I find it enormously funny (and rather sad) that we have "evolved" to the point that we need help shitting in the woods.

x-posted with Bitches: Amazing article about a new photography/oral history book that's just been released, The Oxford Project

[link]

BBC is re-releasing their radioplay of The Lord of the Rings.

I've got the 2002 release of that radioplay, and the reviewer doesn't even mention my favorite performance in it--Bill Nighy as Sam! The reviewer admits he'd only listened through FotR, so he still hasn't gotten to the part that breaks my heart every time I hear it: The Choices of Master Samwise. Nighy just nails every nuance in this chapter.

I've never heard of this year's winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, but he seems interesting. From Wikipedia:

Le Clézio was born in the French Riviera city of Nice to an English father and French mother.[2] His ancestors emigrated from Brittany to the île de France—today's Mauritius—in the 18th century. During World War II, the family was separated, his father being unable to join his wife and children in Nice.[3] Le Clézio moved with his family at age 8 to Nigeria[4] where his father served as a surgeon in the British army.[5]

After studying at Bristol University from 1958 to 1959, he finished his undergraduate degree at Nice's Institut d’etudes Litteraires.[4] After several years spent in London and Bristol, he moved to the United States to work as a teacher. He was assigned to Thailand in 1967 for his military service, but was quickly expelled for protesting child prostitution and sent to Mexico to finish his military obligation. From 1970 to 1974, he lived with the Embera-Wounaan Indians in Panama.

Le Clézio earned a master's degree from the University of Aix-en-Provence in 1964, and wrote a doctoral thesis in 1983 on Mexico’s early history for the University of Perpignan (he is a specialist on Michoacan).[4] He has taught at numerous universities around the world. He has been married since 1975 to Jémia, who is Moroccan. Since the 1990s they have divided their residence between Albuquerque, New Mexico, Mauritius, and Nice.[6]

I haven't read any of his fiction, but he wrote a number of essays during the GATT film dispute in the early 90s, so I know of him through that.

Ursula K LeGuin spoke in Olympia tonight. Though I'm way behind in stuff I made to time to see this. She mostly read from "A Wizard of Earthsea". But she also commented on her thought processes and answered questions. I always have loved her writing, knew she was brilliant, and even that she had a sense of humor. But in her writing her humor is mostly low key. In person she is witty! Must have been a wonderful teacher - funny on top of everything else.

I picked up several books today, including The Graveyard Book. I read the first chapter because I couldn't HELP myself after the first page, and then I patted it lovingly and put it away to savour later. Meanwhile I'm reading Charlaine Harris's Grave Sight (having inadvertently read the second book in this series, Grave Surprise, before this first one). I like this series quite a bit more than the Sookie Stackhouse books, so far. It's a little reminiscent of the early Anita Blake books (you remember? The ones that actually had plots, and dealt with Anita's interesting day job of raising the dead?). Only the protagonist is on a neverending roadtrip, in the manner of Sam and Dean. Only her crappy childhood wasn't as crappy as the Winchester boys' by a long chalk. Crappy like a crappy thing, but at least there were no yellow eyed demons. Mind you, she has that whole endless-motel-rooms-with-Wincestuous-sibling thing going on...only Tolliver's a stepbrother, so it's not going to scare the horses.

(There are, blessedly, far fewer of the tedious descriptions of dull and ugly clothes that characterise the Sookie books. And the cover art is infinitely better - I know that shouldn't matter, but it does. I still find the references to how skinny the protagonist is a little jarring, when it's all in the first person and I know that the author is herself fairly rotund, but I realise that's a bit silly of me. Still, overall I've come to think that Harris is an enjoyable storyteller when she's not distracting me with knit tops or inverted whitetrash snobbery.)

The Graveyard Book is just wonderful. And it may be even better when Neil reads it to you.

Mind you, wtf is up with The Graveyard Book having a recommendation from Laurell K Hamilton on the back?

I mean (1), it's a book pitched primarily at younger readers, who, one assumes, are not going to be all that familiar with the throbbing purple pwp prose LKH churns out, and (2) it's surely akin to trying to get people to watch Judy Dench performing on the basis of a positive review from Paris Hilton, in terms of, you know, talent?

(Holly Black's rec, otoh, seemed entirely reasonable.)

Have wolfed through Grave Sight and An Ice-Cold Grave, and enjoyed both of them. Am wondering whether to give Harris's Lily Bard mysteries a crack...but the blurb did rather put me off. Hmm. Anyone out there read them?

And on another note entirely, I was struck by how much professional fanfic there is out there, as I perused the shelves of my favourite bookshop. Within a few feet of each other were shelved Mr Darcy's Diary, Rhett Butler's People, Lydia Bennet's Story, Mirror Mirror and Son of a Witch. I rather wanted to pluck all of them off the shelf and bludgeon Lee Goldberg insensible with them.