Without-Feathers.com

July 2007

Book Blog

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Elves and Fairies

July 14, 2007

Details:
Author: Sirona Knight
Genre: Mythology

This excerpt is a perfect example of the tone of this book:

Linguistically the word yourself refers to yours elf. In this way, the word self is connected to elf, showing the inherent connection of ourselves (ours elves) and elves. This means there is an “elf” in every “self”.

Sadly, I think the author’s being serious. (It reminds me of that comedian’s famous joke about the origins of the word mankind: “mank” and “ind”.) I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry…

Life Improvement

July 19, 2007

Differences between my husband’s family and mine, example #357: Tony’s parents gave him 2,002 Ways to Cheer Yourself Up (Cyndi Haynes), which proffers such chirpy feel-good tips as “Say good night to God each night before you go to sleep” and “Run barefoot along a sandy beach”. My mother, on the other hand, just presented me with Love, Mildew, & Paper Cuts: And Thousands of Other Things to Be Miserable About (Susan Kingman), which provides feel-bad reminders and scenarios ranging from the mundane (“getting stuck with the iron when playing Monopoly”) to the classic (“when Rick tells Ilsa to leave at the end of Casablanca and she does”) to the phobic (“drinking a cockroach”) to the downright bizarre (“a drowned puppy in your toilet bowl”). My personal favorite(s): “People who insist Shakespeare was really somebody else. EVEN WORSE: People who think Shakespeare was Christopher Marlowe. THE WORST: That we are not allowed to shoot them.”

Of course, like all good “life improvement” tip books, it’s perfectly sized for a purse or a briefcase. I think I’ll carry it in my purse, for those days when everyone around me seems way too happy to be alive…

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

July 22, 2007

Details:
Author: J.K. Rowling
Genre: Fantasy

It took me about five hours, but I finished the last Harry Potter book. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, so I’ll just make three fairly innocuous observations:

• I was right about Ginny (win!).
• I was right about Snape (WIN!).
• The ending reminded me of that Edna St. Vincent Millay quote about childhood—it’s at the top of one of my blog posts, if you really want to find it, but reading it would spoil the ending for you, so beware. That’s how I felt about it, anyway.

It’s the end of an era, isn’t it?

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