Tag Archives: Literature

Sylvia Plath’s Death: Five Decades Have Gone By in a Mad, Mad Whirl

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“Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.”-Sylvia Plath

She died on 11 February 1963.

Sylvia Plath's Grave

Sylvia Plath’s Grave

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Reading her poetry is like picking up shards of glass with a bare hand. It is unnerving to discover that something so deceptively small can cause so much bleeding.”-Alicia Austen

The Dead Writers Round-Up: February 10th

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  • Sir John Suckling was born on 2/10/1609. “Out upon it I have lov’d/Three whole days together;/And am like to love three more,/If it prove fair weather.” (Ballad Upon a Wedding; Aglaura)
  • Baron de Montesquieu died on 2/10/1755. “Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.” (Persian Letters; The Temple of Gnide)
  • Charles Lamb was born on 2/10/1775. “I love to lose myself in other men’s minds…Books think for me.” (Blank Verse; Tales from Shakespeare; The Adventures of Ulysses; Essays of Elia)
  • Boris Pasternak was born on 2/10/1890. “Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.” (My Sister, Life; Themes and Variations; Safe Conduct; Doctor Zhivago)
  • Bertolt Brecht was born on 2/10/1898. “Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.” (Happy End; Saint Joan of the Stockyards; Don Juan; Trumpets and Drums; The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre)
  • Laura Ingalls Wilder died on 2/10/1957. “It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.” (Little House in the Big Woods; Little House on the Prairie; On the Banks of Plum Creek)
  • Alex Haley died on 2/10/1992. “In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it.” (The Autobiography of Malcolm X; Roots: The Saga of an American Family)
  • Arthur Miller died on 2/10/2005. “A playwright lives in an occupied country. And if you can’t live that way you don’t stay.” (All My Sons; Death of a Salesman; The Crucible; A View from the Bridge; After the Fall; Mr. Peter’s Connections; Resurrection Blues)
Sir John Suckling
Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
Charles Lamb, 1798
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Alex Haley in the U.S. Coast Guard

 

Books in Art: Oleanders by Vincent van Gogh

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Oleanders by Vincent van Gogh, 1888

Oleanders (Vase with Oleanders and Books) by Vincent van Gogh, 1888

The book on top is La Joie de vivre by Émile Zola. A framed copy of this painting hangs in my kitchen. The original, a gift of Mr. and Mrs. John L. Loeb, is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Proof That It’s Always About Books

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I received many bookish gifts for Christmas (more on those later). In fact, most of the gifts with my  name on them turned out to be delightfully literary-based. I’m easy to buy for like that. One of the only non-literary themed gifts was from The Chef, who gave me a fancy, shiny, amazing new phone: a Samsung Galaxy S III. It’s heavenly, and I am in love (with both it and my husband). Really, it is perfection. Except, of course, for one small detail. It isn’t bookish enough. My solution? This, dear readers. This.

If it looks familiar, it’s because I wrote about something similar here. I’m over-the-moon with nerdy glee! A plain case would work just as well, but if you can put a bookish spin on something utilitarian…why not?