MARGINALIA: The stuff written in margins of books, often by way of sly commentary - or criticism, such as, "In case of fire, throw this in."
This is taken from an article in CALIFORNIA magazine March/April 2009 had a brief alphabetical Humor Lexicon, author doesn't appear.
5/28/09
5/26/09
SPELLING BEE'S FOR REALLY COOL NERDS
When I was a kid it was honored that boys were good in math while girls were good in spelling... Sexism like this was totally acceptable. Who can say how many girls were afraid to be good in math because it might mean (horrors!) being thought of as not feminine? Here's breaking Yahoo News "I LOVE NERDS."
5/20/09
READING FICTION versus NONFICTION (AND MY BLOG COMMENTARIES)
READING FICTION versus NONFICTION
by Christine Trzyna
by Christine Trzyna
I've been reading more non-fiction than fiction. But I do love fiction. I write less about fiction in this blog because I have focused on excerpting passages from books that I think illustrate interesting language, or information that is thought provoking, or which stood out when I was reading. For the purposes of the usually brief commentary in the blog - on line journal - format, I find it much more difficult to "star" a passage from fiction. I also feel it is difficult to illustrate through an excerpt or quote an important element of fiction, and that is the plot.
I often treat myself to reading an author who I've never read before, especially if a friend has referred me to a book or it appears on the library New Book Shelf or in the LA TIMES BOOK REVIEW. This year I have read a couple fiction stories that I have not commented upon but enjoyed for one reason or another. I recently read and enjoyed SAIL by James Patterson and Howard Rougan, C 2008 by James Patterson only, and put out by Little, Brown, and Company. NY. It falls into a category that I really enjoy SEA TALES.
5/14/09
From MISQUOTING JESUS by BART D. EHRMAN
MISQUOTING JESUS
The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
by Bard D. Ehrman C 2005
Harper/SanFrancisco publishers
page 38... "As it turns out, even defining what it means to read and write is a very complicated business. Many people can read but are unable to compose a sentence, for example. And what does it mean to read? Are people literate if they can manage to make sense of the comic strips but not the editorial page? Can people be said to be able to write if they can sign their name but cannot copy a page of a text?...'
"Throughout most of antiquity, since most people could not write, there were local "readers" and "writers" who hired out their services to the people who needed to conduct business that required written texts; tax receipts, legal contracts, licenses, personal letters, and the like...'
The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
by Bard D. Ehrman C 2005
Harper/SanFrancisco publishers
page 38... "As it turns out, even defining what it means to read and write is a very complicated business. Many people can read but are unable to compose a sentence, for example. And what does it mean to read? Are people literate if they can manage to make sense of the comic strips but not the editorial page? Can people be said to be able to write if they can sign their name but cannot copy a page of a text?...'
"Throughout most of antiquity, since most people could not write, there were local "readers" and "writers" who hired out their services to the people who needed to conduct business that required written texts; tax receipts, legal contracts, licenses, personal letters, and the like...'
5/13/09
5/9/09
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ON LINE
THE MAIN LIBRARY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA... they have a copy of everything ever written by an American !
5/8/09
WRITERS ALMANAC
Here's the link for WRITERS ALMANAC... Today is Gary Snyder's birthday.. hear his poetry...
5/1/09
From TONY HILLERMAN SELDOM DISAPPOINTED
Tony Hillerman
Seldom Disappointed - a Memoir
C 2001 author
Harper Colins Publishers
page 233
"Friedman taught a writing course that focused on the essay. He was himself an author, which impressed me, and he saw promise in my work - which impressed me even more. Early in this course he asked me why I never wrote in the first person. I told him journalists are conditioned to be invisible, to be what Walter Lippmann called "the fly on the wall," seeing everything and feeling nothing. Try it, he said. Do me a memoir bit... I proposed a thousand words on something that had happened last months. No, he said."
Seldom Disappointed - a Memoir
C 2001 author
Harper Colins Publishers
page 233
"Friedman taught a writing course that focused on the essay. He was himself an author, which impressed me, and he saw promise in my work - which impressed me even more. Early in this course he asked me why I never wrote in the first person. I told him journalists are conditioned to be invisible, to be what Walter Lippmann called "the fly on the wall," seeing everything and feeling nothing. Try it, he said. Do me a memoir bit... I proposed a thousand words on something that had happened last months. No, he said."
Dr. Morris Friedman taught Tony Hillerman at the University of New Mexico, English department in winter 1963...
4/25/09
4/23/09
JEAN COCTEAU quote
page 67
"One day, one of our writers whom I used to reproach with writing best sellers and with never expressing himself, led me in front of a mirror.
"I want to be strong, " he said. "Look at yourself. I want to eat. I want to travel. I want to live. I do not want to become a fountain pen."
From OPIUM, the Diary of a Cure, Peter Owen Limited Publishers, London MCMLVII
"One day, one of our writers whom I used to reproach with writing best sellers and with never expressing himself, led me in front of a mirror.
"I want to be strong, " he said. "Look at yourself. I want to eat. I want to travel. I want to live. I do not want to become a fountain pen."
From OPIUM, the Diary of a Cure, Peter Owen Limited Publishers, London MCMLVII
4/22/09
WINSTON CHURCHILL Quote
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm." - Winston Churchhill
4/20/09
PULITZER PRIZES ANNOUNCED ! LAS VEGAS SUN CONGRADULATIONS ALEXANDRA BERZON !
" The Las Vegas newspaper was cited for the "courageous reporting" of Alexandra Berzon, whose stories about lax enforcement of safety rules on the Las Vegas Strip led to changes in policy and improved workplace conditions.The death toll on the Strip had reached nine in 16 months as casino giants undertook a $32 billion building boom, including the largest private commercial development in U.S. history. Berzon described how the rush to build quickly and at highly congested work sites led to safety shortcuts that contributed to deaths."
4/18/09
SYLVIA PLATH and TED HUGHES son - Another Suicide
Just reading DIVINE MADNESS which profiles Sylvia Plath among many other creative geniuses and their struggle with mental illness...
OR is mental illness and creative genius linked? Sylvia and Ted's son, who also struggled with depression... and I dare say, notoriety. (Link to Yahoo article may be live if you click on the title!)
"It is with profound sorrow that I must announce the death of my brother, Nicholas Hughes, who died by his own hand on Monday 16th March 2009 at his home in Alaska," his sister Frieda Hughes said in a statement published by The Times of London.
There is one comment I have to make... If you get seasonal depression don't live in Alaska or anywhere where the sun doesn't shine almost everyday. Get yourself into the sun belt!
OR is mental illness and creative genius linked? Sylvia and Ted's son, who also struggled with depression... and I dare say, notoriety. (Link to Yahoo article may be live if you click on the title!)
"It is with profound sorrow that I must announce the death of my brother, Nicholas Hughes, who died by his own hand on Monday 16th March 2009 at his home in Alaska," his sister Frieda Hughes said in a statement published by The Times of London.
There is one comment I have to make... If you get seasonal depression don't live in Alaska or anywhere where the sun doesn't shine almost everyday. Get yourself into the sun belt!
4/17/09
UCLA and LOS ANGELES TIMES FESTIVAL OF BOOKS
IS APRIL 25th and 26th this year....
I usually go when I'm in town. I find the panel discussions interesting but I wish there were more concentration on individual authors speaking and reading...
Free tickets if you hurry.
I usually go when I'm in town. I find the panel discussions interesting but I wish there were more concentration on individual authors speaking and reading...
Free tickets if you hurry.
4/15/09
GORE VIDAL Quote From PALIMPSEST
From PALIMPSEST a memoir by GORE VIDAL
page 239 hardback
...Although I have had several lifelong friends who were writers, I have never much enjoyed the company of writers. I also did not realize, nor did the others at ... gatherings, that we had arrived on the scene to witness the end of the novel. Today the word novelist still enjoys considerable prestige, so much so that both Mailer and Capote chose to call works of journalism novels. But that was thirty years ago. Today an ambitious writer would be well advised to label any work of his imagination nonfiction, or perhaps, a memoir.
One day, in the spring on 1950, I was invited to lunch by a very ambitious, very young southern novelist who wanted to shine in those social circles that are, for the most part, closed to very young ambitious southern writers. Like Capote, he wanted to be accepted by what was known than as cafe society, and like Capote, he had mistaken it for the great and largely invisible to outsiders, world that Proust had so obsessively retrieved from lost time. In later years , I liked to pretend that Capote had actually picked the right ladder and I would observe,... "Truman Capote has tried, with some success, to get into a world that I have tried, with some success to get out of." Truman was surprisingly innocent. He mistook the rich who liked publicity for the ruling class, and he made himself far too much at home among them, only to find that he was to them no more than an amusing person who could be dispensed with, as he was when he published lurid gossip about them. Although of little interest or value in themselves, these self-invented figures are nothing if not tough, and quite as heartless as the real things, as the dying Swan discovered when he found that his life meant less to his esteemed ... than her pair of red shoes."
...Although I have had several lifelong friends who were writers, I have never much enjoyed the company of writers. I also did not realize, nor did the others at ... gatherings, that we had arrived on the scene to witness the end of the novel. Today the word novelist still enjoys considerable prestige, so much so that both Mailer and Capote chose to call works of journalism novels. But that was thirty years ago. Today an ambitious writer would be well advised to label any work of his imagination nonfiction, or perhaps, a memoir.
One day, in the spring on 1950, I was invited to lunch by a very ambitious, very young southern novelist who wanted to shine in those social circles that are, for the most part, closed to very young ambitious southern writers. Like Capote, he wanted to be accepted by what was known than as cafe society, and like Capote, he had mistaken it for the great and largely invisible to outsiders, world that Proust had so obsessively retrieved from lost time. In later years , I liked to pretend that Capote had actually picked the right ladder and I would observe,... "Truman Capote has tried, with some success, to get into a world that I have tried, with some success to get out of." Truman was surprisingly innocent. He mistook the rich who liked publicity for the ruling class, and he made himself far too much at home among them, only to find that he was to them no more than an amusing person who could be dispensed with, as he was when he published lurid gossip about them. Although of little interest or value in themselves, these self-invented figures are nothing if not tough, and quite as heartless as the real things, as the dying Swan discovered when he found that his life meant less to his esteemed ... than her pair of red shoes."
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