spinning-jennie: Books Archives

spinning-jennie: Books archives

I Can Cook
My mom sent us an old cookbook of mine that she'd managed to keep all these years. Copyright 1980, and the photos are very post-groovy. I scanned the cover and one of the inside plates for your retrotainment.

A little Googling uncovers that Sophie Kay Petros was a semi-popular television home economist (at least in Chicago and Milwaukee). The book was also illustrated by the now-retired Bill Sanders, nifty.

01/11/08 09:26 PM in Books | Comments

Consumption
I've started recording my finished books for 2008 (link permanently on sidebar). This year my "resolution" is to stop using reading as escapism only and start absorbing some toothier stuff again, so the list might actually be shorter than in 2007.

I'm also attempting a movie list, only titles I haven't seen (or not seen in entirety, or not seen Riff'd) before. We'll see how it goes, though; I've tried keeping tally multiple times in the past, unsuccessfully.

01/07/08 07:29 AM in Books , Movies | Comments

The Sorcerer's Spoof
Today, two Harry Potter spoofs. Barry Trotter, in print, and the first (hopefully of many) RiffTrax, on film.

The former I had no idea existed, and the latter I'd been long willing into existence (with scores of other fans). Whee!

11/21/07 09:33 PM in Books , Movies | Comments

A Good Man
Charlie Rose interviews Charles Schulz in 1997, three years before his death. Via TV Squad.

I feel fortunate that we live very near and can visit often the places where he lived and worked and created. Even though there've been some concerns expressed by his family that the upcoming bio (10/16) and American Masters documentary (10/29) portray him as far more dour and depressed than he was, I'm still excited for both, albeit taking them with a healthy grain of salt.

10/10/07 10:52 AM in Books , Link , TV | Comments

Did They Get "Pigs in a Twinkie" from Joel McHale?
A Twinkies Cookbook? The idea leaves me alternately fascinated and upchucky. And then it can't help but evoke thoughts of Hamwinkies.

02/13/07 02:20 PM in Books , Food | Comments

Catchup
Not that I regret participating in NaBloPoMo or the less-famous but still-effective DecBloPooPoo, but now I've got a case of blog burnout (BloBu?). Plus, much of my sparse winter creative juice is flowing into Flickr.

I'm thinking about LASIK again, and this time, seriously. I've been done nursing for months, so no worries about hormones and eye pressure fluctuations. And I just learned that, instead of a mechanical blade, a laser can now be used to make the flap, presumably with greater accuracy (plus, the thought of a metal blade SAWING INTO MY EYEBALL really gives me the heebies; see, I'm visibly shuddering again). I'm sick of glasses that are never clean, and contacts that irk during allergy season. And I'd be trusting a pioneer in the industry, so that helps allay some of my fears. Well. We'll see (ha).

Type A question of the day: do you organize items in your grocery cart by type, and then try to put them up in the order they should rightfully be bagged, too? Cold dairy, frozen boxes, cans, health, etc., with crushables at the tail end. Most baggers realize that you don't put Borax and bread together (the alliteration notwithstanding), but some don't, so I figure every little bit helps.

A friend of my sister suffered terrible loss last year -- both her parents in the span of a few months. Even so, she was kind enough to offer up her mother's classroom collection of books (she was a first grade teacher), and we received a large boxful. Truly a fantastic treasure. I've catalogued (albeit very basically) them all here.

01/16/07 09:34 AM in Babble , Books | Comments

Personal Cataloging Redux
LibraryThing - simplified online cataloging for personal collections. Free for 200 books, $10 for an unlimited lifetime membership. Unlike its predecessors (of which I can't even remember the URLs, that's how long it's been since I've visited), it mines the Library of Congress catalog (or Amazon) and allows Flickr-like tagging. Your profile even shows the public members with whom your collection has the most in common. Awesome!

I'm not nearly finished with my catalog yet, but you can still take a peek.

09/15/05 11:32 AM in Books | Comments

I'm It
So, I've been tagged by Marielle. Here ya go:

1. How many books do I own?

Even after The Great I Thought We Were Moving Purge, I still own well over one hundred books. I don't feel much at home in our local library, so that may trend upwards again. Then again, the town north has toddler storytimes next month, and we've borrowing privileges there, so maybe there's hope yet. And I haven't been in the college library yet, either.

2. Last Book I Bought:

Classroom in a Book: Illustrator CS2

3. Last Book I Read:

HP VI

4. Five Books That Mean A Lot To Me (without explanation or apologies):

Jude the Obscure
The Little House series
His Dark Materials series
The Handmaid's Tale
Where the Red Fern Grows

5. Tag Five More:

Nope, sorry - I'm going to steal this one for forum use ;-)

08/25/05 11:58 AM in Books | Comments

I Admit...
...I downloaded Scholastic's interactive desktop Harry Potter VI countdown. I pre-ordered from Amazon a few months back - sadly, receiving it is the only bright spot on my literary horizon.

04/17/05 04:49 PM in Books | Comments

Dystopiariffic
Remember those book flyers you got in grade school and junior high? You'd place your order with the teacher, and get your books a couple weeks later. That's how, in seventh grade, I became acquainted with Orwell and 1984. The teacher tried to talk me out of it, probably not questioning my reading ability (which was what I thought at the time, and was offended), but my readiness for some of the more "adult" themes. Regardless, I became addicted to novels imagining a grim future for society - Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange, The Handmaid's Tale.

It's been some time since I've visited books like these (though there've been movies - Gattaca, Blade Runner, 12 Monkeys). Or at least the ones meant for adults; there's excellent "juvenile" reading in the same league, if you've a mind, in Lois Lowry's The Giver. Browsing the shelves at B&N tonight, how excited was I to find - a little late, perhaps - that Margaret Atwood had taken another stab at the future with her Oryx and Crake? A few chapters in, and I'm inextricably hooked. I hope it lives up to my expectations.

10/28/04 10:19 PM in Books | Comments

Well, That Didn't Take Long
I just bought and deleted the oldest item on my wish list - from April 12, 2000!

09/28/04 10:55 AM in Books | Comments

108 of 408...
Nice meme for a Friday. Steal the book list (my source was Mindy), bold the titles you've read, and add three new titles to the bottom. Here's mine. Awful lot of holes, there... I suppose if it consisted of nothing but children's/young adult, I'd clean up.

06/11/04 12:04 PM in Books | Comments

See, SF! We're Civilized, Too!
If you're in Sacramento, consider spending your Valentine's Day with beloved Newbery-award-winning author Gary Paulsen. Free!

Honestly, I only remember reading Dogsong (and, more recently, Puppies, Dogs, and Blue Northers), but the Hatchet/Brian books look good, too; they remind me, in spirit, much of Jean Craighead George's Mountain trilogy.

The one thing I miss the very most about my library is the unrestricted, spontaneous borrowing of all that great YA literature. Sigh.

01/27/04 04:25 PM in Books | Comments

"...a visceral experience, like an IMAX movie"
The world's biggest published book. 5 by 7 feet and 133 pounds!

12/15/03 10:26 AM in Books , News | Comments

Sucrelicious yuletidaeum
A Baker's Field Guide to Christmas Cookies. It's like a cookbook aimed at biology geeks, with info like "lifespan," "habitat," and even "related species." And - most importantly - it tells which morsels can survive a trip in a UPS truck! You know I'm going to talk myself into needing this.

Oops. Too late.

11/25/03 10:51 PM in Books , Food | Comments

At Least it Looks Pretty
I never know in advance if I want to invest myself (or precious funds) in companion books and prequel/sequel stories. Usually flat and unengaging compared to the original (unsurprisingly, not unlike movies). Could Lyra's Oxford be different?

10/30/03 04:30 PM in Books | Comments

The Way We Were
I nearly finished Blankets in a way-too-late session last night. Good stuff. What makes it even more relevant for me, personally, is the fact that much of his relationship with Raina is taking place in Marquette, Michigan (the snowiest small city in the 48, as the book says), which I wasn't expecting. Of course, attending college there during the same time the book is supposed to be taking place, I had my share of similar experiences. Is the "mountain" they visit Sugarloaf (where I spent too many friendly/drunken/romantic/lovesick/psycho-jogging-class-from-Hell outings to count), I have to wonder???

10/22/03 03:05 PM in Books | Comments

Books for Me. Me Me Me!
If you're as huge a fan of modern fairy tale retellings as I am, you probably already know about the delightful Gregory Maguire. I didn't realize that a new novel, Mirror Mirror, had just been released, and luckily somehow bumped into it while looking at Craig Thompson stuff. So, yeah. Thompson and Maguire. I don't think I've been this excited to receive a shipment of books in quite some time. Of course, I can't remember the last time I ordered adult novels for myself...

10/14/03 07:30 PM in Books | Comments

Picture Pages
I've just ordered my very first (and very substantial) graphic novel. I think reading Stef's posts about them finally pushed me over the edge.

I honestly couldn't say why I'd been avoiding them. When Maus came out in the late eighties/early nineties, it was obvious how powerful the format could be. But beyond that, I stayed away. Maybe it was residual guilt over enjoying Archie as a kid. In any case, I've got to get over it. Graphic novels open up a whole new world of reading motivation for kids, and the smart librarians are getting on board.

10/10/03 06:27 AM in Books | Comments

"But you're not eating the rabbits, sir, right?"
Inching up on the end of September, and my outfit for the day will include something sleeveless of necessity. I've nearly given up the thought that we'll ever see temps under 95 again. I don't want much, really. Mid 80's would be enough. We've even had to put off our trip to Apple Hill for two weeks now, because it's still too hot up there to be fun. Stayed inside and read.

I can easily list the books that make me cry, because they're so few:

Where the Red Fern Grows

Well, add Pictures of Hollis Woods, drenched in palpable loss and longing. A timeless orphan story that just doesn't need to try as hard as Gilly Hopkins.

Speaking of bawling, I really shouldn't watch shows like Animal Cops, especially when I've just been reading soppy books. Just shouldn't.

And, on the heels of a similar but not as gross story we saw on Animal Precinct yesterday, D. sent me this story about 130 cats in my dear hometown.

09/22/03 07:52 PM in Books , News , TV | Comments

At Least We'll Have the Movie in 2005
It's not often I wish I were in London.

09/13/03 10:41 PM in Books | Comments