New book

I think I'm in a book-buying slump--this is the only thing I bought at Baker Street Books last weekend. But I'm excited about it, so that's all right. I've been meaning to read E.F. Benson for ages and ages. I think I first heard of it when I encountered the miniseries (which I haven't really watched), and I've heard it recommended  by various people in blogland. I gather these books are reminiscent both of P.G. Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh, which is a great recommendation for me. Plus, Nancy Mitford wrote the foreword. The bookstore had a bunch of these books, and two different editions of this one, but of course I had to pick the one involving a Mitford.

Hopefully I'll get to read this soon!

Links

A Man, a Plan, and a Sharpie. Two guys travel across the country correcting the spelling and grammar of signs, and then they write a book about it, which is called The Great Typo Hunt. Might be an interesting book. This is just the kind of thing my grammar-loving self would want to do.

Absolutely incredible pencil lead sculptures by Dalton Ghetti. There's a whole world in your pencil you never knew was possible. Link via Say Yes to Hoboken.

Pea plant grows inside man's lung. This is everything your parents ever told you would happen if you ate watermelon seeds.

Last weekend in California was Costume College, a convention of people who make historical costumes and dress up in them. I'd love to go to this some day. Photos can be found at flickr here, here, and here.

I happened to encounter two fabulous Seattle-based milliners/haberdashers last week. Bad Dog Hats does hats for people and their dogs, especially top hats. Tuzzie Muzzie makes lovely party hats and masks.

Here is a list of 260 websites that offer free, legal e-books. My opinions on books and the internet being what they are, I'm glad to see there are so many such sites.

The To-Be-Read pile grows

I went thrift shopping on Tuesday, and came home with three books. I don't know if I was really intending to buy books, but I've been feeling the urge to browse through some shelves lately, and invariably one finds something that can't be left behind. And for once, I'm entirely pleased with my purchases.

Rereadings, edited by Anne Fadiman. I love Anne Fadiman. Ex Libris was probably my first serious book about books, and I vividly remember the lovely June day on which I read it. Rereadings is not quite as wonderful, probably because it's a collection of other writers and not just Anne Fadiman, but it's lovely all the same, and this little hardcover is nearly spotless. Plus, the back jacket flap was stuck between the pages as a bookmark. Whoever got distracted from their reading was on page 160, reading Allegra Goodman's essay about rereading Pride and Prejudice. I love knowing things like this about past readers.

A Meaningful Life, by L.J. Davis. The NYRB Classics are lovely, both in cover design and in actual content. I've never read or even heard of this book, but the back cover tells me it's a black comedy about a man who buys a falling down house in Brooklyn, New York, and puts everything into fixing up the house, on the theory that this will make his life better.

Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books, by Paul Collins. This is the author's story of his move from San Francisco to Hay-on-Wye, Wales, a town that has 1500 people and 40 bookstores. You know how I feel about books about books. This one sounds lovely.And Happy July!

My life in shoes

This is the story of my weekend, told in shoes. This weekend is the University District street fair, which I went to yesterday. I needed my walking shoes (which are getting rather sad) for that.It's been hot out lately. Yesterday my shoulders got a bit red. Good weather for these.Then I went to Goodwill and had to buy these fabulous shoes, though I have no idea when I'm going to wear them.In the evening, I went to UW's quarterly swing dance. Live band, lots of dancing, fun performances. My legs and feet are going to take today to recover from all the walking and dancing.Today I'm going to sit around in my slippers, doing homework and finishing Greenery Street.I suppose I've revealed my shoe-hoarding tendencies now, haven't I?

Mitfords

For the first time in months I have a weekend entirely free--no homework except studying for a math final, nowhere to go. I am rejoicing in it. Accordingly, I finally got around to the long necessary pants shopping trip. As it currently stands, all my jeans have holes in very unfortunate places. So to Value Village I went.

There is a reason I've been avoiding pants shopping. I found no jeans, but two pairs of other pants which was exactly what I was not looking for. I also found an utterly fabulous black velvet extremely Audrey Hepburn-ish hat, lovely shoes, a very nice blue wool coat, a teapot of utmost bizarrity, and a book. You know me. I can't not look in the book section.

The book was Mary S. Lovell's The Mitford Girls. It's an enormous book, 600 some pages, but after all it does chronicle the lives of six women, so that's rather to be expected. I saw the BBC miniseries of Love in a Cold Climate ages ago, and then last summer read The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, which I liked very much. I didn't go into those books knowing anything about the Mitford Family, and I think the books are probably the best introduction to them, since reading a biography out of the blue without knowing why the people are interesting tends not to work. I can't make any judgments yet about how the biography is, but I'm very much looking forward to reading it

I am rather curious why the book has two different titles. It's also called The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family. My first thought was that mine was the American edition (I hate how they always change titles), but that can't be the case as the price is written on the back in pounds. Oh well.