I am a large, semi-muscular man. I can take it. Don't hide behind Mal 'cause you know he'll shoot it down for you. Tell me.

Wash ,'War Stories'


We're Literary 2: To Read Makes Our Speaking English Good  

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."


deborah grabien - Jun 18, 2004 8:54:49 pm PDT #3542 of 10002
It really doesn't matter. It's just an opinion. Don't worry about it. Not worth the hassle.

I won't give away what it is, though. If Deb wants to share, she can. If not, that's fine too.

Perfect condition original Book Club edition of Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, which is the book of his - along with his passion for cats and his dislike for facism - that makes me forgive all the macho. I love that novel with every inch of my beating heart, because Paris is my other home city (Florence has become the third head of that triad) and very few non-French writers got Paris the way Hemingway did.

And Kristin is angelic.


Polter-Cow - Jun 18, 2004 9:08:13 pm PDT #3543 of 10002
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!

very few non-French writers got Paris the way Hemingway did.

"In Paris we eat brains every night" is the opening line of Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? t /Lorrie Moore likes carrots


deborah grabien - Jun 19, 2004 6:47:13 am PDT #3544 of 10002
It really doesn't matter. It's just an opinion. Don't worry about it. Not worth the hassle.

(natter) Actually, only brains I ever noticed on a Paris menu was tete de veau. I backed away crossing myself a lot more often in Greece, where they put it in a variety of regional soups.... (natter)


erikaj - Jun 19, 2004 10:49:11 am PDT #3545 of 10002
Always Anti-fascist!

I've not read it, Deb. They quoted from it liberally in City of Angels, though.


DavidS - Jun 21, 2004 7:56:05 am PDT #3546 of 10002
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

Just browsing Bibliomania and this seemed worth sharing:

*************

December 1st

Philip Larkin, who died on this day in 1985, probably would have agreed on the general principle of Wilde's comment. One of his finest poems, "Talking in Bed" (from The Whitsun Weddings) puts it like this, in his characteristic mode that lies somewhere between humour and profound sadness:

"At this unique distance from isolation
It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind
Or not untrue and not unkind."

Larkin had something of a melancholy nature as these lines illustrate, but like his friend Kingsley Amis could be relied on for some moments of delightful wit. As a judge at the Booker Prize awards in 1977, Larkin said of the various entries and of modern fiction in general that, "Far too many relied on the classic formula of a beginning, a muddle, and an end". But usually he was capable of the grouchiness one might well associate with a man who worked in a library in Hull for the greater part of his life. Which, of course, he did. John Carey once, brilliantly and accurately, wrote that Larkin's, "attitude to most accredited sources of pleasure would make Scrooge seem unduly frolicsome". His views on death (best seen in "An Arundel Tomb" and "Aubade") were typical in their negativity: in the year before his death he wrote that "I am getting progressively less fond of poems about old age as I near the Pearly Gates". Woody Allen, born today and whose Collected Prose is essential reading for anyone for whom free association is more palatable than free love, put it best when it came to the matter of death and art. He exclaimed, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying".


erikaj - Jun 21, 2004 8:29:37 am PDT #3547 of 10002
Always Anti-fascist!

Aw, too bad he's dead. We might've made each other...not happy, certainly, but appreciably less miserable :) It'd be weird, being the cheery one.


Hayden - Jun 21, 2004 8:51:16 am PDT #3548 of 10002
aka "The artist formerly known as Corwood Industries."

Nah, Larkin was a racist & a fascist sympathizer. Wholly the product of his times & upbringing, sure, but he's better to read than to know.


sumi - Jun 21, 2004 9:33:31 am PDT #3549 of 10002
Art Crawl!!!

Seven Seasons of Buffy -- with an introduction by Drew Goddard and chapters written by (for example) - Jennifer Crusie, David Brin, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Charlaine Harris. .. looks interesting.


Lilty Cash - Jun 21, 2004 9:36:23 am PDT #3550 of 10002
"You see? THAT's what they want. Love, and a bit with a dog."

Seven Seasons of Buffy -- with an introduction by Drew Goddard and chapters written by (for example) - Jennifer Crusie, David Brin, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Charlaine Harris. .. looks interesting.

I actually got this for Christmas from my Mom and I haven't started it yet.


msbelle - Jun 21, 2004 9:47:48 am PDT #3551 of 10002
I remember the crazy days. 500 posts an hour. Nubmer! Natgbsb

Summer Reading suggestions from indie booksellers as heard on NPR.