When we landed here you said you needed a few days to get space worthy again and is there somethin' wrong with your bunk?

Mal ,'Out Of Gas'


Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.

There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."


Typo Boy - Aug 22, 2013 5:06:02 pm PDT #21306 of 28378
Calli: My people have a saying. A man who trusts can never be betrayed, only mistaken.Avon: Life expectancy among your people must be extremely short.

Hey I'm sure that, given the choice, he would totally have done that.

My Mom was ordering vitamins from a catalog by phone,and the sales person asked her if she wanted an herb that would stop her aging. Her response: "I'm 91. I'll stop aging soon enough, but I intend to postpone it as long as possible."


flea - Aug 30, 2013 2:10:26 am PDT #21307 of 28378
information libertarian

Seamus Heaney has died, at only 74.

In Memoriam: Robert Fitzgerald

The socket of each axehead like the squared
Doorway to a megalithic tomb
With its slabbed passage that keeps opening forward
To face another corbelled stone-faced door
That opens on a third. There is no last door,
Just threshold stone, stone jambs, stone crossbeam
Repeating enter, enter, enter, enter.
Lintel and upright fly past in the dark.

After the bowstring sang a swallow’s note,
The arrow whose migration is its mark
Leaves a whispered breath in every socket.
The great test over, while the gut’s still humming,
This time it travels out of all knowing
Perfectly aimed towards the vacant centre.

Seamus Heaney


Frankenbuddha - Aug 30, 2013 3:49:31 am PDT #21308 of 28378
"We are the Goon Squad and we're coming to town...Beep! Beep!" - David Bowie, "Fashion"

I wrote one of my papers in college I was really proud of on his poem "Bone Dreams". What an amazing poet. RIP.


Kat - Aug 30, 2013 3:45:40 pm PDT #21309 of 28378
"I keep to a strict diet of ill-advised enthusiasm and heartfelt regret." Leigh Bardugo

"Bone Dreams" ability to leap over time by thinking about language is so beautiful.


Frankenbuddha - Aug 30, 2013 6:16:18 pm PDT #21310 of 28378
"We are the Goon Squad and we're coming to town...Beep! Beep!" - David Bowie, "Fashion"

My professor (who as it turns out I was INCREDIBLY lucky to get as a freshman English major, and I count her as a formative influence on thinking about literature) - Robert Penn Warren's daughter - suggested, before we started on the essay, that we look at the Oxford English dictionary and try to follow the roots of the words in the poem. Something, I suspect, that Seamus hadn't done, but was probably in his bones, so to speak.


chrismg - Sep 02, 2013 3:51:33 pm PDT #21311 of 28378
"...and then Legolas and the Hulk destroy the entire Greek army." - Penny Arcade

Frederik Pohl has passed away.

GODDAMMIT, Time!


Amy - Sep 02, 2013 5:34:28 pm PDT #21312 of 28378
Because books.

I need some book recs. I finished The Passage (and loved it), but I don't have the sequel yet. I finished the FitzOsborne books and loved them, too.

I need something I can escape into, something as page-turning as The Passage. To choose from I have Wolf Hall, The Light Between Oceans, The Forgotten Garden, The Little Friend, Dark Places, A Discovery of Witches, and Joe Hill's Horns. Thoughts? (There are dozens of others I could choose from, but I'm looking for longish, engrossing, really removed from my life.)


sj - Sep 02, 2013 5:40:50 pm PDT #21313 of 28378
"There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea."

I would vote for Dark Places,but you didn't like Gone Girl, right? Or am I thinking of someone else? In which case I would vote for Horns, even though I didn't read it. I recently read his NOS4A2 and loved it.


Amy - Sep 02, 2013 5:45:32 pm PDT #21314 of 28378
Because books.

No, I loved Gone Girl and started Dark Places and couldn't get into right away. I'm not sure I'm the mood for someone so hateful, though.

If you liked NOS4A2, try Heart-Shaped Box, his first. It was fantastic.


Strix - Sep 02, 2013 5:46:01 pm PDT #21315 of 28378
A dress should be tight enough to show you're a woman but loose enough to flee from zombies. — Ginger

I hate to say this, because I loved "The Secret History" so, so much, but I found "The Little Friend" really quite boring. And on another downer note, I couldn't get through "A Discovery of Witches" and I was bummed, because I love a good academically oriented paranormal.

I quite like Kate Morton. "The Forgotten Garden" isn't my favorite, but it's nicely engrossing.

ETA: Oh, and for those who liked "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt, I highly rec "Waking the Moon" by Elizabeth Hand.