Bibliophile: Don't Want No 18th century Short People

Books. Books, Books, Books.

Food : from farm to fork statistics. Luxemburg : Office for Official Publications of the European Communities
Did you know 41% of the family labor force for European farming is provided by women? It's true.

Book forged in hell : Spinoza's scandalous treatise and the birth of the secular age / Steven Nadler.
Good title, though I was expecting the Necronomicon.

Canada's 10 least wanted foodborne pathogens. [Ottawa] : Canadian Food Inspection Agency, c2011.
Sadly, the sequel, Canada's 10 most wanted foodborne pathogens, sold very poorly.

Walt Disney on the front lines [videorecording] : animation from 1941-1945 / produced by Buena Vista Home Entertainment in association with David A. Bossert and Kurtti Pellerin ; producer and writer, Leonard Maltin.
This could be very interesting. I remember being fascinated as a kid by a video we got somehow of a 1940s cartoon where Scrooge convinces Donald to invest in war bonds.

Blood, sweat and cheers : sport and the making of modern Canada / Colin D. Howell. Toronto ; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press, c2001.
I imagine there's a lot of hockey in here. Like, a lot a lot. Hopefully the fierce, gripping sport of curling gets its fair shake as well.

Crass struggle : glitz, greed, and gluttony in a wanna-have world. Montréal : McGill-Queen's University Press, c2011. Naylor, R. T.
It's been a while since I finished "Evil Paradises," and I could go for something that will fuel my inner Marxist rage.


Onward : how Starbucks fought for its life without losing its soul. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K. : Wiley & Sons, 2011. Schultz, Howard
...Starbucks has a soul? So yeah, here's a book on the history and goals of Starbucks written by its CEO. Now my inner Marxist is scared.


Your call is (not that) important to us : customer service and what it reveals about our world and our lives / Emily Yellin. 1st Free Press hardcover ed. New York : Free Press, c2009.
As someone who now has a rhetorical stake in instruction manuals, I find this line of thought fascinating.

First 60 seconds : win the job interview before it begins / Dan Burns. Naperville, Ill. : Sourcebooks, c2009.
Now that's crafty marketing. I bet he got a five-book deal to cover the next four minutes.

Greenback planet : how the dollar conquered the world and threatened civilization as we know it / H.W. Brands. 1st ed. Austin : University of Texas Press, 2011.
So can you tell yet that the local business college just made some big purchases?

Connected : the surprising power of our social networks and how they shape our lives : how your friends' friends' friends affect everything you feel, think, and do. 1st Back Bay pbk. ed. New York : Back Bay Books, 2011.
Okay, two subtitles is cheating.

Making is connecting : the social meaning of creativity from DIY and knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0 / David Gaunlett. Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA : Polity Press, 2011.
Reading YouTube : the critical viewers guide / Anandam Kavoori. New York : Peter Lang, c2011.
No jokes here; these two would probably be useful to read for my pop culture class next semester, and I want to make a mental note to come back to them.

Host in the machine : examining the digital in the social. Witney, Oxford, UK : Chandos Pub., 2010. Thomas-Jones, Angela.
This, on the other hand, gets points for the pun. I can't believe that's the first time I've seen that variation.

Designing culture : the technological imagination at work / Anne Balsamo. Durham [N.C.] : Duke University Press, 2011.
And I know enough about Balsamo to know that when a new book of hers comes out, it's worth paying attention to. Consider the mental note extended. (Sidenote: looking for her wikipedia page, I was informed that it didn't exist, and that I might be really looking for "anna balls." Which also doesn't have a page that exists. Stop helping, Wikipedia.)

Digital fandom : new media studies / Paul Booth. New York : Peter Lang, c2010.
Okay, university library system, if you're just going to present me with book after book of material that's incredibly relevant to my area of research, then this is going to take all day.

Not quite adults : why 20-somethings are choosing a slower path to adulthood, and why it's good for everyone / Rick Settersten and Barbara E. Ray.
This doesn't apply to ME, clearly, but... it might help shed some life on... a friend... of a friend... yeah...

How to build your own country / written by Valerie Wyatt ; illustrated by Fred Rix. Toronto, ON : Kids Can Press, c2009.
Mostly, I mention because a 40 page educational book clearly written for children has been filed between "Morality, leadership and public policy : on experimentalism in ethics" and "Globalization and human rights in the developing world." Sometimes, the Library of Congress gets whimsical.

Free for all : fixing school food in America / Janet Poppendieck. Berkeley : University of California Press, c2010.
Seems somewhat topical, what with the "pizza is a vegetable" ruling and all.

Intern nation : how to earn nothing and learn little in the brave new economy. London ; New York : Verso, 2011.
Skills for the modern worker! Also, I appear to be back in the business section.

Prairie fabric : architectural intensification in Saskatoon / by Logan Kari Hepworth. Waterloo, Ont. : University of Waterloo, 2011.
As a Saskatchewanier, this one had to get a mention. And congratulations to Logan Hepworth for completing his thesis. If I could only read one book on Saskatoon housing, this'd be it.

Media, masculinities, and the machine : F1, transformers, and fantasizing technology at its limits / Dan Fleming and Damion Sturm.
I don't even *like* Transformers (not part of my childhood culture), but yes, I would still like to read a book analyzing its masculinity.

Encyclopedia of the vampire : the living dead in myth, legend, and popular culture
Joshi, S. T., 1958.
Someone I know, but can't remember, is giving a paper on vampires in the near future. Maybe if they're reading this, (or more likely, someone who reads this knows who I'm talking about, and can tell me who the person is) they'll find this useful.

Kiss my relics : hermaphroditic fictions of the middle ages / David Rollo.
No interest in the topic, but good title.

Looney tunes golden collection.
Rabbit of Seville, Duck Amuck (which was actually adapted into a videogame), and Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century? Yes, please.

Secret identity reader : essays on sex, death and the superhero / Lee Easton, Richard Harrison.
The super hero stuff will pretty much always get a nod with me.

Straight from the heart : gender, intimacy, and the cultural production of shōjo manga / Jennifer S. Prough.
I've watched every episode of Gossip Girl and My Little Pony. Is it any surprise I'd be a fan of manga designed for teenage girls?

Little everyman : stature and masculinity in eighteenth-century English literature / Deborah Needleman Armintor.
As an amateur 18th centurist, I'm intrigued. As a vertically challenged individual, I'm offended.

Dinosaur vs. bedtime / Bob Shea.
The epic battle.

Chinnovation: how Chinese innovators are changing the world / Yinglan Tan.
That title sounds kind of racist.

Later Days.

Friday Quotations: Juicy is the new Gross

"A juicy game element will bounce and wiggle and squirt and make a little noise when you touch it.” --Kyle Gabler, member of 2D Boy, creator of World of Goo.

Later Days.

Thanks from an Asshole

God, that was a good run. Why?

Long version: I went on today's run with a chip on my shoulder. I was carrying the emotional debris of yesterday's post, to begin with. I'd thought the Juul reading would take an hour or so to finish, and it took four hours. Five, counting that blogpost. Which meant I got home at 2:30 am. Which meant I got six hours of sleep. Today was also the first day where it's clear the snow is around to stay, and that's a mood-setter, if you let it be. Then I spent a good portion of today running around trying to track down a laptop for my students (although the downtime downtown was really nice, mostly thanks to good company). Back on campus, I felt inundated with minutiae (It's my blog and I'll use fancy vocabulary if I want): I had to drop off the laptop, get the key from the mailroom, carry a package from the mail room to my office, return a recalled book to the library, go up to the 10th floor to get a book on the rhetoric of instruction manuals (gonna bet they weren't thinking of game manuals), remember that I still had the mailroom key, return the mailroom key, and run at top speed to reach a bus that was pulling away. So I finally get home at around 5, which means the sun is setting. It's at that point I realize that I've lost my debit card, so I have to go the local grocery store and wait around until the floor manager's free so I can reclaim it. I get home, get ready for the run, and it's 5:30, which means the sun has already set.

And thus, I was in a bad mood for my run.

And because of the mood I was in, I wasn't taking the precautions I should have been. I was in a "cars make way for pedestrians, dammit" sort of mood. That misguided view came to a head when I came to a certain corner. There was a main road going east-west, and a road that joined it going south; the only traffic guiding element was a stop sign on the south road. So I'm running east across this walk while a car going west is turning left. I have to jump to avoid being hit, and it honks at me. At which I, being rather annoyed already yell, "IT'S A CROSSWALK!". The rejoinder came in that special tone that only a young male can properly affect: "GET THE FUCK OFF THE ROAD ASSHOLE!".

I'm pretty sure that a pedestrian crossing at a marked pedestrian crosswalk has the right of way in this situation, but that's not the point; if I hadn't been so wrapped up in my own gloom at that point, I probably wouldn't have been in situation to begin with. My anger was endangering me, and I needed to calm down. And thus I did. I took some deep breaths, and ran on, sans iPod and music, just me and cold weather clothing, moving in the night. And once i settled into that groove, it struck me that this was all very familiar.

Those with particularly good memories may recall that I've previously said that I started running in order to impress a girl. Though that's a gross oversimplification, it still has an element of truth. I started running way back in the summer of 2004 for that reason. But what kept me running over these next seven years wasn't misplaced masculine pride. Rather, it was night jogs in the crisp, often cold night air of the late fall and early winter.

At that point in my life, most of my self-esteem was tied into my intellectual endeavors, and for some good reasons. Unfortunately, one of those reasons was that I really, really disliked my body. I was short, short-sighted, kinda chubby, and, though this was long before the asthma days, not exactly in good health. My body was just clumsy, accident-prone, and all around faulty. What was there to be proud of? But when I started running, that changed. Sure, I was still awkward and uncoordinated, but by God, at least I had endurance, and I could continue performing awkwardly long after those smooth-functioning pretty boys had to sit down for a breather.

But while I was appreciating the effects of my running, it wasn't until that fall that I started to appreciate the running itself. I was feeling a lot of pressure from school at the time--the double major was a tough mistress to please. And I was doing marking for the Math department, which meant a pretty heavy workload some nights. Running wasn't an escape, but it was a release. There's a tranquility to a good run that sets in after a kilometer or two. It's a simple satisfaction, but a true one. It's being content in the knowledge that the whole mind/body/meat/whatever assemblage is working together to forge its way through and in the environment around it. When I'm running like that, I'm at peace with myself in a way that's a little different from anything else in my life.

And I'd forgotten that, recently. Partly because I've gotten too used to jogging with the iPod, which, love it though I do, is undeniably a distraction. And partly because I've been doing nothing but day runs, where you have to be more concerned about the fellow pedestrians you're sharing elbow room with. But mostly because I've let the running slide. Once a week, twice a week, maybe skip a week, if sometimes. I've got a lot of things to do, after all, and running's not important. But what I reminded myself today is that it is important. It's important to me, both in terms of who I want to be, and what it does for me on a day-to-day basis.

Or, to put it another way, here's the short version of why that was a good run:
It reminded me who I am. I'm a mother-fucking runner, man.

(Knock on wood, but this would be a good time to start a betting pool for how long until I have my next running-related leg injury.)

Later Days.

Book Review: A Casual Revolution by Jesper Juul

“It was important for me to finish the game—I believe that it is important in life, to finish things, no matter what. I like competing with myself, to see development and progress. 'No matter what,' is really the point for me. I googled for solutions and found a cheat code to make Zuma slower. It worked!!! For me, that was even more satisfying than beating the game on its own terms: to modify the game to fit my own limitations and capacities.” --50 year old woman, on discovering the casual game Zuma. Interviewed in A Casual Revolution.
“Look at chess. Why shouldn't video games aspire to [the] same kind of status? Why shouldn't the very best of them aspire to have that kind of impact on the world? A game could be something that is worth devoting your life to, for a player to grow up playing it, to spend their whole life playing it... to make it the centerpiece of their entire life.
“Is that casual? No, but that's what golf is, that's what baseball is, that's what poker is, and those are the games that appeal to a broad audience. So to me, it's foolish to not look at this larger audience. I think wwe should think about this larger audience in historical terms. It's not just about reaching a million soccer moms, it's about making a game that can stand the test of time.” --Frank Lutz, part of the development team of the Facebook game Parking Wars, and a former director at gamelab, interviewed in Casual Revolution.

Right. It's 11:30 pm, I'm still in my office, and time's a-wasting. So let's minimize the amusing anecdotal portion. I am a hardcore gamer. Here, for example, is a short list of games off the top of my head that I know I have spent over a hundred hours on: Mass Effect, Mass Effect II, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Disgaea, and Dragon Warrior VII. I am a casual gamer. I am (or was) a frequent player of casual games such as FreeCell, Minesweeper, Farmville, Mafia Wars, and online Scrabble. So what's the difference between these two identites? Or, alternatively, what's the difference between these two sets of games? Jesper Juul, veteran videogame scholar, aims to find out, in his book A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players.

The book is rather breezy, to the point of being quite short: it runs at 218 pages, but the last 73 pages are appendices detailing the resulting of Juul's interviews. The real meat is the first 152 pages, wherein he outlines his discussion of casual games. The first chapter outlines the basic theory. Videogames are becoming normalized through the proliferation of popular games, which make a point of appealing to a wider audience. In particular, the casual games function through two main means: mimetic games, that focus on approximating controls with real-life equivalents (think the Wii, the Kinect) and downloadable games that focus on flat screen interfaces over fancy 3D graphics. Juul argues that hardcore and casual don't present two choices or even a spectrum, but different stances on a variety of factors that change over time.

Chapter 2 defines what it means to be casual under five categories: type of fiction (happy or disturbing), usability (ease of learning and mastering the interface), interruptibility (how easy it is to put the game down if need be), difficulty, and juiciness (how immediately the game rewards success). Game studies, he argues, needs to pay attention to how the game addresses these elements, but also on the type of players at work (or rather, play). Chapter 3 examines the history of casual games, with a focus on the development of Solitaire, from the 19th century on. Games, Juul argues, have to be considered in terms of four time frames of experience: historic time (history of the game and genre), design time (the background of the designers), player time (the game conventions the player is familiar with) and game-playing time, the time of actually playing the game. Personally, I would have gone with something like "context" over "time," as the latter places a distracting focus on temporality, but it's still a nice consideration.

Chapter 4 looks at downloadable games, with a focus on the 3-tile swap game's evolution. Again, I would have handled this somewhat differently; in my mind, if you want to talk about the history of the downloadable game, you need to start much earlier, with not just Doom and shareware, but also with the original distribution style of the mainframe game. Yes, these games are about as far from casual as you can get, which is why I imagine Juul didn't go there, but that's the point--what changes alter the use of this medium of distribution to change it from a hardcore channel to a casual one? (Easy answer: the Internet, but I suspect there may be more to it.) Anyway, using early tile-based games Tetris and Chain Shot, he identifies four traits for the games: time (whether the game is hectically paced or turn-based strategic); manipulation (whether you manipulate pieces as they fall or after they are in place); completion criteria (matching three or filling a row), and obligatory matches, whether the game lets you make nonmatching moves or not.

The next chapter is on mimetic gaming, with an emphasis on the Wii and the Guitar Hero-type games. He focuses on the Wii, as the first console to use a simplified controller as its main peripheral, and the arcade games, which had a heavy mimetic bent (think racing games shaped like race cars). Chapter 6 is on social meanings and social goals. Essentially, Juul states that gamers in a social setting keep in mind their desire to win, their desire to create an interesting game, and their desire to keep the esteem and goodwill of the other players. (Note that in an online multiplayer game, anonymity makes the last element less of a concern.) Chapter 7 studies Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and The Sims 2, stating that the success of these games is their flexibility in offering goals, but not forcing players to meet them, enabling hardcore and casual play.

Chapter 8 concludes things, suggesting that the casual shift is occurring because of rising costs in game production, the proliferation of PCs, and the aging demographic of players. He also briefly mentions browser-based games, like the facebook apps, and concludes that games becoming normal is good for hardcore and casual folk alike. Three appendices follow: the first show number crunches for who's casual gaming (most interesting part: the people at that particular site tested 93% female, and average age of 41); interviews with players over what brought them to casual games; and interviews with casual game developers.

As you may have guessed by my dissatisfied, almost snide remarks, I wasn't too enamored of this book. A lot of that, to be fair, must be chalked up to my own personal prejudices. As a scholar, I like studying both casual and hardcore games, though the former my focus is more on player discourses than the games themselves, per se. But as a player, I far prefer the hardcore. And I think that may be because of my single player RPG background. I *do* prefer a good story with my game, even if that story presents itself mainly in terms of ambiance, as in Oblivion. As one of the casual designers, Margaret Wallace, admits, the interruptibility of the casual game means it's not really suitable for sustaining a long term narrative, and I find that inherently less interesting. So I have a vested interest in supporting the hardcore (but not the multiplayer FPSes, or the MMOs. See, even in "hardcore," there's distinctions).

And I should say that the interviews are really quite fascinating. Juul sticks to a pretty typical set of questions for the interview subjects, and those questions really illuminate his discussion points for the book proper: whether casual refers to players or games, whether all video games were originally casual games in the 70s, but drifted away from this form, whether there's a distinction between developing games for themselves and developing for a casual audience. The first question question is significant, because it asks designers to choose a side: focus on the game, or focus on the players. Most designers, like Juul himself, answer somewhere in between. The second question is significant, because if the answer is yes, then suddenly you have a different narrative happening. It's not about casual games suddenly appearing now, but a return to the originary form. My favorite answer to this one was also a yes and no; yes, some games were very simple, like Pac-Man, but others were so punishing--and designed to be punishing, to get the maximum quarter drain--that they can't be really defined as casual. And finally, the third question is significant, because it deals with the image of the designer. If the designer designs for themselves, they are still, in some way, auteurs, creating works of art they themselves appreciate. Or, alternatively, they are selfish jerks, ignoring a wide segment of the population. If they design games they wouldn't play themselves, they are more akin to business suits, catering to demographics. Or, alternatively, they are widening games to more than their immediate narrow circle.

I quite liked the interviews; I liked them more, in fact, than the conclusions Juul drew from them in the book proper. I suppose my main problem with the book is that just because its subject is casual gaming, it shouldn't feel like a casual encounter with the subject. And yet, it does. It's too short. 152 pages is almost nothing, especially when you consider the liberal use of large screenshots and diagrams. It's great to see such quality shots, but it doesn't help me shake the feeling that this book is artificially inflated at the cost of cheapening its subject. Take chapter 6, the chapter on social gaming in casual games. It's eight pages long. Eight pages (one of which is a page long cartoon strip Juul reprints) to describe the entirety of the social element of casual games. It seems like there should be more to say on the subject. (But while I remember, that cartoon strip does get points for being incredibly moving, and a great example of social aspects of gaming--see its original slideshow version here, Animal Crossing is Tragic.)

So to wrap up then: Excellent topic, excellent discussion. I'm just left with the feeling that something of greater substance is still waiting to be written on the subject.

Later Days.

TV Talk: How I Talk About Meeting Your Mother

To say that How I Met Your Mother has been slow going this season is an understatement. It's been in a slump, and it isn't aging particularly well. A large part of the problem is the show's central concept, that the Ted character is telling a prolonged story to his kids about how he met their mother. Presumably, then, the show ends with the line "...and that's how I met your mother." The problem with approach--or at least one of the problems--is that it means that your main character's story arc is already set: he is the one who will meet his "true love" and there's only so much you can do with introducing "potential mothers" before it feels as if you're teasing the audience. So the show tries to distract with its other running plots. This season, it's the Barney/Robin love connection, the mystery of Barney's wedding (which we've seen in flashforwards, thanks for adding that phrase to the TV lexicon, Lost), and Lily and Marshall's attempt to have a baby. The immediate problem with the show is that with the exception of the wedding frame, these are all plot lines we've seen before. This season seems to be a clearing of the deck--Barney's put his womanizing ways behind him, and Ted has resolved two of his longstanding love affairs, the chef girl from Season 1 and the Season 1 Slutty Pumpkin. (On the former: the show's a lot more tolerable if you imagine it ending when he meets the chef. On the latter: don't ask. The explanation's less interesting than the phrase.) But really, it's been more about wallowing in the past than moving forward. And while moving forward is not really a traditional strength of the laugh-track sitcom, HIMYM usually does a better job of at least presenting an illusion of such progress.

Last night's episode, (he said, finally getting to the point)was a welcome departure, not so much because it depicted anything radically new, but because it played to the strengths of the show, namely, its romantic flair and its focus on the subjectivity of memory. We tend to take for granted that what we see in a sitcom is what's actually happening in the fictional world. At times, HIMYM breaks this convention, drawing on the fact that it is not just a world that we're glimpsing into, but a story told by an unreliable narrator. (Which is why, as I continually argue with a friend, you have a father you sounds like Bob Saget, but, in his own memory, looks and sounds like Josh Radnor. It's not a point requiring a suspension of disbelief, it's part of the show's basic conceit!) I've discussed this great, boring length elsewhere, so I won't rehash it all now. Last night, that element is brought to the forefront. First, there's the A plot. (Oh, spoilers abound, folks.)

Barney and Robin slept together last episode, which means they are both cheating on their respective partners. Through one of those ridiculous coincidences sitcoms are built on, they have to go to a boat party with these partners, and thus see not only the person they cheated on, but the person seeing the person they cheated with. (But the contrivance allows for a guest spot from Alexis Denisof, so I'm not going to complain too loudly.) They're both feeling guilty, and thus, through their interpretation, the live band is singing a song directly to them, telling them to confess. In the B plot, the subjectivity is even more evident. Lily, Ted, and Marshall are attending a concert, and Ted and Marshall go through a drug trip. They think they spend hours wandering the stadium, encountering bizarre figures and hearing odd nonsequitors. In reality, as we see through a security camera, they stumbled around for two minutes, and we revisit the whole scene through that perspective (there's a brilliant double use of the line "It's a sign."). The actual plot point--that Marshall is worried about becoming a dad, and Ted's insecure about losing his friends to parenthood--has already been done multiple times this season. And as my brother pointed out, that is not how people high on pot actually act (though if my parents read this, I assume he got this knowledge from friends, because OF COURSE my brother has never smoked any pot, ever). But it's still a clever use of both the show's concept and a reversal of the audience's confidence in what they're viewing.

Equal kudos has to go to the way the A plot was handled. It's very easy to set up villains and victims in a cheating partner plotline, and it's not the sort of situation that lends itself to laughs. And for the most part, it doesn't. I was impressed with how maturely the plot was handled. Barney and Robin are, obviously, conflicted--they don't want to hurt anyone, and they don't know exactly how they feel about each other. It's the sort of thing that could have been drawn out too far, but both of them have frank conversations with their partners and with each other about their futures. No one's demonized, no one's transformed into a pure victim (although Nora comes close) and the situation is resolved through rational discussion rather than explosive, cheap emotional theatrics. It's a glimpse at adult relationships that haven't been filtered through some overly romantic lenses. And with spoiling even further, one stays with their partner, and one doesn't, and the look on the face of the one who leaves their partner for their friend when they realize that they've made the jump and been left alone is just devastatingly well-acted, and definitely a caliber of performance rarely seen in this genre. Chris Harris, the writer of the episode, also deserves some major props. He's been a writer for the show a long time, and last night, he really showed he understands how to play to its strengths.

Later Days.

Bibliophile: Roommate Dynamics and Telepathic Marsupials

All right, I'll level with you--posting is work. The academic blogs, rare as they are, require a big picture view of my career. The book reviews (and indeed, the reviews in general) require some effort towards theme and reading. Even the personal posts require an amount of self-reflection that I'm not really ready for at the moment. (Who's in a rut? Not me. Where are my comic books and skittles?) And so I stick to what's easy. What's simple. And thus, we have Friday Quotations, Sims quotes, and the subject of the most depressing introduction ever,

Biblophile!

Here's what's new and interesting at a library near me.

The Role of taste and calories in access-induced excessive sweets consumption by the rat. By Adam Celejewski.
First: Congratulations to Adam for completing a thesis. It's not easy, which means it amply prepares you for the rest of your life from this point on. Second: there are now some rats in Waterloo that require a good rat dentist.

Manure pathogens : manure management, regulations, and water quality protection / [Dwight D. Bowman, editor].
Mentioned only because I read it as Manure Pantheons, and the six year old in me would have been really fascinated by a book dedicated to the gods of poopy.

Lip service : smiles in life, death, trust, lies, work, memory, sex, and politics / Marianne LaFrance.
Credit where credit's due--that's a clever title.

Astonishing general : the life and legacy of Sir Isaac Brock / by Wesley B. Turner. Toronto : Dundurn Press, 2011.
I don't really know anything about Sir Isaac Brock, but a book called "Astonishingly General" would be great. "Be amazed by our lack of description!" "Marvel at our vague accounts!" "No specifics, no details, just the broad scope you've all been waiting!" And so forth.

Beauty pays : why attractive people are more successful / Daniel S. Hamermesh.
I suspect the answer has to be a little more complicated than "because they're attractive," else it will be a rather short book.

Erotic capital : the power of attraction in the boardroom and the bedroom / Catherine Hakim. New York : Basic Books, c2011.
One assumes that attractive people pay in erotic capital, then.

American idyll : academic antielitism as cultural critique / Catherine Liu. Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, c2011.
The pun's a little subtler than most, which is nice. More to the point, the subject is interesting, if not really my bag; a brief search on the book reveals that its focus is the recent swathe of anti-intellectual, anti-elitist protests in the States, and the failure of both it and the forces it's rebelling against to address the issues that lead to its creation.

Making chastity sexy : the rhetoric of evangelical abstinence campaigns / Christine J. Gardner.
I just saw a Louis C. K. episode on this, and I think it could be a really interesting subject. All right, I saw half an episode. Roommate show-watching is a tricky beast to negotiate. On the one hand, you don't want to commit to asking them to make sure you're informed when they're watching a new episode, as that places demands on both you and them. If you're on the fence for the show, it's a level of devotion that you don't want to meet. And you can't watch the ones you miss by yourself either, because that suggests that you were actually interested in the show all along, but didn't voice any opinion, which raises the question of whether you acted in that manner just to avoid watching them with the roommate. Which means that the only option you're left with if you do like the show is to drift in occasionally and catch what you can. Hence, I saw half of this episode.
...I feel like we've moved off topic somewhat.

John Byrne : art and life.
For a moment, I thought this was John Byrne the comic book writer/artist, but no, it's John Byrne the British artist and playwright.

Ai Weiwei's blog : writings, interviews, and digital rants, 2006-2009 / Ai Weiwei ; edited and translated by Lee Ambrozy.
I like the idea of a book that's just a transcript of an online blog. It's sort of digital archive in reverse. And some Google research reveals that there's a heavy political side as well, as Weiwei was a Chinese artist who blogged until the Chinese government shut the site down and deleted it. (Also, publishers take note: There is precedence, and I am open for negotiating a deal. Experimental Progress goes print!)

Kiss my relics : hermaphroditic fictions of the middle ages / David Rollo.
Heh. Good title.

Politics of insects : David Cronenberg's cinema of confrontation / Scott Wilson
After seeing just a handful of Cronenberg films, I think an in-depth study is very warranted.


Super black : American pop culture and black superheroes. Adilifu Nama.
Another example of a book I think is a great idea, though I doubt I'll ever get a chance to read it. It includes Black Panther, Blade, and Luke Cage, for those curious.

Italo Calvino's architecture of lightness : the utopian imagination in an age of urban crisis / Letizia Modena.
I love the idea of a really thorough analysis of Imaginary Cities, though I understand this is more of a postmodern, urban renewal sort of emphasis.

Hog butchers, beggars, and busboys : poverty, labor, and the making of modern American poetry / John Marsh.
All of the sexiest professions.

Farmer Buckley's exploding trousers : and other odd events on the way to scientific discovery / edited by Stephanie Pain.
Do I really need to explain why "Farmer Buckley's Exploding Trousers" is an attention-grabbing title?

I usually skim over a large chunk of the Q area of the Library of Congress listings, which is the math and computer science section. Honestly, they're incredibly interesting topics, but the titles seem to be in a competition to see who can come up with the driest approach to a subject. And they all make the Sahara look like a sandtrap. ...Okay, that wasn't my a material. Moving on...

Ah, biology. Now there's a group that knows how to lay a title.
Mindreading animals : the debate over what animals know about other minds / Robert W. Lurz.
I assume this book is on the growing danger of the telepathic wombat.

Twitter power 2.0 : how to dominate your market one tweet at a time / Joel Comm.
Considering it's still with only very, very reluctant distaste that I even have a Twitter account, this book would be a novel way to angry up my blood. Twitter. Ugh. (Follow me at PersonofCon! (No exclamation point))

...Okay, that takes at least as long as the regular subjects. I don't know what I was talking about earlier. I suppose it's mildly less intellectual effort, as a bon mot is easier, in many ways, than the careful development of a sustained argument. (Take that, Twitter.)

Later Days.

Friday Quotations: Future Civilizations will marvel over our devotion to LOLcat.

"Images are not just a particular kind oif sign, but something like an actor on the historical stage, a presence or character endowed with legendary status, a history that parallels and participates in the stories we tell ourselves about our own evolution from creatures 'made in the image' of a creator, to creatures who make themselves and their world in their own images."-- W. J. T. Mitchell

Who has two thumbs, a blog, and just got his Amazon-ordered copies of W. J. T. Mitchell's Picture Theory and Iconology?

This guy.

Later Days.