February 2012
20 posts
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a southerner shares his thoughts on race...
Very interesting. I’ll be looking forward to the next in the series!
citizenkerry:
Last week I asked if you’d help me understand America. I was thrilled to hear from people, and hope to feature everyone who expressed interest. Today’s the first in the series.
Cullen is a 38-year old married father of three who lives in Memphis. He was born in rural Louisiana, and has lived everywhere...
Need advice?
theparisreview:
Get advice from our weekly column: advice@theparisreview.org
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Happy Birthday Mabel Smith Douglass →
Founder of the New Jersey College for Women, later renamed Douglass College, now Douglass Residential College after the recent reorganization of Rutgers University.
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“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal,...”
– John Green, The Fault in Our Stars (via bookmania)
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“The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature,...”
– Eleanor Roosevelt in The Autobiography Of Eleanor Roosevelt (via poydrasreview)
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Lazy Self-Indulgent Book Reviews: The First Four... →
Ha! Awesome! I remember thinking he sucked after they got married too.
lazybookreviews:
Faithful readers remember that I frequently rail against Almanzo Wilder’s mediocre qualities as a husband.
Don’t get me wrong, kids, he was AWESOME as a sweetheart. He had horses, he walked her home from church, he picked her up at that horrible boarding house. He only BRIEFLY floated that…
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The Millions Rounds Up Literary Tumblrs. (We'd... →
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What I'm Reading
The two books I ordered during the Powell’s free shipping event (event?) came today -Green Girl by Kate Zambreno andGlory Goes and Gets Some by Emily Carter.
But I’m honoring my promise to revisit Hemingway and reading The Sun Also Rises.
I just finished An Almost Perfect Moment by Binnie Kirschenbaum, which I liked a lot.
(I had to pay a $10.60 fine at the library in order to...
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"It’s fine for a writer to have a quirky or... →
Read this piece by Lisa Levy on The Rumpus. It touches on so many of the things I agonize about concerning my writing and my day job.
I feel you, T.S. Eliot, I really do!
My job is not strange or quirky either. I wouldn’t put it in my contributor’s bio.
January 2012
46 posts
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The Game
‘My darling child,’ said Heidler with calmness, ‘your whole point of view and your whole attitude to life is impossible and wrong and you’ve got to change it for everybody’s sake.
He went on to explain that one had to keep up appearances. That everybody had to. Everybody had for everybody’s sake to keep up appearances. It was everybody’s duty, it was...
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“The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to...”
– John Updike (via aaknopf)
Nobody can make me feel inferior without my consent!
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Gender bias at NPR — and what it reveals about the... →
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“A poem, you could say, is like a bell: if you stuff a bunch of dirty laundry...”
– Renee Ashley, great poet, great lady, dog lover
Read the entire interview. Renee is the featured poet in the Winter 2012 IthacaLit.
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The Rejectionist interviews Kate Zambreno →
Really looking forward to Zambreno’s new book, Heroines.
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“The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.”
– Edith Wharton (via millionsmillions)
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“I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even...”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson (via doubledaybooks)
Me too, Ralphie! But it’s my intent to start keeping track this year. I’m putting it off though because the first book I read this year was The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. They were making a big deal about it on The Leonard Lopate Show! I...
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Messing with Memoir →
I’m not sure what I think about this.
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My day job
I have finally (?) begun to write a story partially inspired by my day job. Artisty and writery types often say to me that I must get so many good ideas or stories from my job, but most of them say it with sympathy and pity and like they don’t quite believe it and just need something nice to say. For my part, I’m sure my feelings of inadequacy and embarrassment come through when I...
“Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out...”
– Flannery O’Connor (via pavorst)
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A new book about introverts
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain
Seems interesting.
“It’s the extrovert, prancing around, dying for a bit of fun—that’s the person you’ve got to be wary of.”
Jean Rhys Good Morning Midnight
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A writing tic I'm tired of seeing
Paragraph construction that goes like this: Statement about how things are/should be/are generally accepted to be. The words “And yet” with a period after. Evidence of how the opposite of the statement is actually the case.
Please no more “And yet.”
I’m also not fond of: Statement. “But” with a period or exclamation point after. Evidence. I see this...
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The anger of the male novelist →
“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be...”
– C.S. Lewis (via doubledaybooks)
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And Jenny's Head Fell Off
That’s the last line in a scary story I remember from childhood. The girl in the story always wears a ribbon around her neck, and no one around her knows why. Some quick research on Google Books tells me that the story is “The Green Ribbon” from the collection In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories edited by Alvin Schwartz.
Damn, I remember so well the elementary school librarian...
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The Rejectionist made me have a vampire dream
Why had I never read The Rejectionist before? I have been missing out. Anyway, as of yesterday, I have read it. She makes the point in many posts that people often bring up vampires when they hear you’re a writer.
So last night I had a dream. I was in a class taught by a person who, in my waking life, had told me that my novel is not very good nor interesting. The class met in my elementary...
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“I used to believe that if someone else is really funny, then I’m obviously less...”
– Elissa Bassist
I am guilty of this. Read the entire piece.
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“A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.”
– William Faulkner
(My lesson today. In light of doubts and panic about my publishing prospects.)
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“The more I’m in this business the more I realize that I am not in control...”
– Writer, Rejected of Literary Rejections on Display
Depressing mystery indeed.
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“I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.”
– Margaret Atwood (via bookmania)
Love her!