Monthly Archives: March 2012

A Year in Books/Day 69: On the Road

Posted on by
2
  • Title: On the Road
  • Author: Jack Kerouac
  • Year Published: 1957 (The Viking Press)
  • Year Purchased: Unknown
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: Do I really have to go into this? Sal, Dean, Marylou. You know the drill, right? In case you don’t, I’ll dedicate a few disjointed sentences to your enlightenment: Although not his best book, ‘On the Road’ is certainly Kerouac’s main claim to notoriety and immortality. It is a great gateway to his other work. Hell, even poor Kerouac is better than most and this is very, very far from being his worst. You’ll meet some of his Beat Generation friends on the pages. Since it captures a state-of-mind that most young Americans experience to one degree or another, it is a must read: exhilarating, chaotic, life affirming. If you haven’t read it yet, and want to, do so before the film is released. Please.
  • Motivation: I think most teenagers go through a Beat phase. This novel is usually the first thing they read. I was a little different-I devoured a few random biographies before taking the ritual plunge with ‘On the Road’. However, I didn’t truly appreciate any of it until a second go-round with the whole gang in my late twenties.
  • Times Read: 2-3
  • Random Excerpt/Page 180: “At dusk I walked. I felt like a speck on the surface of the sad red earth. I passed the Windsor Hotel, where Dean Moriarty had lived with his father in the depression thirties, and as of yore I looked everywhere for the sad and fabled tinsmith of my mind. Either you find someone who looks like your father in places like Montana or you look for a friend’s father where he is no more.”
  • Happiness Scale: 8
    On the Road excerpt in the center of San Franc...

    Image via Wikipedia

     

A Year in Books/Day 68: Are You Somebody

Posted on by
2
  • Title: Are You Somebody The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman
  • Author: Nuala O’Faolain
  • Year Published: 1996 (Henry Holt and Company, Inc.)
  • Year Purchased: 2000
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: Nuala O’Faolain could write. That seems like a simplistic assertion but it’s true: she could write, and she did so beautifully and well in five books. This was her first. She was 56 at publication, and everything she had learned in nearly 6 decades of  living was poured, eloquently and firmly, into this exquisite volume. This is what I would term a “quiet” memoir, not because of the contents but because of her unflinching yet lyrical voice: the battles and iniquities and joys of her life are recounted without hyperbole, bombast or dramatics. It’s lovely, moving, humorous, without pity: it’s straight-up what a memoir should be.
  • Motivation: The title and the jacket blurbs were a huge lure (unusual for me). The cover photo is alluring, the concept compelling.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 36: “I’m not ashamed of our fervours. But I am ashamed that twice I stole the gifts I gave to my heroine. I took Tweed talc or round soaps in tissue paper from other girls’ cubicles. I had to. I had no money. I didn’t take them for myself, just to give to her. I think that she may have known-and that the nuns knew and never came out with it. They knew I told lies. They knew I read under the blanket. They knew (this was nearly the end of me) that I smoked, perched in the window embrasure of a lavatory high up in the attics, listening at the cold glass to the noises of the town, like the great roars from the rallies for the IRA men-one of them was a local-who were killed on the Borders in 1956.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 67: Literary Feuds

Posted on by
Reply
  • Title: Literary Feuds A Century of Celebrated Quarrels from Mark Twain to Tom Wolfe
  • Author: Anthony Arthur
  • Year Published: 2002 (MJF Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2005-2007
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: There are writers who spend their lives and careers building a literary community: where everyone is helpful and supportive of one another, where advice and camaraderie abound, where failures and successes are shared. Unfortunately, reality decrees that some people aren’t meant to get along. This same reality also dictates that some people are just jerks. I’ll leave you to decide how to categorize the titans covered in this book. At least wordsmiths lace their rancorous verbal wars with plenty of wit; unlike feuds involving reality “stars” or athletes, you’ll walk away from these encounters with all of your brain cells intact.

    Lewis-Sinclair-LOC

    Sinclair Lewis-Image via Wikipedia

  • Motivation: Writers. History. Obscure facts. Intellectuals fussin’ and fightin’. Bring it on.
  • Times Read:1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 75: “Fortunately, a revised picture of Lewis is now available from Dreiser’s biographer, Richard Lingeman. Written with sympathetic insight instead of disdain, Lingeman’s ‘Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street’ was published early in 2002; although it adds nothing to our understanding of the quarrel between the two writers beyond what Lingeman had already described in his earlier works about Dreiser, it should help Lewis toward the literary resurrection he deserves. At the least, Lewis should be placed side by side as a literary giant with Theodore Dreiser, the difficult man he admired so much, and from whom he got so little in return.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 66: Marcel Proust

Posted on by
Reply
  • Title: Marcel Proust A Life
  • Author: Jean-Yves Tadie (Translation by Euan Cameron)
  • Year Published: 1996/Translation Copyright: 2000 (Penguin Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2005
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: This is one of the most complex, obsessively detailed and clear-eyed biographies I have ever read. Don’t let the hefty 779 pages deter you; it’s a smooth read and well worth your time.
  • Motivation: Proust fascinates me like few others. I first came across his name as a teenager, when I discovered that I share a birthday with the great writer. That was all it took for me to decide to find out more about the Frenchman (yes, I’m that kind of self-absorbed). Fortunately, I never looked back; my life is infinitely richer for that decision. He is one of my favourite authors. I ended up reading this biography in 2006 whilst on a cruise. This is definitely my idea of vacation reading!
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 577: “This explains why, shortly after 24 December, Proust asked Louis de Robert if he would take his book to Ollendorff, pointing out that he would offer to have it published at his own expense; the choice of this publisher, whose list consisted mainly of books on nature study, was scarcely a fortunate one; his response was to become famous.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9
    Marcel Proust in 1900

    Image via Wikipedia

     

Versatile Blogger Award

Posted on by
8

‘A Small Press Life’ has been nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award by Elisa of ‘Fun and Fabulousness’. We are pleased (and humbled) to know that you appreciate what we do on our bit of WordPress.com turf. Thanks to all of the readers who keep returning to see what we are up to. You are the best!

Here are the rules that go along with the Versatile Blogger Award:

Make a post with a list of 15 nominated blogs
Inform the nominees that they are nominated
Share seven items about yourself that readers don’t already know
Thank the blogger who gave you this award

Seven things you probably don’t care to know about me (so I’ll try to be brief):

  • I performed in NYC (Off-Broadway) as a teenager.
  • I learned to read at 3.
  • I am terrified of butterflies. Terrified.
  • My husband is a whopping 13 inches taller than me.
  • I’m an excellent from-scratch baker.
  • I’m a punk rock fanatic.
  • My “baby” brother is 16 years younger than me.

My nominees are:

Thanks again, Elisa. If you haven’t seen her lovely blog yet, you should head over there now!

The Versatile Blogger Award

The Versatile Blogger Award

 

 

A Year in Books/Day 65: Alone! Alone!

Posted on by
Reply
  • Title: Alone! Alone! Lives of Some Outsider Women
  • Author: Rosemary Dinnage
  • Year Published: 2004 (The New York Review of Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2005
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: A study of women-some famous, others obscure-who fought against the expectations of mainstream society to forge spaces of their own, however tenuous or unappreciated.
  • Motivation: I’ve always had an adversarial (if amiable) relationship with institutionalized normalcy; it’s something I’ve never worried about emulating. I love kooky and strong and talented women. Those profiled in this book just happen to be some of the most amazing creative and intellectual ladies to ever come along.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 269: “Katherine Mansfield’s diaries cannot be considered the equal of Virginia Woolf’s-she died too young for that, for one thing-but there was a strong bond between them. They were in search of the same kind of writing, the same kind of honesty, in spite of a difference in age and experience; and-notwithstanding ambivalences-they recognized it.”

    Alumna, Katherine Mansfield

    Katherine Mansfield-Image via Wikipedia

  • Happiness Scale: 9 1/2

A Year in Books/Day 64: 1900

Posted on by
1
  • Title: 1900 A FIN-DE-SIECLE READER
  • Edited by: Mike Jay and Michael Neve
  • Year Published: 1999 (Penguin Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2001/2002
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: A collection of late 19th century writings, on topics from God to sex, science to feminism, ‘1900’ offers an insightful, interesting, first-person look at the state of humanity at the advent of the modern era.
  • Motivation: The turn of the (20th) century was one of the most exciting, uncertain and fertile times in history. Some of my favourite writers, activists and artists date from this period.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 1: “Using these biological frameworks, a range of views of humanity’s future evolution was also offered, but the most compelling prediction of Darwin’s natural selection was that the human race was separating into two distinct groups: the ‘fit’ and the ‘unfit’. This view forms one of the most striking literary motifs of the period, and is the central idea behind two of its most recognizable literary classics: The Time Machine and Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde.”
  • Happiness Scale: 7 1/2

Shopping for the Bookworm: Lit Goodies

Posted on by
2

There’s something about the changing of the seasons that makes me want to bring new, positive, quirky and beautiful things into my life, be it  a book, bottle of wine, tube of lipstick or art print.  Anything that speaks to me or makes me smile is always welcome. I’m really loving these writer and word-based goodies for Spring! Here are some links if you want to make a purchase.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

[News] Spring Fling Podcast

Posted on by
Reply

Now that we are on the edge of Spring, I expect every day to be as wonderful as yesterday was: balmy and lovely and energizing. When I kicked open the door at work at 12:40 and skipped out onto the sidewalk (yes, this really happened), it almost felt as if I was playing hooky from my pesky work-a-day obligations. Instead, I simply transitioned from one self to another, from something practical to something vital and necessary.

I spent a couple of happy, creative and stimulating hours in the company of a dozen talented women (and my husband!), as we recorded a Spring-themed podcast for Women Writing for (a) Change. Regular readers of this blog will recognize my piece as one that originally posted here, ‘Intermezzo: The Sky is Flaunting Itself‘. The podcast will be available later this month. It is a must-hear for anyone eager to push away the cobwebs of the dying dark season. You will be inspired by words of regeneration, beauty and clarity. I will update you with the particulars as they become available.