Eye Candy

Ladder Of Years

Ladder of Years, by Anne Tyler
$7.99 at Amazon.com
ISBN: 0804113475
One of the best books I've read with a female protagonist, Ladder of Years is about a woman named Delta. She's in her early 40s, has a beautiful family from Baltimore, and a pretty sweet life.
Yet she remains unfulfilled, and so while on vacation at a Delaware beach, she impulsively abandons her family wearing only a bathing suit and carrying a purse containing $500. Under these peculiar circumstances, she decides to start a new life.
She sounds dreadful, but she's actually a very kind and sensible woman. Anne Tyler (right) wrote Delta's character so perfectly that I not only understood why Delta did what she did, she actually led me to a deeper understanding of the women in my life. Hopefully you will, too.
After purchasing clothes, Delta finds an apartment and job in a shore community, mainly through resourcefulness and thrift. The police find her and she calmly explains that she is fine, didn't wish to worry anyone, and asked her family for some privacy.
This all seems a bit bizarre: you'd think she was a nut, or stupid, but she's neither. It's interesting how often in literature dad runs off, rarely is it mom as in this book. She's not a villainous character at all, just a rebel who plays no one's rules but her own.
Much of the story revolves around the people in her adopted town. They're polite yet understandably curious about the lady who was in all the newspapers (her disappearance was highly publicized by the local media). A 12-year old boy from town becomes a curious friend to her; curious since the boy is motherless and she cares for him while neglecting her own children.
Of course her family gets in touch with her eventually, asking if she ever intends to come home. She tells them she probably will.
"A woman's prerogative" is a phrase that kept coming to mind, an idea I'm beginning to grasp. A queer dude is like any other dude: I don't really understand women. Thanks for some enlightenment, Anne! Wonderfully suspenseful, this book is a treat for the senses.

Eye Candy

The Planets

Here's my long-awaited posting on the first three planets in our Solar System. Interesting that we call them "the first three" since evidence suggests they were the latest planets formed. Anyway, there's an outstanding book on the subject called Astronomy: A Visual Guide, by Mark Garlick, for those who are fascinated by this sort of thing.

Mercury:
Diameter: 3031 miles (38.2% Earth)
Mass: 0.055 Earth
Mean Surface Temperature: 800 F (430 C)
The closest planet to the Sun, Mercury is a scorched, airless ball of iron covered with a thick crust of rock. Astronomers suspect the planet was originally much larger before a collision with a proto-planet, billions of years ago, blasted pieces of it into space. Mercury resembles the moon: an endless sea of craters. This is because the planet lacks an atmosphere and has never had water on its surface: the only erosion comes from the occasional impact of meteorites.

Venus:
Diameter: 7521 miles (94.8% of Earth)
Mass: 0.95 Earth
Mean Surface Temperature: 900 F (490 C)
Venus has been called Earth's sister because of its similar mass and size, but our nearest planetary neighbor is anything but Earthlike! The surface is permanently hidden beneath an atmosphere of carbon dioxide choked with clouds of sulfuric acid. This noxious sky pushes down on the surface with a pressure equivalent to that at the bottom of a lake nearly 900 M deep. The atmosphere is a heat trap, too. Despite being farther from the sun than Mercury, Venus is hotter. Both tin and lead would melt there.


And last, but certainly not least, my favorite planet:


Earth:
Diameter: 7926 miles
Mean Surface Temperature:
72 F (22 C)
Mass: 13,140,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pounds
The largest of the terrestrial worlds, Earth is the only planet in the Solar System capable of maintaining liquid surface water. In fact, 70% of the planet's surface is covered in it, many miles deep in places. It's also the only planet known to support life: is this very common? Or quite rare?

There are posts on the other planets here.

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer!

Eye Candy

Dove

Dove, by Robin Lee Graham
$10.19 at Amazon.com
ISBN: 0060920475
Travel memoirs are a favorite of mine, and this one is out of this world. Apparently it's been a classic for years: I'd never heard of it until this week and now wonder where it's been all my life: Treasure Island meets Harry Potter.
In 1965, Robin became the first teenage boy to sail solo around the world. This book is the story of his impressive voyage, told in only 199 pages.
The trip took two years on a 24-foot sloop called Dove, with only a pair of kittens for companionship. During his trip he encounters storms so bad one breaks the mast off his boat. On one of his stops, he finds true love, and returns from his trip a married man. There are so many outstanding themes here: romance, adventure, and coming-of-age on the high seas.
We begin our journey when Robin and a few of his friends build a homemade boat that falls apart during a squall. The boys are rescued by the Coast Guard, but Robin's wanderlust has been ignited. His parents help him buy and build Dove so that he can take his dream trip in relative safety the second time, and on July 27, 1965, he takes off from California for Hawaii.
He visits the Solomon Islands, where his boat is in desperate need of repair, and the archipelago of Tonga, which he calls "the Friendly Islands." In Fiji he visits an island settled by a Scotsman in the 19th Century. Most of the inhabitants are his descendants, they are rather inbred and very odd.
Through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean, across the Atlantic and through the Panama Canal back to his home port. It's a very exciting trip, especially impressive since the author was so young. And handsome, if I may say so. There's a series of photos in the book: in most of them he's shirtless on the deck or sunning himself on an exotic beach.
It's a lonely and dangerous trip for Robin, but a fun read for the rest of us. You'd have to be out of your mind not to find this story interesting. Check it out!

Eye Candy

Quotations

They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.
Dorothy Parker (1893 - 1967)

Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.
Mother Teresa (1910 - 1997)

Be civil to all, sociable to many, familiar with few, friend to one, enemy to none.
Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)

I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them.
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817)

Everything you can imagine is real.
Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973)

Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.
Denis Diderot (1715 - 1784)

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
Elbert Hubbard (1856 - 1915)

We may go to the moon, but that's not very far. The greatest distance we have to cover still lies within us.
Charles de Gaulle (1890 - 1970)

Eye Candy

Generation X

Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, by Douglas Coupland
$11.66 at Amazon.com
ISBN: 031205436X
A terrific novel close to my heart. It was published the same year I graduated from high school (1991), and its title would become synonymous with Americans born from 1961-1981: Generation X.
The story involves three friends and neighbors: Claire, Dag, and our narrator, Andy. They've all grown tired of the materialistic modern culture that sucks them dry from over-work and offers little of real value in return. The three of them shed their old lives and moved to a run-down apartment complex in Florida where they share stories, swap drugs, and tend bar in a nearby blue-collar saloon.
The incredibly handsome author (see below) captures the alienation and dark humor of a group of young people who felt that American society had reached its apex under their predecessors: the Baby-Boomers. By the time their own generation was born, the decline had already begun: wasteful government spending, millions of people on Social Security, and inherited environmental and worldwide health problems presented a bleak outlook for their future. Schools weren't nearly as well funded as they'd been in previous decades, the cost of college had sky-rocketed, and the employment situation offered low-wage "McJobs" but little more.
In other words, no one wanted to buy the world a Coke.
Despite all the melancholy and nuclear paranoia, there's a lot of optimism in this book. Most of Coupland's work is fun for the MTV, Smurf-loving, Gen-Xers out there. This one gets mentioned first because of its notoriety as a book that defined a generation, a Catcher in the Rye for modern times.
The lead characters all sound really sexy: they're young and forever at the pool or shirtless picnic in the sun. How nice for them. The stories they share at one such picnic are especially entertaining. This is a must-read for the generation whose cultural innovations included: rap music, bungee jumping, video games, a significant gay rights movement, and the internet as a major medium.
First class work, Douglas!

Eye Candy

The Elements

My recent posts on the Elements seem to have been a crowd-pleaser. Here's a few short, interesting facts on the first three elements, more to follow. If you can't stand the suspense, there's a great book on all our subatomic friends called Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements, by John Emsley.

Hydrogen:
Chemical Symbol: H
Atomic Number: 1
Hydrogen is the number one element in more ways than one: it was the first element of Creation, it is by far the most abundant element in the Universe, and it is the element that fuels the Sun and stars. World-wide production of hydrogen gas is 30 million tons a year, easy to make since it can be derived from ocean water. Some scientists see hydrogen as the clean fuel of the future: generated from water and returning to water when burned, with almost no pollution. Water vapor makes up 4% of our atmosphere, without which Earth would be too cold to sustain life.

Helium:
Chemical Symbol: He
Atomic Number: 2
Helium is one of the so-called Noble Gases. It is a colorless, odorless gas which is totally unreactive chemically. It was actually discovered on the sun before earth, and is the second most abundant element in the Universe. Although it is a harmless gas, it could asphyxiate if it were to exclude oxygen from the lungs. Its chief source is natural gas: although it is present in the atmosphere, it is currently uneconomical to extract it from the air. Unlike most elements in the air, helium can escape into space. It is currently used for balloons, cooling superconductors and other high heat equipment, and for deep-sea diving. Inhaling helium raises the pitch of the voice because sound travels three times faster through helium than through air.

Lithium:
Chemical Symbol: Li
Atomic Number: 3
First discovered in 1817 by Johan August Arfvedson in Stockholm, Sweden, Lithium is the lightest of all metals. Lithium oxide is used in glass and ceramics, lithium batteries are used in wristwatches, pocket calculators, and camera flashes in which lightness and compactness are important. It is also used in pharmaceuticals to treat schizophrenia and manic-depression.

Earlier posts on the Elements here.

Eye Candy

One Big Damn Puzzler

One Big Damn Puzzler, by John Harding
$10.17 at Amazon.com
ISBN: 0061132187
A funny, fascinating, and touching new novel, certain to make a relaxing and enjoyable summer read.
It takes place on a remote island in the South Pacific. Home to a gentle yet somewhat primitive race, their land was visited twice by westerners: once by the British who started building a resort hotel, but abandoned it as the project became too expensive; and a second time by Americans who tested missiles and planted landmines, carelessly butchering many of the inhabitants who now live with missing limbs.
William Hardt is an attorney, about thirty years old, who visits the island to collect information about the suffering of the natives after the American bombing. He's hoping to win reparations for them from the US government.
William, however, suffers from OCD. The most outstanding characteristic of his condition is the amount of time he spends checking to make sure he's done things: checking to make sure his appliances are turned off, his windows are locked (he has a ritual of opening the window then closing it again, to make sure it's really closed).
Finding himself on an island where everyone poops on the beach together in the morning and the natives wear only a pubic leaf is a real challenge for him.
As for the islanders themselves, there's an amputee named Managua, the only native who can read. He spends his days translating Hamlet into the pidgin-English language of his people. There are, strangely enough, transvestites here, as well as sorcerers and mysterious ghosts who appear to dead loved ones.
The only other white person is an anthropoligist named Lucy, who lives in the abandoned British hotel and studies the customs of the islanders. There's more to Lucy's story than she lets on, however: she's on the run from dark secrets of her own.
One Big Damn Puzzler is a very imaginative work of fiction. The natives, in spite of their suffering, lead very simple and happy lives. One has to wonder how their condition would really be improved if William manages to win a large amount of money for them. Will the cross-dresser find true love? Will Managua be able to translate Shakespeare into a language his neighbors will be able to understand?
Easy to get into, with an unforgettable cast of characters and a story that grows more fascinating on each page. A new author presents a sure-fire crowd pleaser!

Eye Candy

Bastille Day

July 14 celebrates the begining of the French Revolution and freedom from tyranny for the French people.
In 1789 the French government consisted of three houses or Estates: one for the royalty, one for the clergy, and one for the peasantry. People were beginning to feel it was unfair that the peasants, who made up 98% of the population, only got one third of the votes and would invariably be voted down by the other two Estates.
There were several attempts to reach a compromise, but in time King Louis XVI and his wife, the hated Queen Marie Antoinette, simply stopped listening to the Third Estate altogether. Then on July 14, the people decided they'd waited long enough and stormed the Bastille, a prison in Paris which housed many of the nation's political prisoners as well as the army's guns and ammo.
Most historians consider the French Revolution something of a mixed blessing: it eliminated rule by king and church, giving all citizens voting rights and a voice in the new democratic republic. However, the zeal to stamp out the monarchy got a little out of control, symbolized by the guillotine. Reason was replacing the religion and dogma of the Middle Ages, but as crowds lined up to be decapitated for "treason", Europe began to realize that Reason could also have a dark side.
Chaos followed, interrupted by the brutal regime of Napoleon, France's most famous ruler who wasn't even French! If you're interested in learning about the French Revolution there's an awesome book called Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama.
Naturally the people won in the long run. Happy Bastille Day to the wonderful people of France, and a terrific summer to the rest of you.

Eye Candy

Divisadero

Divisadero, by Michael Ondaatje
$15.00 at Amazon.com
ISBN: 0307266354
Layers upon layers in this sensitive and richly composed new book by the author of The English Patient.
Anna and Claire are twin daughters of a farmer in Northern California. Their mother died during childbirth, and their father raises them as well as he can. As an overworked and constantly exhausted man, his parenting is adequate but is somewhat lacking in finesse and sensitivity.
Much of the early story revolves around Coop, a nineteen-year-old enigmatic farm boy whose parents were brutally and mysteriously murdered. Their dad takes him in and raises him to be a farmer and absolutely nothing else.
In time, of course, the girls become preoccupied with Coop. As he strips off his clothes to repair a leaky water tower, the two growing girls find they can't stop watching him. Can't say I blame them. Eventually one of them (I won't tell you which) manages to seduce him.
Going to bed with the farmer's daughter is a bad move; there's violence and the pseudo-family breaks up.
The characters go on to lead very interesting lives. Coop becomes a card shark who takes Vegas for a fortune. Anna moves to San Francisco in the 1980s and later, to rural France researching and obscure and long-dead French poet whose life touches her own in a most unexpected way. Claire becomes something of a recluse, and eventually begins to lose her mind.
One of the girls is reunited with Coop, one finds true love while another experiences nothing but tragedy.
The female leads are virtually identical yet their lives follow very divergent paths. Fortunes are won and lost over a turn of the cards, lies are told, and murders are covered up. This book has all the gritty secrets that come with any dysfunctional family.
Ondaatje's work is very dreamlike and seductive, loaded with subtext and subtle symbolism. In short: this is not a book for kids. Anna is the narrator, but much of the story is told through other characters: Coop or the French poet, a seedy little man named Lucien Segura. Read it slowly. The language is magnificent, the settings are fascinating, the characters so beautifully developed that you'll soon feel as if you knew them yourself.
Quiet an unassuming, yet strangely resonating, Divisadero is the must-read of Summer 2007. A+ work!

Eye Candy

The Planets

Our Solar System represents a lot of good blog posts. For one thing, the planets are so pretty to look at and I like to make Hansisgreat as eye-catching and attractive as possible. For another, there are a lot of interesting "tidbit" facts about them that can be shared in a paragraph or two. Most of us don't feel like reading a long essay.
There's a good book on the subject called Astronomy: A Visual Guide, by Mark A. Garlick, if you find the subject interesting and want a high-quality, glossy coffee table book to flip through.
Today, the outer three planets...

Uranus:
Diameter: 31,763 miles (400.7% of Earth)
Mass: 14.5 x Earth
Mean Surface Temperature: -355 F (-215 C)
This is a featureless blue-green ball, the color created by the high methane content in the atmosphere. There are none of the distinctive bands or storms that mark Jupiter or Saturn, and the rings are dark and narrow. Curiously, Uranus is tipped over on its side. It could be that, long ago in its history, it suffered a glancing collision with another massive proto-planet. As a result of its strange axial inclination, the seasons on Uranus last over twenty years.

Neptune:
Diameter: 30,778 miles (388.3% of Earth)
Mass: 17.1 x Earth
Mean Surface Temperature: -265 F (-220 C)
Neptune is similar to Uranus in size and appearance. However, Neptune has more detail visible in its atmosphere. There are a few atmospheric bands, some wispy cirrus clouds made of methane crystals, and even occasional storm systems. The planet also features a very faint ring system and a small army of satellites. Triton, the largest, is very strange since it orbits backward compared to the other satellites. Moreover, despite its cold surface, Triton is volcanically active, with frigid geysers spewing miles into the air.

Pluto:
Diameter: 1429 miles (18% of Earth)
Mass: 0.002 x Earth
Mean Surface Temperature: -380 F (-230 C)
The last planet is smaller than our moon. It is mainly rocky but covered in ice. Pluto orbits the sun in a region known as the Kuiper Belt, home to ice and rock bodies that are remnants from the formation of the Solar System. If discovered more recently, Pluto would be considered a large Kuiper-Belt object, and not a planet at all. Pluto is the most mysterious planet because it's so far away, and exists almost completely in darkness.

It's funny... you spend your whole life in the Solar System but never see these things until someone comes to visit.
Previous post on the planets here.

Eye Candy

Untapped

Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil, by John Ghazvinian
$16.50 at Amazon.com
ISBN: 0151011389
An outstanding new book on an extraordinary new topic, positively not to be missed.
Oil has been discovered in sub-Saharan Africa. At first there was hope that this would mean the long-suffering African people would finally get some relief from their troubles. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out that way and the story about how and why will astound you.
Nigeria is the world's seventh-largest oil exporting nation, producing millions of barrels per year; yet the majority of its 128,000,000 people live in Stone Age poverty.
How is this possible? Big oil companies like Shell and Chevron just take the oil, often without paying a cent to the poor people who live where they're drilling. Many of the inhabitants lack basic necessities such as electricity, water, public schools, and usable roads.
Several times they've spilled oil into the Niger delta, poisoning the drinking water for millions of people. The earth has been bombed and the air made noxious with Natural Gas fumes. All this suffering is ignored because it's mostly unknown worldwide.
When oil was discovered off the shore of the tiny nation of Equatorial Guinea, it seemed like a dream come true: the nation is small enough so that every citizen could share some of the benefits. Yet most of the people are worse off then they were before. Where has all the oil money gone? Into the personal coffers of the president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang, who paid $2.6 million in cash for a ten-bedroom mansion in Washington, DC. He has a mansion, luxury cars, and wardrobe full of designer suits in every city he visits.
The story here is an outrageous affront to justice and decency. Ghazvinian obviously did a lot of research and is a pretty good writer. His adventures on a motorboat visiting remote Nigerian villages makes interesting reading besides. The people of Western Africa have suffered for centuries due to European and American imperialism. This latest atrocity only exacerbates their situation. Public awareness of this issue is the only solution. Inform yourself, and then pass the book on to a friend.

Eye Candy

Quotations

Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods; particularly if the goods are worthless.
Sinclair Lewis (1885 - 1951)

In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.
Robert Heinlein (1907 - 1988)

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)


Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
Ronald Reagan (1911 - 2004)

Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made.
Otto von Bismarck (1815 - 1898)


The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811 - 1896)

If you treat people right they will treat you right- ninety percent of the time.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882 - 1945)

Eye Candy

A Secret Edge

A Secret Edge, by Robin Reardon
$10.20 at Amazon.com
ISBN: 075821927X
Jason is a sixteen-year-old boy who's beginning to suspect he's gay. He has sexual dreams about other guys (including David Bowie, strangely enough) and has become very close "friends" with a boy on his high school track team. This sensitive and unassuming book chronicles his experience as he becomes a man and comes to terms with his sexual orientation.
Things have changed a lot since I was in high school (I graduated in 1991). Gay couples go to the prom, many schools have gay-friendly clubs; it seems like a lot of things have changed for the better for gay teens in the past few years.
Still, it's not without struggle. Jason is on a team with a lot of jocks who use the word "faggot" to describe anyone who's weak or a sissy, not realizing that they're talking about him. He's raised by his aunt and uncle (his parents died when he was young). They love and want what's best for him, but they're provincial people who are wholly unprepared for a homosexual in the family.
Jason becomes a friend and lover to another boy, Raj, who is an American of Indian descent. Raj's story gives some added depth to the story because his immigrant parents have Old World values that the American born teenager doesn't share. There's some interesting material about the Hindu Vedas and their take on queers.
Raj and Jason deal with their inner turmoil like most high school boys: through sports.
Their teachers and coaches are as understanding as possible, but with sullen teenagers it's hard to get a dialogue going. One of Jason's teammates picks a fight and blackens his eye, but he won't finger the culprit. He just can't bring himself to say: "he beat me up because I'm queer".
It's funny how much this novel reminded me of my own coming out experience. I kept nodding my head and thinking "yes, it was just like that for me, too". Our hero's last attempts to make himself heterosexual brought back a lot of memories: uncomfortable dates with girls, trying to hide boners in the locker room.
This is a very timely book: dealing with contemporary issues in a frank and honest way. It'd be a great gift for a young gay man, or a walk down memory lane for those of us who came out years ago. The family from India and Jason's conservative but well-intentioned family contribute some cultural depth.
If you're gay, this is your own story. Needless to say, everyone winds up happy and well-adjusted in the end, as it should be.
Great work, Robin!

Eye Candy

The Elements

Here's a little more information about the elements and their uses. If you're interested in this sort of thing, there's a great book on Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements, by John Emsley. Each element is discussed in terms of its uses, history, function in the human body, and utility to the economy. Here's a sample:

The top ten elements dissolved in the oceans and their abundance (ppm)

1. Chlorine (19,400)
2. Sodium (10,800)
3. Magnesium (1,300)
4. Sulfur (904)
5. Calcium (411)
6. Potassium (392)
7. Bromine (67)
8. Carbon (28)
9. Strontium (8)
10. Boron (5)

The top ten gaseous elements in the atmosphere and their abundance (ppm)

1. Nitrogen (780,900)
2. Oxygen (209,500)
3. Argon (9,300)
4. Neon (18)
5. Helium (5.2)
6. Krypton (1.1)
7. Hydrogen (0.5)
8. Xenon (0.09)
9. Radon (traces)
10. Chlorine (traces)

Ten elements commonly used in weapons (example)

1. Antimony (greek fire)
2. Arsenic (mustard gas)
3. Carbon (gunpowder)
4. Iron (swords)
5. Beryllium (hydrogen bombs)
6. Magnesium (incendiary bombs)
7. Nitrogen (explosives)
8. Phosphorus (nerve gas)
9. Manganese (armor)
10. Uranium (atomic bombs)

Previous posting on the Elements here.

I hope everyone's US Independence Day was a happy one!

Eye Candy

A Distant Mirror

A Distant Mirror, by Barbara W. Tuchman
$12.21 at Amazon.com
ISBN: 0345349571
The history of the calamitous 14th Century. This book is a bit more challenging than most of the stuff I post about on here, but it's worth the effort if you're interested in learning about life in the Middle Ages. It's a bit long and scholarly at parts, but there's plenty of violence and intrigue to keep the story moving.
The story revolves around a mid-level noble in medieval France: Enguerrand de Coucy. Using his life as a vehicle, the reader gets to experience all the fun of living through the Hundred Years' War, the Inquisition, and of course the 14th Century's most outstanding characteristic: the Black Death. Doesn't that sound exciting?
In October of 1347, a ship arrived in the Sicilian port city of Messina with dead and dying men at the oars. The affected sailors had strange black swellings called buboes, about the size of an egg in the armpit or groin. Violent fevers, agonizing pain and delirium soon followed. Everything that came from the body stank horribly: sweat, blood from the buboes, bloody urine and blood-blackened excrement. Depression and despair accompanied the earliest physical symptoms so that "death is seen seated on the face."
The disease was Bubonic Plague, and a third of the world died.
I have to admit this period represented a real gap in my knowledge until I read Tuchman's book. She has an amazing talent for giving the reader a sweeping panorama view of life in the hardest patch of human history. It's not just about plague, however. Castles began to dominate the French countryside, and we get a terrific tour of what life was like in a medieval castle during war and peace. Sieges brought over-crowding, disease, and eventually starvation and cannibalism to rich and poor alike.
It sounds depressing, but it's guaranteed to make you feel better about your own life in the 21st Century. It's not all gloom and doom, though: there's a lot of material on more up-beat subjects. What was the theater and literary scene in medieval times? What kind of sex lives did people have? What about the night life?
There's a lot of sadness and suffering in this book. This would eventually lead to the Protestant Reformation and the Renaissance. But it's always darkest before the dawn.
Tuchman wrote outstanding books on a variety of historical subjects. This one comes highly recommended because it's a great crash-course on medieval life, covering all the high points without getting bogged down with obscure names and dates. Heavy but not boring, dark but never needlessly so. This is a masterpiece of medieval scholarship enjoyable enough for the less experienced reader to follow.
One of my all-time favorites!

Eye Candy

The Planets

I won't mention all nine in this post, but here's some interesting information on our nearest planetary neighbors. There's a good book on the subject called Astronomy: A Visual Guide by Mark A Garlick. Lots of cool pictures (the universe is pretty to look at), along with interesting facts in an easy-to-digest format. Here's a small sample:

Mars:
Diameter: 4221 miles (53.2% of Earth)
Mass: 0.11 x Earth
Mean Surface Temperature: -10 F (-23 C)
The second-smallest planet in the Solar System, Mars has a thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide, polar caps of dry ice, and an active weather system. There are even indications that Mars may once have had oceans of liquid water, but this issue is still in debate.
Since antiquity Mars has been known as the Red Planet due to the surface, strewn with a fine red soil of oxidized Iron. In effect, Mars is a rusty planet.

Jupiter:
Diameter: 89,405 miles (1127.9% of Earth)
Mass: 317.7 x Earth
Mean Surface Temperature: -240 F (-150 C)
Jupiter is easily the Solar System's largest world, in fact it's big enough to contain all the other planets and more. It's composed mostly of fluids rather than rock or metal, but may have a dense icy core. The surface's most outstanding feature is its great red spot, a hurricane three times the size of Earth, which has existed for centuries. The planet has several dozen satellites, our knowledge of the exact number increases all the time.

Saturn:
Diameter: 74,898 miles (944.9% of Earth)
Mass: 95.2 x Earth
Mean Surface Temperature: -110 F (-80 C)
The second-largest planet. Like all gas giants, it has a system of rings, but those of Saturn are without a doubt the finest and most easily visible. They are composed of countless icy blocks tumbling around the planet, some as large as a house. Another interesting feature of Saturn is its shape: because of its rapid rotation (once in 10 hours, 14 minutes) it is noticeably flattened at the poles.

Eye Candy

Tales of the City

Tales of the City, by Armistead Maupin
$11.20 at Amazon.com
ISBN: 0060964049
As the gay rights movement came to the fore during the American 1970s, Armistead Maupin was writing his Tales of the City as a serial story in several US newspapers. This is the first part in the series, and a masterpiece of gay literature.
Several classics have been written this way: Charles Dickens' David Copperfield, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Adventures of Sherlock Holmes were originally published one chapter at a time in newspapers and later collected in novel form.
The work revolves around a group of tenants at 28 Barbary Lane.
Maryann Singleton is a rather sheltered young lady from Ohio who moves to San Francisco at the height of the sexual revolution. Her landlady, Mrs. Madrigal, is a kindly transsexual who grows marijuana in the apartment building's yard and distributes it freely to her tenants.
The neighbors make up the rest of the cast: Mona, her pan-sexual and hedonistic gal pal who spends her days smoking grass, popping Quaaludes, and making love to anyone of either gender. Michael Tolliver is a sensitive young gay man who moved from Florida looking for love and success. Brian, the downstairs neighbor, is a recovering frat boy and ex-lawyer approaching 30 and starting to slow down.
These people really know how to live: there's always a party or drag show to go to, plenty of drugs and free love, and everyone's mood rings are blue. As the 80s dawned, AIDS cast a dark shadow over the story.
Words can't express how much fun Tales of the City is to read. Moreover, it's become the standard chronicle of the early gay rights movement. The characters all seem like they'd make great friends, and the wacky setting means there's always something unexpected happening.
Armistead describes a world which, sadly, no longer exists: sex and drugs for days in a consequence-free environment. He paved the way for ACT-UP, Marches on Washington, and today's pride parades in every major city. If you were alive, young, and queer in the 70s (sadly, I was only a baby at the time), 28 Barbary Lane sounds like the place to be.
May she rise again.