Faut-il brûler Babar?

Adam Gopnik on Babar. I enjoyed the Babar books as a child, and Benjy has, too. What I love about the first book, The Story of Babar, is how Babar's activities - and what drama there is - seem so characteristically French. Babar buys a beautiful new suit! Babar eats pastries! Babar thinks of his mother and feels sad! It's not exactly The Little Engine that Could, but it's delightful.

Self-explanatory.

Ninja cat.

Reading.

They Came Like Swallows, by William Maxwell. Melancholy story of a
mother's death in the influenza epidemic of 1918. Written from three
characters' perspectives; the first section, Bunny, about an
eight-year-old, was the most affecting - Maxwell knew what he was
writing about.

Reading.

The Folded Leaf, by William Maxwell. Love triangle between two men and a woman at college. A harrowing page at the end given the author's personal history. Very good.

What I've been reading.

The Forbidden City, by Geremie R. Barmé. A good readable introduction to the history, mystery, and meaning of Beijing's zijin cheng. Part of a series called Wonders of the World. BLDGBLOG's interview with series editor Mary Beard here. Book's short (but still laudable) website here.

Frick and Frack.

Neuron 1: Oh, man, that's funny.

Neuron 2: Yeah, Daddy's pretty funny, Frick.

Neuron 1: I think he's REAL funny, Frack.

Neuron 2: Watch it, Frick. You know how you get. Just make sure you're ... oh, no. Oh, NO.



[Strobing lights, sound of alarms.]

Neuron 2: Frick -- Frick! We're in the red zone! The system is on overload! We are in trouble -- dial it back, man!
















Neuron 2: Christ, Frick.

Neuron 1: I know, I just got carried away. I'm sorry, Frack. It won't happen again, I swear.

Neuron 2: Okay, okay. But -- Christ, Frick.

Camera is healed.

What I've been reading.

Austerity Britain, 1945-1951, by David Kynaston. This actually did strike me as something of a "cacophonous and impressionistic mess," but I will readily admit this could be because I cannot appreciate the nuances of some (to me) obscure BBC radio program from 1947. If you are steeped enough in the time period, then maybe the book comes alive for you. For me, I could have used a little more structure and guidance. It seemed too much like "and then this happened, and then this other thing happened, and then person x said y about this other thing in her diary, and then this other person said z about the NHS in his letter to his mum," etc. The book contained a huge amount of raw source material; I would be curious to know the proportion of quoted material to original. Atlantic review.

What I've been reading.

Netherland, by Joseph O'Neill. Troubled marriage, cricket, post-9/11. Too many passages seemed like exercises from a writers' workshop, as in "write 200 words on x." But the last 30 pages or so were a little more bracing. Eh.

What I've been reading.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami. A quasi magical realist novel that is, strangely, not annoying. I'm not sure what exactly the plot was about (something having to do with alienation in modern Japan, a disintegrating marriage, the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in the 1930s, and tentacles), but the story did not flag. Mostly worthwhile.

Tales of Essex County, vols. 1 (Tales from the Farm) and 2 (Ghost Stories), by Jeff Lemire. Pretty good, especially if you enjoy bleak tales of despair and death in rural Ontario. And hockey! These are graphic novels, by the way.