Tonight is New Year’s Eve. After a day at the beach, I’m heading to a family gathering for food and plenty of fireworks to usher in 2013. I have high hopes for the new year. I want to make it one full of adventure, learning, and good health. The last 212-word review for 2012 discusses … Continue reading Hau’oli Makahiki Hou! (Happy New Year!)
This morning I walked the two-mile road between my grandma’s house and my auntie’s house. I got soaked in the morning drizzle and I said hello to the horses and roosters, the rolling Hawaiian hills, the lush foliage and guava-smeared asphalt. I nodded at the familiar figures that some scamp graffitied on each telephone pole … Continue reading Exercising your brain with David Foster Wallace
Making Schools Work, William G. Ouchi I’ve read Making Schools Work before, but as I began applying to graduate school, it became relevant for me to re-read. I’m interested in how to more effectively design and operate successful schools, and this book offers a very readable, well-researched, and passionate introduction to these questions. Dr. Ouchi, … Continue reading Making Schools Work
I’ve been in Hawaii for less than a day (spent yesterday flying, which is why this post is late), and thanks to the miracle of the family-style plate lunch dinner, already have eaten kalbi, Korean chicken, tonkatsu, plus some teriyaki beef and shrimp. Oh man. I can’t wait for all the local style ono kine … Continue reading A feast!
Two book reviews today, since I’ve been lazing through a perfectly lovely vacation and got a bit behind. Four days til 2013! The Flame Alphabet, Ben Marcus In this deeply chilling novel, Ben Marcus imagines a world in which children’s speech, and eventually, all spoken and written language, becomes toxic to adults. All of the … Continue reading The Flame Alphabet & Girl Reading
And to all a very good night. I hope you are as full of love and good food as I am today. Black Swan Green, David Mitchell Lotta hoopla these days about David Mitchell since Cloud Atlas got adapted into a film. Because Cloud Atlas is one of my favorite novels, and one I serially … Continue reading Merry Christmas to all!
Yesterday I got too wrapped up in Christmas festivities: gift-making, spending time with family, and helping with a Your Secret Donor gifting event. So here’s yesterday’s post! Unfortunately it’s not nearly so cheery as any of those activities. The Fifth Child, Doris Lessing I once read an article which argued that King Lear’s structure allows … Continue reading Spreading holiday cheer
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami Things I think Haruki Murakami likes: Food, record players, women’s ears, and melancholic, yet matter-of-fact, meditations on loneliness and fate. I went into this novel mistakenly believing it to be a collection of short stories, which only heightened my disorientation as Murakami chapter-hopped between his … Continue reading Read me a dream
Airports and swamps are misunderstood.
Yes, airplane travel stresses me out. My brain insists that forgetting to pack a third sports bra or a glue stick will ruin me, despite the existence of laundry machines and shops. I worry about arriving early, security lines, flight times, etc. Then there’s neck cricks, dehydration, and not being able to be upside down for several consecutive hours.
But there’s one shining beacon of air travel: airplane food. Really. When I was a kid – one who secretly longed for forbidden Lunchables – I loved getting a tray with weird compartmentalization and plastic film. Even though the food didn’t taste great, it was exciting to see how much time I could spend investigating each item and savoring its alien microwaved aftertaste. Then I’d squirrel away the jelly packets, salt and pepper, wet naps, and plastic utensils, a habit I maintain to this day.
Now that airplanes don’t serve free meals, I refuse to spend $11 for a cardboardy sandwich that doesn’t even come in compartments. I’m an adult now, which means I get to make my own multi-part meals in boxes, dag-nabbit. And it’s a fun challenge to make it tidy, portable, and substantial enough to be breakfast, lunch, and snack. Here’s what I ate on my flight home today:
Swamps, I think, are also misunderstood. They’re dark and dangerous – but as Karen Russell will show you in her outstanding novel, Swamplandia!, there’s magic in them too. Read on for the review!
Swamplandia!, Karen Russell
***WARNING: Contains minor spoilers***
The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag, Alan Bradley With Flavia de Luce, Bradley has created a compelling new detective: a mercurial (wouldn’t Flavia appreciate that adjective?), hot-tempered, brilliant child with the chemical know-how and vocabulary of a postdoc. Astride her bicycle Gladys, Flavia boils through her sleepy town, left to her own devices by … Continue reading Poisons. Betrayal. Murder most foul.
Writing by Numbers 