Deanna Zandt's Extra Helping

I’d put out a call for “good, meaty fiction” or “terrible, addictive, brain candy fiction” on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ over the weekend, and received a bunch of responses! I catalogued most of them here for everyone’s enjoyment.

• Half A Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 
• The Tiger’s Wife: A Novel by Tea Obreht
• Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
  (Read this, loved it) 
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett Removed for questionable racial analysis, see comment below
• Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

• A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
• Anything by Jill Mansell (British chick lit)
• The wind up bird by Haruki Murakami
• Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson
• Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
• Anything by Arnaldur Indriðason (Stieg-Larsson-ish crime novels)

• The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett
• Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

• Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins (Young adult fiction that adults will like)
  (Loved these) 
• The Passage by Justin Cronin 
• Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
• The Lost Gate by Orson Scott Card
• The Unidentified by Rae Mariz (Young adult fiction that adults will like)
• Discworld series by Terry Pratchett
• Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

• Persuasion by Jane Austen

I emailed my mom my realization that the Tooth Fairy didn’t come visit me after my extraction last week. It was probably alright, though, since the Mom Fairy did come… this was her response:

Hmmm, I was just discussing this with friends too.  Jean tells me she’s not certain your situation qualifies for a visit from the tooth fairy as your tooth was deliberately pulled and didn’t just “fall” out. Otherwise, kids would be pulling out their own teeth anytime they need money.

My friend, Tim, says after one reaches a certain age, the responsibility transfers to the tooth gnome (who by the way doesn’t deal with minors, legal issues you understand).   According to Tim, since you had novocaine to remove the tooth AND drugs to dull the pain you do not qualify. Sorry.

Much love,
The mom fairy

If you’re an animal lover in Brooklyn, do consider becoming a member of FIDO Brooklyn, or at least getting on their (very low-traffic) announcement list. They post lost and found animals, and evidently have about a 60% success rate in facilitating reunion. Bob, who runs the list, recently posted this roundup of happy endings and still-looking cases:

Fizzgig the cat made it home as did Chase the Maine Coon Cat. And not to forget Tang the cat; Craig’s List did the trick.

Harvy, the cutie dog from Boerum Hill was turned in to a local Vet and was reunited and Annie, the Boston Terrier from Greenpoint is now back home.

The little shitzu/maltese found in Bushwick lived only a block away and Wrigs of Prospect Hts is now back home with owner.

Gracie the pug and the mystery Shiba Inu both of Prospect Hts are back home as well.

Pitt Bull abandoned in Prospect Park found a great home in Queens.

Looking for owners:

We have a found mini-poodle who is unclaimed-being fostered at the moment.

Still looking for owner of a little brown furry dog found in Prospect Park the other day - now at Sean Casey’s. Another dog is being turned in toSean this am. as well.

Young Pitty mix found in Park Slope still unclaimed.

Lucy the cat still missing in Prospect Hts

She-ra the cat still missing in the South Slope.

I have a client who’s using the Posts functions in Wordpress for multiple purposes. One issue we’ve run up against is that we want the date-based archives (i.e., in the sidebar, showing the months of posts) to only pull from one category out of the 30-40 categories that they have. I was using wp_get_archives, but it doesn’t have a category parameter as I’d hoped.

After some futzing around, I found a combo of two solutions that worked. Here’s the code I dropped into my theme’s functions.php; then I used wp_get_archives in another function to create a widget for the sidebar (not included below). Enjoy!

## First, on monthly archives, only display posts from the category with an ID of 109
function exclude_stuff($query) {
    if ( $query->is_month) {
        $query->set(‘cat’, ‘109’);
        }
    return $query;
    }
add_filter(‘pre_get_posts’, ‘exclude_stuff’);


## Then, when wp_get_archives is used to display monthly archives, only show months with posts from the category with an ID of 109
add_filter( ‘getarchives_where’, ‘customarchives_where’ );
add_filter( ‘getarchives_join’, ‘customarchives_join’ );

function customarchives_join( $x ) {
    global $wpdb;
    return $x . ” INNER JOIN $wpdb->term_relationships ON ($wpdb->posts.ID = $wpdb->term_relationships.object_id) INNER JOIN $wpdb->term_taxonomy ON ($wpdb->term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id = $wpdb->term_taxonomy.term_taxonomy_id)”;

}

function customarchives_where( $x ) {
    global $wpdb;
    $includes= ‘109’; // category id to include
    return $x . ” AND $wpdb->term_taxonomy.taxonomy = ‘category’ AND $wpdb->term_taxonomy.term_id = ‘$includes’”;
}

Just found out about this from Phil Hartman of Two Boots Pizza — every Thursday night this summer, they’re putting on shows with COMPLETELY AWESOME movies and fantastic bands in Tompkins Square Park. It started last night, and will run through Sept. 1. All shows start an hour before sunset and are totally FREE.

This is why I live in NYC, people.

June 30 - Raging Bull (Introduced by Don King); Music: Odetta & Gryphon
July 7 - Coming to America; Music: So So Glos & tba special guest
July 14 - The Warriors; Music: Dog Soldier, special guest Miles Chandler from Yo-Yo Nation
July 21 - Star Trek (2009); Music: Moon Hooch; special guest: Jacob Kogan (Young Spock)
July 28 - Arthur (1981); Music: The Debonairs; special guest: storyteller Chris Carnie
August 4 - The Pope of Greenwich Village; Music: Elliot Sharp; special guest: Bob Holman and the POEMobile
August 11 - Kickass; Music Mamarazzi; special guest: Kesed (spoken word)
August 18 - Rosemary’s Baby; Music: The Luddites
August 25 - The Godfather; Music: Raya Brass Band; special event: the Luca Brasi Poetry Slam
September 1 - Stake Land; Music: Just Desserts; special guest, poet Chavisa Woods

The flyer with full info: