"Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb."
From "Life's too short to read five novels a week," a few interesting points--
"Then we come to a question that cannot be ducked: are there really 10,000 novels worth reading? Surely it is not essential to read every word an author wrote, and in the case of some well-known writers, one may not want to read anything at all. At some point, personal taste must come into it."I disagree. I imagine there are 10,000 novels worth reading. Every time I'm foolish enough to start thinking I'm somewhat well read, I'll run across authors and novels that I've never even heard of. (I can only imagine how many hundreds exist that I still haven't heard of, much less read!) So I think the reading supply is definitely plentiful (no matter what your personal taste), and much of it is, if not essential reading, at least good enough to merit a single read-through.
"What a relief it was, last year, to learn of Milan Kundera's opinion that he based his reading on the premise that he got through books at the rate of 20 pages an hour. How the Society of Slow Readers enjoyed that confession"I think that is reassuring! I happen to be a pretty fast reader, but I read much slower when I'm reading for leisure because there's an element of really savoring the text, as opposed to merely comprehending it.
And the grand prize winner in the 2008 Delete Key Awards contest is …
“A new species is arising on the planet. It is arising now, and you are it!”
“We are in the midst of a momentous event in the evolution of human consciousness. But they won’t be talking about it in the news tonight. On our planet, and perhaps simultaneously in many parts of our galaxy and beyond, consciousness is awakening from the dream of form. This does not mean all forms (the world) are going to dissolve, although quite a few almost certainly will. It means consciousness can now begin to create form without losing itself in it. It can remain conscious of itself, even while it creates and experiences form.”
– Both from Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (Plume)
I smiled as I was reading the article "The Lion, the Witch, and the Really Foul Candy" and the writer's reaction to her first taste of Turkish Delight:
"And so, with anticipation, I took a bite of the Turkish Delight. And a second later, spat it into my hand. It tasted like soap rolled in plaster dust, or like a lump of Renuzit air freshener: The texture was both waxy and filling-looseningly chewy. This … this? ... was the sweetmeat that led Edmund to betray his siblings and doomed Aslan to death on a stone slab?"This must be the reaction of 99% of Americans who rhapsodized over the thought of Turkish Delight as children reading C.S. Lewis, only to finally try Turkish Delight as an adult and find it less than impressive! But I think it's pretty much an inevitable response, because every child who read The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe projected onto that mystical candy the penultimate taste she could imagine. (For example, being the chocaholic I am, I always assumed as a child that Turkish Delight must be made of chocolate.) In the end, it's less about how Turkish Delight actually tastes and more about how we expect it to taste.
Sitting in a quiet downtown diner, local hospital administrator Philip Meyer looks as normal and well-adjusted as can be. Yet, there's more to this 27-year-old than first meets the eye: Meyer has recently finished reading a book.
Even outdoors, Meyer can't seem to think of anything better to do than flip through some American classic.
Yes, the whole thing.
"It was great," said the peculiar Indiana native, who, despite owning a television set and having an active social life, read every single page of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
Here's the complete list of 10 finalists for the 2008 Delete Key Awards for the year’s worst writing in books.
Winners will be announced March 15th, but in the meantime, my money is on the following:
Delete Key Awards Finalist #5 – From Alice Sebold’s The Almost Moon:
“And there it was, the hole that had given birth to me.… This was not the first time I’d been face-to-face with my mother’s genitalia.”
Ummm...face-to-what?
My vote for runner up:
Delete Key Awards Finalist #7 – From Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian:
“ARGGHHHHHHHHSSSSSPPPPPPGGGHHHHHHHAAAAAARGHHHHHHHHHHAGGGGHH!”
My goodness. I don't think I can top the awards people's characterization of this passage:
Yes, Alexie won the 2007 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for this novel. And, yes, it’s possible that this line has an inner logic discernible only to teenagers. But the rest of us may wonder: Why does this line have five S’s and six P’s instead of six S’s and five P’s? Why does it have eight A’s and ten G’s instead of ten A’s and eight G’s? What, exactly, is the logic behind this manic sequence of letters? Does it help to know that it’s supposed to sound like “a 747 is landing on a runway of vomit”? Or that in the book the letters take up two lines (without punctuation) instead of one? The letters seem intended as onomatopoeia, but their arrangement is so random, you wonder if Alexie’s space bar just got stuck.
This line suggests how the language of e-mail – or perhaps Hollywood screenplays – is infecting novels for all ages. Will we someday get a novel written entirely in emoticons?
As of March 2008, The Typo Eradication Advancement League (TEAL) is on the road, roving the country "to stamp out as many typos as [they] can find, in public signage and other venues where innocent eyes may be befouled by vile stains on the delicate fabric of our language."
Awesome! Why didn't I think of this?
Follow the great spelling and punctuation odyssey at TEAL's blog.
Was skimming through Bookworld the other day and ran across a meme that I empathize with so much it's scary. The concept was "Ten signs that a book has been written by me," and I nearly fell out of my chair when I got to #9 because it sounds EXACTLY like me!
"It is a daring blend of nit-picking historical accuracy (picture its author spending a week researching what the Georgians ate for breakfast, only to discover that it was probably something as banal as toast, and then eventually summing up the week's work with "after breakfast they went out") and outrageous inaccuracy and anachronism (when the author doesn't have a week to spare and decides to write a description of a shipwreck in half an hour without knowing where the ship is, what sort of ship it is, what the bits of the ship are called, what would have happened to the passengers or any other sort of actual helpful detail, but does manage to sweep a cursed box out to sea along with its fanatically obsessed owner. Who doesn't yet have a name.)"The only way this description could be more like me was if the author spent a week researching Georgian breakfast habits, only to discover that she had glaring deficiencies in her understanding of Georgian tableware and food etiquette. Which would, in turn, send the author into a nervous tizzy of further research, culminating in a buying spree at Amazon.com of boxes of books that, when they finally arrived, would undermine her confidence more than enlighten her. The author would never get around to writing about the shipwreck because, weeks later, she would still be determining what shape teaspoon to give her breakfast-eaters. Ultimately, months later, the author would throw up her hands in frustration and declare that her characters all share a disdain for breakfast and (counter to all cultural practices of the time) refuse to eat it.
This is one of the funniest blog posts I've seen in a long time. ("Every freaking time I leave my house there’s a huge ship in my way"--who can't relate to that?)
While my in-laws are ready to whisk themselves off to the French countryside for the "grilled cheese sandwiches" alone, I think I've found my big inducement to pick up stakes and move to France: the "City of Books."
"With 30 times as many books as people, the La Charite-sur-Loire has certainly earned the title "city of books," which has been proclaimed from the town sign for the past six years. Fittingly, regular book sales are held in the center on the third Sunday of every month. There's also a festival of words in August, an internationally known salon of old books in July and a book art fair in May."
(Thanks to The Literary Saloon for pointing out this story.)
The Bookseller magazine has announced the shortlist for the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year.
This year's illustrious contenders--
Inspired by this amusing article at The Morning News, I checked out some of the real-life, one-star reader reviews of Ulysses posted at Amazon.com.
As you might imagine, reviews ranged from the hilarious to the surprisingly thoughtful to the downright weird. And of course, a generous measure of the just plain awful. Here are some of my favorites:
"I could never pray the Lord's Prayer and read this book."
"The poor trees who gave their lives that _Ulysses_ might gather dust on countless shelves would have been put to nobler use as toothpicks."
"This is one of those books that "smart" people like to "read." Well if being smart means liking this, count me out! I don't know if it's modern, post-modern or what: but I know this much, I'd rather just curl up with "Bridges of Madison County" for a good cry! . . . I'd like to have seen Leopold patch things up with Molly, am I right? I mean, let's get down to brass tacks: don't we all hate those intellectuals who consider this one of the century's 'finest works of literary craft'? I mean these are the people who put "Citizen Kane" in the top ten...and totally ignored "Life as a House"! (No offense, but Orson Welles is no Kevin Kline!) Unless Oprah puts it on her book list, I won't be picking this one up again, that's for sure."
"This waste of paper is a genuine TEE-YOU-ARE-DEE"
"uggghhhh, after nine months i finally finished this rambling, incoherent string of words. i took this book on because i'm reading the 100 best books of the 20th century (as defined by the modern library). . . . whoever listed this as number 1 was smoking too much crack - since i can't afford a nine-month crack habit, i guess i'll never be able to truly appreciate it."
"There is a famous sex scene in this book where the mental thoughts of the individual coming to climax fills many pages. I asked around and no one I know thinks about anything while climaxing except for a sexual fantasy. Totally unrealistic."
(I'm still marveling that someone would "ask around" about people's thoughts while having sex, all in service of writing a book review on Amazon!)
I'm considering resurrecting this blog, mainly as self-encouragement to keep better up-to-date with various literary happenings. Of course, I'm not promising much, as I realistically see my blogging enthusiasm lasting for a couple months, only to slip back to disinterest and inactivity (see posts below for a sterling example of this!). But hey--you never know until you try (again).
And, by the way, resurrecting this blog does not extend to resurrecting my pursuit of its namesake. I'm not currently up to another try at Ulysses (especially since I just bought Clarissa!), but one of these proverbial days, I'll get back around to it. In the meantime, I'm reading a lot of Elizabeth Gaskell and intending to do a lot of reading of Moby Dick.
