12 frogs read think get curious

lesson

wonderful lies

I can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity

I’ve decided to combine my tumblelog with this blog.

You’d think the first couple of times I launched a third blog (a short-lived flash fiction site called lies.txt, and later a photoblog called spotted) only to shut it down later would’ve given me the hint that maybe maintaining three independent blogs is not the best idea for me. What can I say, I can be a bit stubborn.

For now, I’m going to leave the old blog up with a notice it isn’t active anymore, and direct the entire dozen readers I had over here. Which means that you’ll see more posts here more often, but that some of them will be very short. It will be a bit of an experiment, combining tumble-type posts with what passes for “regular” blog posts around here. Since none of the tumblelog posts had titles, I’m not exactly sure yet how I’ll work that out going forward. I might try and split out feeds, if people are really interested in that, but for now I’ll just keep everything together in the existing 12frogs feed.

I’m still going to keep my book review blog, reading notes, as its own thing — you can see the last few titles I’ve reviewed down there in the footer. Thumbnails linking to my recent photos on flickr are also there. I’m not piping all my other stuff to this blog: if you want to make sure you are comprehensively stalking me (Hi, Dad!) you can get all those links on claimID.

Yeah, I know I could be doing something with friendfeed, but I’m just not sold on it. I don’t think everyone wants one feed to rule them all for every person they know online. I mean, with some folks I read their blog, or enjoy their photos on flickr, but not both. I might care about someone’s bookmarks on del.icio.us, but not give a crap about the last song they played on last.fm — so I really don’t want all of it, all at once. I want to pick and choose. I will control the horizontal. I will control the vertical.

The goodness of the unread books currently in the house is almost unbearable

We went on one of our sprees last night. In other words, we had spent so much on used and remaindered books at Harvard Bookstore that we hit 20% discount time. We knew that going in: spree time involves a combination of careful planning (the need to have lists of “check for” titles ready) and being open to serendipitous discovery.

What did I get?

Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods. I was feeling pretty good about her next book (whatever it might be) and then I read about it on Jeff VanderMeer’s blog: he said “If you can’t see the poetry in this book and the brilliance I kinda want to take away your birthday”

Charles Baxter’s The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot. I loved Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction, so as soon as heard about this I knew I had to get it. I didn’t realize The Art of is going to be a series, and Baxter is going to be series editor. (If this all weren’t excellent enough, Mark Doty is going to do The Art of Description.)

Karen Russell’s St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. This was on my “look for” list. I’ve seen it around, and it seems the wonderfully odd kind of thing I’d like. Plus, I’ve been on a short story kick.

Jack Pendarvis’s Your Body Is Changing was my never heard of it before but decided I had to have it find. George Saunders blurbed it on the back cover, and said the guy was a “dangerously funny writer”. I happen to think Saunders is a genius, so this means he’s probably right about Pendarvis. (He blurbed Miranda July, and I loved No one belongs here more than you, so I don’t think he’s an indiscriminate blurb whore.)

I think I’ll be spending as much time as possible reading tomorrow. And probably for the next little while. Forget warm puppies, happiness is books. (Not that I don’t like puppies. But I’m allowed to have books and more books…)