Read Introducing The Endonym Project (chrisfinke.com)
An endonym is a name that people give to the area where they live. For example, you might live in a city that is officially named "Brooklyn Heights," but you and all of your neighbors call it "The Heights." This is an endonym. I've always wondered about how well-defined the geographic boundaries are for endonyms that aren't tied to specific locations.  For example, how far east do you have to go from Minnesota before the

A cool bit on geography and names. Can’t wait to play with it.

Read I Built a Mid-Century Modern Nightstand (chrisfinke.com)
When I was tasked with making a  31" tall nightstand for my mother-in-law that would fit in a 9" wide space next to her bed and provide drawers and a shelf. I decided to use the opportunity to try a furniture style I haven't tried before: mid-century modern. From what I can tell, "mid-century modern" basically means it can look however you want, but the legs MUST be tapered and they MUST be splayed at

An interesting definition of mid-century modern here.

Read Various Goings On by Brian SchraderBrian Schrader (brianschrader.com)
I've been a little scatter-brained over the past few weeks. I've started lots of little projects and finished almost none of them. Hopefully, they'll all start to wrap up soon. I mentioned on a previous Indie Dev Life that I was working on an update to the Pine.blog iOS app, and that is still true. ...
Read The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML by @edent (Terence Eden’s Blog)
I’ve told this story at conferences – but due to the general situation I thought I’d retell it here. A few years ago I was doing policy research in a housing benefits office in London. They are singularly unlovely places. The walls are brightened up with posters offering helpful services for p...
Read - Reading: Schooled by Gordon Korman (Scholastic)
Homeschooled by his hippie grandmother, Capricorn (Cap) Anderson has never watched television, tasted a pizza, or even heard of a wedgie. But when his grandmother lands in the hospital, Cap is forced to move in with a school counselor and attend the local middle school. While Cap knows a lot about tie-dyeing and Zen Buddhism, no education could prepare him for the politics of public school.
Finished through chapter 17

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Read - Reading: Schooled by Gordon Korman (Scholastic)
Homeschooled by his hippie grandmother, Capricorn (Cap) Anderson has never watched television, tasted a pizza, or even heard of a wedgie. But when his grandmother lands in the hospital, Cap is forced to move in with a school counselor and attend the local middle school. While Cap knows a lot about tie-dyeing and Zen Buddhism, no education could prepare him for the politics of public school.
Started reading two nights ago; got through a few more chapters last night.

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Read - Finished Reading: White Nights by Ann Cleeves (Minotaur Books)
The electrifying follow-up to the Dagger Award-winning Raven Black. In this second thriller of the highly acclaimed Shetland Island series featuring Inspector Jimmy Perez, the launch of an exhibition at The Herring House art gallery is disturbed by a stranger who bursts into tears, then claims not to remember who he is or where he comes from. The next day he's found dead. Set in midsummer, the book captures the unsettling nature of a landscape where the sun never quite sets and where people are not as they first seem.

Brief Review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well tied up after l after laying things out so beautifully. Bigger on character than actual plot though, so it moved pretty slowly until about 60% of the way through.

I think I actually liked this better than the first one, though it does help to have some more background on the characters for having read both now. Definitely very carefully and well structured little mystery.

Read - Reading: White Nights by Ann Cleeves (Minotaur Books)
The electrifying follow-up to the Dagger Award-winning Raven Black. In this second thriller of the highly acclaimed Shetland Island series featuring Inspector Jimmy Perez, the launch of an exhibition at The Herring House art gallery is disturbed by a stranger who bursts into tears, then claims not to remember who he is or where he comes from. The next day he's found dead. Set in midsummer, the book captures the unsettling nature of a landscape where the sun never quite sets and where people are not as they first seem.
Finished reading White Nights.

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Read - Reading: White Nights by Ann Cleeves (Minotaur Books)
The electrifying follow-up to the Dagger Award-winning Raven Black. In this second thriller of the highly acclaimed Shetland Island series featuring Inspector Jimmy Perez, the launch of an exhibition at The Herring House art gallery is disturbed by a stranger who bursts into tears, then claims not to remember who he is or where he comes from. The next day he's found dead. Set in midsummer, the book captures the unsettling nature of a landscape where the sun never quite sets and where people are not as they first seem.
Finished through chapter 40. Yet another body!? Should be a good ending…

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Read - Reading: White Nights by Ann Cleeves (Minotaur Books)
The electrifying follow-up to the Dagger Award-winning Raven Black. In this second thriller of the highly acclaimed Shetland Island series featuring Inspector Jimmy Perez, the launch of an exhibition at The Herring House art gallery is disturbed by a stranger who bursts into tears, then claims not to remember who he is or where he comes from. The next day he's found dead. Set in midsummer, the book captures the unsettling nature of a landscape where the sun never quite sets and where people are not as they first seem.
Read through chapter 27 late last night. There’s just been another murder…

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Read - Reading: White Nights by Ann Cleeves (Minotaur Books)
The electrifying follow-up to the Dagger Award-winning Raven Black. In this second thriller of the highly acclaimed Shetland Island series featuring Inspector Jimmy Perez, the launch of an exhibition at The Herring House art gallery is disturbed by a stranger who bursts into tears, then claims not to remember who he is or where he comes from. The next day he's found dead. Set in midsummer, the book captures the unsettling nature of a landscape where the sun never quite sets and where people are not as they first seem.
Finished through chapter 9. The body’s been found and Perez has begun questioning everyone.

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Read - Want to Read: Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark (Knopf Publishing Group)

"Finally, the biography that Sylvia Plath deserves . . . A spectacular achievement." --Ruth Franklin, author of Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life

The highly anticipated new biography of Sylvia Plath that focuses on her remarkable literary and intellectual achievements, while restoring the woman behind the long-held myths about her life and art. With a wealth of never-before-accessed materials--including unpublished letters and manuscripts; court, police, and psychiatric records; and new interviews--Heather Clark brings to life the brilliant daughter of Wellesley, Massachusetts who had poetic ambition from a very young age and was an accomplished, published writer of poems and stories even before she became a star English student at Smith College in the early 1950s. Determined not to read Plath's work as if her every act, from childhood on, was a harbinger of her tragic fate, Clark evokes a culture in transition, in the shadow of the atom bomb and the Holocaust, as she explores Plath's world: her early relationships and determination not to become a conventional woman and wife; her conflicted ties to her well-meaning, widowed mother; her troubles at the hands of an unenlightened mental-health industry; her Cambridge years and thunderclap meeting with Ted Hughes, a marriage of true minds that would change the course of poetry in English; and much more.

Clark's clear-eyed portraits of Hughes, his lover Assia Wevill, and other demonized players in the arena of Plath's suicide promotes a deeper understanding of her final days, with their outpouring of first-rate poems. Along with illuminating readings of the poems themselves, Clark's meticulous, compassionate research brings us closer than ever to the spirited woman and visionary artist who blazed a trail that still lights the way for women poets the world over.

Greg O’Dea in “@themeghanodea @rachsyme The latest, by @Plathbiography Heather Clark, is far and away the best Plath biography. It is also a model for all biographies in its critical balance and deep erudition. Even at about 900 pages it reads like a literary dream.” / Twitter ()