Why There Will Be No Roundup at the Stroke of Midnight
Written by Edward ChampionPosted on June 19, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized
The roundup could have occurred. But since I have become reliant upon Bloglines for my influx of information and since I have attempted to be somewhat neat in the way I organize my many feeds through this process, this attempt at organization has resulted in my downfall. I intended to merely click the boxed plus box to expand the Books section of my feeds, but I somehow clicked the word “Books” instead, resulting in Bloglines opening every single goddam one of the hundred or so feeds that I rely upon in the framed window.
Bloglines does not have an undo function for this.
Thus, any new information I receive from the blogosphere will have to wait until time has passed.
I suppose I could mark everything as new. But I am too lazy to do this. And I would have to systematically do this for each blog.
I suppose I could switch to Google Reader. But since there is no Bloglines export, this will involve work. I am also too lazy to do this.
Thus, because of a foolish misclick and laziness on my part, there shall be no roundup at the stroke of midnight. I am sure there are interesting stories, blog posts, and other assorted information I missed.
My dog also ate my homework.
A relative is dead.
I believe I may have come down with something, but you will not hear it in my voice.
I’ve had a personal emergency. (I’ve used this excuse before and when I have arrived at work the next day, I remain silent and appear morose, maintaining a very serious expression. The idea here is to suggest by this appearance that something serious and possibly life-threatening has happened and, if co-workers pry, you can let loose a casual detail. Some perfunctory detail about a fistfight with the fuzz. Some blur about hundreds of dollars gone. As excuses to miss work go, this one is probably the best and the least subject to question.)
My dog drank from the poisoned tap water.
He tried to molest me while installing cable.
I had a severe operation at the hospital. Don’t worry. It won’t affect the health insurance rates.
There is a loud beeping in my head. (I like this excuse better than “I have a migraine,” which is strangely unconvincing even when it is true.)
They shot up the guy next door and the police are holding me for questioning.
I anticipate oversleeping by about eight hours.
Bloglines has a bullshit interface.
[UPDATE: Okay, some initial experiments have begun with Google Reader. Have managed to export from Bloglines. Thanks to the commenters!]
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
- Must hear segment with Bob Garfield calling Alicia Shepard on the "torture" debate. http://tinyurl.com/mlmolx (Thank you, @annaleighclark) 6 hrs ago
- @annaleighclark Not yet, but thanks. Shepard appeared Thursday on "Talk of the Nation" and here's the link: http://bit.ly/X0v6Y in reply to annaleighclark 6 hrs ago
- More on NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard's silence from @simonowens here: http://bit.ly/5K6FX 6 hrs ago
- More updates...
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
- Will Resurface Later
- The Bat Segundo Show: Hal Niedzviecki II
- Alain de Botton on Responding to Critics
- Alain de Botton Clarifies the Caleb Crain Response
- Despotism (1946)
- Inside BookTour.com: A Q&A With Kevin Smokler
- Dia de los Vivos — Flower Parade 2009
- Alice Hoffman: The Most Immature Writer of Her Generation
- The History of Verizon, Part Three (September to October 2000)
- Hoaxes Are Still Possible in the Internet Age
Bloglines ate your dogma’s karma?
Well, I have to disagree. A bit. They make it hard to do things, but I’ve gone with Google Reader three times, and each time I go back. On dial-up, BL is faster.
They just went through a minor outage in which certain RSS feeds were going through (such as my website, which, with 13 readers, is catastrophic). A look at their forum showed a lot of people in the same boat. I also found, there, a note from one of the employees, saying they’re working on it. It was the only notification I saw, despite sending in a notification of the problem.
Anyway, if you want to switch to Google Reader, here’s how. Scroll down your list of feeds. At the bottom of the window, under “Additional Features”, you’ll find “Export Subscriptions.” Click that. Save the file to the desktop.
Open Google Reader. There should be an “Import Subscriptions” link. Click on that and browse over to the file on your desktop. That’s it!
Google Reader has a Bloglines import. Check out “Import/Export” in the settings.
Also Google Reader = much better than Bloglines for my money. Switched, never looked back.