Monthly Archives: August 2012

A Year in Books/Day 202: Tales of Mystery and Imagination

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  • Title: Tales of Mystery and Imagination
  • Author: Edgar Allan Poe
  • Illustrator: Harry Clarke (from the 1919 edition published by George C. Harrap and Company Ltd.)
  • Year Published: 1987 (The Franklin Library)
  • Year Purchased: 2005
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: It’s Poe, people. We all know Poe, don’t we? His stories are such an immutable fact of our culture that we’re practically born with them embedded into our consciousness. Continue reading →

The Dead Writers Round-Up: 25th-28th August

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  • Bret Harte was born on 8/25/1836. “A bird in hand is a certainty. But a bird in the bush may sing.”
  • Truman Capote died on 8/25/1984. “A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That’s why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.”
  • Zona Gale was born on 8/26/1874. “The world consists almost exclusively of people who are one sort and behave like another sort.”
  • Christopher Isherwood was born on 8/26/1904. “One should never write down or up to people, but out of yourself.”
  • Theodore Dreiser was born on 8/27/1871. “In order to have wisdom we must have ignorance.”
  • Ivy Compton-Burnett died on 8/27/1969. “People who have power respond simply. They have no minds but their own.”
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born on 8/28/1749. “Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.”
  • Robertson Davies was born on 8/28/1913. “The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”

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[All images are in the Public Domain and are courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.]

 

Daily Diversion #37: Card House Kafka

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It lives on a shelf above my desk. I look at it when I need to loosen my thoughts, daydream.

House of card

House of card

The card was made in Nepal and purchased in Montreal, but it reminds me of Kafka, Prague, and my artist friend Jack. I wonder, do the windows creak when they open? I’ve never been dreamy nor drunk enough to find out. Pity.

A Year in Books/Day 201: George Eliot A Life

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  • Title: George Eliot A Life
  • Author: Rosemary Ashton
  • Year Published: 1996 (Penguin Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2007
  • Source: A discount bookstore in New York.
  • About: I have a lot of nice things to say about this biography, but the words refuse to line up in the right order. If I wrote down what I was thinking, it wouldn’t make any sense to you. Actually, I tried. About five times, and it didn’t make any sense to me, either. In an effort to get my point across in a straightforward way, and not drive myself crazy whilst doing so, I’m going to toss some descriptive and applicable words at you: Thoughtful. Intelligent. Careful. Illuminating. Human. Measured. Absorbing. Interesting. Appropriate. Subtle. George Eliot is one of my favourite English-language novelists of the 19th century. Her books bear reading and stand up to repeated visits. So does Ashton’s biography.
  • Motivation: I like George Eliot’s work. I love biographies to the point of near obsession.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 72: “Her isolated position high up in her foreign attic, poised between a past life of much frustration and under-achievement and an unknown future, encouraged her penchant for thorough analysis and turned it inward. Sara had worried about her state of mind and her ability to cope alone. Mary Ann replied that she did quite enough worrying on her own account. Solicitude which expressed itself in criticism was not helpful.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9
    English: George Eliot

    English: George Eliot (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

A Year in Books/Days 199 and 200: MGM Posters/MGM When the Lion Roars

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DAY 199: MGM Posters The Golden Years

  • Title: MGM Posters The Golden Years
  • Text: Frank Miller
  • Year Published: 1994 (Turner Publishing, Inc.)
  • Year Purchased: 1990s
  • Source: I have no idea!
  • About: There’s nothing like an old movie poster. When art and commerce combine with history and nostalgia, the result is a visually stunning social commentary. In looking at the representative posters of five decades, changing attitudes and mores are as obvious as changing aesthetics. MGM was known for the luxuriousness of its productions, and the top talent of its employees. Although designed as throwaways, the posters that advertised its movies were no exception, and neither were their artists. My favourite era for this exciting medium is definitely the 1920s.The posters are stunning. At the risk of sounding like a crotchety hundred year old, it has been all downhill since then.
  • Motivation: Old movies are my friends. We’re tight. I’m pretty close with art, too. Continue reading →

A Year in Books/Day 198: The Roosevelts An American Saga

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  • Title: The Roosevelts An American Saga
  • Author: Peter Collier with David Horowitz
  • Year Published: 1994 (Simon & Schuster)
  • Year Purchased: Late 1990s
  • Source: An ex
  • About: This book is exhaustive; comprehensive; and any other applicable word over-used by critics and reviewers. To horribly paraphrase Joni Mitchell, after reading An American Saga I can honestly say that I have looked at the Roosevelts from both sides now. (*groan*) It’s a biography of the entire family, radiating from Teddy and FDR, to be sure, but giving flesh and voice to all of the members. Neither man, after all, was created in a laboratory; nor are the two lines of the family treated as barely associated branches, but as richly interconnecting pieces of a large and complex puzzle. This is a classic.
  • Motivation: I’ve been intrigued by FDR since that day in 6th grade history when I drew his name out of the assignment hat. My best friend, Jessy, was not so  lucky: she was forced to research Ronald Reagan, the then-sitting head of state. At least neither of us had the task of padding out a report on William Henry Harrison, which was probably an F waiting to happen. Small mercies, people. Small mercies.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 37: He was curious about how things worked. He captured insects, rodents, and other specimens and took them apart on makeshift dissecting tables, almost as if by opening them up for examination he might better understand what was wrong with his own machinery. He drew, catalogued, and described what he saw. At the age of eight, when his mother threw out the corpses of two mice he had stored in the icebox for future autopsy, he accused her, in a tiny indignant voice, of “defeating the ends of science.”

    English: William Henry Harrison: ninth Preside...

    English: William Henry Harrison: ninth President of the United States. (Photo credit: Wikipedia). Sorry, Will, but I’m glad I was assigned FDR as a book report subject back in the sixth grade. We’re still friends, right?

  • Happiness Scale: 9 1/2

A Year in Books/Day 197: Me of Little Faith

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  • Title: Me of Little Faith
  • Author: Lewis Black
  • Year Published: 2008 (Riverhead Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2010
  • Source: Clearance rack, unknown bookstore
  • About: During the 90 minutes it took to read Me of Little Faith, I did so with Lewis Black’s voice in my head. It was like a book-on-tape experience without the tape part. Or disc, as this isn’t 1984. If you’ve ever seen Black do, well, anything, you know what to expect from his religious diatribe/angry memoir. It reads like one of his stand-up routines, which is a good thing: he’s witty, smart, articulate, inappropriate, honest and decidedly on-point about nearly everything he touches. Unless you disagree with him, in which case you’ll find this book, and my review of it, a miserable read. Continue reading →

[Intermezzo] Five Minutes

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After I fall in love with a book, whether it happens with the opening sentence or mid-way through chapter five, in an effort to finish it I operate at one of two speeds: molasses-slow or maniacally fast. The process is involuntary, organic: I don’t choose the rate, it chooses me. Whether I’m pulling apart paragraphs sentence by sentence, and sentences word by word, or running through chapters to the rhythm of a hummingbird’s beating wings, one thing is true: I’m savoring every moment, every thought, every element. The paths are different, but the enjoyment is similarly intense.

Reading is ritualistic, with individual ceremonies developing around each book: fugitive but nourishing, their ordered peculiarities decorate the mosaic of my days. Continue reading →

The Dead Writers Round-Up: 22nd-24th August

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  • Dorothy Parker was born on 8/22/1893. “Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.”
  • Kate Chopin died on 8/22/1904. “To be an artist includes much; one must possess many gifts-absolute gifts-which have not been acquired by one’s own effort. And, moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul.”
  • Ray Bradbury was born on 8/22/1920. “I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.”
  • Edgar Lee Masters was born on 8/23/1869. “To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness, But life without meaning is the torture Of restlessness and vague desire-It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.”
  • Jean Rhys was born on 8/24/1890. “A room is, after all, a place where you hide from the wolves. That’s all any room is.”
  • Malcolm Cowley was born on 8/24/1898. “Be kind and considerate with your criticism….It’s just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book.”
  • Jorge Luis Borges was born on 8/24/1899. “Art always opts for the individual, the concrete; art is not Platonic.”

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[All images are courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and are in the Public Domain]

 

Daily Diversion #36: Then You Realise That You Got to Have a Purpose*

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I came across this whilst wandering around Half Price Books last night. It called my name to the scream of a punk beat. “I’m yours, yours, YOURS, Maeeedezzzzzzzzzzz!”

Route 19 Revisited

Route 19 Revisited

How could I resist, especially on the eve of Joe’s birthday?

Route 19 Revisited, The Clash and London Calling

Route 19 Revisited, The Clash and London Calling

He would have been 60 years old today.

*From Clash City Rockers by The Clash