Author Archives: Samantha

“I’m a little teapot, here’s my spout”–a close-up of a family teapot

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Above is a photo of the family teapot.

This is the teapot that traveled with my family since… I’m not sure when my parents bought it, but I’m currently sifting through family photos so possibly I will have a better answer later on. The steel part is a sort of tea cozy that fits over the plain white pot. No need to worry about the lid tipping off when you pour.

I love tea paraphernalia, and I have several teapots of my own. Some are inherited (silver with scallops, white with blue-and-gold); some were chosen (spring green, spring flowers). I like teapots with pretty designs or in appealing colors. I don’t like pots that are made to look like something else, such as a cake or a rabbit. That just isn’t my thing. I do like some teapots with simple, modern shapes, like this one. But there’s also one other important thing.

It has to pour well.

You’d think this would be required for any teapot, but I guess a lot of the really decorative teapots are bought by collectors and don’t get much use. (Mine don’t get much use, and I only have seven or eight! Imagine trying to use all of forty or so teapots!)

What makes a teapot pour well? I don’t know the answer. I do know that my parents’ teapot has a very unusual spout, and I can only assume it was meant to help it pour. I had never really looked at it, despite all those home-for-break teatimes, until now.

As you can see, there’s a small channel that runs down from the tip of the spout, and it is pierced.

And there’s a channel inside the spout that starts right at the hole. Is the drip meant to go back inside? Does this actually work? Did someone really do all this work to create a teapot that doesn’t drip? Surely this is more than is required.

I just looked up this company. It appears that other pouring vessels they made in the past, such as coffeepots, did have pierced spouts. I couldn’t find out if this was true of their current products. I would love to read more about this feature, how it compares to other spout shapes, and who came up with it. Maybe someone out there can point me to an article?

Till next tea-time–and next post.

Color and Shadow–more tricks of the light

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I guess it isn’t fair to call shadows a “trick” of the light. Perhaps it would be more accurate to describe them as creating shapes and colors on surfaces where those shapes and colors wouldn’t normally appear. Here I pair them with photos showing the difference that shadow and contrast can make to colors.

First, the shadows. I already have one post just on shadows, so you know I love the effect they can create, like a temporary mural with movement. Here are two more images that caught my eye.

A hanging plant casts a partial shadow above another plant.
The delicate shadows of a Japanese maple.

Now for the color trick. I was lying on the floor stretching my leg when I noticed that where the green living room paint touched the yellow paint of the kitchen, something strange happened.

Where’d this blue stripe come from?
The painted edge is definitely the same green paint.
It’s a trick of the light!

A while back, I read the book Joyful by Ingrid Fetell Lee, after having seen her TED talk. One of several things that struck me was something she said about joy being something that showed up in moments, like the delight on seeing an unexpected pop of color in a sea of blandness, or on suddenly hearing a cheerfully familiar tune, or being entranced by a really interesting painting. And further, that these moments significantly enrich our lives, which I really think they do.

And so it seems worth while to notice the interesting shadows around me, or the strange ways of color in light and shadow. Honestly, it’s probably better when you see these things pop up in your own life, rather than read about it in someone else’s blog. Photos just don’t capture it.

So really, the point of this post is probably “Take a second look at the things around you. Isn’t that an interesting shadow? Are there any color tricks around you now?”

One last thing, which I just noticed in the first photo and which may be due to the camera rather than a trick of the light at the time. Since when is my window frame pink? It’s white, contrasting nicely to the pale aqua wall in a paint called “Sparkle.”

Tricks.

Till next post.

My Top Fifty Books of this Century

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There’s just something fun about lists. And books are fun as well. So of course I had to check out the New York Times list of the Top 100 Books of this century (so far), based on about 500 chosen people’s responses.

My result? 4 1/2 out of 100. (I don’t think I finished Nickeled and Dimed, for some reason. Or maybe I eventually did. It was good.)

Then they posted a Readers’ Choice list of 100, and I had read about 9 out of 100. Still not surprising–I don’t read many books from the mainstream lit section, and genre books weren’t heavily represented.

But lists are so much fun that I had to make my own list. I only listed 50, because it was getting time-consuming. I’d already listed the most obvious ones and was agonizing about which ones to include next. There are almost certainly more than 50 books that could have made the next 50.

This list is utterly idiosyncratic. Some books are on there based on the fact that I re-read them, maybe multiple times. (They must be good if I wanted to read them again, right?) Some are on there because something in them struck me and stayed in my memory. Some were just so much fun to read! They are in order of publication year, because there is no way I could rank them–apples and oranges.

Also, I deliberately did not include more than one book per author. There were some difficult decisions involved.

  • Stormfront Jim Butcher 2000
  • The Two Princesses of Bamarre Gail Carson Levine 2001
  • Artemis Fowl Eoin Colfer 2001
  • Getting Things Done: the art of stress-free productivity David Allen 2001
  • Gaia’s Garden: a guide to home-scale permaculture Toby Hemenway 2001
  • Faking It Jennifer Crusie 2002
  • The Midnight Disease: the drive to write, writer’s block,… Alice Weaver Flaherty 2004
  • Alexander Hamilton Ron Chernow 2004
  • Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince J.K. Rowling 2005
  • Night Train to Rigel Timothy Zahn 2005
  • Animals in Translation: using the mysteries of autism to… Temple Grandin 2005
  • Live At Bryson Elementary (comics collection) Jef Mallett 2005
  • The Arrival Shaun Tan 2006
  • Mindless Eating: why we eat more than we think Brian Wansink 2006
  • The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable Nassim Nicholas Taleb 2007
  • Bringing Nature Home: how you can sustain wildlife with native plants Douglas W. Tallamy 2007
  • Graceling Kristin Cashore 2008
  • Traffic: why we drive the way we do Vanderbilt 2008
  • The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins 2008
  • Blackout [and All Clear] Connie Willis 2010
  • The Last Dragonslayer Jasper Fforde 2010
  • Hex Hall Rachel Hawkins 2010
  • The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up Marie Kondo 2010
  • Midnight Riot (aka Rivers of London) Ben Aaronovitch 2011
  • After the Golden Age Carrie Vaughn 2011
  • Battle Hymn of the Tiger Daughter Diana Holquist 2011
  • Seraphina Rachel Hartman 2012
  • Three Times Lucky Sheila Turnage 2012
  • Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking Susan Cain 2012
  • The Circle Dave Eggers 2013
  • Fangirl Rainbow Rowell 2013
  • Eight Million Gods Wen Spencer 2013
  • The Screaming Staircase Jonathan Stroud 2013
  • Confessions of a Sociopath: a life spent hiding in plain sight M. E. Thomas 2013
  • Lock In John Scalzi 2014
  • Gut: the inside story of our body’s most Giulia Enders 2014
  • The World Beyond Your Head: on becoming an individual in an age of distraction Matthew B. Crawford 2014
  • Stoned : jewelry, obsession, and how desire Aja Raden 2015
  • Magpie Murders Anthony Horowitz 2016
  • Eight Flavors: the untold story of American cuisine Sarah Lohman 2016
  • Breaking Cat News (comics collection) Georgia Dunn 2016
  • All Systems Red Martha Wells 2017
  • Truly Devious Maureen Johnson 2018
  • Not So Pure and Simple Lamar Giles 2019
  • Secondhand: travels in the new global garage sale Adam Minter 2019
  • A Deadly Education Naomi Novik 2020
  • Exercised: why something we never evolved to do is Daniel Lieberman 2020
  • Small Miracles Olivia Atwater 2022
  • Meg Langslow series Donna Andrews
  • Inspector Gamache series Louise Penny

Sorry about the formatting–this was in an Excel file originally.

I would be happy to see other people’s top choices for this century. (The advantage of limiting it to this century–many fewer books to think about.)

Till next post.