9 posts tagged “book”
. . . a collaborative novel penned by both Lemony Snicket and J. K. Rowling. A Series of Unfortunate Career Decisions features as its protagonists a best-selling husband-and-wife fantasy-writing team who decide to kill the hero who's earned them a fortune. Unable to come up with another equally exciting creation, the writers turn to crime, black magic and drugs in an attempt to revive their failed career.
Yesterday, after Lindy in the Park, I went to hear Lord Whimsy speak at Cody's downtown. He was quite amusing, if not the best public speaker. Nobody's perfect at everything.
I'd brought my copy of Swindle magazine and a box of the delicious pumpkin cookies, because I really can't justify buying a $15 book purely for entertainment purposes right now. As thanks for the cookies, Lord Whimsy gave me his touring copy of the book, The Affected Provincial's Companion, Vol. One! And he signed both the book and the magazine. I like having autographs about cookies. I'm going to try getting more!
In summation: I highly recommend Lord Whimsy for his style, prose, humor, and generous nature.
One of the wonderful things about artists is their ability to express the sorts of things that I've been feeling and thinking and unable to put in to words. That's precisely how I feel about this passage by Carrie Fisher:
The New Real was not being real, it was acting real. Suzanne was in the business of seeming--of entertaining people with her ways of seeming real. Portraying reality had become her way of experiencing it. She knew how to act like a regular person. She was self-consciously unselfconscious. She didn't mind being watched, but on some level she minded being recorded.
[Underline mine.]
I'm no Hollywood actress, but I do feel that I perform my life. I can't just be. I cannot 'naturally' express myself. I can't interact with the world without a self-reflexive awareness of my behavior. I'm still sincere. I mean the things I'm performing (most of the time). I just can't express them without performing them. If I'm left without performance, I clam up and hide in a corner. If I can't perform it, I can't do it at all.
I've accepted that this is my way of living. It used to make me feel uncomfortable. But this is just me. This is the way I think about my behavior. It works. No need to change.
I'm really looking forward to seeing Carrie's live show when I fly down to SoCal for the Christmas holiday!
What character in a book can you connect with or relate to the most?
Submitted by Eating A Book.
Mostly, I'd say that a whole lot of "Mediated" by Thomas De Zengotita feels as though it was written about me.
As far as fictional characters are concerned, I'll just say the lead in Carrie Fisher's "The Best Awful". Not because I'm a Hollywood type or divorcee or mother or drug addict. But after being in denial about my bipolar diagnosis for several hours, I bought this book and it was like group therapy. I kept thinking, Yes, that's like what I feel, only moreso! and Wow, I'm glad I'm not an addict! I'd love to be as funny as any Carrie Fisher character, but I don't measure up.
I just started reading "Postcards from the Edge" this morning. Unlike the movie, I don't have to actually see the ugly '80s clothes. Yay!
I'm so glad Moleskine is making guide books now. I'm eager to get one for SF! I'd attempted to make something like this myself but gave up as it's a lot of work. So exciting!
Jacked from thebookishpixie:
Instructions:
Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you've read, italicize
the ones you might read in the future, cross out the ones you won't
touch with a 10 foot pole, underline the ones on your book shelf, and do not do anything the ones you've never even heard of.
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkein)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkein)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Gift & Award Bible NIV (Various)
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
59. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveler's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brahares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones' Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73.Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard's First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)
trice (tris), n. a very short time; moment; instant. [abstracted from phrase at a trice]
Thank you, Thorndike Barnhart Comprehensive Desk Dictionary, for a fun 'new' word!
wooo! Neil's in town! I went to his Cody's Books reading in Berkeley last night. I met a couple of fellow fans --whose names I've forgotten-- who kept me giggling while waiting for Neil to come out. One even drew my attention to National Novel Writing Month (November), which sounds like a fun challenge for someone who can actually write plot and dialogue (i.e. not me).
Neil started by reading my request, The Day the Saucers Came. Yay! I'm so tangentially special!
His tight tee and low-slung jeans made him look both:
Stephin Merritt will be writing the music for Coraline: The Musical!!!
- Rather punk
- Like a middle-aged man who probly shouldn't be shopping at, I dunno, The Gap or H&M or wherever he bought those
Quite a lot of fun. Sadly, the cookies at Comic Relief weren't as good as those served at their post-Sin City screening the weekend of WonderCon. Still - free cookies!
