"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.
