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Trying to decide whether I'm ambitious enough for running commentary
New year! New list of books!
- Tooth and Claw ~ Jo Walton (w/ reread)
- Half a Crown ~ Jo Walton
- Naked ~ David Sedaris
- Lake Overturn ~ Vestal McIntyre
- You Are Not the One ~ Vestal McIntyre
- Ethan Frome ~ Edith Wharton
- The House of Mirth ~ Edith Wharton
- Stone's Fall ~ Iain Pears
- An Instance of the Fingerpost ~ Iain Pears
- The Magicians ~ Lev Grossman
- Pierce ( Read more... )
- Tooth and Claw ~ Jo Walton (w/ reread)
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Tre vignette = three vignettes
1. I love my friend Jill, who was describing to me a friend she recently saw for the first time in several years:
J: I worked together with him at a summer theatre a few years ago, and when we were there there was some, er --
N: Sexual tension?
J: Sexual congress.Which I envy especially because it's something I wouldn't have done, and if I had, ( Read more... ) -
Appropriazione = appropriation
This is my latest YouTube revelation:
It's kind of amazing. Her ear for harmony is awesome and they're right, that progression in the chorus is something else. The singer only has about five notes -- boring ones, do-re-mi-fa-sol, but the bass line is from another planet, chromatic and menacing, and when it suddenly evaporates it's like the sun ( Read more... ) -
Nella cantina della bageleria = in the basement of the bagel store
There is a box in the basement of the bagel store that says OATS. In these huge no-nonsense Arial Black caps that take up most of the side of the box. Let me see if I can demonstrate:
OATSWhy is this box is trying so hard? It may be hard to respect, but you sure have to honor its badassery. You'd better watch out, 'cause when you open this ( Read more... ) -
La città = the city
New apartment! Currently ensconced in my charming new room on 30th Avenue in Astoria. It's petite! It's puce! It's pentagonal*! The apartment is shared with two kindly artistic types who are reserved, but clean, and whose names rhyme. One of them is also a pianist, so there is a baby grand piano in the living room, which, not gonna lie, is 80 ( Read more... ) -
Sentimentalismo sdolcinato = cloying sentimentality
We closed Sisters of Swing yesterday. The show wound up selling better than the box office people expected -- our run was extended twice -- and it helped a lot that the room was filled with white-haired folk who cried at the appropriate places, cheered when we started "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," and came up to us every night to tell us about the ( Read more... ) -
Stigmate = stigmata
I wouldn't normally describe myself as accident-prone, but here is a list of places on my body I managed to draw blood from yesterday, in chronological order ( Read more... ) -
Recitare = to act or perform
At the top of the (short) list of verbs I hate: kvetch. I may be hypersensitive, but isn't this just "complain" + Jewish slur? Kind of like how mince to me conveys "walk" + "I hate gay people ( Read more... ) -
Gli abeti = The firs
I've been falling behind on my classics, so this week when I went to the Mid-Manhattan library and realized that the new Zoë Heller book had over two hundred holds on it, I decided to do a little catching up.
Hence, The Country of the Pointed Firs, by Sarah Orne Jewett, which is about a writer who goes to spend a summer in a village on the coast ( Read more... ) -
Attento alle idi di marzo = Beware the Ides of March
Why, that's today! Hence, a boring update ( Read more... )
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