Taking another break from writing about books...

....to bring you my visual DNA.

My friend's latest entry inspired me to try this.

It's pretty accurate!

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I have no idea how to fix the code so that it doesn't show on the blog.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

by Brian Selznick

This is the first book I've completed in more than a month. Or at least, the first book I've read in full that I've felt was worth adding to the list here.

I'd had this book from the library for a while but wasn't in the mood to read it till tonight. Partly because I didn't realize it was part graphic novel, and its girth was a reflection of the number of illustrations (all beautiful, btw). (I've been struggling with The Autobiography of Henry VIII and it's killed my appetite for anything long and engaging.)

It is a wonder-full story of a gifted boy, orphaned and alone, forced to live by his wits in a train station; his obsession with his father's legacy (a broken automaton), the girl who befriends him and her godfather, a man who runs a toy shop in the station.

The story is set in 1930s Paris. Brian Selznick uses the real-life figure Georges Melies as inspiration--he is the godfather in this story. Many details in the book reflect the life of the real Melies (the son of shoemakers, prodigious filmmaker, bankrupted by big studios, running a toy shop in a train station).

But this book is about Hugo, a good boy in unfortunate circumstances. He loses his dad in a fire, is adopted by his drinky uncle who works as timekeeper at the train station, is forced to take on his uncle's job when the latter disappears, steals food to survive, and works on the automaton his father discovers in the museum before it burns down. Isabelle falls into his life and while initially she seems to him an obstacle and a pain in the neck, she paves the way to a better life for him.

Confession: Not a Book Review

(although I was thinking of the novel Di & I, which I read a few weeks before August 31, 1997.)


Among the many, many things that Teo will no doubt find shameful about his mom one day in the near future is the fact that she is a Princess Diana-o-phile.

I don't own any memorabilia from the 1981 wedding or (thankfully) the 1997 tragedy (except for countless commemorative magazines). I've never read a whole Diana bio from cover to cover.

But when Princess Diana died on Aug. 31, 1997, I was hit with a crippling, devastating sadness. That was the day I had my first measurements taken for my wedding gown, so for about 2 months I could only associate the wedding dress with sadness. (Wish I could tell you that there was a happy ending with the dress, but we're talking about a different shattered fairy tale here.)

Tonight I was reminded of how sad I felt when I watched Matt Lauer interview William & Harry.

It's been 10 years since Diana died. Back then, a lot of people thought I was crazy & shallow, that I was the height of celebrity-watching-culture-gone-mad. Perhaps they were right. But I know the feelings were real. I told Benjie tonight that I could remember how awful I felt, but I was glad I didn't feel the same feelings as intensely, any more.

I still wish that Diana were still alive, as crazy as she might have been herself. (She wasn't perfect--she was immature, and manipulative, and misguided in many things.) I wish Harry & Wills didn't lose her when they were so young, that they could've had her around now as they become men.