The Bookity Book & Tall Grass Salon

maxmordon

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Will keep that in mind, Maryn! Some authors do shine earlier.

I never read Elmer Gantry. It was in the "adult" section of the library. I remember the movie--I had to wait to watch it until it came on TV because it was an "adult" movie. Either the good parts were all cut out on TV or the times had passed it up. By the time I saw it, it was pretty tame. Shirley Jones certainly wasn't Mama Partridge! --s6

The movie is about a fifth of the book, if I recall. The book ends with Gantry as a powerful clergyman reading to make an organization to keep America clean once for all. Frank, a liberal pastor and Elmer's counterpoint, gets almost lynched for supporting the theory of evolution and ends up deaf and blind due to the wounds.

Elmer does have sex with Shirley Jones' character in an altar adorned by crucifices, menorahs, Buddha statues and whatnot.
 

Kylabelle

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Good morning.

The Writer's Almanac for July 23, 2014

Too early in my brain for me to make much sense, I fear.

*sips coffee*

The poem is dear, with a stinger.

I didn't know that story about how the Detroit riot started. We humans sure have had a dark time of it!

Ford sold its first car on this date and Raymond Chandler was born. However you feel about that genre, he contributed a tremendous gift to our verbal culture, IMO.

*still taking in that story about Detroit and all we have to outgrow one way or another*
 

shakeysix

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Raymond Chandler--ex-tennis racket stringer, soldier, fruit picker, book keeper-- pulp fiction from a dead broke alcoholic, a genius, trained in the classics and going no where. Desperate to support the lovely, rich, older woman he married as a kid, Chandler decided that if Dashiel Hammet could make money writing for the pulps, he could too. So he gave up on sappy poetry and invented Marlowe-- a knight errant in a fedora and silk tie.

His use of language is breathtaking; his scathing, "regional" descriptions of southern California have become classics in themselves. He boiled his characters hard but left them enough humanity to make them live for the reader, even after the book was closed. You know this guy is a hero to me! --s6
 
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lacygnette

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Good morning - sorta late. Love the Raymond Chandler story - egads. Maybe I should start rewriting some of the Munro stories LOL.

We just spent 2 hours shoveling gravel on our driveway - it's early but I'm ready for a G&T. However, I had an idea that might let me break into the new novel I'm planning; love physical labor - gets me out of the way of myself.

Oh, and it seems odd that the day of the first car was also the day of the riot. A beginning and an end. You couldn't write that in a story without getting dinged.
 

Kylabelle

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Yes! The almanac often presents such juxtapositions. It's delightful.

Though of course the riot had nothing to do with auto manufacture at all in any direct way.

And really, I think presenting it in fiction, or presenting that kind of thing in fiction, can be done, if the touch is subtle enough.

*slides a G&T over*

Ah, never too early for one of those here! :D
 

Kylabelle

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It's all in the wrist.

I do it with mirrors.

They taught me well

in cyber Mixology school.

~~~
sorry, I was just immersed in the Poetry crit pages. does something to me.

:gone:
 

Kylabelle

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Good morning.

The Writer's Almanac for July 24, 2014


The poem today is one I wish I had written. Holy wow. It has in it everything I want in a poem.

Amelia Earhart, Robert Graves, Zelda Fitzgerald, John D. MacDonald, and Alexandre Dumas were born, and Brigham Young and his followers arrived at the Valley of the Great Salt Lake.

Here, it's raining. I hope it rains all day. We need it badly.
 

Maryn

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Amazing poem. I wonder if schools taught more poetry like this and less of the more traditional kind written hundreds of years ago if more people would come to like and seek out new poetry. I certainly wasn't taught anything written after the Great War.

Today's our wedding anniversary. We are celebrating it stinky, since this vacation house has a hot water issue. Ugh. I can't deal with a cold shower!

Maryn, sissy
 

lacygnette

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Happy anniversary! Mine's coming up soon...although since Mother died, we are pushed to remember. She used to always send a card. Somehow we aren't the type to celebrate; we have so much fun everyday, maybe it isn't necessary?

Again, have a great one, stinky or not!
 

Kylabelle

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Maryn, Happy Anniversary! I love it. The Stinky Year. Hahahahaha!
 

Maryn

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The hot water, she is back! I luxuriated in the shower, since I went last.

I suppose a fussier person might want to wash the sheets we slept on while dirty, but I'm not her.

Maryn, in a better frame of mind
 

Kylabelle

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a hot shower when you didn't necessarily expect to have one is one of life's chief delights. Glad it happened on your anniversary.
 

lacygnette

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Good morning everyone. I was reading the longlist for the Booker. Here's a description of one of the books, a real outlier:

Paul Kingsnorth: The Wake
“With my scramasax i saws up until his throta is cut." Eco-activist Kingsnorth crowd-funded his debut novel, a story of 11th-century English guerrillas fighting the Norman invasion written in a “shadow” version of Old English. The Guardian review declared it “a literary triumph”.

Here's a link to the list - some of these go right on my to read pile: http://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2014/jul/23/man-booker-prize-2014-longlist-in-pictures
 

Kylabelle

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A shadow version of Old English sounds definitely intriguing but I wonder how readable it really is.

Good (late) morning! The almanac finally arrived, so

The Writer's Almanac for July 25, 2014

My ice cream truck memories are not quite a match for what's in the poem; for one thing, the ice cream from the trucks never tasted as good in my mouth as it did in my anticipation.

It's funny to me that the poet specifies "Nutty Buddies". I once worked in a factory that made and printed the paper wrappers for those. It was a right hellhole, in South Baltimore. A city where, interestingly enough, the ice cream trucks plied their trade all year long. Everywhere else, they are a summer event only, or everywhere else I've ever lived, which is a few places now.
 

Kylabelle

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Hi.

The Writer's Almanac for July 26, 2014

The poem today is very sweet.

George Bernard Shaw, Alduous Huxley, Carl Jung, and the U.S. Postal System share a birthday. I feel something could be made of those juxtapositions but it isn't coming to me.

Maybe Jean Shepherd would be able to make something of it. :D

*more coffee*
 

lacygnette

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Some good writers were born today according to the Almanac: Mukherjee and Joseph Mitchel. I like most the quote about Elizabeth Hardwick who, with 'some of her literary friends decided over dinner to found a book-reviewing journal called The New York Review of Books. She said it was dedicated to "the unusual, the difficult, the lengthy, the intransigent, and, above all, the interesting."'

That's where I'd like to go with my writing!
 

shakeysix

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Mine is staring me in the face with a mad dog growl. Summer is almost over, school will be starting in a few weeks, the house is still under construction and I have produced nothing creative since June. I plan to step out of the bar until I have 10 pages indicative of progress for each novel and a livable home. I might breeze through of a morning but I am rinsing my glass and turning in my napkin for now. If you want me I will be somewhere in time, on the Santa Fe Trail --s6
 
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Kylabelle

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Little Swan, so there were, many good writers noted yesterday. I'm also fond of the stories of the humble beginnings of institutions like NY Review of Books. :D

Shakey, we will miss you, that we will! Good journeying on that Trail, and good writing! We'll keep your glass clean and empty for your return.

Good morning!

The Writer's Almanac for July 28, 2014

We've got a poetry triple threat this morning. The featured poem is a chuckler by Robert Frost, with a twist at the end that's just a teensy bit morbid (as he often was).

Then, it's the birthday of both John Ashberry and Gerard Manley Hopkins. There's a poem of Asheberry's quoted in full that might be a response to the one by Frost, if somebody wanted to read it that way.

Have a good day, everyone. Chances are I'll be in the garden more than in the forums today. :hi:
 

shakeysix

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Couldn't pass up the almanac--love the poems. Another sign from them: I spent a good part of yesterday looking online for a long forgotten, miniscule stop on the Santa Fe Trail called Adam and Eve Creek. Most of yesterday was spent reading first hand accounts of life on the trail from the 1820s to the 1870s. Not that I haven't read them all before but was looking for a new angle. The thing that struck me most was the scattered spots of peace and beauty along the desert trail that travelers took the time to describe. Places like Middle Spring and the Black Pool are still beautiful but so much of the "Grandeur of God" has been lost.

My stories are set along the trail because that's where I live--between Fort Zarah and the Cimarron Cut Off. All of that research boiled down to a paragraph --like picking 4 buckets of chokecherries for two cups of jelly! Back to work, but thanks for the refreshing stop along the TRail K-belle--s6 PS--If I had time I would parody Frost's poem with Swannie's Saxon Shadow English but this is how a morning unravels!
 
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Chris P

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I love Robert Frost. He's so accessible.

Great to see everyone again! I've been traveling and internet has been HORRID. But I'm feeling the need to get back into the WIPs. I've been reading some widely acclaimed heavy hitters and that's been boosting my confidence. But, first things first (or is that "first thing's first?"--the first thing is first? Discuss in groups, then reconvene and present your group's discussion to the whole class. You have ten minutes.). I've got a few weeks of intense travel ahead that will see me through northern Uganda, Kampala, Entebbe, Victoria Falls in Zambia, Cornwall in England, then *drum roll* HOME!
 

lacygnette

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I love Hopkins - not particularly accessible, but the beauty of the language, all those knots of sound.

Hey Chris, fabulous travels. I've been to Cornwall...but not yet into Africa. What "heavy hitters" have you been reading? Old? New? I'm always looking for hints. I'm suggesting Anthony Marra's "A Constellation of Vital Phenomena" to everyone within ear shot. Literary? Absolutely. But plotted? Holy cow, yes.

And good morning to all! Hot sunny beautiful here. Shopping done. Today I'll have time to write.
 

Kylabelle

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Just stopping by briefly and sorry I missed the fly-throughs by Chris and Shakes! and glad to learn the Almanac is such a draw. :D

Chris, golly Moses but that is some traveling you're doing. And echoing Little Swan, I'd also like to know what heavy-hitters you been readin', to boost your confidence!

I did spend lots of time in the garden today. There are several areas I'm in mid-project with. One I call Hannah's Corner because it's in the corner of the fence next to Hannah's yard. On her side there's sidewalk along her house and a tiny strip of soil next to the chain link fence that is home to several noxious vines. One that likes it there is called Devil Vine because it has horrible thorns and is the very devil to root out; its roots are deep and strong. Sinewy, even.

Anyway, of course the vines are mostly on our side where there is more soil, but they grow up the fence and look like they're on Hannah's side. I dug out a big ole hunk of one today, after planting a fern in the shadowed part of the little area.

I also planted a few plugs of different groundcovers I'm experimenting with, and scrubbed off some rocks from the rock pile and placed them at the end of a narrowing bed to define its end.

I then came inside and ordered some tubtrugs I've been wanting, which will help me greatly for my next projects which include a lot of digging up, sorting through, and moving and replanting.

:D