Color Coded

Post-move, new taxonomy.

Indie Watch

My new independent bookstore (called Diesel). Thanks for the tip Michiko!

The Paper Mill

Unfortunately cremation is my plan - or this would a sound investment.

Mess Mess

Currently on the dining table/chairs:

Two bags

A book of poetry

Two novels

A coat

Four books on the FDA

A scarf

A hat

Eight issues of the New Yorker

A cake stand (the only thing that should be on there)

A laptop case

Two Supreme Court cases on copyright law

A book on commodities

Three hornbooks

Most of a novel, in manuscript

Through the Looking Glass

I was listening to the latest podcast from The Sound of Young America, with guests Neil Gaiman and Henry Selick talking about the new film Coraline, which opens on Friday. It's a stop-motion animation film about a girl, Coraline, who goes through a bricked-up wall to another world where her "other" parents are amazingly kind and sweet to her, and fantastic things are constantly happening. Of course, there's a dark side.

It got me thinking about the "other world" idea in general, from books dating back to Alice in Wonderland. Why is it that art conceives of other worlds as simultaneously more wondrous and more terrifying than our own, a heightened roller coaster of thrills and chills that makes our own world seem like a walk in the park? Is our own world that emotionally placid that we hunger for experiences that make the highs higher and the lows scarier? Do we conceive of the world as being "dull" because we have to spend every day of our lives in it? If we could go away to other places like Alice or Coraline, maybe our own world wouldn't seem so monotonous. 

I've probably oversimplified or missed something obvious. Oh well. 

Answered Prayers

(The title of this post comes from Capote's final, unfinished novel Answered Prayers, for those who don't know. Capote died three days after I was born - make of that what you will).

It is a lovely 38 degrees out today, which means the snow is melting and I might actually not have to hike through snowdrifts for a couple of days.

And I have a job offer!

Group Think

Two book groups have been suggested in the last few months. Will I have time for either? More importantly, do I have the willpower to say "No"?

Which Way?

So, the semester is over. We had our last final yesterday and vacation has officially started - school resumes on January 14.

I'm not thrilled about how exams went - I almost certainly could have done better, and waiting for grades for another month will probably drive me mad - but they're over, at least. Now I'll just have to find something else to spend time doing. Probably job applications. And maybe books and movies. And - my trip to NYC of course.

Merry Classmas

My mother called me today to let me know she's buying some stuff off of my Amazon wishlist, most notably this. Thanks?

Who's Watching?

Our course requests have been tabulated and I've got Cyberlaw with Susan Crawford next semester, in addition to my required courses (Civil Procedure, Contracts, Criminal Law, and Legal Practice). Crawford was recently named one of the heads of Obama's FCC transition team.

I'm excited about Cyberlaw especially since I'm interested in pursuing it as a career, and I'm hoping to find a job related to it for next summer. But unfortunately I'm not as up on the subject as I should be; luckily, a friend at Penguin recently sent me Larry Lessig's new book Remix, which is serving as a bit of a crash course but is also pointing me to a bunch of other reading (Yochai Benkler, Jamie Boyle, etc.). It's serving as a nice distraction from outlining/exam prep, certainly.

There's a good article about Google, freedom of speech, and censorship in tomorrow's NYTimes Magazine, as well.

Knopf Kares (and Penguin!)

A nice holiday package. Thanks guys!

Relocating

I'm trying to decide (very early) if I want to renew my lease or try to move closer to campus. The tradeoffs are clear - but do I really want to move all my books again? Not really.

Past Lives

Dwight Garner, an editor at the New York Times Book Review, is going to be the new daily book critic for the New York Times, joining former film critic Janet Maslin and publisher punching bag/oracle Michiko Kakutani. I don't know how I feel about this - Garner is smart, but his review of Joe O'Neill's Netherland was a little weird. We'll see if he's as non-fiction oriented as Bill Grimes, the book critic who left in April, was. I hope not.

Now back to regularly scheduled law school life.

Bibliomania

There is another small black bookshelf on the far left of this photo. This is the opposite wall from my desk - you can see the red desk chair with the Chinese scarf (thanks Brian!) here.