McHuston Booksellers

Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

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Backups!

There is a reason they call the process “Backup,” and you’ll be doing several of those maneuvers as a result. The blog upgrade advised to “Backup” first, which I hurriedly ignored, and since the upgrade failed, I’ve had to backup, backup, backup. As in one step forward, two steps backup. The fancy plugins are now gone from the website, along with the work involved in producing them in the first place. Ah well… if lessons were easily learned, we’d all know way too much.

Pretty Horses

What a relief! Halfway through Cormac McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses” I Googled some online reviews. HA! I’m not the only one in the world that has trouble with run-on sentences, incomplete phrases, lack of punctuation, and indistinct dialogue attribution (forcing backtracks to find out who is speaking…). I don’t mind all the non-translated Spanish, as it lets me work on my second language skills. Others, it appears, aren’t so forgiving. Without question, McCarthy is a great story teller, but it might work much more effectively if he were in the room narrating, putting on different voices for the characters. Perhaps not. I keep thinking – gimmick, like the Artist-Formerly-Known-As-Prince and his language usage (I Would Die 4 U, et al). It is wonderful when an artist can create a masterpiece, but how much better might it be if, instead of using the heel of an old shoe, he worked with a paintbrush? (Overheard at the art gallery: “Can you believe he actually painted that using an old shoe? What talent!)

Cookin’ Up a Storm

The heat is on – backyard grills are fired up! You’d be surprised the kinds of masterpieces that can be created outdoors. Need inspiration? Just arrived, a wonderful collection of cookbooks, including Vegetarian Appetizers, 365 Snack, Hors D’Oeuvres & Appetizers, Country Inn Cooking, Muffins, Comfort Food, Blissful Brownies, and many others. They aren’t dedicated to outdoor grilling (muffins are tough to make over the charcoal) but will give you something to read when you run back into the house for a blast of air conditioning. If your part of the country is cooler than an Oklahoma summer, you can sit out next to the grill with one of these titles and plan your next indoor cooking project.

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