Saturday Work Liveblog

I am here at work on an overcast Saturday, trying to clean off my desk, and to keep things interesting, I'm going to liveblog every couple of hours (trying very hard not to have the blogging eat up my work time). Rachel's here too, and she just brought in cupcakes from Dean & Deluca as a reward to both of us for our virtue.

Some men are installing carpet down the hall and listening to -- Eminem, I think. There's an R&B song on the Top 40 charts with the chorus, "You've got an icebox where your heart used to be, an icebox where your heart used to be," and then a man with a bass voice growls, "So cold, so cold, so cold. . . . So cold, so cold, so cold." It never fails to crack me up. I especially love the use of the old-fashioned word "icebox" -- "refrigerator" just had too many syllables, I guess.

Also on a musical note: On the way home from work last night, I saw a man in the subway station singing a song called "Suicide Is Painless" on a ukelele.

I have been thinking about children's literature this week, even if I haven't posted here. . . . I said this on child_lit in relation to a discussion about whether Tamora Pierce was great or good:

"I draw the distinction between great and good based on a work's depth -- the emotional and thematic/philosophical levels it strives for and succeeds in reaching. Tamora Pierce and Eoin Colfer are entertaining and good; Philip Pullman and J. K. Rowling are not only entertaining but thought-provoking (on the subjects of God vs. man and love/death respectively, I would say, being VASTLY reductive) -- and therefore great.

"Or to cite another genre: I am on a mad Georgette Heyer romance binge at the moment, and loving every minute of it, but while Heyer has Jane Austen's gift for character and humor, she doesn't have Austen's control of plot or clarity and fineness of morality/theme. And that morality lifts Austen to a great writer, while Heyer is simply a very good one.

"For more thoughts inspired by an earlier round of this discussion, see http://chavelaque.blogspot.com/2005/12/manifesto.html."

End of self-quoting. Would you all agree? I finished two Heyer novels in bed this morning, btw, Frederica and These Old Shades (both begun earlier this week or last), and they were just marvelous. I'm on to Arabella next, and thinking I'm going to order Regency Buck and Faro's Daughter to feed the addiction.