Towse: views from the hill

December 19, 2007

The Rap Sheet’s ONE BOOK PROJECT

Filed under: blog,books,mystery,people — Towse @ 11:18 pm

Better late than never.

Last May, in honor of its one-year anniversary, The Rap Sheet organized The Rap Sheet's ONE BOOK PROJECT.

We invited more than 100 crime novelists, book critics, and bloggers from all over the English-speaking world to choose the one crime/mystery/thriller novel that they thought had been “most unjustly overlooked, criminally forgotten, or underappreciated over the years.”

Interesting list. Steve Hockensmith, author of Holmes on the Range and On the Wrong Track, nominates THE DOORBELL RANG (1965) by Rex Stout and explains why. J.D. Rhoades, lawyer, blogger, and author of Safe and Sound nominates Katy Munger’s MONEY TO BURN [1999]. Linda Fairstein, author of Bad Blood, chose Robert Traver’s ANATOMY OF A MURDER.

… and the list goes on.

If you’re a crime fiction fan, this list will keep you in reading material for a long, long time.

[via The Rap Sheet]

December 1, 2007

Cute Overload! :)

Filed under: blog,yikes — Towse @ 5:16 pm

Cute Overload! :)

The wonders of the Web. Why, I was just off reading In Praise of Sardines and Brett mentioned Cute Overload and I clicked through.

The world is cracked, you know? A bit of cute might help mend things.

Or not.

November 19, 2007

BLDGBLOG

Filed under: architecture,blog,books,people,San Francisco — Towse @ 10:01 pm

Check out Geoff Manaugh’s BLDGBLOG: Architectural Conjecture, Urban Speculation, Landscape Futures.

A plethora of goodies.

Geoff Manaugh has a book (BLDGBLOG) out from Chronicle Books in Spring 2009 and moved to this fair ville in September to become a senior editor at Dwell.

More about Manaugh here.

November 15, 2007

Transbay Blog

Filed under: blog,politics,public transit — Tags: , — Towse @ 9:44 pm

Eric, over at Transbay Blog, is running a series of informational posts on the Central Subway, which I’ve ranted about on occasion here and elsewhere.

Transbay Blog is one of the most focussed, least axe-grinding blogs covering “News and thoughts on public transportation and city planning in the San Francisco Bay Area.” If such be your interests, check it out.

November 3, 2007

The Consumerist: Shoppers Bite Back

Filed under: blog,culture,shopshopshop — Towse @ 6:40 pm

Entertaining blog with news tidbits.

The Consumerist: Shoppers Bite Back

You can find such gems as a post about Batter Blaster:

Occasionally we see products that make us wonder how we got to this late day without them. “Batter Blaster” (which is pancake batter in a Cheese Whiz or Redi Whip bottle) is one such product.

Will we be buying this? No. Are we happy the it exists? Yeah. Actually, we are.

I think the product’s an abomination (How hard is it to add water to your Krusteaz mix?) but about half the comments are in a “hell-yeah, I’ve been waiting for something like this” vein.

October 11, 2007

[BLOG] Sara Zarr: The Stories of a Girl

Filed under: blog,books,URL,writing — Towse @ 5:04 pm

Word out in today’s SFChronicle that Sara Zarr — whom I met many many moons ago at a WTQ gathering of misc.writers, back when she lived in this fair city, before she moved to Utah — is a finalist for the National Book Award for The Story of a Girl in the Young People’s Literature division.

Yippee! Yahoo! for Sara!!!!!

Sara’s Web presence: The Stories of a Girl

Sara is published. Sara is a finalist for a National Book Award.

Sara no longer engages with folks on misc.writing.

Hmmm. Is there a connection?

(A slight one, perhaps. Her success is primarily due to … Sara is talented, and determined, and focussed and …)

Yay, hooray for Sara!

October 1, 2007

Cease and desist notices from the Tenderloin Housing Clinic

Filed under: blog,life,San Francisco — Towse @ 7:15 pm

“From Tenderloin Housing Clinics own court records and you thought YOU had bad neighbors?

Yikes.

[via Curbed SF]

September 25, 2007

Page 3.14 : "What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years," circa 1900.

Filed under: blog,science — Towse @ 8:20 pm

Entertaining blog entry over at Page 3.14:

Page 3.14 : “What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years,” circa 1900.

Earlier today, a friend sent me a link to this old-ish post from the excellent history/art/cultural curiosity blog Paleo-Future. It’s a document written by John Elfreth Watkins, Jr., for Ladies’ Home Journal in 1900. It is entitled “What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years.”

I couldn’t resist reading the whole thing (see the big version here), and am compelled—as a person of the future—to log a few replies.

Entertaining snippets from the December 1900 LHJ article and replies from Katherine Sharpe.

Read the article yourself or just dip into Sharpe’s blog entry.

[via science blogs from Seed Media]

September 24, 2007

A collection of typography links

Filed under: blog,design,URL — Towse @ 11:32 pm

Typographic Collaboration | Typophile

Typographica a journal of typography featuring news, observations, and open commentary on fonts and typographic design.

typography a photoset on flickr

viaLetter Spell it out

Jules Vernacular Lettres oeuvrières & incongruités typographiques. French signage and lettering from Jack Usine.

Triborough’s photos of NYC Transit Authority Graphics Standards Manual = a flickr photoset

Zuzana Licko and Rudy VanderLans at Emigre

Typetester – compare screen type

FontFeed a font blog

Citroën ad

Filed under: blog,culture,media,URL — Towse @ 10:30 pm

[via the brilliant collection of advertisements at I believe in advertising]

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