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Three Celebrities and their Books

A lavish photomontage experience following a showgirl princess who loses her shoes.











Robert Pattinson working at the Strand in "Remember Me," a new movie with an amazing SPOILER ALERT!
Bonus pic of Robert roughly grasping "Nine Stories"



No Comment.

A story from Sam, verbatim

In ancient Greece, in order to preserve the confidentiality of a message, a slave was chosen to deliver same. In order to accomplish this task, the slave's head was shaven cleanly. The message would be tattooed on the crown of the slave's head after which enough time was allowed for the slave's hair to grow back to a reasonable length, whereupon the slave was dispatched to the proposed recipient of the message. When the slave reached the end of his journey, his head was once again shaven, and the message was received.

A tip o' the hat to Sam for his fine story.

We're featured in Chester County Life!

Check out the great article printed about us in Chester County Life and stop by the shop for a copy of your own!

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is a graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel about her father Bruce's life as an aesthete and closeted gay man (or possibly bisexual man) in rural Pennsylvania. The truth about his sexuality becomes clear to Bechdel shortly before his death at the age of 44, just after she's come out as a lesbian. Although the details of his death are unclear-- he stepped backwards into the path of a truck while crossing the road, jumping back as though he had seen a snake-- Bechdel is convinced that he committed suicide. This conviction is one of many artistic inferences that she gives for her father's life.

Bechdel's explanation of Bruce's regionalism (he stays within a few miles of his birthplace for most of his life), homosexual relationships with young men, and careers as an English teacher and a funeral home (or "fun home") director is informed by readings of literature. Ulysses, The Far Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James and Proust are all called up. "I employ these allusions," Bechdel writes, "...not only as descriptive devices, but because my parents are most real to me in fictional terms." The triple function of these books-- as actual objects in Bechdel's families lives, as interpretive frameworks, and as devices to suggest removal-- makes for an unusual memoir that insists on the fictional qualities of real lives. after his death, bruce's life becomes even more of a book, which bechdel can attack and interpret but only at a distance.

I was a little frustrated at how bechdel was always making sure that these books matched her father's life, but this is also the most revealing thing about the memoir: it's a memoir about her, and the twisting and turning she has to do to make sense of her family.

Ivar Ekeland spends a lot of time talking about Norwegian legendary kings and their peccadillos, but I guess that must be because he is Norwegian. Anyhoo, this book is about Chance, Fate, Anticipation, Chaos, Risk and Statistics. In fact, coincidentally, those are the chapters of the book too. Basically, the premise is that we either can't do anything about anything, or obversely we may be able to do so, but for the myriad of variables that greet us each day as we lazily stretch, arise and brush our teeth. Any of those actions, delayed or bumped up by a nano-second and we could find ourselves run over by the UPS truck or bitten on the nose by those damn possums. So best not to worry, or consider the butterfly flapping its wings somewhere and assume that things will turn out the way that they do because he is such a rascally little thing. Bottom line is ignore the formulas in the book. I did. Otherwise it is amusing, erudite and thought provoking. Exponential instability is the heart of the matter. That's what I always thought, I think.

Blasphemy

This is a really really good bad book. Its premise is that a super super collider, propels protons and antiprotons in a circular path around a 45 mile diameter accelerator ring, bringing them to near light-speed, then collides them and watches the distributions of particles which emerge as they annihilate each other. The only problem is that someone has injected malware into the system, so that it appears that God is also disclosed when the collision occurs. Unfortunately this gives rise to a Fundamentalist outrage and subsequent storm on the collider by those who believe that the scientists are trying to create a graven-image of our Lord. The violence which ensues creates an anti-Christ, who ends up establishing his own "religion" based on science and a search for the truth, which is mankind's quest for an answer to the heat-death of the universe through entropy. There is a love interest, which is semi-hot, and the ending is cloyingly predictable, but Stephen King couldn't do much better. I guess. It was a waste of my evening and early morning, but enjoyable in an onanistic way. Well, c'est la vie. I've certainly done worse on a Friday night.