monoceros blogsI bought this book on the strength of the New York Times review. When I read the glowing reviews - and there were many of them - I wanted to buy it, but in Singapore, American hardbacks are incredibly expensive (this was over $40). So I kept staring at the copy in Borders on many visits, and waiting until the big discount was available and then I picked up the book that nobody else seemed interested in. Borders had brought in only one copy and it'd sat unmoving on the shelf, except for my occasional investigations.
I've never read any of Laura Lippman's books, so I didn't know her if her style was the usual crime and thriller fast-paced writing or the literary sort, sentences pregnant with suggestion and nuance. I'm happy to say that it's very literary: wonderful and evocative prose, carefully structured and flowing like a dream. The case involves the disappearance of two girls, two sisters taken during an outing at the mall. Years later, one of them reappears and throws the case wide open again. But she doesn't quite seem to be who she says she is (is anyone ever?). Lippman builds up characters like a sculptor, taking great pains to evince personality traits, histories, and deep, simmering emotions. Each character, not just the sisters, was interesting to me and there seemed a wealth of stories that could be told about each of them.
While reading, there were moments when I felt I was aloft and enjoying an excellent view of the community, gently and generously invited by the author to remain there watching, occasionally descending and moving close to the characters until the tempests of fear or rage within them became palpable. Despite what "knowingness" I thought I felt, my position was never higher than the level of the author herself, who knew everything, yet her voice was never smug. I was happy to observe and learn and guess.
And I managed to guess the identity of the mystery person because of a few small details. I'm glad I was right because I never get anything right when I guess the end of crime or mystery novels. Still, the circumstances behind the mystery were impossible to guess. But when all was revealed, it made perfect sense. Heartbreaking sense. I've never been so affected by the end of a book, especially a crime one. Perhaps because it was my mom's birthday the weekend I was reading that these lines stood out for me: "A parent is never happier than their unhappiest child."
Parts of the book reminded me of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, which focuses heavily on the family breaking down after the disappearance of a young woman. In What the dead know, two girls are taken (who takes two? many characters ask), and the parents are changed forever. Change is both internal and external. Time alters the town as well, and these altered landscapes reminded me how malleable our own appearances are, whether by our own hand or those of time and circumstance.
I don't think I've blogged about make-up before, so this is the first - and probably the last time - I will do so. (This isn't going to turn into a beauty blog!) My closest friends and I don't really talk about or use a whole lot of make-up; it's never a topic of conversation, although I do remember one that took place years ago, between D and me about DSD finally purchasing make-up, like eyeshadow. These days, DSD is quite an adventurer in the world of make-up though she can just as comfortably go without it.
As for my own adventures, I got into the eyeshadow thing myself for a year or two during college, and then I got very lazy and stopped wearing any. Now, I wear eyeshadow only when I attend milongas at night. Incidentally, I learned to wear mascara so that I wouldn't look sleepy at milongas; I don't think anyone dances with you if you look like you're ready to fall asleep. Lipsticks are more my thing; they're easy to wear and take off, and it seems highly possible that one can do away with all other forms of color products and thrive with just a little red on the lips.
Despite my penchant for them, I don't buy many lipsticks, so when I have to throw one out, it pains me a little. Nars Morocco is one I conserved for too long and it's now turned rancid, smelling like a crayon. I bought it from the Sephora store in Troy, or to be precise, Somerset Mall, the so-called up-town mall an hour away from Ann Arbor. Yes, the lipstick - if it came from my days in Ann Arbor - is very old and was pretty expensive. It's a bit of a cult brand, and isn't sold in Singapore so I had to trawl the Net to find a replacement. In the end, after my eBay surf sessions, I found a seller who was having a mini Nars sale - buy one item and additional items ship for free. And in the very end, I didn't buy the Nars Morocco again but chose a more daring shade than the brownish-coral Morocco. It bears a slightly embarrassing moniker, "Fire Down Below," which is supposedly a red that is flattering on most women. I also decided to get a safe choice named "Corinthe," a sheer almond color that will likely do as a daily make-me-look-a-little-more-grown-up-when-I-teach tool. What I like about Nars lipsticks - or the only one I ever had - are the rich pigments and semi-matte finish. I'm not a lip gloss girl and prefer a non-shiny lip look, though I'm a fan of lip balms (the shine those impart is never over the top), clear or lightly tinted.
While looking for Nars online, I also read about Poppy King, former resident of Australia and now indie lipstick creator based in New York, who has created her second line of lipsticks, Lipstick Queen. Her first line, named Poppy (which I remember reading about when I was in secondary school), made her one of the youngest - if not the youngest, at 18 - successful entrepreneurs in Australia in the 90s. For a number of reasons, the company folded after an expansion attempt, which included adding products like lingerie(!), and Poppy moved to America to work for Clinique. Three years later, she quit and took another stab at designing her own product, which will be only lipsticks, which were and always will be her obsession.
This new line got my attention because it specifically avoids the path of glitter and shimmer and sparkles and little spangles, the very things that - when overdosed in any make-up product - annoy the hell out of me. King has only ten shades but these come in two versions - Saint or Sinner. Saint, light and airy, is sheer and has 10% pigment. Sinner, dark and deep, is the matte 90%-pigment edition. The packaging is covered with Art Nouveau designs and the marketing spiel mentions Jane Austen somewhere. I think the "Jane Austen" part alone won my favor. There's also a clever product called Oxymoron, which is a matte lip gloss. Goes on like a gloss but without the shine. Brilliant.
In one interview, Poppy King said it made her sad that women have stopped wearing lipsticks, saying they can only wear gloss after a certain age, convinced that lipsticks make them look old. I wouldn't have believed this until I heard someone say the very same thing to me, that she only wears lip gloss now. Personally, I can't see how lipstick makes anyone look old. The sheer or shimmer lipsticks are pared down versions of lip gloss, so why wouldn't those do, instead of gloss and only gloss? Even if glosses glide easily on the lips (I never find it so though; as mentioned above, I am not a gloss person), that doesn't mean they trump lipsticks and isn't reason enough to toss out the option of lipstick altogether! I'm in the Poppy camp, which considers lipstick to be the quintessential make-up product, the main and best part of a toolkit or an artist's palette; the center of everything: the nib of a pen, the belly of a whale, the sturdy spine of a book, the controlling metaphor of a poem, the middle C of a piano. Everything else comes after.
Before I exhaust myself, let me add one more brand to this lipstick list. I have never used shu uemura lipsticks, but I became besotted with the autumn/winter collection for 2007 simply because it's inspired by the Edo period. Or rather, the patterns and colors of nature seen in kimono designs during the Edo period. The collection is called Komon, and small detailed Komon patterns actually decorate the eyeshadow palettes. The limited edition lipsticks aren't numbered as they usually are but have names like "Toki" and "Hakubai" and "Sazanka," all of which make no sense to me but sound like poetry to my infatuated ears. Other product names include "Usubeni," Nadeshiko," "Konjo," "Rikancha," "Shirogane," "Kaihaku," "Tobi," and "Sakura," the last of which I do understand! I fancy the "Toki" lipstick, which is described as a soft mulberry pink, and on the back of my hand, feels creamy and makes me think "delicious."
Ultimately, I won't wind up with all of these lipsticks that I've written about, but I'm blissfully satiated after writing about them. Blogging isn't just catharsis but also a form of virtual indulgence; I can't have it, but I can still dream and write about it!
If Masi Oka is the geek boy made good, moving from developing visual special effects in Industrial Light & Magic to becoming a small screen hero in "Heroes," then Naomi Novik is, as the New York Times calls her, the "geek girl made good." With a masters degree in computer science from Columbia, she was part of the team that designed and developed the computer game Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide. Her first degree, though, from Brown University, was in English. (Incidentally, Oka, a year younger, got his first degrees in mathematics and computer science from Brown University.)
After reading that Peter Jackson had optioned the rights to the first three books in Novik's Temeraire series (there are two more forthcoming), I was interested to learn what had hooked Jackson. I've certainly enjoyed his choices in adaptations so far. There is the biggie, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and then the wrenching Alice Sebold work, The Lovely Bones, which can't arrive soon enough. From epic fantasy to literary drama/thriller, Jackson's eye for literary works is fantastic.
So I purchased the fairly inexpensive paperbacks by Novik and started reading one weekend in a bid to keep myself from thinking about a recent dismal haircut I had. I was a little hesitant about the novels at first, never having been a dragon fiction fan and not being able to recall what was the last grown-up fantasy novel I read, unless you count Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell as fantasy fiction. Still, I knew that Novik was partly inspired by the works of Patrick O'Brian and Jane Austen, weighty names that lent some worth to her reputation. By the middle of the first novel, the well wrought combination of dragons, Napoleonic wars, and Regency propriety sealed Novik's reputation for me. And it's a good one.
The best thing about the series is the friendship between a Jack-Aubrey-styled hero, Will Laurence, and the Chinese-by-nature and British-by-nurture Imperial dragon, Temeraire, named for a French ship captured by the English at the Battle of Lagos in 1759. (Temeraire's egg was taken from a French ship that Laurence had won.) After finishing the first book, I wanted my own dragon friend, much like Temeraire who is curious, polite, brave, eager for knowledge and action, and harbors revolutionary inclinations. I wanted a dragon with an insatiable thirst for books and overlarge claws that render him incapable of flipping pages so that I can read to him in the shade of a hill and then watch over him as he walks around to examine rocks and clouds.
Since I have no room for a dragon - even if they did exist - I will content myself with reading more of Novik's books and waiting patiently for Peter Jackson to bring the dragons to life on screen, not just for me but for everyone who's read the books and wants a dragon friend too. And if any of the toy companies are smart, they'll be approaching Weta for merchandising rights. The descriptions of each dragon character and the various breeds are specific, detailed, and very ready for toy adaptation. McFarlane is already well-known for its on-going dragon series, so why not another, which would be based on a series of films?
On the other hand, I also hope no dragon action figures will be made, then I can save my money for the other Temeraire books that will surely be written and the DVDs in lush collectors' editions that will surely be produced.
I love the rainy days we've been having lately; it's perfect weather for reading and lazing, though I don't get to do enough of either. This evening, I actually hurried through my front door to get out of the shockingly cool (for Singapore), rainy breeze. These lower temperatures also remind me that the weather in the U.S. is changing and cooling as well.
It's almost fall there, and October means the arrival of the Best American series. Ever since I was assigned the Best American Essays books for two non-fiction courses, I've been buying a copy every year. Except during my instructor days, of course, when the publisher sent me copies of Short Stories and Essays without my asking! The Best American books are often assigned in classes because they are so non-textbook-like. And when the Best American Non-Required Reading series edited by Dave Eggers came into play, readings became more quirky and lively, and covers got illustrated by the likes of Adrian Tomine and Art Spiegelman. And then the introductions. The past few years have had Viggo Mortensen (I have to say here that I can't wait to see him and Naomi Watts in "Eastern Promises" - tattoos and naked knife fight!), Matt Groening, and Beck writing pieces for the anthologies. This year, it's Sufjan Stevens. Splendid.
Although the books aren't on shelves yet, I managed to read the introduction for this year's Best American Essays. David Foster Wallace does the honors this year and it's by far the most thought-provoking introduction I've read in some time. By turns absorbingly conversational and erudite, Wallace examines bias (the "Best" in the title isn't safe from his musings) and choices determined by points in time, and states why essays on Iraq matter and why memoirs have no place on his favorite list. He also writes about the responsibility and necessity - in a world throbbing with information, trivia, noise, news, and battling voices - of those selected to make selections for the public, or rather, the "deciders," as he terms it.
His introduction alone convinces me that this year's edition is going to be exceptional. It makes me want to read his choices and think about why they got places in the book. For once, the introduction won't be an obligatory piece of writing; it may be seen as one of the bests as well, an excellent piece of prose alongside the essays selected for the anthology.
Read it here.