March 18, 2019 at 4:06 am (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Explorers, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Recommended, Sundays)
Tags: Asian American Writers, discoveries, essays, history, nonfiction, Salon.com, San Francisco
Love Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco. Reading the essays in it painstakingly slowly.
Gary Kamiya was one of the founders of Salon.com (still going strong!). An ex-fellow Fellow from Stanford, Jim Paul, used to write for them. As did Chitra Divakaruni. As did Laura Miller. As did Heather Havrilesky.
Self is on Essay # 5, The Harbor at the End of the World:
A 1508 map by Johannes Ruysch depicts South America as the New World, with Asia in the place where North America actually is.
Private beach access for this homeowner along the Mendocino coast
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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March 17, 2019 at 8:50 pm (Books, Eavesdropping, Memoirs, Places, plans, Sundays, The Economist, Women Writers)
Tags: English writers, literature of medicine, London, medicine, nonfiction, reading lists, reviews
As dear blog readers can tell from the date, self has a whole pile of Economists to catch up on.
Today is Sunday and the sun is shining and she’s made good on her goal to spend most, if not all, of today reading.
She’s on the 9 February 2019 Books section, and there’s a review of a really interesting book:
Another book reviewed in this issue (though not positively, lol) is Let Me Not Be Mad, by A. K. Benjamin. Sadly, The Economist does not warm up to its unreliable narrator, but self confesses to being intrigued by this excerpt, quoted in the review:
- I walked over London Bridge in rush hour, faces thronging around me, and diagnosed each one in an instant: Psychosis . . . Depression . . . Lewy Bodies . . . Panic . . . Depression . . . Sociopathy . . . OCD . . . Cynophobia . . . Panic . . . Guam’s. Everybody has something, and now there’s a name for it, even if it’s fear of having something, of going insane, aka dementophobia.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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March 6, 2019 at 5:25 pm (destinations, Flowers, Food and Drink, Links, Places, Recommended)
Tags: Cee Neuner, Garden, indulgence, Redwood City, restaurants
For this week’s Fun Foto Challenge, PATTERNS, self is posting pictures from Lovejoy’s, an English-style tearoom tucked away in downtown Redwood City, CA, only a block from the library; and a picture of a plant with bright orange flowers that just began sprouting in her backyard. This winter saw heavy rain, hopefully in a month or so there will be tons of flowers blooming.
Tea at Lovejoy’s, downtown Redwood City, 1 March 2019
Adorable Porcelain Cup and Saucer, Perfect for Tea!
About to Bloom: 28 February 2019
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 27, 2019 at 8:57 pm (Food and Drink, Links, Places, Recommended, Traveling)
Tags: California, Cambridge, Cee Neuner, indulgences, literary festivals, London, restaurants
Self missed last week’s Fun Foto Challenge. But this week, the Challenge is SMOOTH.
Here are: a sidewalk near Fleet Street, London (smooth sidewalk); a canal in Cambridge (smooth, tranquil boat ride); and sweet potato fries and an assortment of (smooth) dips!
London, Near Fleet Street: 20 November 2018
And here’s Cambridge University, during last November’s Cambridge Literary Festival:
Cambridge, England: 25 November 2018
And here’s a dish from Coupa Cafe, whose owner might be Venezuelan because there are a number of Venezuelan items on the menu:
Sweet Potato Fries w/ an Assortment of Dips: Coupa Cafe, Los Altos, CA
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 24, 2019 at 6:14 pm (Books, destinations, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Sundays, Surprises)
Tags: Asian American Writers, discoveries, history, nonfiction, San Francisco
The oldest skeleton found in the City is that of a female, unearthed during excavation for the Civic Center BART station in 1969, dating to about 5,000 years ago.
— from Cool Gray City of Love, Chapter 3: The Alcatraz Triangle
Fourth Sunday of February 2019
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 22, 2019 at 2:35 am (Books, destinations, Family, Holidays, Places, Recommended)
Tags: crime, memories, nostalgia, novel, reading lists, thrillers, vacation
Lou Berney’s thriller, November Road, is nearing its mournful denoument. The killer’s getting closer and closer.
NOOOOO!!!
Before we get there, however, there’s the 1963 Las Vegas Strip, where Frank Guidry discovers his past and Charlotte discovers her future.
Las Vegas was the one place self associates with “family vacation” — the one place we returned to, year after year, for about five years. We’d stay at a hotel — either the Bellagio, the Venetian, the Paris, or the MGM Grand — and loll by the pool and take in a show. We’d grow fat at hotel buffets. Here’s a picture of self and son, taken about 15 years ago, at Hoover Dam. How ironic that this is the ONE picture she has of a particular trip. And it’s not even IN Las Vegas.
With Son at Hoover Dam, Just Outside Las Vegas, a Lifetime Ago
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 20, 2019 at 10:06 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Links, Movies, Places, Recommended)
Tags: crime, mysteries, New Mexico, novel, reading lists, thrillers
At one point, close to the end of Alita: Battle Angel, self started to see if she could correctly predict the outcome. There was the cute guy (who looks A LOT like one of self’s nephews), the charming father figure (Christoph Waltz) and the Evil Henchman (Ed Skrein). At a certain point, self found herself hoping for a certain outcome, which meant that she was vested. And then she realized she was watching Robert Rodriguez, not Guillermo del Toro. And she suddenly knew the outcome. Which gave her a very satisfying feeling of closure.
Alita: Battle Angel — Five Stars
Now, she is at a point in her current read, November Road, where all characters and all plot lines begin to intersect. And they intersect in what is surely one of America’s most beautiful and most mysterious states: New Mexico. There’s a tiny hamlet called Goodnight that has one sheriff, one deputy, and one jail cell.
Here’s a Wikipedia page about the Goodnight Trail, if anyone’s interested.
The book’s veering into No Country For Old Men territory, with this one crucial difference: the MC, Frank Guidry, is good-looking. AND smart.
Since she’s never read Lou Berney before, she has no idea what authorial quirks are coming into play. She has a feeling, though, that Berney is going to be true to the genre. And that genre is noir.
The writing is of the hard-boiled crime genre category (which is to say, self loves it).
p. 136: Seraphine was fond of Guidry, he knew, but that and a nickel would get him one song on the jukebox.
See what self means?
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 13, 2019 at 9:06 pm (Personal Bookshelf, Places, Traveling)
Tags: Cee Neuner, Japan, London, memories, nostalgia, Philippines
Self’s choice is RED.
Self at 19, with Masako in Shibuya, Tokyo
Red Woven Bag from the Philippines, in Self’s Closet
Self’s Red Knapsack: The Penn Club, London, 23 November 2018
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 11, 2019 at 4:06 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Places, Recommended, Sundays, Weather, Women Writers)
Tags: California, English writers, Mendocino, novel, reading lists
View from Main Street, Mendocino, Today (It rained all day yesterday but today was glorious)
“And hadn’t the Kraken been nothing but legend, until a giant squid pitched up on a Newfoundland beach, and was photographed in a tin bath by the Reverend Moses Harvey?”
— The Essex Serpent, by Sarah Perry, p. 144
This is self’s first Sarah Perry book. She’s quite enjoying it.
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February 1, 2019 at 3:12 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Links, Places, Recommended, Tel Aviv, Traveling)
Tags: art, Cee Neuner, England, Fridays, Israel, literary festivals, poetry
Thanks once again to Cee Neuner for the Fun Foto Challenge!
Last October, self was in the historic English town of Winchester, which was hosting a Poetry Festival. The next Winchester Poetry Festival will be October 2020.
Winchester, England: City Map, October 2018
Tel Aviv Artist Reuven Rubin
A friend made this bag for self.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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