the Marvel. Homes had it bad.”

I loved joining Oscar on his quest for romance, in his depths of self pity and despair. I loved watching the present and the past of the story unfold, seeing the patterns but being left wanting more, wondering, my mind tripping back over the story to make connections. But perhaps above all, I loved this witty, bantering voice Diaz masters in the narrator. He’s part David Foster Wallace with his footnotes and educated allusions, and he’s part street-level shit talking at its finest, silver tongued and savvy. It’s simply excellent prose, even if you get a little confused at the Spanish sections — don’t worry, everything absolutely vital is translated. Much like Oscar’s life, the novel was wondrous, taking the nitty-gritty everyday and sprinkling some magic dust and cuss words to take it to the next level of meaning.

Can I put this on our wedding registry? Anyone?

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Buy the hardcover

Though I found the novel lukewarm in general, I did enjoy the comparison between the main character and some of her friends who make different (read: not so great) decisions, which accurately portrayed how little things (or things you think are small potatoes) you do in your teens can change your entire life. That the main character emerges unscathed from the morass of high school is depicted as a mixture of brains and luck, which is really what it takes get through those stormy years. At least, so it seems to me in hindsight. I often think that if I was given another set of circumstances or thrown a curve ball or two, it would have been very, very easy to stumble off a cliff, changing my life as I know it. As a teen, you’re really unaware about how precarious it all is and, again, how much pure luck factors into things.

This little teen tale will soon disappear from my brain as quickly as it was absorbed, I’m sure, but it was just what the doctor ordered: Like a sorbet between courses, easy reading sometimes cleanses the palate, making reading fun again after a particularly heavy tome. Not every book has to be meaningful or unique. Sometimes you just want to hear a story, any story, just to reawaken your joy of books.

Books, books, books. So many books.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - Vacation reading

Long story short — unlike my excuse — the book sat with it’s book mark 80 pages from the end for almost two weeks, even though it was an artful and compelling novel, a book worthy of it’s Booker Prize. Tackling vast philosophic and historical issues like imperialism, capitalism, slavery and racism, you might think that the tale would be preachy or snobbish. But instead, the author fleshes out characters that feel right at home in this (to the modern mentality) foreign, brutal and immoral world. The rich son of a trader whose religion is commerce and revenge. His cousin, a fallen-from-society doctor who signs onto a slaving ship, writing himself off into whatever pain he can find. The conscripted sailors, the seasoned and brutal captain, the cringe-worthy depictions of Africans sold into slavery.

All told in a somewhat formal style. In fact, it reminded me quite a bit of the writers of the time period of the book — probably an intentional touch meant to drive the reader deeper into the past. However, the prose lacked the confusing flourishes of the period enough to lull a modern reader in, and the style was often striking and original.

(The slave ship was) a member of a vast fleet sent forth by men of enterprise and vision all over Europe, engaged in the greatest commercial venture the world had ever seen, changing the course of history, brining death and degredation and profits on a scale hitherto undreamed of.

That the ship was a mere corpuscle in this nourishing bloodstream was not easy to imagine for the men aboard her. To them she was a universe of routine tasks and routine sounds — the bell marking the half hours, shouted orders, the way of the waves, the wincing tune of the timbers as they were exercised by the sway of the sea. Forces less tangible but equally determinate worked on the men and they were set in relation to one another in sympathy or antipathy, as happens in all communities.

The title refers to trade, to the blindly ambitious commercial and imperial endeavors of the day, which were sanctioned by king, country and God.

Money is sacred, as everyone knows, he said. So then must be the hunger for it and the means we use to obtain it.

To take something as vile and despicable as slavery and immerse a reader in a world in which the practice is defended, is seen as common sense and morally just — and then to slowly have the characters wake up to a sense of disgust … I believe it takes an author of real talent to succeed at such a large undertaking, especially without denigrating or simplifying the historical figures involved, keeping them human and complex.

Deep? Yes.  Light reading? No. But Sacred Hunger (I agree with what I’ve heard) is just as worthy of critical praise and readership as the other book that shared the Booker Prize that year, The English Patient. And I think it could make just as good of a movie, too, replete with lots of ocean panoramas and violence, exotic locales and people and ideas.

And I think it’s worth the $2.10 I owe the library for the privilege of reading this intense novel.

DENVER - A man accused of checking out hundreds of books and DVDs from libraries around the Denver area and then trying to sell them will be doing all his library borrowing from now on behind bars.

Denver prosecutors say 34-year-old Thomas Pilaar was sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered Tuesday to pay $53,549 in restitution. He pleaded guilty in May.

Of an estimated 1,400 books and DVDs that were taken, about 500 have been recovered.

Denver Public Library estimated it had lost $35,000, while Douglas County said it had $11,000 worth of overdue items.

Authorities were tipped off by a woman who recently bought books on Craigslist and noticed the library identification stamps.

From the Associated Press via MSNBC

When it comes to real estate, money can buy a lot of things, including acreage, views, corner lots and square feet. Having walked through a wide variety of homes in my line of work, I’ve seen some that are no more than a combination of those parts: four walls, location and XYZ square feet.
But one thing that money can’t buy, even in high-caliber real estate, is exquisite taste, something that this 2007-built home radiates. Located in the Northern Colorado Springs Cordera neighborhood, the six-bedroom, four-bath home is listed for $550,000 by Wendy Crawford of Keller Williams Real Estate.
Perhaps jadedly, I expected such a recently built house to still retain that sterile yet crisp new-home smell and lack of personality. But past the earthy yellow stucco and stacked stone columns of the exterior, I was pleasantly surprised by the home’s contemporary and tasteful — yet far-from-bland — style.
“They have very good taste,” admits Crawford, pointing out the warm mocha walls throughout most of the house, the striking highlight walls of red and green, and the sellers’ awe-inspiring art collection. “Very,” she repeats.

CLICK HERE to read this article, which printed in Springs Houses on July 5, 2008.

The National Endowment for the Arts has an initiative you may have heard of called the Big Read. According to the website, its purpose is to “restore reading to the center of American culture.” They estimate that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. ( More commentary after the list.)

Here’s what you do:
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list on your own blog.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (I’ve just read the first)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (link)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (Complete? Really?)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (link)
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (link)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (link)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (link)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (link)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt (link)
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (I tried. I failed.)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (link)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - A. S. Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell (link)
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (link)
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (link)
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I’ve read 62 out of 100. Not bad. But I was really surprised with how few of those I’ve actually blogged about (12) considering I’ve been reviewing every book I’ve read since January 2006.

I think there should be another category to flag: books I’ve never heard of. A Town Like Alice? No idea. But I’ll read it. Then again, I’ll read just about anything.

And one book I’m very proud to have not read: The Five People You Meet in Heaven. I did have to read his Tuesdays with Morrie for a class, but I’m proud I haven’t yet given into this best-selling shmaltz.

Local animal handler brings her love of animals home
By Kate Jonuska

You might think that after a 40-hour week of caring for two hippopotamuses — transporting hundreds of pounds of food, brushing gigantic teeth, cleaning up their, ahem, droppings — a person might barricade herself alone in her home, where no other creature could demand her time and energy.

April Hyatt, an animal keeper for the hippos at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, is not such a person. In fact, her household includes two dogs, two cats, three parrots, two fish tanks and a bunch of “little ones,” like her two rats.

“Honestly, we’ve got a lot of little stuff I end up bringing home because I work at the pet store (in addition to the zoo),” says Hyatt. “I find myself being most complete when I’m around animals. I also pet-sit and work at a dog wash once a week.”

CLICK HERE to read a PDF of this article, which published in the July 2008 Pikes Peak Parent magazine.

I ask because I spent at least 16 hours of the last two days painting trim, which anyone who has attempted such a thing knows is the third circle of hell. (Dante rented, so he wasn’t aware.) That’s a lot of iPod time.

And I ran out of my normal podcasts (including This American Life, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Radiolab, To the Best of Our Knowledge, the Bryant Park Project and few others). And although music is great, I’ve become accustomed to having voices in my head ears. Long story short, I finally broke down and signed up to try a service many I know have been raving about for years: Audible.com. It’s $7.95 a month for the first three months (one book per month) and you can cancel at any time, so I figured it was worth a shot.

So what does one want in an audio book? I pondered. On the front page, there were many books I had on my to-read list, including the new David Sedaris and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. They also had some of the non-fiction books I’d been recommended, like Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA. But the first two I knew had language I wanted to savor, and the last would probably need the parts of my brain engaged in painting if I wanted it to be more than noise. So I went for my version of brain candy: fun, fast-moving historical fiction.

I took the No. 1 most popular book in the category: The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. What the hell? It was No. 1. And it had a bonus. Where for my one credit I could have gotten 9 hours of David Sedaris, with Follett I received about 50. That’s right. Fifty hours of voices in my head, telling the epic stories of the everyday men and women constructing a cathedral in 12th century England.And by the end of the day painting, I’d already gotten through five of those hours, or 10 percent of the book, and found it to be exactly what I’d been craving. The story is light, engrossing and fun, using just enough of my brain to allow my hands to move in their repetitive tasks. For instance, here’s an excerpt of the back story of my favorite character thus far, Ellen:

Her father had been a knight, she told them; a big, strong, violent man who wanted sons with whom he could ride and hunt and wrestle, companions to drink and carouse into the night with him. In these matters he was as unlucky as a man could be, for he got Ellen … (She) grew up in what was almost an all-male household. She cut her hair short and carried a dagger, and learned not to play with kittens or care for blind old dogs. By the time she was Martha’s age she could spit on the ground and eat apple cores and kick a horse in the belly so hard that it would draw in its breath, allowing her to tighten its girth one more notch. She knew that all men who were not part of her father’s band were called cocksuckers and all women who would not go with them were called pigfuckers, although she was not quite sure — and did not much care — what these insults really meant.

It’s such great entertainment, I’m almost considering going around the house looking for other physical things to do so I can continue listening. Almost, of course. But considering that I now have an amount of entertainment exceeding the hours in a full-time work week, I think my home-improvement tasks will be a bit easier for a while to come.

So yay for shortcuts, like this easy, breezy novel about Queen Esther, a young Jewish virgin taken forcibly into the harem of King Xerxes and who beguiles him to the point that he makes her Queen. From the throne — where she’s given little power but lots of almond-oil beauty treatments, fancy clothing and tweezings — she is able to prevent the massacre of Jews in Xerxes’ Persian empire. As a story of girl power, it’s lacking. Esther only gets what she wants because she’s a beauty and she becomes a master of feminine persuasion. (No requests for heads on platters here.) But it was an interesting look into the female world of antiquity, especially of the drugged, catty harem women.

I’m told The Red Tent needs to be next on my list of biblical fictionalizations that flesh out the lives of women in traditionally male-dominated Christianity. And even if it makes me look like an up-tight nerd to put such a book on my list of summer/vacation reads, so be it because No. 1, I’m comfortable in my nerdiness. And No. 2, those chick-lit-reading beachgoers just won’t go to heaven because of their ignorance of the (fictionalized) Bible, right? Right?

Yeah, yeah, I know. I have a lot more about Christianity to learn.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - Vacation reading

Somehow, I don’t think it would be quite as entertaining if I had one that read, “WARNING: Rider has enormous breasts.” Perhaps “Rider has enormous ovaries”? No?

In addition to Gary’s testicles, scooters were decked out with all sorts of witty repartee. If memory serves, there was:

• My other ride is another Lambretta.
• Scooter girls kick it.
• 0 to naked in 6.3 beers.
• Push it like you stole it.

Sweeping views, professional decor create a warm, relaxing home
By Kate Jonuska

People in glass houses, they say, shouldn’t throw stones. Of course, this idiom imagines a glass house as an exposed place, probably sharp and cold, where the world can look in and judge the occupants.

Obviously, that idiom never took into account this warm and comfortable home in Top of Skyway in Southwest Colorado Springs, where plentiful windows reveal a breathtaking view without exposing its occupants to prying eyes.

“I don’t see this much glass in a lot of the homes up here. You take all the trouble to be up here with the views, so that’s a huge selling point,” says Suzanne Holland of Platinum Group Realtors, who lists the five-bedroom, four-bath home for $785,000. Holland points out that the vista sweeps from Garden of the Gods over the city lights. “You feel like you’re outdoors with these views, and you’re almost at the top of the neighborhood, so it’s quiet and private.”

“It’s such a big view. She almost went crazy when she saw this,” says the seller of his wife’s reaction. But thanks to thoughtful planning and landscaping, the couple has never felt that the plentitude of glass infringed upon their privacy or cooled the home’s warm, cozy interior. “They’ve got the trees in the right places so you don’t feel people are looking at you.”

CLICK HERE to read a PDF of this article in its entirety, which was published in the June 7, 2008 Springs Houses.

A teen lifeguard on responsibility, focus and misconceptions

By Kate Jonuska

Photos by Carol Lawrence, special to Pikes Peak Parent

When the final bell rings to let students out of school for the summer, many teenagers exchange books and pencils with plastic gloves for cleaning bathrooms or uniforms with funny hats.

But kids like Austin Ord, an 18-year-old senior at Liberty High School, have found a way out of typical teen work in fast food and retail by becoming lifeguards, a position that offers teens a rare level of respect and responsibility. And it doesn’t hurt that he gets to hang out next to a pool on the clock.

“At my previous job, you were the bottom of the pyramid, with no respect whatsoever,” explains Austin, who will serve his second summer as a guard with the City of Colorado Springs this year. “A lot of jobs don’t trust you with responsibility. You’re there for one task only.”

But after completing a YMCA certification course, a six-hour orientation and ongoing training, Austin finds himself in a position of trust and authority daily.

“It empowers you … Not many jobs certify you to save someone’s life. At a teenage age, that’s pretty cool,” Austin explains. “It’s not just flipping burgers.”

CLICK HERE to view a PDF of this article, which ran in the June 2008 Pikes Peak Parent magazine.

A take-along scavenger hunt for the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo

By Kate Jonuska and the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo

Sunny outdoor fun can always be found at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, and new attractions like the Rocky Mountain Wild exhibit and the Mountaineer Sky Ride are sure to draw crowds. But if your children think the zoo is old hat or need a bit more structure, tear out this creative scavenger hunt to keep them entertained and — shh! Don’t tell them! — learning.

CLICK HERE to view a PDF of the scavenger hunt.

This Booker Prize-winning novel definitely deserved its accolades. Though it took me much, much longer than normal to get through the book (my fault, not the novel’s), I loved every little description, every meaningful encounter, every private thought. Though the story ostensibly revolves around a tragedy of youth where a young relative visiting from England dies, the tale encompasses so much more and paints a thoughtful portrait of India during that time period.

Communism and unions and the division of wealth are seen in the family’s ownership of Paradise Pickles and Preserves. Gender roles appear in the “men’s needs door” allowed in the uncles bedroom, contrasted against his sister who left her drunken husband, who is considered immoral. Westernization: Is everything foreign more valuable than what comes out of India, including people?

But yet, the overwhelming theme is loss, tragedy and guilt. Not an uncommon theme, I admit. But the talent of Roy, her offbeat yet poignant descriptive ability, brings the theme to a higher level. Take, for instance, her description of Estha, who retreats into silence in reaction to his cousin’s death:

Once the quietness arrived, it stayed and spread in Estha. It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy arms. It rocked him to the rhythm of an ancient, fetal heartbeat. It send its stealthy, suckered tentacles inching along the insides of his skull, hoovering the knolls and dells of his memory, dislodging old sentences, whisking them off the tip of his tongue. It stripped his thoughts of the words that described them and left them pared and naked. Unspeakable. Numb. And to an observer therefore, perhaps barely there. Slowly, over the years, Estha withdrew from the world. He grew accustomed to the uneasy octopus that lived inside him and squirted its inky tranquilizer on his past. Gradually the reason for his silence was hidden away, emtombed somewhere deep in the soothing folds of the fact of it.

I absolutely love the irreverence of Roy’s language. Random capitalization. Repetition. Her unique titling of people and things: Estha becomes Ambassador Pelvis with his special-occasion puff; Rahel is labeled a fountain in a Love in Tokyo due to her hairstyle. Roy reaches into the brain to pull out descriptions I would never have dreamed of, but that immediately bring images to mind. For example, the twins’ mother’s appearance is gauged in toothbrushes. As she stares in the mirror, she thinks she could definitely hold one under the fold of her bottom — several even — but her smaller breasts couldn’t support one.

And unlike heavier works by just-as-gifted authors, the words alone are not the only joy of the novel. The story itself will make you ache, both in its occasional sweetness and innocence as well as its tragedy. The guilt, whether deserved or not — in this world, tragedy almost seems inevitable — is palpable. But sometimes the best of books make you feel the worst, right? And despite it being the author’s first novel, this is definitely one of the best.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Buy the hardcover

A letter-to-the-editor response to Newsweek’s recent cover story (picture at right) headlined “Obama’s Bubba Gap: Deep rooted race and class issues are changing the “hope” election,” which published May 2. (See the full article here. Read all the responses here.)

“Obama’s Bubba Gap” (May 5) asks whether Barack Obama is elitist. To be sure, I know the definition of elite, but I still chose to consult the dictionary. “Elite” refers to “a small group of people … who have more power, social standing, wealth or talent than the rest of the group.” By that definition, Hillary Clinton and John McCain are also elitist. And, I, for one, am thrilled! I want a president who is smarter, more talented and more powerful than the man next door. As an average American with a household income less than average, please give me an elitist president.

Becky Balestri Killion
Omaha, Neb.

I whole-heartedly agree. After all, we don’t want a president we can all see as a “drinking buddy,” the point of the icon of light beer on the right-hand side of the Newsweek cover. We have one of those now, and he’s just as valuable in the White House as any other neighborhood tavern drunk IMHO. Even if most the country can’t pronounce it and are frightened of its verdant, vegetably greenness, I’d still like the (left-hand icon) arugula candidate any day.

But I guess I’m not your average American Bubba, though.

BY KATE JONUSKA • SPRINGSHOUSES.COM

Sometimes small is good, like in the case of golf scores or jeans size. But those who claim that smaller is always good have never had a car weather the elements because it lacked a garage, seen family members bump elbows while preparing a meal or stumbled over clutter due to a lack of storage space.

In real estate, bigger is often simply better. And this University Park home in northern Colorado Springs, listed by Connie de Jong of RE/MAX Properties for $999,000, proves how luxurious it can feel when you have space to let down your hair, let down your guard and let a sigh of relaxation drift — through the open floor plan, up to the vaulted ceilings and out the sunny windows to dissipate in the pine trees.

“A lot of houses of this caliber are outside city limits,” says Rob de Jong, pointing out that few homes so close to the city center have .66 acres of trees, soaring views and such private quiet. “The location makes it stand out. The privacy is amazing, and it makes it really unique to border 250 acres of open space.”

To read more: CLICK HERE to see a PDF of this article, which ran May 17, 2008 in Springs Houses, a section of The Gazette.

The title of the novel refers to everything that the narrator, 13-year-old Henry “Hank” Toohey, doesn’t have but wants: the green pastures of the country, grass without lawn ornaments or the clothes of errant spouses who’ve been thrown out strewn about, and Grace, the sharp-tongued, big-hearted girl-next-door he’s in love with. The plot centers on Henry’s quest to bring his brother back from the brink after his fiancee’s death and reunite his parents by declaring his love for Grace in public, reigniting the love within his family’s memory and making things happily ever after once and for all. Yes, it’s a 13-year-old’s logic, but that’s what makes the idea so real, so touching and, of course, so doomed to complications.

Complications include bike riding, television-remote hijacking, seminars on how to take a bra off, haggling with local businessmen (all of whom want you to watch their new cable TV ad; very amusing), sitting on train tracks, neighborhood games of tag, making out behind dumpsters and more. But such juvenile antics are mixed with heavy adult topics like alcohol abuse, unfaithful marriages, death and poverty.

In fact, one of the most vibrant characters is Henry’s neighborhood itself, whose residents and houses are colorful, unique and also incredibly human. Henry’s words can be both humorous and amazingly touching. Take, for instance, his description of the neighborhood church:

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the cavernous St. Ignatius Church in the heart of Holmesburg in sunny Philadelphia. Let’s get ready to worship. The temperature inside is 98 degrees with higher humidity, but it still ain’t as hot as Hell, so pipe down and keep the top buttons buttoned. And shut up. And buck up. Open your hearts and your wallets. Bow down before the three oil paintings behind the altar of St. Julius Erving, St. Robert Clarke, and St. Richard Ashburn. Then light a candle at the statued feet of Jesus and Mary, who slouch and suffer on the altar, their hearts torn from thorns and burning like tire fires set by parishoners one dollar at a time in the name of someone dead.

It’s a quick, fun and interesting read. I’m interested to see, however, how this freshman author can take it to the next level, if he’s done anything recently that learns from this book or builds off his first novel experience. I can’t find anything online, though, so I guess I’ll have to ask my friend to check his My Space page.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Book club selection

Jenna Bush bucks tradition with low-key nuptials
By Maria Puente, USA TODAY

Jenna Bush is getting married Saturday, a semi-historic event that America will not get to see. CNN will not be going live to the ceremony. People magazine will not be snapping cover pics. Paparazzi will not be hanging from hovering helicopters.

That’s because Jenna, the first presidential child in decades to marry for the first time during her father’s term, will not be wed at the White House. One of President Bush’s twin daughters, Jenna, 26, will marry Virginia Republican scion Henry Hager, 29, in an outdoor wedding at her parents’ country retreat in Crawford, Texas, secluded with about 200 of her closest family and friends.

Via Petulant in Shakesville.

The release on Daytrotter of some new songs from the upcoming Death Cab for Cutie album Narrowstairs (available May 13) has gotten me listening to some of their older stuff (Plans and Transatlanticism) with more frequency. I thought I’d share. Like most of my favorite bands — ok, ok, ALL of my favorite bands — Death Cab has thoughtful, intelligent lyrics. Some of my favorites should be playing above if I got my first-ever YouTube embed to work correctly.

I’ve got a hunger
Twisting my stomach into knots
That my tongue has tied off
My brain’s repeating
“If you’ve got an impulse let it out”
But they never make it past my mouth

Ba BAA! This is the sound of settling. Silence. Silence is the sound of settling.

The song also ponders aging (“I can’t wait to go gray”), one of Death Cab’s recurring themes and one I morbidly enjoy. For instance, there’s Brothers on a Hotel Bed.

You may tire of me as our December sun is setting
Because I’m not who I used to be
No longer easy on the eyes, but these wrinkles masterfully disguise
The youthful boy below
Who turned your way and saw
Something he was not looking for: both a beginning and an end

What the hell is it that makes us link love/marriage and death/aging in our minds? Is it because marriage is the death of freedom? Or because marriage will hopefully last until death? Love, which is a life-affirming emotion, is death. Even to orgasm is to experience a “tiny death” according to literary tradition.

Yes, people. This is really this kind of shit I think about when I listen to good music.

“In 1921, the National Census had published. The figures were devastating … In England and Wales there were 19,803,022 females and only 18,082,220 males — a difference of a million and three-quarters. This was far worse than predicted. Already, since the end of the war, newspapers had been running scare headlines about ‘Our Surplus Girls’. By February 1920 the Manchester Evening News was running a report on Dr Murray Leslie’s alarming analysis of post-war demographics, in ‘Husband Hunting — Tragedy of England’s Million Surplus Women’. The Daily Mail caught the story, with ‘A Million Women Too Many — 1920 Husband Hunt’. But with the publication of the 1921 Census the figure doubled overnight, and the Mail’s proprietor, Lord Northcliffe, felt able to publicly refer to ‘Britain’s problem of two million superfluous women’. The phrase — with all its insinuating baggage — refused to go away.”

Much awaited, the book didn’t disappoint in the least with Nicholson’s mostly anecdotal tales of these “bach girls” (pronounced batch, as in bachelorette), surplus women, spinsters and old maids. Yes, there were a lot of negative titles for these unfortunate ladies, who not only had to experience their brothers, fiances and neighbors being killed in foreign lands, but also had to find a way to go through life without a mate — and often have society blame THEM for not following the traditional route of marriage and babies. There simply weren’t enough men to go around, so what was a girl to do? According to Nicholson, lots!

Surplus women studied at the best universities (where they could complete courses, but not receive degrees). They could get office jobs as clerks and secretaries (where they were paid a pittance compared to men doing the same jobs). They could fall into the guilt trap of taking care of aging, ailing relatives. They could set up house with a sister or a friend and become uncomfortably fond of their pets. They could go lesbian. They could go to the colonies in search of single men. They could live financially and emotionally meager existences. Some did, of course.

However, Singled Out chooses not to focus on what these women missed out on or the negative aspects of their spinsterhood. Instead, we learn about women who became stockbrokers, archaeologists, publishers, authors, diplomats. We meet women who took lovers, traveled the world, adopted children, devoted themselves to politics or public service. In fact, these single women transformed society in one short generation. Unable to ignore such a big population, the patriarchy was forced to relax. Women not only had careers and options and freedom, they were eventually accepted for having them. They got the vote. They got respect. They achieved things that it might have taken women a century to accomplish and changed Britain’s conception of women, setting the stage for the women’s rights movement/feminism of the next generation. According to Nicholson, many came to see being a wife and mother as the real cage, a boring existence they were glad to escape. (And some wives shared their opinion!)

And all because their future husbands were killed before they could ever meet.

Bittersweet and often touching, the stories of these women were fascinating reading, sad yet empowering. Singled Out (like Sin in the Second City or Dorothy Parker’s biography — Gee, am I a bit of a feminist, you think?) is the kind of non-fiction I can read all day, without the pressure of a classroom or a syllabus to MAKE me do it.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Book club selection

Local mothers explain their choice to stay at home or work

By Kate Jonuska - Pikes Peak Parent

Motherhood. It is the best of times (when you hear their first word or see their face light up when you enter a room). It is the worst of times (when you feel like an underpaid chauffer or your shirt reeks of vomit). It is also the time of looming guilt, when a woman can question if she is making all the right choices, doing all the right things.

One of the main guilt-ridden struggles moms face boils down to a very simple yet fundamental choice: to stay at home or to continue working. Sometimes circumstance dictates the decision, forcing a woman’s hand, while others have deeply held convictions about what kind of mother they’d like to be. Then again, many will carry both titles at different stages of their lives.

Two local women at different places in the mommy game — one stay-at-home and one working — share their thoughts on motherhood, guilt and balancing priorities.

CLICK HERE to view a PDF of this article, which published in the May 2008 Pikes Peak Parent magazine.

Becoming a big sister, for one important hour a week

By Kate Jonuska - Pikes Peak Parent

Though we’ve become closer as we age, my big sister often seemed to be an evil influence in my life. She teased me, scared me and ignored me, each in turn. She once packed my mouth with dirt, and to apologize, helped me clean it out with MY toothbrush. (Still love you, though, sis!)

I always wanted a younger sibling when I was a kid, but I never imagined that perfect little sister would fall into my lap at the age of 28, when I was introduced to 10-year-old Chloe Mosier by Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Pikes Peak Region.

Chloe and I meet once a week in the morning before school as part of the organization’s school-based mentoring program. From the moment she gets in my car to the time we get to her elementary school, this supposedly shy girl talks my ear off: about the role she had in the holiday play, the seeds sprouting in science class or an upcoming fieldtrip to the Museum of Nature and Science, where she gets to sleep overnight IN THE MUSEUM. She’s sooooo excited.

From the beginning, Chloe and I had a lot in common. We both wear glasses. We love to read and do arts and crafts. She likes helping her mom make dinner; I like to cook.

But it doesn’t really matter what we had in common initially because what we’ve learned about one another along the way has been even better. For instance, because she comes from a military family, Chloe has attended several different schools, though she’s only in fourth grade. She misses her dad when he’s away from home on assignment or for training, which can be for months at a time. She’s very proud of the traveling she’s done, including to Hawaii several times, and she wants to be a zoologist when she grows up.

This little sister of mine opened up over the course of our morning meetings, where we discussed issues like self-esteem and safety, acted out skits, made “me boxes” from magazine clippings and talked about the upcoming challenges of the tween years — all guided by a BBBS representative.

A while back, we were making bracelets out of multicolored beads. Chloe put a gray one on the string for her brother, a green one for her dad and a heart for her mom. Then she picked up a yellow bead shaped like a butterfly.

“This one’s for me,” she told me. “Because I can be shy, but when you get to know me, I’m a social butterfly.” I smiled and put a different yellow butterfly on my bracelet, to represent her.

These wonderful thoughts and ideas of Chloe’s amuse and often surprise me. “What did you want to be when you grew up? What’s your favorite color? Have you ever read this book?” She bursts out with a new question from the backseat almost every time I drive to our meeting. “What do you like about writing for the paper?” she asked recently.

“Well, I guess it never gets old to see your name in the newspaper,” I replied, and we laughed.

It’s amazing how much you can get to know a kid in a scant hour a week, how the hours add up to a real relationship. Chloe has done a lot for me, like finally showing me what it is like to be a big sister instead of just a little one. She brings back great memories from my childhood as well as some of the awkward, painful teenage ones, which I hope she’ll be spared thanks to some of BBBS’s great program themes. And she’s reminded me how important it is to make time in a busy schedule to just hang out, have fun and talk.

So in return for what she’s given me, I’ll give my “little” the little I have: some time in the morning once a week, someone to listen to what’s going on at school and maybe some confidence she can take with her into the future.

Oh, and her name in the paper, just like her big sister. This one’s for you, Chloe!

CLICK HERE to see the PDF of this article, which published in the May 2008 Pikes Peak Parent magazine.

CLICK HERE to see a PDF of all of May’s Fresh Perspectives.

Every thread, every thought is woven together so gracefully. There was a moment at the kitchen table when I read the last page where the art of the novel hit me full force, making me see how this narrator’s personality and world view effected not only way we are told the tale, but the tragedies and triumphs of the plot beneath. In a way, Stevens is the ultimate unreliable narrator: Without artifice or intentional deception, we nonetheless see that his story is not the WHOLE story. While he spends time documenting the philosophy of his profession and his absolute dedication to it (the persona is a suit one never removes except when utterly alone, he notes), the reader sees what the unperceptive, dutiful butler doesn’t: what is really happening in the world, who the people around him truly are, their emotions, their desires.

Take, for instance, Steven’s experience on the road trip the novel centers around. Having rarely traveled far from his employer’s estate and never for simple pleasure, he observes the “greatness” of the scenery in such a unique way, what becomes a very signature way of the character.

“And yet what precisely is this ‘greatness’? Just where, or in what, does it lie? I am quite aware it would take a far wiser head than mine to answer such a question, but if I were forced to hazard a guess, I would say that it is the very lack of obvious drama or spectacle that sets the beauty of our land apart. What is pertinent is the calmness of the beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of it own beauty, of its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it. In comparison, the sorts of sights offered in such places as Africa and American, though undoubtedly very exciting, would, I am sure, strike the objective viewer as inferior on account of their unseemly demonstrativeness.”

Demonstrative scenery? I say! Another great instance is how, because of the jovial character of his new American employer Mr. Farraday, Stevens attempts to master the art of making witty retorts, something too casual and unplanned to be easy for him.

A certain incident “is as good an illustration as any of the hazards of uttering witticisms. By the very nature of a witticism, one is given very little time to assess its various possible repercussions before one is called to give voice to it, and one gravely risks uttering all manner of unsuitable things if one has not first acquired the necessary skill and experience. There is no reason to suppose this is not an area in which I will become proficient given time and practice, but, such are the dangers, I have decided it best, for the time being at least, not to attempt to discharge this duty in respect to Mr. Farraday until I have practiced further.”

The personality of Stevens is so alive and real, despite the obvious typecasting as “the butler,” partially because he doesn’t see himself as a type. Where he is blind, we can see and we can ask. Has he really reached the peak of his profession? Has he really become the ultimate butler he so lovingly describes? Or has his whole life been subsumed within this duty? Is his success actually a failure? Can we not love this character wholly and completely anyway, even as we ache for him?

As I said, the poignancy of this device hit me hard on the last page, at which point I burst into satisfied tears, confounding The Boyfriend. “I thought you really liked the book,” he said. “Oh yes,” I sniffed and blew unattractively into a tissue, relishing the emotion the book released.

Ishiguro, like a star athlete, makes perfection seem so simple. A good author can take a pile of letters, a collection of words, a string of sentences, and create with these simple tools a unique and solid experience, something as real to a reader as a friend, a memory or a souvenir of an eventful vacation. Though I’m a library rat, this is one book I will consider buying, just so the sight of it on the shelf can renew that flood of emotion and amazement this talented author created in me. Just so the joy — and pain — will never leave me.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Buy the hardcover

Now that I see the idea, it seems almost too easy to insert new words into the mouths of Early Modern prints, with their stiff formality and cartoonish nature.

“I IZ SUFFERIN LAWTS!” I love it. And if that makes me an even larger nerd than most of you already thought I was, so be it. I just can’t help laughing when someone so artfully brings academic scholarship down to my snarky level. Keep it up, Sarah. If I were your Prof, I’d totall