Monthly Archives: August 2012

A Year in Books/Day 192: The Right Word II

Posted on by
4
  • Title: The Right Word II A Concise Thesaurus Based on the New American Heritage Dictionary
  • Staff: Houghton Mifflin Company Reference Division
  • Year Published: 1983 (Houghton Mifflin Company)
  • Year Purchased: 1980s
  • Source: My lovely mother
  • About: Concise is the key here. The Right Word II is the sparest thesaurus I’ve ever read. Although not meant or marketed as such, I think it is ideal for a bright child’s use: tiny, portable, informative and easy to navigate. I relied on it for countless elementary age writing projects. I was a budding playwright then, before switching to short stories and essays in middle school. During the genre shift, I upgraded to a thicker, wordier thesaurus. I still own both of them, and every other reference book I have ever used. Even though I have not consulted this one in years, there is so much nostalgia attached to it that I cannot throw or give it away. It reminds me of why I wanted to be a writer in the first place, so it will live forever on a shelf in my studio.
  • Motivation: I didn’t need this for school, as one might assume given my age. I’ve always loved reference books, and have been collecting them since I was 5.
  • Times Read: Unknown
  • Random Excerpt/Page vi: “Discriminated Synonymies. The foundation of The Right Word II is a block of synonym paragraphs in which the meaning shared by all the words is supplemented by additional material that discriminates the various shades of meaning for each word.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10 (as a child)

Daily Diversion #35: Not Every Diversion is a Good Diversion

Posted on by
9

As of 6:00 PM Wednesday, this was the photograph I was going to post for my 35th Daily Diversion.

Yum! Tacos!

Yum! Tacos!

Last week, a friend opened an eclectic little taco shop in the neighborhood behind ours. We missed the official opening because we were out-of-state attending a family wedding/staring at the Toronto skyline. We’re hardcore devotees, though, so we made up for it by walking 3 miles round trip just to eat a few heaven-stuffed tortillas. Afterwards, when we rounded the side of our building, instead of seeing an empty street…we saw a police cruiser and a wrecker hoisting up a strange car. Then, this pitiful sight:

Pretty, isn't it?

Innocent bystander

Our parked Durango was just collateral damage in the broad daylight shenanigans of a random heroin addict, who decided to shoot up whilst careening down the street in a too-fast car with her baby strapped in the back seat. RHA is in the county lock-up, the unharmed baby is with his/her Grandma and our (only) vehicle is likely headed to the great scrap pile in the sky. It was hit with enough force to move it 4 feet forward and 2 feet to the side from where my husband left it last night.

I haven't trotted out Millais' Ophelia for awhile, but she is perfect for so many situations.

I haven’t trotted out Millais’ Ophelia for a while, but she is perfect for so many situations.

Until the insurance adjusters have come and gone-for good or ill-this is how you will find me.

[15th August Inspiration Board] Visually Inclined

Posted on by
8

My writer’s brain requires a lot of different stimuli to keep on churning fast enough to function. A slowed down thought process is detrimental to my creativity. If you jumped out on the obvious limb and guessed that I probably have a hard time meditating, you were correct. Although I relish being alone, I do not handle quiet well. I need noise: a slightly too-loud television, a wide-faced Labrador crunching on a bone, a cat scratching on a door frame, low but audible music (The Clash or Patti Smith) pulsing from my laptop, discordantly lovely street noise breaking in through a few open windows, dogs racing and barking down the halls. Sirens. Car alarms. Screaming, skittering children. The sound of my bare feet beating against a table leg. A bus breaking to a stop. I could write with a baby squawking in my face. Noise. It’s beautiful. Continue reading →

A Year in Books/Day 191: Laurence Olivier On Acting

Posted on by
2
  • Title: Laurence Olivier On Acting From Hamlet and Heathcliff to “Brideshead” and Marathon Man, Our Greatest Actor Candidly Discusses His Triumphant Career in an Extraordinary Examination of His Profession and Craft
  • Author: Laurence Olivier
  • Year Published: 1986 (A TOUCHSTONE BOOK)
  • Year Purchased: 1992
  • Source: A bookstore at an outlet mall.
  • About: Every actor, young or old, has something  many things to learn from Olivier. If they say otherwise, they’re just in denial. Or ignorant. Perhaps I should strike a line through that as well and replace it with the (softer?) word naive. Nah. I’ll stand by my original assessment. Let’s move on to the good stuff. Even if you don’t care about the craft of acting (and have never been silly enough to work in or, sanity forbid, train for the theatre), On Acting is really entertaining. Part autobiography, part theatre/film history, and part textbook, it is a mixture that  works. He exposes the thought processes behind his roles, but dishes enough behind-the-scenes stories to keep most people interested. It is superior to his traditional memoir, Confessions of an Actor.
  • Motivation: I was an acting student then; the cover blurb was an excellent sales person.
  • Times Read: 2 or 3
  • Random Excerpt/Page 65: “New actors, new waves, new ideas-it’s all been done before. What we forget is that every new generation is the modern man. We are only watching things repeated with different costumes, new settings, original surrounds. However we look at it, it is still the same jewel, shining from the crown, that was mined between 1564 and 1616.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10+++
    Laurence Olivier, June 17, 1939

    Laurence Olivier, June 17, 1939 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

A Year in Books/Day 190: Feminist Ryan Gosling

Posted on by
12
  • Title: Feminist Ryan Gosling Feminist Theory As Imagined from Your Favorite Sensitive Movie Dude (Unauthorized)
  • Author: Danielle Henderson
  • Year Published: 2012 (Running Press)
  • Year Purchased: 2012
  • Source: This was a birthday gift from my mom.
  • About: Based on the hilarious blog of the same name, this book is every bit as good as the original source. I do not have an opinion on Ryan Gosling. Is he a fine actor? Word-of-mouth and critical response indicates as much. Is he as good-looking as many people think? That’s a matter of opinion. Until a year ago, I never even gave him any thought. As soon as I saw the first blog post, I was in love. With this concept. Feminist theory coming out of the mouth* of an actor known for his positive sentiments about women? Next to photographs of him looking thoughtful and sensitive (really, is there any other kind?). The very idea cracks me up. Hey girl, indeed. *(Naturally, he never said any of the quotes attributed to him in the blog or book. Is that a detraction? Nope. In fact, it makes it even better.)
  • Motivation: I’m a feminist with a sense of humor. There are lots of us, by the way, and this book is proof.
  • Times Read: More than once, and I’ve only had it one week.
  • Random Excerpt/Pages 62 & 99: “Hey girl. We’d be more successful at reclaiming public space for women if we were willing to address the patriarchal fixtures that made it unsafe in the first place.”/ “Hey girl. I literally have no idea how to react to someone who hasn’t read Judy Blume’s Forever.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10+++

A Reading List a Mile Long: Daedalus Books Midsummer 2012 Edition, Part II

Posted on by
2

Here’s the companion piece to Part I, delivered as promised.

  • Travelling Heroes In the Epic Age of Homer by Robin Lane Fox
  • America Dreaming How Youth Changed America in the 60’s by Laban Carrick Hill
  • Fanny and Adelaide The Lives of the Remarkable Kemble Sisters by Ann Blainey
  • The Booklover’s Guide to the Midwest A Literary Tour by Greg Holden
  • Script and Scribble The Rise and Fall of Handwriting by Kitty Burns Florey
  • Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch
  • Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel by Edmund White
  • The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head-Franz Kafka: A Biographical Essay by Louis Begley
  • The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith by Joan Schenkar
  • Woman of Letters Irene Nemirovsky and Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
  • My Paper Chase True Stories of Vanished Times by Harold Evans
  • Paris to the Past Traveling Through French History by Train by Ina Caro
  • Vedic Ecology: Practical Wisdom for Surviving the 21st Century by Ranchor Prime
  • The Life of David by Robert Pinsky
  • Saint Augustine, Tarsicius J. van Bavel, ed.
  • All Hopped Up and Ready to Go Music from the Streets of New York 1927-77 by Tony Fletcher
  • The Red Prince The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke by Timothy Snyder
  • Renaissance Florence on 5 Florins a Day by Charles FitzRoy

I’ve learned a few things from typing out this list.

  1. It should have been split into 3 parts.
  2. I am obviously intrigued by anyone with a secret life.
  3. Literary biographies are even more of a personal thing than I thought.

Plus, a bonus revelation:

  1. If I read all of these books (and everything else on my ever-fattening To-Read List) I would not only never write another word, I would spend 20 hours a day reading in bed. For the rest of my life.

 

 

 

The Dead Writers Round-Up: 9th-12th August

Posted on by
4
  • Hermann Hesse died on 8/9/1962. “Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.”
  • Louise Bogan was born on 8/11/1897. “Your work is carved out of agony as a statue is carved out of marble.”
  • Edith Wharton died on 8/11/1937. “Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.”
  • William Blake died on 8/12/1827. “A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.”
  • Mary Roberts Rinehart was born on 8/12/1876. “The writing career is not a romantic one. The writer’s life may be colorful, but his work itself is rather drab.”
  • Radclyffe Hall was born on 8/12/1880. “The world hid its head in the sands of convention, so that by seeing nothing it might avoid Truth.”-The Well of Loneliness
  • Helen Hunt Jackson died on 8/12/1885. “Bee to the blossom, moth to the flame; Each to his passion; what’s in a name?
  • Thomas Mann died on 8/12/1955. “A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

 

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