Laila Lalami

Terry makes an excellent point about policitian-speak: He figures that lies sort of come with the territory, but he’s bothered that even when something is obvious, politicians will feel the need to spin it. Recently he came across an article by Michael Kinsley in Slate, which talks about Howard Dean’s candidness when he called Saddam’s capture a “great day” for the Iraqis and the Americans as well as “frankly, a great day for the Administration.” None of the other candidates came close to acknowledging this. Mostly they spoke of what a great relief it was that the dictator was caught, but glossed on what it really meant for their chances in 2004.
Here’s the plug. I was at the Dean for America site yesterday and noticed they have a new drive (okay, so maybe it’s a bit old, but I was busy moving, ok?) in which they try to get $100 donations from 2 million Americans. The idea is that 100 x 2 mil = enough money to actually compete with Bush. Now wouldn’t that make for a more interesting race? Go on over there and donate.

Literary Mama has a profile of author Ayelet Waldman.

Like [the protagonist of her novels] Applebaum, Waldman found staying at home with children isolating and boring. It’s a story Waldman has often told. After her second child, Isaac, was born, she decided to become a law professor, so she could live a less crazy life and have more time. She got a part-time gig teaching law school. But every time she sat down to work on her law review article — a necessity for tenure — “it was a catastrophic experience.” She found herself unable to write, uninterested in or intimidated by the academic approach to legal issues she still cared passionately about. So, in 1995, she decided to take a few years off and be a stay-home mom. “That lasted about a minute,” she says. “Seriously. I mean, I did it, I stayed home, but I got depressed. Definitely depressed. So I started writing while my son was taking his naps to make myself feel better about what I was doing.”

Read the rest here.

Marquette University, which owns the original manuscript for The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit, is set to acquire a host of secondary Tolkien sources.

I’ve been trying to see House of Sand and Fog, but it’s only playing in one screen in L.A. (Century City) and I’d rather not brave the hordes of holiday shoppers to get to it. I’m very curious to see how Ben Kingsley portrays Colonel Behrani. The reviews so far have been mixed.

Much has been made of the fact that Democratic hopefuls criticized Howard Dean because of his statement that the capture of Saddam doesn’t make America safer. Guess what? It so happens that 51% of Americans feel exactly the same.

The movers walked in, their T-shirt sleeves rolled up, biker chains hanging from their belts, tattoos on their arms. They took their coffee black, in quick sips, leaning against the kitchen counter as they handed us the paperwork. They ate the croissants, but left the bagels untouched. After a quick walk-through, they made it clear that, despite the moving company rep.

Publishers’ Lunch has the scoop on Google Print, a new feature that will allow Google to go head to head with Amazon’s Search Inside the Book. Here are the FAQs, and a sample search.

Writing is good for you.

Journalist and novelist Salah Nasrawi writes about his brief encounters with Saddam pre-rat hole period.

Michael Dirda has a piece on books that might have inspired J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

“Beowulf,” now available in a fine translation by poet Seamus Heaney. Tolkien himself wrote the best general essay on the poem “The Monsters and the Critics.”
Other Old English poems, such as “The Battle of Maldon,” “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer.” The first, in particular, presents as bloody, realistic and hard-fought an Iron Age skirmish as any in Jackson’s movies.
“The Song of Roland” — the classic French epic of war between Charlemagne’s entourage and Moorish invaders. The death of Boromir in “The Lord of the Rings” clearly mirrors the death of Roland, right down to the sounding of the horn.
The tales of the Norse gods and demigods. Scandinavian mythology is closer than any other to the history of Middle-earth, with a Gandalf-like Odin, double-crossing Loki, trolls and giants, and the cast-of-thousands final conflict of Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods.
The Icelandic sagas. Think spaghetti westerns on ice, with swords. Adventurous tales of lone fighters, outlaws, witch-like beauties, demon-ghosts, curses and revenge from generation to generation. In “Grettir Saga” the mightiest warrior in Iceland is haunted with fear of the dark; in “Njal Saga” one relentless man, over many years, hunts down the 40 killers who massacred his adopted family.