This Old Book: 'Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur'

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This 1970s paperback has been kicking around my collection since high school. I probably bought it after viewing "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," one of the first movies I was allowed to see in a theater without adult accompaniment.

Needless to say, Malory is not really as entertaining. I'm with Dennis the Constitutional Peasant: "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government."

This edition of Malory has a glossary. For example, the questing beast "has the head of a serpent, the body of a leopard, the buttocks of a lion, and the feet of a hart. From its belly issues the sound of thirty pairs of yapping hounds. It is never brought to earth."

This Old Book started as a Tumblr, which is also archived on Palafo.com. These are books that have survived many purges from my shelves over decades, with a few comments about why I have held onto them.

This Old Book: 'The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes'

I have a bunch of these Calvin and Hobbes books, purchased when Bill Watterson was still creating the strip for newspapers. Part of me wishes he were still plugging away as a cartoonist, but I respect Watterson for hanging it up while the strip was still a perfect work of art, fresh, funny and not tired, the way so many other strips get in their old age. He is sort of the J.D. Salinger of newspaper comics. Attempts to track him down have become something of a genre. He’s not that hard to find, but I imagine he’s tired of talking about something he did years ago.  At least we have the various collections, including this one from 1990. I re-read them every now and then, and my daughter has recently been absorbed by them. I think it’s cool that she is being entertained by a great and funny work of art that I myself loved and bought a decade before she was born. I do wonder if she’s caught on that I learned most of my parenting style from Calvin’s father.

This Old Book started as a Tumblr, which is also archived on Palafo.com. These are books that have survived many purges from my shelves over decades, with a few comments about why I have held onto them.

This Old Book: 'Ian Shoales' Perfect World'

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I fondly remember the National Public Radio's of the 1980s, especially "All Things Considered," because it kept me awake on so many long automobile trips in the wilds of Maryland, Pennsylvania and upstate New York. I must have bought this book after hearing a commentary on the show from Ian Shoales, a member of Duck's Breath Mystery Theater. I'm not entirely sure that it was clear to me at first that he was the fictional creation of Merle Kessler. After a blast of cynical commentary, his trademark sign-off was "I gotta go."  In later years, Kessler has written articles, performed on KQED radio, local theater on the West Coast, kept a blog, and even done some recent podcasting. I can't say that this Reagan-Cold War-era book has aged all that well. So much in our culture, world and society was about to change. A lot of the references seem stale or frozen in time. What might have seemed edgy then has been rendered mild in this age of "The Daily Show," Sean Hannity and The Onion. It is a window on a forgotten era.

This Old Book started as a Tumblr, which is also archived on Palafo.com. These are books that have survived many purges from my shelves over decades, with a few comments about why I have held onto them.

An Update on the Coffee Situation

The Krups Espressaria full automatic espresso machine. ​
The Krups Espressaria full automatic espresso machine. 

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Earlier this year, we moved to Chelsea, and now live I within in a couple of blocks of Cafe Grumpy. It is among the best, if not the best, place for coffee in Manhattan. That has made me exceptionally lazy about seeking out new coffee shops. When I lived in Midtown, I had no choice but to hop on my bike or the subway to get good beans and a cafe vibe.

A couple of months before we moved, my refurbished Jura machine jammed up in some way, and I didn't have time to deal with it. Half of our stuff was in storage while the real estate agents, lawyers, condo boards and bankers toyed with us.

When the dust settled, I decided to treat myself to a Christmas present, this Krups machine. I like some things about it more than the Jura, but it requires a lot more regular attention and cleaning. The bean and water containers seem smaller.

But the more pressing matter right now is that I am almost out of Heartbreaker.  It's time to head to Grumpy.