The Vintage Reader

Interested in old electronics? Or, like me, do you have a couple of old radios from the 30s and 40s and you want to know what makes them work? Find out from one of the excellent books posted here.

I only buy working radios (although in a startling reversal, I'm thinking of buying a non-working radio with a nice case and turning it into an Internet radio that plays nothing but Radio Dismuke all the time), and I love the sound of the tubes warming up on my 1939 GE console radio. Hummm... and then presto, baseball. Because my radio only gets one station: WKBW. Oldies and the Bisons. Which, considering the dearth of good radio in the region anyway (let alone AM radio) isn't half bad.

Pretty cool: just enter an author and title and What Should I Read Next? will make recommendations.

This has been Neatoramaed, BoingBoinged, and probably Slashdotted and Metafiltered too, but I just have to mention it: Louis Wain's Schizophrenic Art. I've seen lots of Wain's illustrations; at one point I think I even had a set of stickers that were reproductions of his cats. I think it's fascinating to see how his cats changed from clever-looking, Tobermoryesque beasties in lovely outfits to scary abstract monsters as his illness progressed.

I got a very neat note today from the proprietor (-tress? -trix?) of Davenport. We're both using the same great graphic from the long-departed Squaresville, and she's using the Font Diner font that used to be the Vintage Reader font. But besides that, there are some eerie similarities between us:

• She's a librarian. I'm an ex-librarian.


• We have several of the same obscure movies on our favorites list: Next Stop, Wonderland, Sliding Doors, and of course, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T., the amazing, bizarre, live-action Dr. Seuss movie.


• We both seem to have a thing for John Cusack and Bill Pullman.


• We both grew up in the 70s, reading 1950s "malt shop" books.


• Apparently we both really like reading about New York in the 30s and 40s, as evidenced by her inclusion of Breakfast at Tiffany's (yes, that's right, the book takes place in the 40s), Dawn Powell, and Patrick Dennis on her lists of favorite books.

I think we're secret twins or something. In any event, I'm really enjoying Davenport, especially the Bad Book Reviews.

I usually don't do memes, but I liked this one I found at The Clutter Museum.

Instructions: Bold the books you have read. Italicise the books you might read. Cross out the books you probably won't read. Underline the books you have on your shelf to read or have started reading. Pass it on.

• The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown


• The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger


• The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams


• The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald


• To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee


• The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger


• His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (tried to read it; didn't get far)


• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling


• Life of Pi - Yann Martel


• Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell


• Catch-22 - Joseph Heller


• The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien


• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon


• Lord of the Flies - William Golding


• Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen


• 1984 - George Orwell (required reading for the Class of '84, dontcha know)


• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J. K. Rowling (I think; all the HP books start to blend together after a while)
  
• One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez


• Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden


• The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini


• The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold


• Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut


• Angels and Demons - Dan Brown


• Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk


• Neuromancer - William Gibson


• Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson (see His Dark Materials, above)


• The Secret History - Donna Tartt


• A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess


• Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë


• Brave New World - Aldous Huxley


• American Gods - Neil Gaiman


• Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card


• Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson (tried in when it was new. No luck. I have, however, read The Big U. How many people can say that?)


• A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving Favorite. Book. Ever.


• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis


• Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides


• Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell (never heard of it)


• The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien (Actually, after the first two I quit reading; I could only take so much of Fight. Ride. Fight. Walk. Fight. Sleep.)


• Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë


• Good Omens - Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman (tried a couple of times. Haven't given up yet.)


• Atonement - Ian McEwan (??)


• The Shadow Of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón (??)


• The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway


• The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood


• The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath


• Dune - Frank Herbert (tried repeatedly to like this series; finally gave up in 11th grade)