I’m stuck in the muddiness between winter and spring. Nothing much going on at all. The CourierPostOnline.com redesign launched on Valentine’s Day. I’ve spent the month prior working nonstop on it (caveat: I did not design it) and the time since ironing out little bugs. I have a few things left on my list to cover, but all in all it’s a done deal. You should go see it. I even started my own World of Warcraft blog there. Dig the 3-year-old picture of me, artfully photoshopped. My “media empire” continues to grow! Mua ha ha! (ahem)
This whole site relaunch has left my brain a big pile of mush and when I get home I don’t feel like being on websites at all.
So I’ve started reading books again. In the last month I’ve read:
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - Da Boss lent me this one and I tore through it in 3 or 4 days. It’s a tiny book about the former editor of French Vogue who, after a stroke, lives with locked-in syndrome. All he can do is blink his left eye, and that’s how he communicates. It sounds like a downer, but I felt so good reading it. I’m going to try to remember his outlook when I start complaining about silly things like having too many clothes for my drawer and closet space.*
Politics Lost - Grabbed this from the Cherry Hill Library after I had to pay a $25 non-residents fee to renew my card. (See below w/r/t First World Problems.) I loved Primary Colors and I’m being sucked into the drama of the election this year, so I gave this one a whirl and loved it. In a nutshell, politics and campaigns now are so scripted and focus-group-tested that any kind of humanity or individuality has been boiled out of the process. He gives great examples from campaigns and politicians that I actually know and remember. Joe Klein leans left, but the book is pretty darn objective and was a quick read.
I checked out Arianna Huffington’s How to Overthrow the Government too, but I only read a few chapters before I returned it. My bad, really. It’s been on my “to-read” list for so long, that it’s dated to me now. 9/11 changed us all a lot, and many of the guys she writes about are out of the game entirely.
Just finished The Vagina Monologues. I got nothin’ here. There was one monologue about how women reacted when they got their first period that made me smile, but the rest was either already known (Women are beaten and raped daily? No! Really?!??) or gave me the impression that Eve Ensler was trying to see how many times she could fit the word vagina into her writings. The whole V-Day movement that came as a result of this work is fantastic, even if the website is a bit heavy on the usage of parentheses and brackets ({}) to remind us about the original v-subject at hand. (PS…can’t what to see what Google Ads come up on my site as a result of this post)
Now I’m starting Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different. I found this on CitizenSugar (have fallen in love with the entire Sugar Network, by the way) and I’m looking forward to it.
I guess I’m an non-fiction girl at heart.
Any good reads on your end lately?
*Truly a First World Problem.
Posted at: 7:44 am in General, Play
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February 26th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Well, uh, my reads aren’t really your type, but I read “Certain Girls” by Jennifer Weiner (doesn’t come out for a few months but I got an advanced reader’s copy) and am now reading “Size 12 Is Not Fat” by Meg Cabot. I love the chick lit, I admit it!
I read “Lucky,” a memoir by Alice Sebold, a bit ago… She wrote “The Lovely Bones.” Both good reads, however both tough reads, too. Worth powering through, though.
Have you seen “The Vagina Monologues” performed? I think that might give you a whole new perspective on it… Done right, each monologue has power in its own way.
February 26th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
I’m not so sure about the revolving main story. I like that feature, but I think it’s a bit disorienting as the main piece. I thought the entire site mysteriously refreshed and that I was originally looking at old news. If you don’t mind my saying.