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Mystery novels for a rainy weekend; A Sharpie transforms a basement

11:16 AM Fri, Sep 26, 2008 |
By Sheila Lennon    Email this author |   Email this entry

Still on vacation, back from the woods, rained in with a book...

Recommended Mystery Novels. Cosma Shalizi's big list: Hundreds of them, with some annotation. Take this one to the library with you.


When Books Could Change Your Life: Why What We Pore Over At 12 May Be The Most Important Reading We Ever Do. Nice essay at Baltimore City Paper.


sharpie.jpg
Related: Man decorates basement with $10 worth of Sharpie. At Kentucky.com, with a Flash panorama.

When Charlie Kratzer started on the basement art project in his south Lexington home, he was surrounded by walls painted a classic cream. Ten dollars of Magic Marker and Sharpie later, the place was black and cream and drawn all over.

There are fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes, Winston Churchill lounging with George Bernard Shaw -- and the TV squirrel Rocky and his less adroit moose pal Bullwinkle.

Says Kratzer of his cartoon of a cartoon: "You appreciate the cleverness more as an adult."

There's Georges Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. There is Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, and the Cornell Law School, of which Kratzer is an alumnus. There is Kratzer's dad. There is the harlequin pattern -- alluded to in culinary culture today by the Panera bread bag -- and a fake fireplace facing a real one.

There are both The Walrus and the Carpenter (from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There), and William Shakespeare. The Marx Brothers peer around a corner. A flip-top garbage can is transformed via marker art into Star Wars' plucky little beeper R2D2...


Bonus link: How to Read Wall Street Journal for Free

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