Top 21 Surfing Faves: Marginal Revolution, Scott Adams, Holding the Light, Root Simple, Apifera Farm, Book Man's Log, Kevin Kelly, and More

Yes, it is true that most blogs, never better than mediocre, end up abandoned as their authors migrate over to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the like. Nonetheless, there are many worthy, richly fascinating, and consistently updated blogs out there, some old, many new. Herewith, I share with you, dear reader, a my top 21 surfing faves as of this month.

CRUNCH-CH-CH-Y ECON & ROARINGLY ECLECTIC WHATNOT

Marginal Revolution



DILBERTERIE AND PERSUASION FILTER-O-RAMA

Scott Adams 
By the way, if at first glance Adams' blog appears pro-Trump, look again, it is not. Over the past months Adams has been analyzing and explaining some of the more esoteric techniques that Trump employs in his speeches and debates and even Tweets. Long before any of the op-ed crew in major media, Adams predicted the rise of Trump. His blog is fascinating reading, and it's worth the trouble to read many of his previous posts. And yes, this is the cartoonist who came up with Dilbert. And no, I am not for Trump. Hey, I live in Mexico.

SOUTH OF THE BORDER, SOMETIMES

Mexico Cooks!

Rachel Laudan

David Lida

Sam Quinones 
> Read my review of his latest book, Dreamland, for Literal Magazine.



TEXAS, HIS TEXAS

The Rambling Boy 
Read or listen to my interview with Lonn Taylor here.



AMIGAS ARTISTAS

Holding the Light 
Patricia Dubrava, translator, poet, writer

Work-in-Progress 
Leslie Pietrzyk, writer

One 
Sarah Zalan, photographer



ART & ANIMALS

Apifera Farm 
> Read my 2011 post about this blog here.

God of Wednesday



RARE BOOK BIZ

Book Man's Log



DESIGN & ECLECTIC WHATNOT

Swiss Miss 
Her Friday Link Packs are always a treat. The latest included a link to this Japanese shop and this stunning video by Method Design.

Screenshot from this Vimeo video by Method Design.

IMPENDING DOOM OR, LIFE WITH HORSES PROBABLY

James Howard Kunstler 
Rolling preacher-like thunder and, on many an occasion, wackily wicked imagery.

The Archdruid Report 
His sci fi is not my cup of chai, but his skill and prolificacy as an essayist is a wonder.

Club Orlov 
Cranky sailboat doomer, but at times the language kicks samovar, e.g.:

July 19, 2016

"And there are all those who, whenever I publish something that mentions climate change, crawl out of the woodwork and gnash their exoskeletal mandibles at me, to the effect that climate=weather, and it's all a conspiracy theory. They are idiots and deserve a boathook in the eye."

July 5, 2016

"People were summoned to explore the heavens, they were promised universal prosperity, a world without borders, gender equality, and a third gender, and a fourth, and a fifth, and watermelons that taste like raccoons, and raccoons with the hair of mermaids. But people wanted a hug, warm tea, summers in the country, and to spend time with their relatives."

SETH GODIN
www.sethgodin.com

PEP TALK

Seth Godin

TECHNO WOW, WHOA, WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!

kk.org 
This is Kevin Kelly, whose latest is The Inevitable: Understanding the Twelve Technological Forces that Will Shape Our Future). Several blogs in there, including Cool Tools.

YUM & FIXIT

Orangette

Root Simple (best roasted tomatoes in the galaxy and solar ovenerie!)



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For those of you who might be wondering, my book in-progress on Far West Texas proceeds... ayyy, and having taken a karmically necessary detour to write this book review/ essay (the strangest thing I have ever written), I am still working on Marfa Mondays podcast 21. There will be blood. Of the 19th century. I invite you to listen in to the other 20 Marfa Mondays podcasts anytime here.

Your comments are always welcome.

CLICK HERE.

Writers Blogs (and My Blog):

Eight Conclusions After Eight Years of Blogging

Top 13 Trailers for Movie with Extra-Astral Texiness

Notes on Xavier González, "Moonlight Over the Chisos" 

and a Visit to the Antigua Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City

*

I welcome you to sign up for my free, usually podcast-packed, 

once-in-a-while newsletter

which goes out via mailchimp... maybe... next month.

>> CLICK HERE <<

Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones

Just posted in Literal Magazine


Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic
By Sam Quinones

Reviewed by C.M. Mayo

This is a grenade of a book. Based on extensive investigative reporting on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, Sam Quinones’ Dreamland tells the deeply unsettling story of the production, smuggling, and marketing of semi-processed opium base— or “black tar heroin”— originating in and around Xalisco, a farm town in the state of Nayarit, and in tandem, the story of the aggressive marketing of pain pills in the U.S.— in particular, of Purdue Pharma’s OxyContin—and the resulting conflagration of addiction and death.

Unlike previous drug epidemics—heroin in the 70s, crack in the 90s— this one involved more deaths and more users, and not so many in urban slums but “in communities where the driveways were clean, the cars were new, and the shopping centers attracted congregations of Starbucks, Home Depot, CVS, and Applebee’s.”

Mexican black tar heroin trafficking isn’t anything like what you’ve seen on TV or in the movies or, for that matter, most books about narcotrafficking. It’s a small-time and customer-centric business: smugglers carry small high-quality batches over the border, and then drivers, using codes received on their cell phones, deliver tiny balloons filled with heroin directly to individual customers. The smugglers and drivers, “Xalisco Boys,” for the most part— friends, neighbors, brothers, third cousins— are not ready-for-prime-time “narcos” but otherwise ordinary young men from an otherwise ordinary farm town.

Nor are these Mexicans crossing the border because they are drawn by the light of “a better life” in the U.S. Their goal is a short period of hard work—and if that work happens to be delivering balloons filled with some drug to gringo addicts, so be it—and then to return home with the cash to peel off for a house, a wedding banquet with a live band, a stack of Levi’s jeans for the clan.

The number of English language reporters who could have written such a book can be counted on one hand— if that. Quinones draws on two decades of covering remote corners of Mexico and Mexican immigrants to the U.S. His two previous books, both superb, are True Tales from Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino, and the Bronx and Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration. In Dreamland, Quinones writes about the “Xalisco Boys” with unusual insight and compassion [CONTINUE READING]

Nut Country: 

Right-Wing Dallas and the Birth of the Southern Strategy 

By Edward H. Miller

Lone Star Nation:

How Texas Will Transform America

By Richard Parker

Our Lost Border:

Essays on Life Amid the Narco-Violence

Edited by Sarah Cortez and Sergio Troncoso

CLICK HERE.

Cyberflanerie: Writers and Writing: Sam Quinones on the Mennonite Mob, the Daily Skimm, Write On!

Debra Eckerling's Write On! August newsletter is out. (Thanks, amiga, for the mention of my "30 Deadly-Effectve Ways to Free Up Bits, Drips & Gimungously Vast Swaths of Time for Writing" and the new gumroad.com edition of From Mexico to Miramar or, Across the Lake of Oblivion.") Lots of useful information in there for writers. Take note, those of you looking for some inspiration, Eckerling is offering Purple Pencil Adventures, her Kindle of writing prompts for free on specific dates. Read the newsletter to find out all about it.

Sam Quinones, who I admire more than I can say, has just posted on his blog about the Mexican Mennonite Mob. Whoa.

Something I find charming, useful and yet totally appalling: The Daily Skimm.

How to Rank Well in Amazon. Uh, for all one's spare time. 

James Somers asserts: You're Probably Using the Wrong Dictionary.

The always elegant and thoughtful Pat Dubrava on Discovering Indians in 1951.

COMMENTS always welcome.

+ + + + + + + 

SURF ON:

Madam Mayo:

>Why Aren't There More Readers? A Note on Curiosity, Creativity and Courage

>Desert America: Boom and Bust in the New Old West by Rubén Martínez

>My Little Gumroad Shop

And on the home page, www.cmmayo.com:

>Review of Sam Quinones' True Tales of Mexico

>Giant Golden Buddha & 364 More Free 5 Minute Writing Exercises: August

>New Workshop: One One Day Writing Workshop at the Writer's Center on Literary Travel Writing, Saturday October 11, 2014.

Cyberflanerie: Mexico City, Patzcuaro, Tijuana & Tulum Edition

You're Eating Fake Tacos and Diana Kennedy is Pissed About It  by Daniel Hernandez
P.S. Diana Kennedy is a true treasure: teacher, caretaker, visionary. Her name may not be hispanic, but she knows Mexican cuisine better than anyone, including, yes, the Mexicans.

The always excellent and informative Exploring Colonial Mexico, lately on Enrique Luft Pávlata.

Sam Quinones doesn't like Tijuana, he loves it! (Yes, Yours Truly has visited and had quite a bit to say about it, too. But I didn't get to the opera.)

Victor: Artes Populares Mexicanas, now in new digs near the Claustro Sor Juana, upstairs from Librería Madero. I was about to blog about this charming rinconcito, but my amigo, artist and travel writer, Jim Johnston, beat me to it in his blog, Mexico City: An Opinionated Guide for the Curious Traveler. 

Speaking of rinconcitos, Mexico Cooks! has another bodacious post about the new market in Col. Roma. Nicholas Gilman chimes in on his blog, Good Food in Mexico City.

My amiga the ever adventurous DC-based writer Judy Leaver is learning Spanish in Tulum.

David Lida says Federico Gama is the best photojournalist working in Mexico City today.

Burro Hall is still reporting on the usual wackiness. (Hey, karma police, the guy has an elderly pug.)

COMMENTS always welcome.

Cyberflanerie: Better Books, Books of Note, Decluttering Books, Rare Books

The NYT's Charles M. Blow says, Reading Books is Fundamental.

Making Better Books:

The Book Designer's archive of articles "practical advice to help build better books"

Chronicling America in the Library of Congress (newspaper archives)

Book Aesthete Tumblr

Books of Note:

Sam Quinones' Tell Your True Tale East Los Angeles

The Daily Beast's Ted Gioia says The Smartest Book About the Digital Age Was Published in 1929. (José Ortega y Gasset's The Revolt of the Masses.)

My book! Updated edition in Kindle, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual.

>see also recent Madam Mayo posts on Gregory Gibson's Demon of the Waters and Bruce Berger's The End of the Sherry.

>see also lists of recommended reading on Mexico; creative process; craft of  creative writing; literary travel memoir.

Decluttering Books: 

Early Retirement Extreme on How to Get Rid of Books

>see also Madam Mayo's easy-peasy 10 Question Method

Rare Books:

Mexico Desconocido on Mexico City's antiquarian bookstores (en español)

>see also recent blog post,  Una ventana al mundo invisible (A Window to the Invisible World) or, Master Amajur and the Smoking Signatures

COMMENTS always welcome

Cyberflanerie: The Voynich Manuscript, Books, Used Books, Rare Books, and the Future of Bookstores Edition

Totally huge news: The mysterious circa 15th or 16th century Voynich manusucript might be of Mexican origin: Arthur O. Tucker and Rexford H. Talbert make a very interesting case in, of all places, HerbalGram, the Journal of the American Botanical Council, issue 100, 2013, in their article "A Preliminary Analysis of the Botany, Zoology, and Minerology of the Voynich Manuscript." Could the strange, supposedly cipher, language have been simply a dialect of Nahuatl?

To see the Voynich manuscript on-line, check it out at the website of Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. 

Sam Quinones, a most original and intrepid journalist, who hosts the Tell Your True Tale website, has just brought out the Tell Your True Tale: East Los Angeles, in both paperback and Kindle.

Novelist and blogger Carmen Amato has asked Yours Truly and other "influential bloggers" to pontificate on the Future of Bookstores. (For some visuals, try this.)

The Rambling Boy of the Big Bend Sentinel, Lonn Taylor, goes browsing for bargains at used bookstores.

Find books with Bibliopolis.

Here's a cool new venue for selling books: Gumroad. Stay tuned on that front.

More anon.

Cyberflanerie: Nuts Edition

James McWilliams talks about The Pecan: A History of America's Native Nut (University Texas Austin) with podcaster extraordinaire Chris Gondek.

UK newspaper reports Mexico leads the world in death by . . . lightning strikes. (Who knew?)

Sam Quinones on the Mexican Roma
(No, not Colonia Roma. Just when you think you've got Mexico figured out, Sam Q spins it topsyturvy. Who else would watch giant snake movies in the campo?)

Nut Wizard (Boy howdy! This gives me renewed faith in the ingenuity of the human race. I am not kidding.)

Human Sacrifice in Olde St Louis.

And on a rather drastically lighter note, check out Chubbs the Totally Awesome Pug!!

COMMENTS

Cyberflanerie: Michael Ventura, Macaulay Library's Coyote Calls, John Wells' Field Lab blog, Sam Quinones on the Dinastia de El Hamlet

3D printer du jour

The Revolution Will Be Printed, according to Austin Chronicle columnist Michael Ventura, by which he means 3D printed. Buckle up, it's going to be a Mr Toad ride! (So when people don't have jobs anymore, what will they do? Why, what people without jobs have always done! Some grow potatoes and stuff, while others glue themselves to the sofa and watch TV, while others give elaborate dinner parties featuring piles of foie gras! Only it will be printed foie gras, I guess.)

PS Get your 3D printer here.

Via Delia Lloyd's Real Delia blog's Friday reading links, Cornell University's Macaulay Library of sounds, an uber-amazing archive of bird and animal audio. (Love the selection of coyotes.)

Over on his Field Lab blog, John Wells once-upon-a-time-of-New-York-now-of-Terlingua offers his one wise cent. P.S. Catch his podcast interview on Tiny Revolution. PSS Related: H20 Rainwater Harvesting Community.

One of my favorite writers writing on Mexico, San Quinones, offers this fascinating blog post about the dynasty of "El Hamlet."

(Coming soon: printed burgers and robot waiters?)

>Comments off due to spam, but your comments via email are always welcome.

Sam Quinones Podcasting on Oystein Baadsvik and the Tuba

Delighted to find Sam Quinones, one of my favorite writers, podcasting.

>>Check out his latest report on Oystein Baadvik and the tuba.

Links Noted: Yayoi Kusama, Kevin Kelly, Thumb Thing, Sam Quinones, Ken Ackerman, Joy of Books, Ken Gordon

The World According to Yayoi Kusama
(The Financial Times)
A very unusual elderly artist whose polkadotted pumpkins fetch the price of a ski condo.

The Art of Endless Upgrades
(Kevin Kelly's kk.org The Technium blog)
I was thinking just the same thing the other day when I had to upgrade my operating system for the second time in a year.
(KK's latest book, What Technology Wants, is on my Top 10 Books Read 2011)

The greatest pug picture ever
(Burro Hall)
By someone who has a highly strange sense of humor.

The Thumb Thing
The Spoonsisters
(Did they just come up with this in the 21st century? I think I need one of these.)

Sam Quinones' True Tales
Cool, generous, amazing, engaging, and frequently updated.

Viral History
A blog hosted by historian Ken Ackerman
Highly recommended. Sign up for the free newsletter.

The Joy of Books Video
Yikes, 2 million plus views already!

People Who Claim to Communicate / Have Communicated with Disembodied Consciousnesses
My updated list for surfers in the more esoteric waters. (Apropos of my translation of Francisco I. Madero's Spiritist Manual of 1911. Stay away from those Ouija boards...)

CleanSlateNow.org
Hopping freaked about about that 2010 Supreme Court decision, Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission? Ken Gordon is doing something about it and so can you.

More anon.

Blogs Noted: Reading War and Peace, Sam Quinones, Sophy Burnham, Sandell Morse, and More

Supercut.org
Check out the "supercut" video riffing through Nicholas Cage's wiggy and not so wiggy hairstyles. Read what Kevin Kelly has to say about the so-called "supercuts" genre here.

Reading War & Peace: A Novelist's Notes
Yes, it's by Yours Truly, and I'm just catching up with the blog posts-- I am actually now about half way through this "loose baggy monster," right after the fall of Smolensk, and on schedule to finish the whole enchilada by December 31. Yes, dagnabbit, 2011 is the year! I welcome fellow readers' comments. As a writing workshop leader I am always telling people to "read as a writer"-- herewith, taking my own advice.


Marfa Mondays
Which starts up in January 2012. Follow on twitter @marfamondays. Watch the two trailers, "Where is Marfa?" and -- featuring plastic bags and dancing peas-- "Where the Buffalo Is Marfa?" here.

Sophy Wisdom
Mystic, essayist, historical novelist Sophy Burnham's new blog.

Sam Quinones' True Tales
An amazing journalist, hosting amazing true tales by others.
P.S. Check out his guest-blog post about this for Madam Mayo.

Sandell Morse
A new blog by a thoughtful and articulate writer of creative nonfiction

Richard Seymour on TED
How Beauty Feels

Another wingsuiting video
Whew (maybe for the next interplanetary reincarnation)

More anon.

Guest-blogger Mare Cromwell on 5 Telephone Numbers that Have Emblazoned Themselves Across Our Cultural Consciousness

I met Mare Cromwell, one of the most interesting writers I know, at the Maryland Writers Association's annual conference.* A master gardener, Cromwell is the author of an audaciously original book based on her interviews with a Cheokee Medicine Woman, a Death Row inmate, an Afghani Sufi Mystic, a Catholic, a Jew, and several praying kids: If I Gave You God's Phone Number... Searching for Spirituality in America. A finalist in ForeWord Magazine's 2003 Book of the Year Awards, it has just been reissued as an e-book, which you can find on both amazon.com and smashwords (and iBook and Nook very soon). The hardcover edition is also available here. Read an excerpt, an interview with poet John Terlazzo, here.

If the idea of being able to telephone God is amazing, well, certainly, so is the telephone itself. Isn't that something to contemplate? Over to you, Mare.

5 Telephone Numbers To Remember
by Mare Cromwell

Ever since the invention of the telephone, thanks to the brilliant Alexander Graham Bell, we’ve been able to dial a number on a piece of gadgetry and hear a voice on the other end. What was considered a miracle in the 1870’s, we now take for granted. Today we even carry phones with us wherever we go – a technological umbilical cord that keeps us connected where we go.

Over the decades some telephone numbers have emblazoned themselves across our cultural consciousness. Some we can rattle off without thinking. Others made their mark and then faded away. Here’s a list of famous telephone numbers, most known for more than just dialing.

911
The number you hope you never have to call for police, fire or ambulance.

867-5309/Jenny
Tommy Tutone released this song in 1962. Apparently, Tommy Heath, the lead singer of the group, had a girlfriend with this actual number.

Beechword 4-5789
Cowritten by Marvin Gaye and two other men, this song was sung by the Marvelettes, a Motown group in the early ‘60’s.

Pennsylvania 6-5000
For those whose music memories go back further, the Glenn Miller Band composed and played this song in 1940. It is the phone number of Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City where the Glenn Miller Band played. The telephone number will still ring at the Hotel and is considered the oldest continuing phone number in the city though now you need to add the area code ’212.’

Bruce Almighty’s Number to God
In the film Bruce Almighty, God (Morgan Freeman) pages Bruce (Jim Carrey) and the pager reveals a seven digit phone number that is not one of the fictional 555 exchange numbers traditionally used by Hollywood. As soon as the movie aired, people started calling the number in their own area code and requesting ‘God.’ Serendipitously, a pastor named Bruce in North Carolina possessed the number. Those whose phones were the number experienced weeks of grief from the countless calls to God across the nation.

-- Mare Cromwell

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*So you beginning writers wondering, "how can I meet other writers?" -- Go thee now to a writers conference. Seriously, joining your local writers association and showing up at their meetings, whether small get-togethers, open mics, or a conference (name tags, keynote speaker, rubber chicken, and all), is one of the best things you do for yourself as a writer.

-->Read Cromwell's For the Earth blog, and her recent guest-blog post about her book for The Journey: Not About the Striving But the Opening.

-->For the complete archive of Madam Mayo's guest-blog posts, click here.
Recent guest-bloggers include Julia Sussner on explorable apps, Eva Schweitzer on Berlin, Sam Quinones on true stories, Eric D. Goodman on train stories, and Susan Coll on comic novels.

Guest-blogger Sam Quinones on 5 Books of True Tales

It's a very special honor to host Sam Quinones this Wednesday because he is one of the writers I most admire. Some years ago, I gave his book True Tales from Another Mexico a heart-felt rave review in the Wilson Quarterly. Later, when his collection Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream came out, I placed it on my top 10 list for 2007. Quinones writes about Mexico and Mexican immigrants, and with more originality, insight and sheer grit than anyone else out there. (As someone who is married to a Mexican and has lived in and written about Mexico for 25 years, I'm not an easy customer in this department.) Sam Quinones's writing is something very special, so waste not a minute, go read his books-- after you read his guest-blog post, that is. And send him your true tale.

FIVE BOOKS OF TRUE TALES
by Sam Quinones

Hey there C.M. Mayo readers:

Hi there. I’m Sam Quinones. I’m a reporter and author of two books about Mexico and Mexican immigration.

I’m guest blogging to introduce C.M. Mayo readers to my storytelling experiment.

Tell Your True Tale is me trying to get folks to write true stories and send them in. I put them on my website. The latest postings, for example, are two women’s crime stories, Monah Li's "Speed Kills", and Carrie Gronewald's "The Green River Camp Fire". (Many others are up as well.)

Storytelling is the idea here— something that happened, a moment, an event. Something small; something big. Could have happened to you, or a friend, a coworker, relative, or someone you met at a café. Just needs to be true.

Like C.M., I don’t pay. But I do edit, and sometimes rather vigorously, rewriting being the essence of writing.

I encourage you all to think about stories you might have. Put ‘em down and send ‘em in.

Tell Your True Tale page: http://www.samquinones.com/category/true-tales/
My website: www.samquinones.com
My email: samquinones7@yahoo.com


FIVE GREAT BOOKS OF TRUE TALES

American Stories by Calvin Trillin
Amazing stories from the master storyteller in U.S. journalism. Trillin tells the story of Edna Buchanan, ace crime reporter for the Miami Herald; of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream; of the battle surrounding the estate of doo-wop crooner Frankie Lymon. The story on John Zeideman, a young man who died in China, is terrific.

Killings by Calvin Trillin
Stories of how people died violently, by the master again. “Todo Se Paga,” about the Casa Blanca neighborhood of Riverside, California, is fantastic.

The Heart That Bleeds by Alma Guillermoprieto
Stories from Latin America by a great reporter. Her story on the trash boss of Mexico City is a gem.

Stories by Anton Chekhov
Okay, it’s fiction, but the kind of stories to read when you’re writing true tales. What we’re after is nonfiction stories that read like fiction.

My books. They’re great. Stories of the Michael Jordan of Oaxacan Indian basketball; of the Henry Ford of velvet painting; of the Tomato King and the Popsicle Kings; of a lynching in a sweltering backwater; of how opera emerged from Tijuana’s broken and cacophonous streets; of Chalino Sanchez, the most influential musician to come out of Los Angeles in the last generation; And, finally, of my escape from Mexico, chased out by wacky, drug-smuggling old world German Mennonites from northern Mexico.

-True Tales From Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino and the Bronx

-Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration*

www.samquinones.com
(*I’m selling this one myself, hardcover, signed, for $10 apiece. Write me at samquinones7@yahoo.com)

That’s all folks. Really would love to see some stories. This is getting fun. What I’ve seen up to now is great and I can’t wait to see more.

--Sam Quinones

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Recent recent guest-blogs include novelist Eric D. Goodman on train stories; novelist Susan Coll on comic novels; and poet and translator Richard Jeffrey Newman on the Shahnameh.

For the complete archive of Madam Mayo guest-blog posts, click here

Monday Miscellanea

The Astral Plane by C.W. Leadbeater
And so many more once very rare and now free ebooks at Project Gutenberg

Book xylophone
A charmingly energetic image of the Apocalypse.

"When the Nile Runs Dry" by Lester R. Brown, NYT
This brings to mind some of what happened under Mexico's "Porfiriato" (late 19th c up through the 1910 Revolution).

"Emerging Economies Are Ready to Lead" by Agustin Carstens, Financial Times

Tell Your True Tales to Sam Quinones

Peter Behrens blogging on John Brinckerhoff Jackson

"It's Rainmaking Time" with Angela Thompson Smith

Time Slips: Twidders

Walden Font
Purveyors of old and historic fonts

Butch Anthony's Museum of Wonder (etsy blog)

Feltmaker Jean Hicks's Slideshow of Hats

Lisa Carter's Intralingo translation blog

Sam Quinones's Series on Mexican Heroin

How did I miss this? If you did, too, check it out here.

P.S. Read my review of his earlier book, True Tales from Another Mexico, here.

Madam Mayo's Top 10 Books Read in 2007

1. Patricia Klindienst, The Earth Knows My Name
Strange, moving, beautiful.

2. Sam Quinones, Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream
If you want to understand modern Mexico, you must read Quinones. (I reviewed his first book, True Tales from Another Mexico, here.)

3. Halldor Laxness, Atom Station
(Reykjavik, ho!)

4. Janet Lewis, The Wife of Martin Guerre
This may well be the best novela written in English, ever. Every page, every scene, every image, is stunningly vivid. And the author lived in Los Altos, California! Too incongruous.

5. Hermoine Lee, Edith Wharton
At last, Wharton has the bio she deserves. A grand, plummy pleasure to read, all 850+ pages.

6. Mary Morris, The River Queen
A heart-felt personal memoir of a journey to rival Huck Finn's own.

7. Dale C. Carson and Wes Denham, Arrest-Proof Yourself
Witty, wise, and very disturbing. The authors's dedication says it all: "To the thousands of young men in jail for petty offenses. It's not right. It's not just. America can do better." Read my post on this book here.

8. Janice Eidus, The War of the Rosens
A masterfully told story of a family in the Bronx in the 1960s.

9. Mark Kurlansky, Nonviolence
I selected this one for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in Non-Fiction.

10. Edward Tufte, Beautiful Evidence
And read my rave about his one day course.

---> Read Madam Mayo's Top 10 Books Read in 2006 here.

Back blogging December 5th.

Tell Your True Tale to Sam Quinones

There are so few truly good books about Mexico in English. By good, I mean not only beautifully written and deeply researched, but both compassionate and wise--- not the typical here-I-am-on-vacation, or oh-how-my-heart-is-bleeding stuff. (Even in a book as superb as Steinbeck's Log from the Sea of Cortez, Mexico is less the subject than a metaphor for other musings.) So I admire Sam Quinones's two collections of essays on Mexico more than I can say. When it came out a few years ago, I gave the first one, True Tales From Another Mexico, a rave review in the Wilson Quarterly. The new one, Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream, I didn't have time to review, alas, (I was finishing my novel), but I thought it was just as superb as his first collection--- perhaps even moreso. Really, if you're at all interested in Mexico, and Mexico's relationship with the U.S., Sam Quinones' two thought-provoking, consternating, informative, and highly entertaining books are essential reading. What promps me to sing his praises once more is the news that he has added a special feature to his website where you, too, can tell your true tale. Don't be shy! Or, as they say in Mexico, no seas ranchero. (That ranchero on the cover, by way, is Chalino.) More anon.

Summer Travel Reading: Top 10 Faves

I'm still on vacation... so for now, here's my recent guest-blog post over at The Happy Booker--- with an intro by Wendi Kaufman (aka the Happy Booker):

Guest blogger C.M. Mayo is the author of Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California just released in paperback by Milkweed Editions, and Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion, a collection of Mexican fiction and literary prose. Her most recent travel writing, "From Mexico to Miramar or, Across the Lake of Oblivion", an essay in Massachusetts Review about a journey to the Emperor of Mexico's castle in Italy, won the 2007 Washington Writing Prize for Personal Essay.

Around the World with Madam Mayo

Bon voyage, feliz viaje, and how do you say that in Icelandic? Speaking of which, one of my favorite travel memoirs, perfect for whiling away lazy afternoons in a deckchair, is Charles Fergus's Summer at Little Lava: A Season at the Edge of the World, about his mid-life stay at Litla Hraun in western Iceland.

For some reason, though my own writing tends to focus on Mexico, most of my favorite travel books are about the far north--- Farley Mowat's dirge-like Walking on the Land (about Canada's Ilhalmiut people); Gretel Ehrlich's low-altitude, vegetable-free romp, This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland; and for sheer wierdness (wierd to me, anyway), Gontran de Poncins' cult classic, Kabloona. But I certainly do read books on Mexico. My all-time favorite is Frances Calderon de la Barca's 1842 Life in Mexico--- not so much a seamless narrative as a patchwork quilt of vivid, often comic scenes. Two new ones well worth reading: Jeff Biggers's In the Sierra Madre, and Sam Quinones's Antonio's Gun and Delphino's Dream, a rollicking collection which includes chapters about the black velvet paintings, opera in Tijuana, and--- that's right--- Mennonite narcotraffickers.

On Southeast Asia, I've yet to read anything that beats the drama and haunting poetry of war correspondent Jon Swain's River of Time. For Francophiles: Sara Mansfield Taber's Bread of Three Rivers, in which the story of the best loaf of French bread rises to become the story of the whole world. For Italophiles, subspecies Venetophile: Judith Martin's hot-off-the-presses No Vulgar Hotel. Jog a bit around the Adriatic for Jan Morris's Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, a meditation on this most un-Italian of Italian cities, with denizens as unlikely as Mexico's Emperor, Maximilian, and James Joyce. Oops, that's eleven. Ciao for now. I'm going to California.

The Happy Booker Goes South of the Border with Narco Corridos & Mas

Today on the Happy Booker, author Sam Quinones has put together a list of the top Mexican immigrant corridos by Los Tigres del Norte, the most important bi-national band and the foremost musical chroniclers of the Mexican-immigrant experience. He's reading and signing his new book, Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream, tonight in Washington DC at Olsson's Dupont Circle. Madam Mayo is a ginormous fan! Here's my Wilson Quarterly review of his first book, True Tales from Another Mexico.

(My own Mexican music selections for the Happy Booker, apropos of Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion and the audio CD "The Essential Francisco Sosa or, Picadou's Mexico City" are here).