Friday, April 13, 2007

Who's Your Book Daddy?

A two-post day.

Jerome Weeks was the long-time book critic for the Dallas Morning News. He now has a blog called Book/Daddy on which he still provides terrific book reviews. You can read his blog here.

The following came from his post for Wednesday:

Lesson in map reading

1. Go to Google.
2. Click on "Maps."
3. Click on "Get directions."
4. Type "New York" in the "start address" box (the one on the left).
5. Type "London" in the "end address" box (the one on the right).
6. Scroll down to step #23.
7. Then check out step #24. After all that effort in #23, you wouldn't want to miss the EO5.

I'm offering you a smile as a talisman against Friday, the 13th .

And, while you're over there at Book/Daddy, check out Weeks' review of Jon Clinch's first novel, Finn here. I was on my way to a class yesterday morning, wearing my trusty Sony S2 walkman, when I heard Weeks giving that review on NPR.

Finn takes Twain's Huck Finn and expands on the novel, telling the story of Huck's father Pap.

One of the most interesting things about Finn is that Clinch postulates Huck was a child of mixed race, the son of a racist and an escaped slave.

There have been academics who have argued for this interpretation of Huck's racial make-up for years based on his speech patterns in Twain's books. However, this is the first fictional exploration of the subject.

Weeks' on-air review also makes the argument that all of our finest arts, including jazz and rock, began as blended, mixed race efforts.

Have a good day.

9 comments:

Marie Tuhart said...

Maya,

Thanks for the Friday morning laugh. I love google map #23. That made my day.

poetica in silentium said...

One of my wife's friends sent this to her with Pittsburgh to Amsterdam directions. I'm a little uncertain about what appears as step 20 in her list - don't quite think I can swim the Atlantic in 29 days, but the whole thing was a hoot. Someone at Google has a sense of humor.

PS - Mentioned you as a must read author in my blog yesterday - only by name, but with he idea that there's a lot of good reading out there that doesn't have names like King or Rowling or Brown on the cover.

Dave

Maya Reynolds said...

Marie: Glad you enjoyed the story.

Maya Reynolds said...

David: You forgot to give us a link to your blog.

Thanks for the mention. I'm looking forward to reading it.

Maya Reynolds said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
poetica in silentium said...

http://www.xanga.com/Davidjroth2002

Maya Reynolds said...

David: You have a great blog! You need to fill out your blogger profile so people can click on your name and find it.

Warm regards,

Maya

poetica in silentium said...

I just checked - the profile seems to be working OK. Thanks for your comment, though.

Maya Reynolds said...

David: I'm talking about your profile on Blogger (you needed to join Blogger to post on Blogspot here), not your profile on Xanga.

Once you provided me the link, I could go to Xanga and read your profile there. However, when I just click on your "David" here, I get the message that you've opted not to file out a profile yet.

Sorry I wasn't more clear earlier.