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| "Here the driver broke into a trot, and the old man started to run behind the hearse—sobbing loudly, but with the motion of his running ever and anon causing the sobs to quaver and become broken off. Next he lost his hat, the poor old fellow, yet would not stop to pick it up, even though the rain was beating upon his head, and a wind was rising and the sleet kept stinging and lashing his face. It seemed as though he were impervious to the cruel elements as he ran from one side of the hearse to the other—the skirts of his old greatcoat flapping about him like a pair of wings. From every pocket of the garment protruded books, while in his hand he carried a specially large volume, which he hugged closely to his breast. The passers-by uncovered their heads and crossed themselves as the cortege passed, and some of them, having done so, remained staring in amazement at the poor old man. Every now and then a book would slip from one of his pockets and fall into the mud; whereupon somebody, stopping him, would direct his attention to his loss, and he would stop, pick up the book, and again set off in pursuit of the hearse."
-Dostoevsky, Poor Folk
The old man is the father of the one that is dead and in the hearse. The books belonged to the son. I just found this scene so heartbreaking. fjsgkffjgf. :( | |
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| I know I should have asked this question last week, but better late than never. What were your fantasy fiction highlights of 2009?
What were the best fantasy books of 2009?
And what were the best things you read in the genre last year, regardless of their original publication date. | |
|
| We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages. | |
|
| "You don't understand what I mean," says her mother. "I'm trying to tell you. What perturbs me, in the few quiet moments I have when not worrying about feeding myself and my ugly daughters, is that life has wrung from me any ability to respond to the beauty of the world. I'm not sure I ever had the ability in the first place, even as a child. Whether it be Young Woman with Tulips," she goes on, holding her hand up high, "or this portrait of a burgher, or that study of a sleeping housemaid, or, for that matter, the moon that spills its cold light on this floor. I derive no pleasure from any of these effects. I look on them coldly and without interest. Is it my eyes, I wonder, or is it my soul that is bruised?"
-Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Gregory Maguire | |
|
| Yola was in a foul mood. She had discovered that morning, don't ask how, that the Slovak women who shared their hotel room had no pubic hair. How could this be permitted? Presumably they were not born this way -- well, presumably they were, but acquired it in the natural course of things, and had taken unnatural steps to remove it. There are many bad things that can be said about communism, but one thing is certain, in communist times women did not abuse their pubic hair in this way -- a practice which is unnatural, unsightly, undignified and, without being too specific, potentially dangerous. | |
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|  Stones from the River Ursula Hegi Historical fiction 525 pages  Returning to Burgdorf, the small German community she memorably depicted in Floating in My Mother's Palm, Hegi captures the events and atmosphere in the country prior, during and after WW II. Again she has produced a powerful novel whose chilling candor and resonant moral vision serve a dramatic story. With a sure hand, Hegi evokes the patterns of small-town life, individualized here in dozens of ordinary people who display the German passion for order, obedience and conformity, enforced for centuries by rigid class differences and the strictures of the Catholic church. The protagonist is Trudi Montag, the Zwerg (dwarf) who becomes the town's librarian; (she and most of the other characters figured in the earlier book). A perennial outsider because of her deformity, Trudi exploits her gift for eliciting peoples' secrets--and often maliciously reveals them in suspenseful gossip. But when Hitler ascends to power, she protects those who have been kind to her, including two Jewish families who, despite the efforts of Trudi, her father and a few others, are fated to perish in the Holocaust. Trudi is a complex character, as damaged by her mother's madness and early death as she is by the later circumstances of her life, and she is sometimes cruel, vindictive and vengeful. It is fascinating to watch her mature, as she experiences love and loss and finds wisdom, eventually learning to live with the vast amnesia that grips formerly ardent Nazis after the war. One hopes that Hegi will continue to depict the residents of Burgdorf--Germany in microcosm--thus deepening our understanding of a time and place. I am so glad that we picked this one for our first book club read of the new year! The only reason that I did not give this book five stars is because it seemed to drag and lag on at the beginning and end of the book. There were times that I found Trudi to be annoying, honestly. However, I do not know how it is to grow up in that time period and to be like her, so I cannot say if her reactions to people/things is wrong, but I don't think she had a heathly outlook on things all of the time. If you are into pre-WWII and holocaust survival stories, then I highly recommend this book. I am now reading another book by Hegi, Floating in My Mother's Palm, in which Trudi plays a minor role. | |
|
| I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing! | |
|
| ...The ultimate truth is penultimately always a falsehood. He who will be proved right in the end appears to be wrong and harmful before it.
But who will be proved right? It will only be known later. Meanwhile he is bound to act on credit and to sell his soul to the devil, in the hope of history's absolution. | |
|
| ♥ The Darwin Awards, named in honor of Charles Darwin, salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it - thereby ensuring that the next generation is descended from one less idiot. We applaud the heroic self-sacrifice of these noble men and women, who gave their all to improve the human race.
Of necessity, this Award is usually bestowed posthumously.
♥ In order to qualify for a Darwin Award a person must remove himself from the gene pool via an "astounding misapplication of judgement." Three liters of sherry up the butt can only be described as astounding.
♥ This is a true Darwin Award trifecta: two people die, while in the act of procreation, due to an astonishingly poor decision. Bottom line: If you put yourself in a precarious "position" at the edge of a pointy roof, you may well find yourself coming and going at the same time.
♥ The Darwin Awards provide ample evidence that huimans have no problem shuffling off this mortal coil as a result of plain old bad decisions. But adding mind-addling drugs to the decision-making process further impairs judgment and increases risk-taking behavior, setting the stage for some amusingly lethal acts of stupidity. From jumping into a bear cage while drunk (page 223) to partaking in alcohol enemas (page 4) acute inebriation has been the impetus behind many Darwin Awards.
♥ In a world full of wonders man invented boredom. So work time becomes playtime. If you work in an office, you reproduce your naughty bits on the copy machine. If you work for an arc welding company? A plastic bucket, welding materials, and a single spark can combine for a playdate with a bang.
♥ Any story that begins, "Well I was building a pipe bomb," can never end well.
♥ FAQ: How can I avoid a Darwin Award?
Take a few personal pledges:
"I will keep pointy metal objects away from electrical wires."
"I will not suck bees into a vacuum cleaner."
"I will not disable the safety."
"No rooftop romantic interludes for me!"
Beware of the following ideas:
"Instead of following standard procedure..."
"Attempting to impress the lady..."
"So he could save himself time..."
"They tested the ice by jumping up and down."
"A case of beer went into the planning."
"He is still convinced that the toadstool is harmless."
"He refused to let anyone call an ambulance."
"He thought he could outsmart the police."
"The diver had kissed hundreds of sharks."
"He deceived the radiation control supervisor."
"It's a nice snake. Nothing can happen."
Heed good advice:
"Never surf on a flooded street."
"We urge people not to drive with a burning grill in the vehicle."
"The stupidity of cutting through power cables should be obvious."
"Tossing random chemicals down the drain is not wise."
"Only an idiot would jump into the bear cage."
~~The Darwin Awards: Next Evolution, Chlorinating the Gene Pool by Wendy Northcutt. | |
|
| In reference to a conversation I was just having:
"No one can read two thousand books. In the four hundred years I have lived, I've not read more than a half dozen. And in any case, it is not the reading that matters, but the rereading. Printing, which is now forbidden, was one of the worst evils of mankind, for it tended to multiply unnecessary texts to a dizzying degree."
And in reference to pretty much my view of power:
"Elections were called, wars were declared, taxes were levied, fortunes were confiscated, arrests were ordered, and attempts were made at imposing censorship--but no one on the planet paid any attention."
--Jorge Luis Borges, "A Weary Man's Utopia" | |
|
| “Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.”
“I hate them for it,” cried Hallward. “An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray.”
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray | |
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| "A stranger enters a god-forsaken town locked in conflict between two factions, where both sides are equally bad and repugnant, and the audience welcomes the swathe of destruction that the hero creates as he exacts justice. There is something inherently appealing about this scenario. It speaks to a desire latent within all of us: that some agency will come and clean up the mess we have made of our society." --Justin Howe, "Yojimbo", Directory of World Cinema: Japan Free digital copy of this book available at http://worldcinemadirectory.org/ . It's decent, I'm disappointed to already know quite a bit about these movies from my own viewing of them and reading into Donald Richie and Tom Mes, but for anyone interested in Japanese cinema in general and not already familiar with it, it's a good place to start. | |
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| I hacked the ljdump Python script someone else wrote to make an untagged entries list exporter: http://code.google.com/p/ljuntagged/downloads/listI tested it on Livejournal and Dreamwidth, and it seems to work, so hooray. It mmmay work on other LJesque sites, but I don't have accounts on those, so... If you have input on this, feel free to provide input. I'm very new to Python, so I'm sure I missed something. Yay! | |
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| My heart is weak and unreliable. I try to burden it as little as possible. If something is going to have an impact, I direct it elsewhere. My gut, for example, or my lungs. When I pass a mirror and catch a glimpse of myself, or I’m at the bus stop and some kids come up behind me and say, “Who smells shit?”—small daily humiliations that are par for the course—these I take, generally speaking, in my liver. The pancreas I reserve for being struck by all that’s been lost. It’s true that there’s so much, and the organ is so small. But. You would be surprised how much it can take. When I wake up and my fingers are stiff, almost certainly I was dreaming of my childhood. All the times I have suddenly remembered that my parents are dead (even now it still surprises me to exist in the world while those who made me have ceased to exist): my knees. To everything a season; to every time I’ve woken only to make the mistake of believing for a moment that someone is sleeping beside me: a hemorrhoid. Loneliness: there is no organ that can take it all.
- The Last Words on Earth, Nicole Krauss
(ie the short story upon which The History of Love is based) | |
|
| by Michael Capobianco
As part of fixing the process for claiming works, the Settlement Administrator has issued SIMPLIFIED PROCEDURE FOR CLAIMING YOUR BOOKS AND INSERTS The gist of it is that authors may now submit a list of their works by mail or email.
…authors, their heirs and/or agents and other Rightsholders may initiate the claiming process by sending a list of their works to the Settlement Administrator. A list of both author(s) and Book or Insert titles(s) is sufficient, although the process of claiming your works will be much easier if you are also able to provide any or all of the following information: ISBN, publisher, publication date and place of publication…
but note that
If you choose this simplified procedure, please be patient, as it will likely take the Settlement Administrator several months to contact you, and you may not be contacted until after the Settlement is approved by the Court and there can be no more appeals. There is, however, no reason to worry.
Mirrored from SFWA | Comment at SFWA | |
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| “Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance … till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake.” | |
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| An online friend of mine recently mentioned how she always wanted to write. She asked if I had any advice on getting started. Other than start writing, I wondered. Writing is weird that way. Nobody ever asks my XY -- a musician -- "Oh, I always wanted to play guitar and sing; how do I get started?" I think the answer is so obvious, they never bother to ask. If they want to play guitar and sing, they'll learn to play guitar and they'll learn to sing. I gave my friend a list of my favorite resources -- Romance Writers of America and Alicia Rasley's Writing Corner to start -- and suggested she, you know, get some words on paper (or on a screen, or whatever). Afterward, another friend said perhaps I had done the aspiring writer a disservice by offering any advice until there was something to talk about. Because until the words are given a life outside her head, she won't be a writer. ( Read more... ) | |
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| ♥ Blind dates and setups of all kinds are completely useless, I long ago decided. Most intelligent men and women like to go forth into the world and stalk their own prey, choose their own mirrors of dysfunction, and repeat their own patterns of abusive relationships, without the well-meaning but futile efforts of friends.
♥ ...He looks away, his other hand quickly swiping at his eye. Was that a tear?
I fight the urge to gather him in my arms and cradle his head against my breasts. And rip off his clothes.
♥ ..As my bedside candles illuminate a page in the precious first edition I hold in my hands, I understand, as I have long understood through my own insatiable appetite for reading and rereadings of Jane Austen's six novels, why children want the same stories read to them a thousand times. There is comfort in the familiarity of it all, in the knowledge that all will turn out well, that Elizabeth and Darcy will end up together in Pemberley, that Anne Eliot will pierce Captain Wentworth's soul, and that Mr. Elton will be stuck with his caro sposa for the rest of his life. It is so unlike the unpredictability and unfairness of real-life endings and the half-life stasis I inhabit.
♥ We walk on for another minute while I contemplate the prudishness of a society that can hardly admit to the means by which the human species reproduces itself, let alone that those same humans actually participate in the process.
♥ The candlelight casts a flattering glow on everyone in the room, from the servants and old gentlemen in their powdered wigs and the young men with their hair au naturel, to the women, octogenarians and rosy-cheeked teenagers alike, clad in the uniform empire waistlines and long gloves, necks glittering with diamonds, gold, and pearls. This is the perfect light for a woman forced to appear in public without makeup.
Even the smell of the body odor has lost its usual overpowering quality tonight, heavily laced as it is with the mingled scents of soaps, perfumes, and the wax of a thousand melting candles. I can almost understand for a second, even in all my twenty-first-century fastidiousness, that one could come to like the scent of a ballroom. Is that Jane's sensibility, I wonder, that's responding to this particular mélange of scents? Or am I, my real self, responding to something else? Certainly I don't need a nineteenth-century frame of reference to pick up the erotic charge underlying the formality of the curtseys, bows, and nods of this elaborately stylized mating ritual.
~~Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler. | |
|
| Your thoughts
day-dreaming in a pudden'-soft head
like an overfed lackey on a greasy sofa,
I'll tease with my heart's blood-streaming shred,
deride you, audacious, till you smart all over.
In my soul there isn't a single grey hair,
no senile tenderness does it hold!
My voice thundering everywhere,
I go, - handsome,
twenty-two-years old.
Tender lovers
with violins vie.
The ruder compete with cymbals.
But can anyone turn inside out like I
to be nothing but lips, bodiless and limbless?
Come and I'll teach you,
Miss Now-Now-No-Fooling,
angelic, stiff as the wall of a precipice.
Come you, too, who skim over lips as coolly
as a cook skims through books of cooking recipes.
If you want -
I can be all crazy flesh,
the antipode of polite romance.
Or
sweet and delicate as you wish;
not a man but a cloud in pants.
I'll never believe there's a flowery Nice.
Today once again I sing glory
to men who've sinned till they're sick of vice,
to women worn as a trite old story.
V.V. Mayakovsky | |
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| i just started this today and i already love it! some choice quotes PRIOR: I... I'm sorry. I usually say, "Fuck the truth," but mostly, the truth fucks you. ( and another ) | |
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| As some of you know, I have been working for Adventures in Fiction, a creative writing mentoring programme based in London, which takes a limited number of apprentices each year for various genres. I will now be offering this service privately, and hope to be able to offer it both online and in person (I met my previous student on a regular basis, but this is obviously dependent on geographical location!). ( Read more... )Please email me at liz(at)arkady(dot)org for further information, including a full breakdown of costs. | |
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