Category Archives: Reading

A Reading List a Mile Long: Bas Bleu Autumn 2013

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“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”-Oscar Wilde

  1. The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England by Ian Mortimer-$22.36
  2. Serving Victoria: Life in the Royal Household by Kate Hubbard-$29.99
  3. This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart-$14.95
  4. The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World’s Great Drinks by Amy Stewart-$15.96
  5. Wretched Writing: A Compendium of Crimes Against the English Language by Ross Petras and Kathryn Petras-$15.00
  6. Dickens at Christmas by Charles Dickens-$22.36
  7. The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories by Saki and Illustrated by Edward Gorey-$14.95
  8. The Baroness of Hobcaw by Mary E. Miller-$18.95
  9. [BONUS LITERARY MUG] The Greatest First Lines of Literature Ever Mug-$12.95

Autumn Weather, Where Are You?

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Why doesn’t the landscape look like this yet? It is October, after all. Where are the jewel toned leaves carried on hearty, smoke-scented breezes?

Lane at Alchamps, Paul Gauguin, 1888

Lane at Alchamps, Arles, Paul Gauguin, 1888.

I’m ready for hot cider and Thomas Hardy, fingerless gloves and Sylvia Plath. Please cooperate, Mother Nature, before winter scoots in and steals away autumn’s cloaked light and quiet beauty.

[Alternative Muses] Coming and Going: T.S. Eliot/Edgar Degas Mashup

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“Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them.”-T.S. Eliot (born on 9/26/1888)

The Millinery Shop, Edgar Degas, 1879/86. Art Institute of Chicago.

Edgar Degas (died on 9/27/1917): The Millinery Shop, 1879/86. Art Institute of Chicago.

A Selection of Quotes from Frequently Banned Books, Part Two

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  • “A little morphine in all the air. It would be wonderfully refreshing for everyone.”-Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D.H. Lawrence
  • “I have found God, but he is insufficient.”-Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
  • “Confusion hath fuck his masterpiece.”-Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs

A Brief Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald on His Birthday

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Dear Scott,

Another year has gone by, and I still find you as enigmatic and problematic as ever. You, who could write such beautiful words, ruffle my feathers like few others. You, who squandered such exemplary gifts, frustrate me to the point of madness. Although I’ve never loved you, not even a bit, I have spent some wonderful time in your company. At this point in the game, I realize that I will never stop questioning you and, in questioning you, relentlessly, learn more about myself than I ever cared to know. Happy birthday, you beautiful bastard.

Yours (but not really),

Maedez

F. Scott Fitzgerald by Gordon Bryant. Shadowland, 1921.

F. Scott Fitzgerald by Gordon Bryant. Shadowland, 1921.

“I don’t want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.”-This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Daily Diversion #161: Reading with George

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George Bellows Bookmark

Bookmark: Stag at Sharkey’s, 1909, by George Bellows Book: STILL, by David S. Shields

“Both of the inventors of the visual glamour, Eickemeyer and Genthe, came from the ranks of the art photographers, that cadre of aesthetically ambitious cameramen and-women who in the 1890s organized into an international community intent on fighting the slapdash amateurism of the mass of Kodak-wielding weekend shutterbugs, the routine posing and eclectic composition of the professional portrait studio, and the condescension of a fine arts critical establishment that denigrated photography as a mechanical craft.”-STILL American Silent Motion Picture Photography, by David S. Shields