Monday, March 9, 2009

This and That: Book Clubs, Children's Books, George Clooney, etc.

  • So, who watched Castle? It was ... good enough to pass the time on the typical brain dead Monday night. I was doubtful during the first half hour but I liked the second half. Although they could lose the mother character.
  • I belong to two book clubs and neither one of them has ever considered that we should turn the club into ... well, a club. But a book club in Canada did. They built themselves a private club complete with a bar serving premium liquors.

    The board originally hoped to sell 120 two-person memberships at $100 each; they've now sold 340 and are considering capping the number, Hunziker says.

    “And this is in a town of 700!” she points out.

    Sounds like my kind of book club! (h/t HeyLady)

  • When I was in third grade my favorite book was Baby Island. Don't ask me why. I think the whole idea of being washed up on a desert island just fascinated me. Today the idea of being stranded on a desert island with a boat of babies sounds like my kind of hell. But I still remember Baby Island fondly. And Carrie brought back those memories by mentioning it in a blog post about good books to read aloud.
  • Did I mention that George Clooney is here shooting a movie? It's called Up in the Air and, while lot of it is being shot at the closed D Concourse out at the airport, they are also shooting downtown. Lots of sightings starting to happen. For instance, George shoots hoops at St. Louis University's arena. The local paper even published an interactive map where fans could pinpoint where they had seen him . My favorite entry was the one that claimed to see him in Springfield Missouri (about 3.5 hours from here) where he was caught scaling a fence trying to peek in the window of Brad Pitt's childhood home. Of course as The Riverfront Times pointed out, if George had been all the places people spotted him:
  • he'd almost certainly be dead or in jail by now. One reader reports seeing him "harassing midgets" in Granite City. Another saw him drinking a forty in Fairground park, and yet another reports witnessing the actor as he stabbed a man at a Popeye's restaurant and stole the victim's three-piece meal and fruit punch.
    Yet another reader says he beat Clooney in a go-kart race in St. Charles. The actor has also been reported at numerous east side gentlemen's clubs where he supposedly has an insatiable thirst for the "chocolate milk" -- whatever that means.

Today one of my colleagues told me that she spotted him. Yep, live and in person. And I believe her. I hope I spot him and get to talk to him. Because I really want to have a political conversation with him. Really.

Beowulf, translated by Maria Dahvana Headley

I never intended to read yet another epic poem immediately after finishing The Iliad .  But I subscribe to the Poetry Unbound podcast and in...