Saturday, July 5, 2014

Today's brilliance is brought to you by the letter "S" - a meme

I couldn't resist playing along with a meme I saw at Danielle's and Stefanie's blogs.  Danielle gave me my algorithmically generated (and therefore not completely random) letter of the alphabet, and I am charged with telling you my favorite book, author, song, film, and object beginning with that letter, as well as telling you that I will happily generate a letter for you if you would like to play along.  Just leave a request in the comments.

Book

A favorite book beginning with 's' is Sonya Hartnett's SurrenderShe is a lyrical, imaginative, and thematically serious Australian author who, although she writes books for young people, assumes them to be mature and intelligent readers. Surrender is a suspenseful, veiled, poetic tale related by two first-person narrators - an angel and a demon.

Author
I think I'll go with May Sarton, poet, diarist, and novelist. This underappreciated American writer has long been a favorite of mine. I wrote about her 1955 Faithful are the Wounds for the 2007 Outmoded Author's Challenge.




Song
The second of Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs - 'September.'  Sung here by Renee Fleming.



Film
Michel Gondry's fantasmagorical low-tech The Science of Sleep in which Gael Garcia Bernal is delightful.


Object
If you are an asparagus fan, as I am, you will certainly never want to be without your spargel schäler.  This highly specific kitchen utensil, mine was made in Germany, so I call it by its German name.  It is specifically designed to trim and peel asparagus.  If you manage not to overcook them, they come out perfectly every time.

Care to play along?  Leave me a comment and I'll give you a letter.

1 comment:

Danielle said...

Wow, I have never heard of a spargel schaler--I wonder if there is a youtube video showing how it is used? (probably....). I love asparagus, too, though I roast mine--probably not very well, but it still tastes pretty darn good. (Almost everything is good roasted I think). I am totally with you on May Sarton being underappreciated. I think she is marvelous and really need to read one of her journals this year (I was all set to read the one set in Maine, but typically, got sidetracked). Must check out Sonya Hartnett--there is some very good YA lit out there I have discovered. And September is lovely... And as the humidity cranks up here in NE I am personally all ready for September! Thanks for playing along!