Monthly Archives: July 2012

A Year in Books/Day 170: Sophia Style

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  • Title: Sophia Style
  • Author: Deirdre Donohue
  • Year Published: 2001 (Barnes & Noble Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2004
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: In the physical sphere, Sophia Loren is everything I am not: tall, leggy, busty. Sure, we have a tiny waist in common but, on her, because of her height, it is more of a thing. Her style, on camera but especially in life, matches her features: striking, angular, and beautiful. Of course, even if she wore a potato sack (like Marilyn in that famous early cheese-cake photo) she would out-shine us all. Sophia Style examines and connects her characters’ wardrobes with her personal clothing choices, resulting in a book that is a melange of fashion, film, and personal history: it is really more interesting than it probably sounds.  Whether you love film or fashion, or are just looking to shade your brain from the reality of an ugly word for a couple of hours, it is a quick and fun read. It’s full of gorgeous photos from her first five decades in the spotlight.
  • Motivation: Sometimes I just like to look at pretty people in pretty clothes. It’s a nice break from thinking too much, which is how I usually spend approximately 95% of my waking hours.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 81: “(Marc) Bohan’s white slip gown in A Countess from Hong Kong is a unique creation, having an exceptional relationship to both Loren’s body and the character she portrays. This quality was requested by the director, Charlie Chaplin, as well as by Loren. Chaplin was very earnest and exacting about the countess’s look, and Loren, awed by this iconic film figure, uncharacteristically deferred wholly to his authority.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10+++
    Cropped screenshot of Sophia Loren from the fi...

    Cropped screenshot of Sophia Loren from the film Five Miles to Midnight (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

I’m Sensing a Trend

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I’m lucky enough to share a birthday with one of my favourite actors (John Gilbert), one of my favourite writers (Marcel Proust) and the possessor of one of the most brilliant (recorded) minds in history (Nikola Tesla). What else do they have in common? Hmmm, let’s see.

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I’ve found that frivolous observations are best made on serious days. I’m off to celebrate with the husband at the newest contemporary Indian restaurant/bar in town. Toodles.

Daily Diversion #24: Birthday Wishes

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“Give me silence, water, hope

Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes.”-Pablo Neruda

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“I don’t want to go on being a root in the dark,

vacillating, stretched out, shivering with sleep,

downward, in the soaked guts of the earth,

absorbing and thinking, eating each day.”-Pablo Neruda

 

Voices from the Grave #27: Cornelia Otis Skinner on What’s My Line?

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This one’s a bit different. It features Cornelia Otis Skinner, co-writer (along with Emily Kimbrough) of Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, as the mystery celebrity on What’s My Line? in 1959.

If you have never read the book Our Hearts Were Young and Gay (or watched the charming film adaptation), you should go rectify that now.

 

 

 

Things Your Autopsy Report Should Not Say

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And now, in the interest of public service, we present:

  • Thought “Cape does not enable wearer to fly” warning only applicable to those who didn’t BELIEVE!
  • Accidentally kept parents from meeting
  • Thought cost-prohibitive Sealy Posturpedic mattress could be easily substituted by considerably less expensive pile of burning debris
  • Completely misinterpreted dog’s orders on who to shoot
  • Beheaded by peasants
  • Forgot which order deathtraps in pyramid were placed
  • Too much fun
  • Told Bond entire plan
  • Showed Buddha flaws in his philosophy; subsequently beaten to death by livid Buddha
  • Tried to prove lions were ticklish
  • Superstitious cops used silver bullets

 

Tornado Maedez

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This. This is the reason for my fewer than normal posts. Once I have sorted through the mess, and am properly organized, things will not only be back to normal around here…they will be better. Guaranteed. Once the clutter has been vanquished, my mental processes will be freed up to focus on what I like (and do) best: write. No need to worry: until then, you can expect at least a post a day. I promise to miss you more than you miss me.

Tornado Maedez?

Tornado Maedez?

Seriously, this is so out of control (at least by my standards) that all of my writing projects are threatening to come to a full-on, nasty stop. Since I do this for a living, that is a pretty scary concept.

[Intermezzo] I’m Thinking About Cleaning Out My Idea Bank

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I’m thinking about cleaning out my idea bank. It is a knee-quaking concept. Ten years of scraps, plots, extracts, phrases, titles, names, research and character studies are lovingly tucked away or carelessly crammed into various crannies and boxes and drawers. They contain a lot of good ideas and solid or beautiful writing. There are threads of greatness, however frayed and dirty and dusty; there’s a lot of crap, too, or things that I have outgrown or moved past. Legal pads, notebooks, torn napkins, loose leaf paper. Written in pen, pencil, marker, lipstick. It’s all there, waiting to be addressed. Faced. Embraced or conquered. Trashed or saved. Crumpled mounds of surprise or disgust. “I’m this good?” or “What shitty shit of a writer came up with this?” It’s all conjecture, of course, as I haven’t read any of it; but I know the odds, and they are even. The summer is young, and the days are long. I can do this.

A Year in Books/Day 169: Almost There The Onward Journey of a Dublin Woman

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  • Title: Almost There The Onward Journey of a Dublin Woman
  • Author: Nuala O’Faolain
  • Year Published: 2003 (Riverhead Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2005/2006
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: I love O’Faolain’s straightforward and elegant prose style, proof that readability does not have to equal simplicity. Almost There is a follow-up to Are You Somebody, her searing and evocative first memoir. I loved it so much that I was truly giddy when I found this volume in the middle of a stack of clearance books. She is one of those naturalist prose-poets of the everyday, recounting the events of her turbulent life with warmth, grace and a total absence of pity or dramatics. Her candor is believable. True or not, it is a remarkable feat for a memoirist to achieve-and not once, but twice. To feel the full import of her story, and the rare beauty of her spare writing, I suggest reading the books back to back.
  • Motivation: Are You Somebody is one of my favourite contemporary memoirs.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 55: “I had waited to go on in a small dressing room, almost paralyzed with fear, because I knew my reputation and my family’s and Nell’s was going to be changed by the interview, and my standing with colleagues and bosses and former lovers and the nuns who’d taught me-anyone I could think of. But there really is such a thing as grace. It’s the word I want to use, anyway, for a rightness of behavior that kicks in out of nowhere.”
  • Happiness Scale: 8