I really, really enjoyed this book.
I've been focusing on books written by women lately; they seem to satisfy the things I'm looking for in characters and narrative more often than books written by men. But I saw some good reviews of this, and a book about Midwesterners seemed appealing at the moment, so I gave it a try.
I really liked the characters, even the more flawed ones; I especially liked Edith. And there were some plot developments I really didn't see coming that just made me grin when they happened.
I've recently discovered some really wonderful art by Korean artists. To my dismay, I know almost nothing about Korean art - but thanks to the internet, I'm beginning to discover some works I really like.
I've started poking around Google Arts & Culture, and it's actually pretty great - they feature various artists, various topics, various museums from one day to the next.
Somehow, one of those explorations led me to this terrific painting, Wood Box and Bottle.
I was so delighted to read about bees, and how they learn from other bees how to open puzzle boxes and pass on waggle dances.
The wonderful article Bees learn to dance and to solve puzzles from their peers, by the wonderful Jennifer Ouellette, highlights two recent studies
I'm still thoroughly enjoying listening to my Familiar and Unfamiliar playlist.
The other day, Bonnie Raitt's "I Ain't Gonna Let You Break My Heart Again" came up. I love Nick of Time and Luck of the Draw and know them pretty well, but I'd never paid much attention to the piano on this track before.
It's really lovely, though, and moved me so much that I wondered who was playing.
I love the poetry of A. E. Stallings so much. I know no one else is like her, but I wondered if somebody might delight me as much as she does.
So I did a search for
poets like a. e. stallings
Google found over a million results*,
I've been using iTunes (and the Music app) since it was released, and I've always loved it, but I've somehow never really made the most of it in all that time. Like so many things, I know there are a million things to learn and discover with this tool, and if I only had infinite time, I'm sure I could find more of them.
I've been reading the classic comic strip Cul de Sac lately, and I've been loving it - and also being struck by all the artistry that went into the drawings.
I've read a bit about cartoonist Richard Thompson and watched some short videos, and several people pointed out how deceptively simple his work appears - the visual style of Cul de Sac is suggestive of children's drawings, while still being surprisingly precise.
The Cul de Sac from September 17, 2008 has some wonderful illustrations of his skillful drawing:
I just cannot say enough good things about this book. I love the main character, and the serial enthusiasms he's propelled into, and I could happily spend years just reading about whatever he's up to, whatever new thing he's learning about, dabbling in, experiencing.
Recently during my daily practice of looking at art, I was poking around various pages at the Art Institute of Chicago, and I came across this article about Kinds of Red.
It had thumbnails of some beautiful works - I was expecially taken with the red diacritics in the 1000-year-old Qur'an, and the advertisement by Elsa Kula.
But what delighted me the very most was learning about the website's feature that lets you filter images by color. The article links to artworks matching a nice bright red as an example.
I was delighted to find this in one of my neighborhood free library boxes.
I could have sworn I first heard about it via the NPR Book Concierge (now known as Best Books), but I don't see it anywhere on the site, so I must be mistaken.
As someone who delights in lots of things and tries to make it a practice to notice the delightful, I am the perfect audience for this book.