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Here are some thoughts pertaining to some books I’ve read of late: :: I often find biographies a mixed bag, as a reading interest. Autobiography is something special, but generic biographies can be tough. Even the most interesting of lives can be rendered dull and uninspiring in the hands of a dull writer; conversely, a life that wouldn’t strike anyone as especially notable can, when told by a skilled biographer, become utterly fascinating. In the latter category falls David Michaelis’s new biography of Charles M. Schulz, Schulz and Peanuts. It’s a long and exhaustive book, providing great amounts of detailDown the rabbit hole….

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Snagged from Roger and T&C: 1. Do you remember learning to read? How old were you? I don’t remember learning to read, per se, because it happened very early on, via my mother. I could read before I went to kindergarten, I know that much; my parents have often told the tale of how my kindergarten teacher was kind of dumb and didn’t even realize how it was that I was apparently shouting out the directions to the assignments before she could read them to us. I have no memory of doing that. 2. What do you find most challengingDown the rabbit hole….

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Time for a rundown of some reading I’ve done lately: :: Born Standing Up, by Steve Martin. If you come to this book expecting a “wild and crazy” book of comedy-in-print, you’ll walk away disappointed. If you come, instead, looking for Martin’s insights as to the early parts of his career when he toiled in obscurity before finally bursting onto the national scene, then you’ll find the book worthwhile. It’s a surprisingly unfunny and unflinching look from afar at Martin’s career. It’s not completely unfunny, mind you, but the prevailing tone is one of seriousness, and reading it, I getDown the rabbit hole….

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Some lazy linkage for a snowy Thursday evening: :: Lynn Sislo hasn’t posted in several days. As she lives in Oklahoma, I assume that this is due to the ice storm they had in those parts. I hope she’s back online soon. :: Do check out this wonderful article about visual injokes in Pixar’s movies. I love stuff like this. :: I suppose I should start reading Terry Pratchett sometime soon. He has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. :: When I become Supreme Ruler of Teh Universe, my first decree will be that all gas stations shall be one-way only, andDown the rabbit hole….

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Sheila has a pretty wonderful link: the Book Inscriptions project. (As of this writing, the site’s not loading, but it was loading an hour or so ago, I swear!) The site posts images of inscriptions written in the fronts of books, typical of the kind of thing people write when they give a book as a gift. As Sheila notes, this sort of thing is like crack cocaine to a person like myself. Go have a look, when the site starts loading again. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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I’ve just started reading Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise. I’ll have more to say on the book when I’ve finished with it (and that’ll be a while; I’m only about fifty pages in as of this writing), but in reading the passages early on about Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler, I realized that I haven’t listened to the music of either composer in a great while – years, for most of their works I have on disc, and in several cases, over a decade. Ouch. That’s too long to spend out of the company of such great composers. So,Down the rabbit hole….

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Time to catch up on some recent reading I’ve done: :: As research for a short story I finished drafting a few weeks ago, I read a fascinating book called Stradivari’s Genius: Five Violins, One Cello, and Three Centuries of Enduring Perfection by Toby Faber. This is exactly what the title suggests: an examination of the violin making of Antonio Stradivari, the great Cremonese master whose hand produced stringed instruments that have never been surpassed in quality despite the fact that Stradivari died in 1737. I was most interested in the early parts of the book, the ones that dealDown the rabbit hole….

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About a month ago I mentioned a new children’s bookstore opening soon in Orchard Park, “B is for Books”. Well, the store is going to open this week! They’re doing a soft-open on October 9, with a grand opening bash to come on October 13. Check out their website, bis4books.com, for more information. These aren’t the best of times to be opening independent bookstores, but here’s hoping they make it — consider them, for instance, for your next big birthday party for your kid, if you’re sick of the whole Chuck E. Cheese scene. And support a local business whileDown the rabbit hole….