I've been meaning to post this for awhile. When Pottermore was first announce, the video featured some really beautiful 'book graphics'. I especially love the owl.
Showing posts with label authors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label authors. Show all posts
Friday, August 10, 2012
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Artists who are Actors
I chose these four because they are my favorites and because I find them and what they do inspiring. While some of these are both actors and artists (and musicians and writers)in the traditional sense, others have seemingly turned their lives into their craft and their craft into art.
Pyotr Mamonov is a living legend in Russia. He is recognized in part for his work in film and theater (cult classics like Taxi Blues, Needle and The Island), but mostly for his contribution to the underground music scene at the end of the Soviet era. He formed and fronted 'Zvuki Mu' - an alternative rock / indie / post-punk (that's how Wiki defines it, I'd call it Classic Russian Rock with a destinct aftertaste of psychedelia) band.
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Saturday, October 2, 2010
What else am I doing that's horrible and stupid? Vol 2.
* You may notice a tag at the bottom of this page that says "my poor decisions list". This refers to the books I've bought at the times when I've had no money for basic necessities such as food and bus tickets. It's a special list.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Marginalia
An entirely new kind of biography, Built of Books explores the mind and personality of Oscar Wilde through his taste in books This intimate account of Oscar Wilde’s life and writings is richer, livelier, and more personal than any book available about the brilliant writer, revealing a man who built himself out of books. His library was his reality, the source of so much that was vital to his life. A reader first, his readerly encounters, out of all of life’s pursuits, are seen to be as significant as his most important relationships with friends, family, or lovers. Wilde’s library, which Thomas Wright spent twenty years reading, provides the intellectual (and emotional) climate at the core of this deeply engaging portrait. One of the book’s happiest surprises is the story of the author’s adventure reading Wilde’s library. Reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges’s fictional hero who enters Cervantes’s mind by saturating himself in the culture of sixteenth-century Spain, Wright employs Wilde as his own Virgilian guide to world literature. We come to understand how reading can be an extremely sensual experience, producing a physical as well as a spiritual delight.
Oscar Wilde’s library was dispersed on April 24, 1895, while he was in prison awaiting trial on charges of sodomy and gross indecency. It was sold for nearly nothing, in carelessly assembled lots, and mostly snapped up by dealers at a raucous auction held to pay his creditors, primarily the Marquess of Queensberry, who was awarded £600 in court costs after Wilde had disastrously and unsuccessfully sued him for libel. It is only partially possible to reconstruct the contents of Wilde’s collection of some 2,000 books, through the incomplete auction catalog, booksellers’ receipts, lists of titles he had requested in prison, and references in his letters and writings. A few of the books were bought by his friends in secondhand shops and restored to him, but only around 50 are known to survive...
...What becomes clear to Wright in his attempt to read all that Wilde read is how cautious we should be of easy identification with him today. His “sexual rebellion,” as Wright chastely puts it, may make him appear modern, but “in intellectual and existential terms,” he is “utterly alien to us.” It is not just the “labyrinthine commentaries on Hegel” that stand in Wright’s way. It is Wilde’s thorough classical education. Before he knew rentboys intimately he knew the Greek writers intimately, and many more besides, from Augustine to Shakespeare to Pater. “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life,” Wilde wrote in “The Decay of Lying,” and this may be less an aesthetic paradox than an admission of the extent to which, as Wright more prosaically puts it, “he always came to life via books, literally seeing reality through them.” Imitators beware: it was his great strength, until it wasn’t. ~ Full article from New York Times
Wilde's doodles from his notebooks.
Obsession is an overused word, but in the case of Thomas Wright it seems like something of an understatement...
...He began to read all the books he could find that were by Oscar Wilde or about him, and then, in what he now describes as a moment of madness, he 'resolved to read all the books my hero had read'. As Wilde was one of the quickest and most voracious readers of his age - he claimed he could read both open pages of a book simultaneously - Wright was embarking on a project that he was unlikely ever to complete...
...It seemed to me that the great events of Wilde's biography, to adapt his own phrase, had taken place in his brain.' This is, of course, the trouble with all literary biography. The real life of any author takes place largely in his head, but it is only the secondary stuff - people met, places visited, opinions expressed - that is accessible to a biographer... ~ Full article Daily Mail
Obligatory Stephen Fry as Wilde.
Articles / Reviews:
New York Times: Wilde’s Library
Literary Review: BOOKS MAKETH THE MAN
Daily Mail: Wild about Oscar
The Independent: Oscar's Books
Oscar Wilde’s library was dispersed on April 24, 1895, while he was in prison awaiting trial on charges of sodomy and gross indecency. It was sold for nearly nothing, in carelessly assembled lots, and mostly snapped up by dealers at a raucous auction held to pay his creditors, primarily the Marquess of Queensberry, who was awarded £600 in court costs after Wilde had disastrously and unsuccessfully sued him for libel. It is only partially possible to reconstruct the contents of Wilde’s collection of some 2,000 books, through the incomplete auction catalog, booksellers’ receipts, lists of titles he had requested in prison, and references in his letters and writings. A few of the books were bought by his friends in secondhand shops and restored to him, but only around 50 are known to survive......What becomes clear to Wright in his attempt to read all that Wilde read is how cautious we should be of easy identification with him today. His “sexual rebellion,” as Wright chastely puts it, may make him appear modern, but “in intellectual and existential terms,” he is “utterly alien to us.” It is not just the “labyrinthine commentaries on Hegel” that stand in Wright’s way. It is Wilde’s thorough classical education. Before he knew rentboys intimately he knew the Greek writers intimately, and many more besides, from Augustine to Shakespeare to Pater. “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life,” Wilde wrote in “The Decay of Lying,” and this may be less an aesthetic paradox than an admission of the extent to which, as Wright more prosaically puts it, “he always came to life via books, literally seeing reality through them.” Imitators beware: it was his great strength, until it wasn’t. ~ Full article from New York Times
Obsession is an overused word, but in the case of Thomas Wright it seems like something of an understatement...
...He began to read all the books he could find that were by Oscar Wilde or about him, and then, in what he now describes as a moment of madness, he 'resolved to read all the books my hero had read'. As Wilde was one of the quickest and most voracious readers of his age - he claimed he could read both open pages of a book simultaneously - Wright was embarking on a project that he was unlikely ever to complete...
...It seemed to me that the great events of Wilde's biography, to adapt his own phrase, had taken place in his brain.' This is, of course, the trouble with all literary biography. The real life of any author takes place largely in his head, but it is only the secondary stuff - people met, places visited, opinions expressed - that is accessible to a biographer... ~ Full article Daily Mail
Articles / Reviews:
New York Times: Wilde’s Library
Literary Review: BOOKS MAKETH THE MAN
Daily Mail: Wild about Oscar
The Independent: Oscar's Books
Friday, June 4, 2010
Random Facts Dump Time
Fun Facts brought to you by Am I Annoying
Lillian Hellman - Playwright
June 20, 1905-June 30, 1984
Raised in New York City
Resided in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts
Wrote 'Julia,' 'The Little Foxes,' 'Toys in the Attic,' 'The Children's Hour,' 'Another Part of the Forest,' 'The Little Foxes,' 'The Dark Angel,' 'Days To Come' and 'Scoundrel Times'
Susan Sontag - Author
January 16, 1933-December 28, 2004
Birth name was Susan Rosenblatt
Raised in Tucson, Arizona, and Los Angeles
Resided in Manhattan
Wrote 'Notes on Camp (1964),' 'Against Interpretation (1966),' 'On Photography (1977),' 'Illness as Metaphor (1978),' 'The Volcano Lover (1992)' and 'In America (2000)'
Wrote for 'The New Yorker,' 'The New York Review of Books,' 'Times Literary Supplement,' 'The Nation' and 'Partisan Review'
Partner of famed photographer Annie Leibovitz
Simone De Beauvoir - Philosopher
January 9, 1908-April 14, 1986
Wrote 'The Second Sex', 'All Men are Mortal,' 'The Mandarins,' 'Adieux: A Farewell to Jean-Paul Sartre'
Elise Cowen - Poet
1933-February 1, 1962
Born in Long Island, New York
Poems include 'Words,' 'The Lady,' 'Emily,' 'A Skin' and 'Sitting'
June 20, 1905-June 30, 1984Raised in New York City
Resided in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts
Wrote 'Julia,' 'The Little Foxes,' 'Toys in the Attic,' 'The Children's Hour,' 'Another Part of the Forest,' 'The Little Foxes,' 'The Dark Angel,' 'Days To Come' and 'Scoundrel Times'
- She dropped out of Columbia University.
- She was a chain smoker.
- She divorced after a seven year marriage.
- She had an affair with Dashiell Hammett for over thirty years.
- She testified at Senator Joseph McCarthy's Un-American Activities Committee.
- Mary McCarthy said: 'Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.''
- She traveled with Ernest Hemingway.
- She was an outspoken force in politics.
- She went almost blind.
- She said: 'Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.'
- She had strong opinions and often voiced them.
January 16, 1933-December 28, 2004Birth name was Susan Rosenblatt
Raised in Tucson, Arizona, and Los Angeles
Resided in Manhattan
Wrote 'Notes on Camp (1964),' 'Against Interpretation (1966),' 'On Photography (1977),' 'Illness as Metaphor (1978),' 'The Volcano Lover (1992)' and 'In America (2000)'
Wrote for 'The New Yorker,' 'The New York Review of Books,' 'Times Literary Supplement,' 'The Nation' and 'Partisan Review'
Partner of famed photographer Annie Leibovitz
- She said: 'I don't like America enough to live anywhere except Manhattan.'
- She was a literary critic who argued that literary criticism was pointless.
- She sneered at writers she didn't like.
- She said: 'The white race is the cancer of human history.'
- The day after 9/11, she published a controversial essay calling the terrorists 'courageous.'
- She had a weird skunk stripe in her hair.
- She loved reading.
- She was very involved in civil and human rights causes.
- She was one of the most famous intellectuals of her time.
- Her mother was a drunk.
- Her father died when she was a little girl.
- She graduated from high school at 15.
- She suffered from breast cancer, uterine cancer and leukemia.
- She pissed people off on both the right and the left.
- he had as many fans as detractors.
January 9, 1908-April 14, 1986Wrote 'The Second Sex', 'All Men are Mortal,' 'The Mandarins,' 'Adieux: A Farewell to Jean-Paul Sartre'
- She and her mother had a falling out when she became an atheist as a teenager.
- 'The Mandarins' was banned by the Catholic Church.
- In 'The Second Sex,' she said 'A woman is not born, she is made,' thereby denying genetics and taking a rather extreme view on gender.
- Towards the end of her life, she drank too much and took amphetamines.
- She graduated from the Sorbonne.
- At twenty-one, she met Jean-Paul Sartre, and they became life long friends and lovers.
- She and Jean-Paul Sartre saw no need to marry and had two rules for their relationship: They were both allowed to fall in love with or have sex with anyone else they wanted, and they were always completely honest, never withholding anything from the other.
- She and Jean-Paul Sartre had at least one menage a tois with Olga Kosakiewicz.
- When Jean-Paul Sartre died, she said, 'My death will not bring us together again. This is how things are. It is in itself splendid that we were able to live our lives in harmony for so long.'
- Her writing was far more lucid than Jean-Paul Sartre's.
- She won the Prix Goncourt and the Jerusalem Prize for Leaders.
- She rejected the title of existentialist.
- 'The Second Sex' is a landmark in the feminist philosophy.
- She was a social reformer who fought for the rights of women, the elderly, and factory workers, in addition to protesting France's occupation of Algeria and the Vietnam War.
1933-February 1, 1962Born in Long Island, New York
Poems include 'Words,' 'The Lady,' 'Emily,' 'A Skin' and 'Sitting'
- She dated Allen Ginsberg and looked like him at the time.
- After breaking up with him, she and her lover Shelia shared an apartment with Ginsberg and his lover Peter.
- Ginsberg called her 'an intellectual madwoman.'
- She stole books from libraries and bookstores, saying it was 'the only moral way' to acquire them.
- She suffered depression and had several nervous breakdowns.
- She checked herself out of Bellevue Hospital against her doctors' advice.
- She committed suicide by jumping through a locked window in her parents' seventh-floor apartment.
- After her death, her parents destroyed most of her writings.
- Her favorite poets included T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and Dylan Thomas, and she could recite their works from memory.
- Beat chronicler Joyce Johnson said of her relation with Ginsberg, 'Elise was a moment in Allen's life. In Elise's life, Allen was an eternity.'
- Her friend Leo Skir possessed 83 of her poems when she died and arranged for their publication.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Stephen Fry
I love Stephen Fry. I adore the man! And I associate him so strongly with Oscar Wilde it's not even funny. I'm currently listening* to "The Liar".
Fry's first novel. While it's a little hard to follow at times - the timeline/plot jumps around a lot - it is very entertaining and funny. Fry's hilarious novel has won praise from critics everywhere, and it hit the very top of bestseller lists in England. Its bisexual hero is a diabolically brilliant pathological liar with the wit of a Truman Capote and the moral compunctions of an amoeba.
Also, here's a rendition of Adrian by Lyndsey Wells which I love.Apparently "The Liar" is partly autobiographical. Which prompted me to look up Fry's actual biography (I'm ashamed to admit it, but I wasn't aware he'd written and published one). Thus, "Moab Is My Washpot" - again, not entirely legally acquired - is sitting on my 'to read' list. I'm reading "Orlando" at the moment, than it's "On Beauty", and then it's "Moab Is My Washpot".
* OK, so I normally don't do audio books, but I just couldn't get my hands on a printed copy of the book. I mean, technically I could, but I'm in some serious financial trouble at the moment, so if Monash university library doesn't have what I want, I go online and just pretty much download whatever I can get. Anyway, Stephen Fry is awesome. I'll (legally) get a copy of "The Liar" when I crawl back up from the rock bottom.
A number one bestseller in Britain that topped the lists there for months, Stephen Fry's astonishingly frank, funny, wise memoir is the book that his fans everywhere have been waiting for. Since his PBS television debut in the Blackadder series, the American profile of this multitalented writer, actor and comedian has grown steadily, especially in the wake of his title role in the film Wilde, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination, and his supporting role in A Civil Action. Fry has already given readers a taste of his tumultuous adolescence in his autobiographical first novel, The Liar , and now he reveals the equally tumultuous life that inspired it. Sent to boarding school at the age of seven, he survived beatings, misery, love affairs, carnal violation, expulsion, attempted suicide, criminal conviction and imprisonment to emerge, at the age of eighteen, ready to start over in a world in which he had always felt a stranger. One of very few Cambridge University graduates to have been imprisoned prior to his freshman year, Fry is a brilliantly idiosyncratic character who continues to attract controversy, empathy and real devotion.This extraordinary and affecting book has "a tragic grandeur that lifts it to classic status," raved the Financial Times in one of the many ecstatic British reviews. Stephen Fry's autobiography, in turns funny, shocking, sad, bruisingly frank and always compulsively readable, could well become a classic gay coming-of-age memoir.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Stereotyping People by Their Favorite Author
From Lauren Leto
J.D. Salinger Kids who don’t fit in (duh).
Stephenie Meyer People who type like this: OMG. Mah fAvvv
J.K. Rowling Smart geeks.
Jack Kerouac Umphrey’s McGee fans.
Jeffrey Eugenides Girls who didn’t get enough drama when they were younger.
Lauren Weisberger Girls who can’t read. Or think.
Jonathan Safran Foer 30somethings who were cool when they were 20something.
Jodi Picoult Your mom when she’s at her time of the month.
Chuck Klosterman Boys who don’t read.
Chuck Palahniuk Boys who can’t read.
Christopher Hitchens People I would love to hang out with.
Leo Tolstoy Guys I want to date.
Fyodor Dostoevsky Guys I want to sleep with. (The difference between the two Russian authors lies in the fact that I think the Underground Man is sexier than Pierre Buzukhov).
Christopher Buckley (or William F. Buckley) People who love excess verbiage.
Ayn Rand Workaholics seeking validation.
David Foster Wallace Confirmed 90’s literati.
Jane Austen (or Bronte Sisters) Girls who made out with other girls in college when they were going through a “phase”.
Haruki Murakami People who like good music.
Ralph Waldo Emerson People who can start a fire.
Nathaniel Hawthorne People who used to sleep so heavy that they would pee their pants.
Charles Dickens Ninth graders who think they’re going to be authors someday but end up in marketing.
William Shakespeare People who like bondage.
Mark Twain Liars.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle People who drink scotch.
Joseph Conrad People who drink old fashioneds.
Dominick Dunne People who get their class from Vanity Fair.
Anne Rice People who don’t use conditioner in their hair.
Edgar Allan Poe Men who live in their mother’s basements. Or goth seventh graders.
Michael Crichton Doctors who went to third-tier medical schools.
John Grisham Doctors who went to medical schools in the Dominican Republic.
Dan Brown People who used to get lost in supermarkets when they were kids.
Dave Eggers Guys who are in the third coolest frat of a private college.
Emily Giffin Women who give their boyfriend marriage ultimatums.
Richard Russo People whose favorite day in elementary school was “Grandparent’s Day”.
Anais Nin Librarians.
Margaret Atwood Women whose favorite color is hunter green.
William Faulkner People who are good at crosswords.
Jackie Collins Your drunk stepmother.
Nicholas Sparks Women who are usually constipated.
James Patterson Men who score a 153 on their LSAT exam.
Sylvia Plath Girls who keep journals (too easy).
George Orwell Conspiracy theorists (too easy).
Aldous Huxley People who are bigger conspiracy theorists than Orwell fans.
Harper Lee People who have read only one book in their life and it was To Kill A Mockingbird (and it was their assigned reading in the ninth grade).
Nick Hornby Guys who wear skinny jeans and the girls that love them.
Ernest Hemingway Men who own cottages.
F. Scott Fitzgerald People who get adjustable-rate mortgages.
Vladimir Nabokov Men who use words like ‘dubious’ and ‘tenacity’.
Friedrich Nietzsche Sommeliers.
Bret Easton Ellis Foo Fighters’ fans.
Hunter S Thompson That kid in your philosophy class with the stupid tattoo.
Cormac McCarthy Men who don’t eat cream cheese.
Thomas Aquinas Premature ejaculators.
Pearl S. Buck Women whose favorite president was Harry S. Truman.
Toni Morrison Female high-school English professors who only have an undergraduate degree.
Thomas Pynchon People who used to be fans of J.D. Salinger.
Elizabeth Gilbert Women who liked the movie “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” but didn’t read the book.
Rebecca Wells Women on the East coast who wish they were from the South.
Tama Janowitz Cougars who went to an urban college in the 80s.
Alice Sebold People who liked Gilmore Girls – even in the first season.
Michael Swanwick Men who argue Neil Gaiman is overrated.
Terry Goodkind People who have never been dungeons master but still play D&D.
Stephen King 11th graders who peed their pants while watching the movie It.
H.P. Lovecraft People who can quote the Comic Book Guy from Simpsons.
Brothers Grimm Only children with Oedipal complexes.
Lewis Carroll People who move to Thailand after high school for the drug scene.
C.S. Lewis Youth group leaders who picked their nose in the 4th grade.
Elmore Leonard People who know how to perform a “Michigan left”.
Shel Silverstein Girls who can’t spell “leheim”.
Douglas Adams People who bought the first generation Amazon Kindle.
Tucker Max Guys who haven’t convinced their girlfriends to try anal yet.
Alexis de Tocqueville Political theory and constitutional democracy majors.
Tom Clancy People who skipped school by hiding out in the gym.
Herman Hesse People who own one straw chair in their house.
Phillippa Gregory Women who have repressed their desire to go to Renaissance Festivals
Gabriel Garcia Marquez Men who can’t lie but will instead be silent if they know you don’t want to hear the truth.
Susan Wiggs Older women who are surprisingly loud during sex.
Nicole Krauss Girls who intern at Nylon but end up moving back to the Midwest for their real job.
Mitch Albom People who didn’t go to college but do well on crossword puzzles.
Stieg Larsson Girls who are too frightened to go skydiving.
Sue Grafton Women who have an @aol.com email address.
Seth Grahame-Smith People who own a smart phone which requires a stylus to use it.
David Baldacci No one. Even the police say Clancy before they’ll say Baldacci.
Michael Pollan The girl who just turned vegan to cover up her eating disorder.
Andrew Ross Sorkin People who refer to themselves as “playing devil’s advocate”.
O. Henry Men who have names like Earl or Cliff and were really close with their paternal grandfather.
Virginia Woolf Female high-school French teachers who have their master’s degree.
Michael Chabon People who hate Ayelet Waldman.
Ray Bradbury People who own golf head covers.
Joseph Heller People who love buying drinks for their friends. See also, people who cringe when they see their bar tab.
David Mitchell Women who live in any area of Brooklyn other than Park Slope, but may end up there someday and if that day comes, they will switch to Barbara Kingsolver fans.
Max Barry People who don’t mind the color orange.
Dean Koontz People who would never dream of owning any type of “toy” breed dog.
John Irving People whose parents are divorced.
Richard Dawkins People who have their significant other grab them under the table in order to shut them up whenever someone else at a dinner says something absolutely ridiculous and wrong.
Salman Rushdie People who google image search Padma Lakshmi late at night.
Albert Camus People who went to art school after “trying it out” at a public university.
Kurt Vonnegut People who played Creep by Radiohead while having sex or smoking pot. Longer explanation here.
James Joyce People who do not like John Cusack movies.
Charlaine Harris Elementary school teacher’s aids.
Jorge Luis Borges People who took care of their dying grandparents.
Terry Pratchett People who really like monkeys.
Oscar Wilde People who can’t resist anything. See also, people who claim they’re going to change but never do.
Truman Capote People who would never dream of owning anything that could be classified as a “knick-knack”.
Tom Wolfe People who don’t mind others smoking around them.
Neil Gaiman People who can name at least two Miyazaki films.
J.D. Salinger Kids who don’t fit in (duh).
Stephenie Meyer People who type like this: OMG. Mah fAvvv
J.K. Rowling Smart geeks.
Jack Kerouac Umphrey’s McGee fans.
Jeffrey Eugenides Girls who didn’t get enough drama when they were younger.
Lauren Weisberger Girls who can’t read. Or think.
Jonathan Safran Foer 30somethings who were cool when they were 20something.
Jodi Picoult Your mom when she’s at her time of the month.
Chuck Klosterman Boys who don’t read.
Chuck Palahniuk Boys who can’t read.
Christopher Hitchens People I would love to hang out with.
Leo Tolstoy Guys I want to date.
Fyodor Dostoevsky Guys I want to sleep with. (The difference between the two Russian authors lies in the fact that I think the Underground Man is sexier than Pierre Buzukhov).
Christopher Buckley (or William F. Buckley) People who love excess verbiage.
Ayn Rand Workaholics seeking validation.
David Foster Wallace Confirmed 90’s literati.
Jane Austen (or Bronte Sisters) Girls who made out with other girls in college when they were going through a “phase”.
Haruki Murakami People who like good music.
Ralph Waldo Emerson People who can start a fire.
Nathaniel Hawthorne People who used to sleep so heavy that they would pee their pants.
Charles Dickens Ninth graders who think they’re going to be authors someday but end up in marketing.
William Shakespeare People who like bondage.
Mark Twain Liars.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle People who drink scotch.
Joseph Conrad People who drink old fashioneds.
Dominick Dunne People who get their class from Vanity Fair.
Anne Rice People who don’t use conditioner in their hair.
Edgar Allan Poe Men who live in their mother’s basements. Or goth seventh graders.
Michael Crichton Doctors who went to third-tier medical schools.
John Grisham Doctors who went to medical schools in the Dominican Republic.
Dan Brown People who used to get lost in supermarkets when they were kids.
Dave Eggers Guys who are in the third coolest frat of a private college.
Emily Giffin Women who give their boyfriend marriage ultimatums.
Richard Russo People whose favorite day in elementary school was “Grandparent’s Day”.
Anais Nin Librarians.
Margaret Atwood Women whose favorite color is hunter green.
William Faulkner People who are good at crosswords.
Jackie Collins Your drunk stepmother.
Nicholas Sparks Women who are usually constipated.
James Patterson Men who score a 153 on their LSAT exam.
Sylvia Plath Girls who keep journals (too easy).
George Orwell Conspiracy theorists (too easy).
Aldous Huxley People who are bigger conspiracy theorists than Orwell fans.
Harper Lee People who have read only one book in their life and it was To Kill A Mockingbird (and it was their assigned reading in the ninth grade).
Nick Hornby Guys who wear skinny jeans and the girls that love them.
Ernest Hemingway Men who own cottages.
F. Scott Fitzgerald People who get adjustable-rate mortgages.
Vladimir Nabokov Men who use words like ‘dubious’ and ‘tenacity’.
Friedrich Nietzsche Sommeliers.
Bret Easton Ellis Foo Fighters’ fans.
Hunter S Thompson That kid in your philosophy class with the stupid tattoo.
Cormac McCarthy Men who don’t eat cream cheese.
Thomas Aquinas Premature ejaculators.
Pearl S. Buck Women whose favorite president was Harry S. Truman.
Toni Morrison Female high-school English professors who only have an undergraduate degree.
Thomas Pynchon People who used to be fans of J.D. Salinger.
Elizabeth Gilbert Women who liked the movie “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” but didn’t read the book.
Rebecca Wells Women on the East coast who wish they were from the South.
Tama Janowitz Cougars who went to an urban college in the 80s.
Alice Sebold People who liked Gilmore Girls – even in the first season.
Michael Swanwick Men who argue Neil Gaiman is overrated.
Terry Goodkind People who have never been dungeons master but still play D&D.
Stephen King 11th graders who peed their pants while watching the movie It.
H.P. Lovecraft People who can quote the Comic Book Guy from Simpsons.
Brothers Grimm Only children with Oedipal complexes.
Lewis Carroll People who move to Thailand after high school for the drug scene.
C.S. Lewis Youth group leaders who picked their nose in the 4th grade.
Elmore Leonard People who know how to perform a “Michigan left”.
Shel Silverstein Girls who can’t spell “leheim”.
Douglas Adams People who bought the first generation Amazon Kindle.
Tucker Max Guys who haven’t convinced their girlfriends to try anal yet.
Alexis de Tocqueville Political theory and constitutional democracy majors.
Tom Clancy People who skipped school by hiding out in the gym.
Herman Hesse People who own one straw chair in their house.
Phillippa Gregory Women who have repressed their desire to go to Renaissance Festivals
Gabriel Garcia Marquez Men who can’t lie but will instead be silent if they know you don’t want to hear the truth.
Susan Wiggs Older women who are surprisingly loud during sex.
Nicole Krauss Girls who intern at Nylon but end up moving back to the Midwest for their real job.
Mitch Albom People who didn’t go to college but do well on crossword puzzles.
Stieg Larsson Girls who are too frightened to go skydiving.
Sue Grafton Women who have an @aol.com email address.
Seth Grahame-Smith People who own a smart phone which requires a stylus to use it.
David Baldacci No one. Even the police say Clancy before they’ll say Baldacci.
Michael Pollan The girl who just turned vegan to cover up her eating disorder.
Andrew Ross Sorkin People who refer to themselves as “playing devil’s advocate”.
O. Henry Men who have names like Earl or Cliff and were really close with their paternal grandfather.
Virginia Woolf Female high-school French teachers who have their master’s degree.
Michael Chabon People who hate Ayelet Waldman.
Ray Bradbury People who own golf head covers.
Joseph Heller People who love buying drinks for their friends. See also, people who cringe when they see their bar tab.
David Mitchell Women who live in any area of Brooklyn other than Park Slope, but may end up there someday and if that day comes, they will switch to Barbara Kingsolver fans.
Max Barry People who don’t mind the color orange.
Dean Koontz People who would never dream of owning any type of “toy” breed dog.
John Irving People whose parents are divorced.
Richard Dawkins People who have their significant other grab them under the table in order to shut them up whenever someone else at a dinner says something absolutely ridiculous and wrong.
Salman Rushdie People who google image search Padma Lakshmi late at night.
Albert Camus People who went to art school after “trying it out” at a public university.
Kurt Vonnegut People who played Creep by Radiohead while having sex or smoking pot. Longer explanation here.
James Joyce People who do not like John Cusack movies.
Charlaine Harris Elementary school teacher’s aids.
Jorge Luis Borges People who took care of their dying grandparents.
Terry Pratchett People who really like monkeys.
Oscar Wilde People who can’t resist anything. See also, people who claim they’re going to change but never do.
Truman Capote People who would never dream of owning anything that could be classified as a “knick-knack”.
Tom Wolfe People who don’t mind others smoking around them.
Neil Gaiman People who can name at least two Miyazaki films.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
The Holy War between Robin Hobb and her fans
http://community.livejournal.com/fitzandthefool/110343.html
Well, I finished "Assassin's Quest". Perhaps it's because I know that the story continued afterward, but to me it seemed unfinished. There was certainly little happiness and sense of fulfillment for Fitz. It just didn't seem like the end.
But that's of no importance right now. What I really want to write down here and remember is to stay the hell out of fandoms and Robin Hobb's blogs. For once I have very little desire to know anything about the author, and what I do already know disheartens me enough to not want to read the books. She blunders. And it seems like she wages a holy war against her own fans and their interpretation of her work. To some extent I can understand her. There is an obviously deep emotional attachment to her work, particularly the part pertaining to Fitz. But there is little sense in trying to force her point of view onto her fans and be furious when they perceive the story different. The understandable fury brewing in the fandom doesn't help. It taints the story for me.
Perhaps, the author should remain invisible after all. After all it's not all about him/her. Once the idea is put to paper, and thrust forward into the world it no longer belongs to the author (if it makes any sense. To me it does). A book becomes a book when someone reads it.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is this. As much as I long to run to the bookstore first thing tomorrow, I will have to hold out and wait. I will also have to stay as far away from the fandom and (God almighty forgive me!) Wiki (I already know enough of the ending of Fool's Fate to ruin the book for myself). Perhaps if I steer clear of all this for a month or so, I can begin to read "The Tawny Man" free of any outside influence.
There are few book I love this much. It's hard to believe that the series sat on my shelf collecting dust for 3 fucking years, while my dad kept trying to encouraged me to read it. And it was pure boredom that made me pick it up again. Just as pure chance and a cover design that caught my attention made me first want to read it some 5 years ago. You never know when you may strike gold.
I may actually sleep tonight.
Well, I finished "Assassin's Quest". Perhaps it's because I know that the story continued afterward, but to me it seemed unfinished. There was certainly little happiness and sense of fulfillment for Fitz. It just didn't seem like the end.
But that's of no importance right now. What I really want to write down here and remember is to stay the hell out of fandoms and Robin Hobb's blogs. For once I have very little desire to know anything about the author, and what I do already know disheartens me enough to not want to read the books. She blunders. And it seems like she wages a holy war against her own fans and their interpretation of her work. To some extent I can understand her. There is an obviously deep emotional attachment to her work, particularly the part pertaining to Fitz. But there is little sense in trying to force her point of view onto her fans and be furious when they perceive the story different. The understandable fury brewing in the fandom doesn't help. It taints the story for me.
Perhaps, the author should remain invisible after all. After all it's not all about him/her. Once the idea is put to paper, and thrust forward into the world it no longer belongs to the author (if it makes any sense. To me it does). A book becomes a book when someone reads it.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is this. As much as I long to run to the bookstore first thing tomorrow, I will have to hold out and wait. I will also have to stay as far away from the fandom and (God almighty forgive me!) Wiki (I already know enough of the ending of Fool's Fate to ruin the book for myself). Perhaps if I steer clear of all this for a month or so, I can begin to read "The Tawny Man" free of any outside influence.
There are few book I love this much. It's hard to believe that the series sat on my shelf collecting dust for 3 fucking years, while my dad kept trying to encouraged me to read it. And it was pure boredom that made me pick it up again. Just as pure chance and a cover design that caught my attention made me first want to read it some 5 years ago. You never know when you may strike gold.
I may actually sleep tonight.
Monday, November 16, 2009
The Red Leather Diary
(Age 15-Adult) Lily Koppel, the author of this book and also writer for the New York Times, discovered a red leather diary among other treasures during a clean up in the cellar of her New York apartment building. The author of the diary - Florence Wolfson - had not missed a single day's entry from 1929 (when she received it as a birthday gift) until the end of 1934 (the lifespan of the diary). What unfolds is a fantastic insight into the Bohemian life of America during the 1930's and the life experiences, through intimate thoughts and emotions, of Florence during those five years. Intrigued, Lily set out to try and find information about Florence and in discovery her still alive proceeded to meet with her to discuss the diaries entries. Florence added insight to the entries and what transpires is a reflective look back on those times and the unfolding of a true story of a woman who dared to follow her dreams. ~Tracy Glover. From Read Plus review blog
Neil Gaiman's Personal Library
From Shelfari. More stunning pictures are available at the source.
"Shelfari has always been a place where people come together to talk about their books. A place where you can show off your virtual bookshelf and where communities form around your favorite books and authors. It’s no surprise to us that you can learn a lot about someone by seeing what’s on his or her bookshelf.
Which is why we thought it would be fun to take a look at what’s on the bookshelves of some of our favorite authors. What books do they love, or consider to have been particularly enlightening, informative or just plain fun? What books do they keep?
So we asked one of our all-time favorites, Neil Gaiman, if he’d be willing to give us a peek into his personal library, and he graciously agreed."
Seriously. This is where I want to go when I die. It also helps that Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite writers, and "Neverwhere" is one of my favorite books of all time.
"Shelfari has always been a place where people come together to talk about their books. A place where you can show off your virtual bookshelf and where communities form around your favorite books and authors. It’s no surprise to us that you can learn a lot about someone by seeing what’s on his or her bookshelf.
Which is why we thought it would be fun to take a look at what’s on the bookshelves of some of our favorite authors. What books do they love, or consider to have been particularly enlightening, informative or just plain fun? What books do they keep?
So we asked one of our all-time favorites, Neil Gaiman, if he’d be willing to give us a peek into his personal library, and he graciously agreed."
Seriously. This is where I want to go when I die. It also helps that Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite writers, and "Neverwhere" is one of my favorite books of all time.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Authors: JK Rowling
J.K. Rowling a Year in Her Life Documentary
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
I have a lot of admiration for J.K. Rowling. Firstly (and obviously) because of the great book series she wrote (also after Sirius died, the whole Harry Potter concept died for me as well), and secondly because of her life story, the resilience and strength of character she's show, and how much she's accomplished.
All things considered, I have a soft spot for Harry Potter. Also I don't think I ever really qualified as a proper HP fan, I did enjoy the first four books, especially PoA. And I did read HBP in one sitting - which I do not recommend to anyone.
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