homefries.org

Kenneth Sutton’s aide-mémoire

homefries.org header image 2

Amazon Rank

April 12th, 2009 · 1 Comment

Amazon Rank.
‘Nuff said.
Update, 4/13: NY Times reports on the “glitch”.

[Read more →]

Tags: · ·

2008 technology: Kindle

January 4th, 2009 · Comments Off

After eyeing them online, I finally handled a Kindle and talked to a couple of Kindle-owners last June. That rather undermined my defenses against buying one, and I finally broke down in August and bought one.
I love it!
Does it have room for improvement? Yes. The configuration of the buttons is a bit awkward. Putting the [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: · · · ·

The longer you wait, the farther away it gets

November 11th, 2008 · Comments Off

On September 15, 2006, I ordered a special 25th anniversary edition of one of my favorite books, Little, Big by John Crowley, which was then in preparation. (I even sprang for a copy of the numbered edition, I like this book that much.) There is a theme in the book, that the farther in you [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: · ·

Books as business, take 2

September 28th, 2008 · 1 Comment

The New York article I blogged a few days ago got quite a response from Kassia Krozser at Booksquare, It’s Only The End of Rose-Colored Glasses:
Noted statistician Philip Roth estimated, fifteen years ago, “…there were at most 120,000 serious American readers—those who read every night—and that the number was dropping by half every decade.” If [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: · ·

Resist the present!

September 17th, 2008 · Comments Off

Not to mention the future: Online Literacy Is a Lesser Kind – ChronicleReview.com
So let’s restrain the digitizing of all liberal-arts classrooms. More than that, given the tidal wave of technology in young people’s lives, let’s frame a number of classrooms and courses as slow-reading (and slow-writing) spaces. Digital technology has become an imperial force, and [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: · · ·

Books as a business

September 17th, 2008 · 2 Comments

Fascinating article in New York Magazine, as a reader, as an editor, and as a new owner of a kindle: Have We Reached the End of Book Publishing As We Know It?
Debbie Stier, Miller’s No. 2 at HarperStudio as this little imprint is called, has been collecting videos for their blog. “You want to see [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ·

Marilynne Robinson on faith

July 25th, 2008 · Comments Off

The Spring 2008 issue of Harvard Divinity Bulletin has a lovely essay by Marilynne Robinson, “Credo.”
History up to the present moment tells us again and again that a narrow understanding of faith very readily turns to bitterness and coerciveness. There is something about certainty that makes Christianity un-Christian. Instances of this are only too numerous [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: · · ·

Phineas Finn

March 3rd, 2008 · Comments Off

And, in a break from political videos, I should report that I finished Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Finn, which introduces yet another misguided, modestly dissipated youth who doesn’t know his own mind, in this case the title character. There are also three rather wonderful female characters: Lady Laura Kennedy, for whom the plot is a tragedy; [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: · · ·

Can You Forgive Her?

February 12th, 2008 · 2 Comments

I continue my Anthony Trollope kick, this time starting the Palliser series of novels. Can You Forgive Her? is a rhetorical question that quite obviously is intended to be answered, “of course.” But I found Alice Vavasor to be tediously headstrong as well as foolish. I suppose it is to be expected when one is [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: · · ·

I Met John Scalvi!

January 19th, 2008 · Comments Off

It was so exciting, the day I met John Scalvi! It was quite by accident. Literally. I was minding my own business when a car came crashing across the sidewalk in front of me and through the window of a convenience store. I’d always heard about those elderly drivers who step on the gas instead [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: · ·