My Days in Texas » books

Letters of Note

sbatterman — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:49:29 +0000

I have a new blog in my RSS reader (what a modern sentence this is turning out to be!) that every time I read the latest post I think “I need to make sure everyone I know reads this!”. It’s Letters of Note, and it is what it says it is. Interesting letters, scanned and transcribed, with a bit of backstory. It’s been up a couple of months I guess? with a couple of posts a day, and they have all been interesting to me. Really, just keep clicking “Older Posts” and read them all if you have any interest in history or humor or art or people or science or books or writing or happy or sad or life or anything. It’s a new enough blog to catch up.

I started to go through and pick out favorites, but I just started clicking back and re-reading them all so I’m not going bother listing them. Although I liked this recent cover letter quite a bit:

Literary layabout

sbatterman — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 04:40:21 +0000

My original plan for Saturday was to meet my friend Ray from Houston and his kids at the Texas State Fair. It looked to be the best of fair days, cool and sunny. But that meant it was also the best of reading in the backyard days, and so that’s what I did. I felt some pangs of regret as I lay in the wicker loveseat under my climbing rose beside my herb garden, because I could hear the whistle of the old steam engine from the fair, and even the occasional musical act. But the library book I had started was so good, and so I read until it started to sprinkle late in the day, and then said smugly to myself “well, good thing I didn’t go to the fair!”.

The book was (I finished it last night indoors) “The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky” by Ken Dornstein. Great book, recommended. Briefly, it’s a memoir about the author’s brother, who was killed in the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103, aka the Lockerbie bombing. Now sensational as that story could be, it’s not about the bombing, but about the author trying to piece together his older brother from the copious (understatement) notebooks he kept in his quest to become a writer. The video on the book’s website explains this main theme, but the story, as told by the younger brother, is really a very effective tale of siblings, ambitions, expectations and failure, and what people go through when they try to make sense of a sudden death.

Anyway, I had breakfast today with Ray and his kids, and it sounds like the fair was crowded, the line for the fried butter (yes) was long, and the rain came too soon. At least that’s what I tell myself, and I do have another two weeks to fit in a fair visit.

Grand Hallows Ball

sbatterman — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 21:07:24 +0000

Last night I went to the festivities leading up to the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at the Borders near our apartment. There was a spelling bee, costume contest, “Hogwarts Express” trolley rides, a debate, and coloring and games, even though many of the people there were over 21. Sure there were plenty of kids there, but I came to realize that a lot of Harry Potter fans who grew up with the books are Erica’s age or older, and since that is the demographic in our neighborhood, there were many young adults participating (some somewhat sheepishly, especially in the spelling bee).

It was actually pretty fun to see how excited people were. Three teenage girls next to me on the trolley were beside themselves with anticipation about the book, and spent the entire time talking about the previous books and movies. There was a little boy in a wizard costume near the front of the line who looked like he was going to wet his pants. I tried to get a picture of him, but his mom was in my way with her camera. He got his book and kept saying “it’s so heavy!”. I’m sure most of the people who bought the book last night made at least some attempt to read it as soon as they got home.

And no, I didn’t buy the book. I have only read the first two books, so I didn’t feel like I needed to buy one day one. Just don’t tell me how it ends before I read it. Someday.

A few photos at Flickr.