Category: artistic experiences

Just Read: (In A Sense) Lost & Found

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IMG_6395 It was fun to start the new year with this graphic novel. I love the conceptual nature of the narrative (the disappearance of and subsequent search for one’s innocence), and the drawing style has a fluid simplicity yet also a delightful precision to it. I couldn’t stop reading through this story and loved its idiosyncratic world. I wish I could spend more time in that world to get to know the protagonist F. Premise and the dynamics of the society she’s embedded in.

It’s so nice to see Nobrow Press making yet another engrossing work available!
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NaNoWriMo Guidance: Every story is about saving the world

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Every story is about saving the world. The only question is: what is the world you’re saving?—Max Gladstone

It’s so fantastic that the Cambridge Public Library has an author speaker series for National Novel Writing Month! The last session on world building with Max Gladstone was fully of lively discussion and great perspectives about creating immersive, coherent worlds in fiction. One point that really stood out to me was a world-centric view of stories that Max mentioned, quoted above. In the days following his talk, I found myself looking at story after story through this lens, considering the sorts of worlds various characters are trying to save—a microcosm of interconnected friendships, the Candy Kingdom, a starship full of spacefaring humans, the inner life and family life of a tween… I love how applicable this way of looking at narratives is.

I wish the NaNoWriMo Author Insights speaker series could go on and on beyond November… Fortunately, it seems like there are always author talks and more on the library calendar!

NaNoWriMo 2015 at Cambridge Main Library

Delightful Media This Week: Hidden Brain, PBS Space Time, TED Radio Hour

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Hidden Brain-d4dc2bc0fb94c4fa0074fb7ab2e1b681e6245d7a-s600-c85It’s been another wonderfully stimulating week of public broadcasting. NPR’s Hidden Brain podcast consists entirely of a witty, informative interview of Aziz Ansari by Shankar Vedantam on patterns of romance-related behavior (word of caution: a lot of bleepings in this one), while in another corner of NPR, the TED Radio Hour looks at our ability to change. And PBS Space Time once again does a fantastic job nutshelling intriguing topics, this time laying out how to thwart killer asteroids in not just 1 or 2 but 5 ways!

I love how these podcasts and videos build out the story of who we are as a species.

Barry Yourgrau wrestles with Internet distraction too?!

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I found myself back at my laptop, Web surfing. It was all sinkingly familiar. I was suckling on the cyber teat in the face of gnashing anxiety. I realized (not for the first time) that thanks to new technology I’d harmed my capacity to press on through such anxiety. The same way computers had affected my handwriting. My muscles for sustaining focus had turned twitchy and flaccid. 

This passage in Barry Yourgrau’s latest book Mess really caught my attention as it opens up a facet of his life with idiosyncratic authenticity. And that’s really the crux of this book; it opens up Barry Yourgrau’s physical and mental world for us in distinctive poetic prose that delightfully almost verges on melodramatic at times. It’s a travelogue taking us through his life by way of an itinerary of personal belongings, attempts to wrangle their overwhelming abundance and actual travels—the chronicles comprising the narrative all rendered in the writing style that made Mr. Yourgrau’s fantastical travelogue, The Haunted Traveler, a unique joy to read.  Continue reading →

Back to the Futurism of 2001: A Space Odyssey

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This stunning book by Piers Bizony from Taschen goes well beyond the infinite wonders of the film.
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The physical heft this interestingly oblong tome seems to promise that The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ is the definitive text on the iconic film. Then, when you slide the book out of its sleeve and open it, this promise is upheld. And man, does this book deliver. Numerous full-color pages and foldout leaves dazzle and delight. The astounding trove of behind-the-scenes images and descriptive text brings my appreciation of the film to a whole new level. The extent to which it details the realization of the film is unbelievable and even overwhelming.  Continue reading →

just read: Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel

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IMG_5528 Wow. Just… wow.

Read this novel all in one sitting, so attached to several of the main characters, even the, well, I don’t want to give anything away. There are some nice surprises in this story.

Here are a few not-so-revealing passages that struck me…

I was heartbroken. I threatened almost every country at the conference with whatever military capabilities Algeria had. My other group members had to appease everyone afterward by offering to export…

Lisa manipulates mannequin arms into lewd positions whenever she has the chance.

I’m always going to think of Ms. Taylor as one of my first big crushes, albeit a teacher crush, but now she’s more like a friend. She does look superhot, thought.