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High temp today, here: -4. Dewpoint then: -7. High dewpoint: -7.
High temp today in TO: -1. Dewpoint then: -9. High dewpoint: -7.
Epsilon hanging on as a hurricane. It's another storm--like, at least, the one that ran into Spain--that has strengthened far beyond what the models indicate for the conditions. Epsilon is a hurricane over 22C seas, which theoretically shouldn't happen.
In other news, there is no other news. Well, we went to a sale at a used bookstore today, and I bought the Buffy movie for $2.40. (And Heathers, and Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. These purchases, no doubt, might tell one something about me. What they might tell one is that I am a character from a Stewart Home book. At least, from Sixty-Nine Things to Do with a Dead Princess, which is the only Stewart Home book I know. That was not just one of those books.) And we watched the Buffy movie tonight. The Buffy movie is just not Buffy. It's just not ... anything, really.
Speaking of one of those books, there was an article in the Globe today about how fiction sales are down this year, or these years (though nobody has actual numbers, just anecdotes from publishers and booksellers), with some blabblediblah about how people just aren't into fiction in these very serious Post-9/11 times. (Not to mention (and how they didn't mention, I don't know) the BIRD FLU. Why read fiction when you're about to die from the BIRD FLU?)
My theory is that people possibly are not buying as much fiction as they used to for much the same reason that they are not buying as much music (and never mind the illegal-download smokescreen) as they used to: people have bought as many just-another-books, and just-another-CDs, as they can handle. The market is saturated. You wallpaper every room in your house, and then you don't need to buy any more wallpaper.
Look: The Hours won the Pulitzer Freaking Prize. The Hours is not a great book. It will go away, if it hasn't already gone away (I was in a used bookstore last week that had ten copies of it, though one never knows exactly what that indicates--probably that has been, but is no longer, popular on local ENGL 101 syllabi), having left hardly a trace on anyone except Woolf scholars. (As for right now, though, a whole bunch of my students have heard of the movie, if not the book, and three of them have seen it.) I hear panels of critics talking about the nominees for the Canadian prizes (the Giller and the What-The-Fuck's-A-"G-G" (uh, some Queen's humour, there)), and they describe these books, and I think--more of those books! Why would you buy those books?
High temp today in TO: -1. Dewpoint then: -9. High dewpoint: -7.
Epsilon hanging on as a hurricane. It's another storm--like, at least, the one that ran into Spain--that has strengthened far beyond what the models indicate for the conditions. Epsilon is a hurricane over 22C seas, which theoretically shouldn't happen.
In other news, there is no other news. Well, we went to a sale at a used bookstore today, and I bought the Buffy movie for $2.40. (And Heathers, and Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. These purchases, no doubt, might tell one something about me. What they might tell one is that I am a character from a Stewart Home book. At least, from Sixty-Nine Things to Do with a Dead Princess, which is the only Stewart Home book I know. That was not just one of those books.) And we watched the Buffy movie tonight. The Buffy movie is just not Buffy. It's just not ... anything, really.
Speaking of one of those books, there was an article in the Globe today about how fiction sales are down this year, or these years (though nobody has actual numbers, just anecdotes from publishers and booksellers), with some blabblediblah about how people just aren't into fiction in these very serious Post-9/11 times. (Not to mention (and how they didn't mention, I don't know) the BIRD FLU. Why read fiction when you're about to die from the BIRD FLU?)
My theory is that people possibly are not buying as much fiction as they used to for much the same reason that they are not buying as much music (and never mind the illegal-download smokescreen) as they used to: people have bought as many just-another-books, and just-another-CDs, as they can handle. The market is saturated. You wallpaper every room in your house, and then you don't need to buy any more wallpaper.
Look: The Hours won the Pulitzer Freaking Prize. The Hours is not a great book. It will go away, if it hasn't already gone away (I was in a used bookstore last week that had ten copies of it, though one never knows exactly what that indicates--probably that has been, but is no longer, popular on local ENGL 101 syllabi), having left hardly a trace on anyone except Woolf scholars. (As for right now, though, a whole bunch of my students have heard of the movie, if not the book, and three of them have seen it.) I hear panels of critics talking about the nominees for the Canadian prizes (the Giller and the What-The-Fuck's-A-"G-G" (uh, some Queen's humour, there)), and they describe these books, and I think--more of those books! Why would you buy those books?
