Sentential Links #99

Here is the ninety-ninth edition of Sentential Links. That seems meaningful — but probably isn’t. Alas!

:: I teach at a community college. At commencement I get to watch students walk across the platform and pick up diplomas who have gone through some pretty tremendous shit. (Warning: salty language here. Good post, though.)

:: Mark Helprin’s gone and done us all the service of advocating the idea that dare not speak its name: Rather than endlessly retroactively extending copyrights, why not make them last forever? (Oh, wow. Just…wow. Now, I love Mark Helprin’s writing, but the notion that copyright should last forever is utterly goofy.)

:: As editor of the Science Fiction World Book Club I’m often asked (most recently by Kong Jing Han of the very worthy Electric Velocipede) which books are most representative of the genre and its history. The following are my choices, broken down by decade, and limiting myself to authors from Zhōng Guó. I’m picking the most influential and important books (or magazines) I could think of, rather than the ones I liked best. (Anticipating the inevitable screaming which will arise in some quarters of the blogosphere: Yes, I know that none of the authors I chose are women, or non-Hàn Zú. But if critics and fans worried more about writing criticisms proving their arguments (in this case why female and non-Hàn Zúwriters deserve to be on this list), and less about whether their particular self-identified group is adequately represented in an online discussion of the greats of the genre, then perhaps they would have more luck gaining an audience.) (Jess Nevins never writes something that I don’t want to smash my computer to tiny bits after I read it, so full of despair do I become that I’ll never write anything as good. Or, put another way: Whadda jerk.)

:: The distinctly British Composer wrote this fabulous solo violin with orchestra work in the early 20th century. It tells the story of a skylark rising above the English country side, its beauty in full view. (Sean e-mailed me the link to this blog, which twice a week updates with a post about a single work of classical music. There’s a listing of all posts thus far at the bottom of the main page; check it out. Nice to see a classical music blog that isn’t about which orchestras have hired the wrong music directors or why young people aren’t listening to classical music or why the latest German production of Parsifal is an affront to everything Wagner stood for. It’s a blog that’s just about the music.)

:: So I made a list of my train intolerables. These are the books I simply will not stand for—or rather, will stand for, as in: I’m moving seats, this is creepy, I’m uncomfortable.

:: I don’t know if this is a secret or not, but men find feminine confidence incredibly sexy. (Oh, do we ever. Good post about Wonder Woman.)

:: Drive through this city today and take a good look around. Drive through the neighborhoods and look at the houses decorated in blue and gold. Look at the kids decked out in Sabres gear, at almost every single business sporting a “Go Sabres” sign of some sort. I haven’t seen anything like it since the late seventies. It’s a total investment of a town in its team, and it’s worth every bit of the hurt I feel today to see Western New York back in love with hockey and with the Sabres.

All for this week. Tune in next time to hear the Burglar say….

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