Wedding day photo – Carrie’s on the left, I am on the right
I am really happy to have married Carrie Lincourt!! We’re planning a bigger wedding, with extended family and close friends, but we’ve got a kid on the way, so we decided to tie the knot now – and celebrate more later. Read the rest of this entry »
Barbara Kingsolver’s novel Flight Behavior, published 2012 by Harper
Yesterday I finished reading Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel Flight Behavior.
I’ve been a fan of Kingsolver for a while. Kingsolver’s books are on my favorite authors shelves at my home – alongside Primo Levi, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Percival Everett, Sherman Alexie, Arundhati Roy, Chester Himes, Junot Diaz, Kobo Abe, Michael Ventura, Franz Kafka, Somerset Maughm, Jorge Luis Borges, and a few others.
I really enjoyed Barbara Kingsolver’s earlier novels – especially The Bean Trees, Animal Dreams, and Prodigal Summer (my favorite Kingsolver book so far.) I also like her non-fiction, including Animal Vegetable Miracle, plus her essays in High Tide in Tucson and Small Wonders. I blogged briefly about Kingsolver’s most recent novel, The Lacuna, earlier here.
Flight Behavior is excellent – I definitely recommend it. Read the rest of this entry »
untitled work by Doris Salcedo – installed at MoMA
Carrie and I went to MoMA – New York City’s Museum of Modern Art – last week. In addition to artists whose work I already enjoy (Beckmann, Cornell, and many more), I was happy to encounter three pieces of sculpture by Doris Salcedo. Read the rest of this entry »
Carrie and Joe in front of downtown Jersey City’s “flatiron” type building
So… I’m on an extended visit passing nearly two months in Jersey City, New Jersey. It was settled in 1660, and incorporated as a city in 1838. It’s about 15 square miles (similar to the size of the city of Pasadena, CA) with a population of 250,000 (2000 census cited here – similar to the population of the city of Glendale, CA or of Los Angeles City’s Koreatown plus Westlake.) Read the rest of this entry »
Junot Diaz speaking in L.A. yesterday. Photo by Yuki Kidokoro
Just a really quick post to say that I saw Junot Diaz speak last night at the L.A. Theater Center in downtown L.A. – and it was great. I really love his book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (have read it three times, and it seems like it just came out – hmmm – it was 2007.) Last night I bought his new book This Is How You Lose Her, and looking forward to diving into it. Read the rest of this entry »
Panel from Gogo Monster by Taiyo Matsumoto
My friends Federico and Yuki loaned me Gogo Monster, a comic book by Taiyo Matsumoto. I’d read Matsumoto’s Black and White comics. He has a great art style that’s both slightly goofy and nearly photo-realistic. Read the rest of this entry »
Inside cover of Mom and Paige’s collage book. Text reads: this book was made by Paige Gastil and Grandma Marge Linton – finished in 2002
Thinking of my mom lately… wishing she was still around. Mom was pretty creative, but I think poured a lot of that energy into raising four kids.
I posted a few of my mom’s Stockholm drawings earlier here, today it’s some collages that she did with my niece Paige. Read the rest of this entry »
Though I blog here in the first person, I don’t think I write all that much about my life. The Periodic Fable tends to be my thoughts, not my journal. Today’s post is more like a journal – strictly about me and where I am hoping to head, and not as deep and thoughtful as when I blog about important stuff like comics, sports, mystery novels. (sarcasm)
At the post office, mailing off my old expired passport to be renewed
Yesterday I found my expired 1999 passport! Within two hours, I filled out forms and wrote a check and biked to the post office and sent it off for an expedited renewal. Read the rest of this entry »
Riksdaghuset (Parliament Building in Stockholm, Sweden), drawing by Marge Linton, done in the late 1950s, pencil on paper, about 8.5″x11″
Here are a couple of pencil drawings that my mother did during her junior year abroad in Stockholm. Margaret Gerhardt Linton 1937-2011, then Margaret Eunice Gerhardt – mom – was a junior at Occidental College, she studied abroad for a year, during which she traveled quite a bit through various countries in Europe. Read the rest of this entry »
If Not Now, When? a novel by Primo Levi
I am re-reading Primo Levi’s novel If Not Now, When? It’s a story of a band of Jewish partisans during World War II. The partisans tool their way through Russia and Poland surviving and sabotaging. It’s not my favorite Primo Levi book. Though it’s thoroughly researched and based on historic events and people… it comes off a bit as a sort of wish-fulfillment. For my personal perception it comes off as just a bit over-optimistic. Too many of the characters are just a bit too saintly; they all just get along a bit too well. Read the rest of this entry »
