Tag Archives: books

Caffeinated Links: Women’s Journeys in Film, Tenenbaum, Kickstarter Novel

film & television, this & that October 8, 2013 Leave a comment

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Badass Digest on why women’s journeys in film are always different than men’s – “Socially speaking, we’ve been trained to believe that women are less prone to make mistakes, but there’s this tricky double standard in which we blame them for the ills that befall a man (if a marriage or relationship dissolves)” RT

Pajiba’s Courtney Enlow snark-destroys Chris Brown, and does it good. “And then he starts talking about his class about violence against women. Oh guys. He has some thoughts on it.” RT

Via The Rabbit Room, this looks like an unexpectedly lovely/worthy Kickstarter Project – “Almost ten years ago I put my three kids to bed, told Jamie for the millionth time about my desire to write a novel, and with her blessing dug out my sketch pad to draw the first map of Aerwiar. I turned off the television (this is key) and sat in the recliner with my high school art supplies, eager to tell a story. As with any adventure, had I known how much work and time it would have taken, I might not have had the guts to start. I drew the coastline of Skree on the left, then for some reason on the right I drew another coastline and named the continent Dang.” RT

Everything Tenenbaum. “On Tuesday, New York Magazine TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz will release his sumptuous coffee-table book, The Wes Anderson Collection. The book delves deeply into each of Anderson’s seven films, dissecting every angle and influence with commentary, illustrations, and photography. Every chapter is anchored by a lengthy conversation between Anderson and Seitz about the making of each film.” RT

C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Dedication

books poetry lit October 1, 2013 Leave a comment

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Dedication: To Lucy Barfield
My Dear Lucy,
 I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand, a word you say, but I shall still beyour affectionate Godfather,
C.S. Lewis

Summary: Narnia …. a land frozen in eternal winter … a country waiting to be set free. Four adventurers step through a wardrobe door and into the land of Narnia — a land enslaved by the power of the White Witch. But when almost all hope is lost, the return of the Great Lion, Aslan, signals a great change … and a great sacrifice.

 

Caffeinated Links: ‘The Mother’, Crepes, Bookstore Windows

books poetry lit, this & that September 26, 2013 Leave a comment

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Brilliant article on HIMYM‘s casting of “the Mother” – “It is unfortunate that American women are attached to the notion that there is no way that the most enthusiastically long-winded courtship story packaged in the form of an 8-year television show could be based around a perfectly, fabulously, “normal” girl. (To be sure, Milioti’s character, as I’ve mentioned, has proven and will prove to be anything but normal, but I use the term only to suggest that she is outside the norm of what our Hollywood-monopolized imaginations have come to expect for women deserving of a great love). –Cristin Milioti is a Win for Women

Stephen Colbert crowing over his Emmy victory over Jon Stewart is both hilarious and heart-warming RT

Flavorwire has a gorgeous list of 30 amazing bookstore windows around the world. My favorite is the building front with authors’ faces, including Virginia Woolf’s, painted on it. RT

This recipe for crepes with caramelized apples and ricotta cheese looks decadent and I plan to make it soon. RT

Maureen Johnson brilliantly responds to David Gilmour’s assertion that he never teaches women writers-

“To which I say, okay, fine. I get it. Because I know your problem.

Literature is kind of full of assholes.

And that is okay. Some great books have been written by assholes. I am looking at my shelf and it is full of beloved books by known assholes, and that’s fine. Assholism is one of the most common afflictions of literature. Certainly literature and writing programs are full of them. They are like wildlife refuges for assholes.”  RT

Harry Potter

quotidian, this & that September 26, 2013 Leave a comment

firefly

Book Dream

books poetry lit September 24, 2013 Leave a comment

To sleep, perchance, to dream..

libraryvia ms. brightside

Caffeinated Links: Candles, Novels, and Grand Theft Auto

books poetry lit, design & style, this & that September 20, 2013 Leave a comment

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Est Magazine, one of my favorite curators of design and lifestyle products and content from all over the world, released a “Tiny Things” edition, which included this list of the world’s top 10 covetable candles. I drool, especially over the Jo Malone Grapefruit.

The New York Times beautifully reviews Jhumpa Lahiri’s new novel – “Jhumpa Lahiri first made her name with quiet, meticulously observed stories about Indian immigrants trying to adjust to new lives in the United States, stories that had the hushed intimacy of chamber music. The premise of her new novel, “The Lowland,” in contrast, is startlingly operatic.”

Grand Theft Auto V has been making massive amounts of money. “Given the massive sums of currency changing hands (seriously think about it, where do you PUT $800 million dollars? Like, which banks even DO that sort of thing?) it should surprise no one to state that gaming is an entertainment industry set to eclipse the old vanguard of film.” RT Pajiba

Sir Patrick Stewart got married to his lady love presided over by Sir Ian McKellan and then he and his bride jumped in a ball-pit. It’s pretty much the greatest thing ever. RT Pajiba

Awesomebox: Good Omens Fan Art

books poetry lit August 1, 2013 Leave a comment

Look at the gorgeous! Via Graphite Doll

(Fan art for Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s fantasy novel Good Omens)
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Life

books poetry lit, coffee, quotidian May 6, 2013 Leave a comment

coffeebooks

Shiny: BBC Drama, Iron Man 3, Neo-Noir Fiction

books poetry lit, film & television May 3, 2013 Leave a comment

Set against the iconic backdrop of the War of the Roses, The White Queen is an adaptation of Philippa Gregory‘s bestselling historical novel series The Cousin’s War. This Summer on BBC One.

 

Iron Man 3 Review. “The problem that then presents itself is that post-Avengers, all of this has changed. The world has changed. Now there are gods and monsters and supermen out of time, not to mention aliens and Hulks and Cosmic Cubes and even death Himself made a brief appearance. The entire game has shifted, and as a result, we’re at a peculiar kind of crossroads with Tony Stark and his invention. Where does one go, in this brave and crazy new world? What will Iron Man’s new enemies look like in this bizarre new landscape, where literal worlds have been opened up to us?” (RT Pajiba)

“What is neo-noir fiction? It’s contemporary dark fiction. It was built on the backbone of classic noir and hardboiled fiction, but it’s evolved to be so much more than that. It is a genre-bending subgenre that includes edgy literary fiction, as well as fantasy, science fiction, and horror. It also touches on niche storytelling like magical realism, slipstream, transgressive, and the grotesque.” –10 Essential Neo-Noir Authors (RT Flavorwire)

Caffeinated Links

this & that April 23, 2013 Leave a comment

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“Attacks in America are far more indelible in the world’s memory than attacks in any other country. There may be fewer victims and less blood, but American tragedies somehow seem to occur in a more poignant version of reality, in a way that evokes a more sympathetic response. Within minutes American victims are lifted from the nameless to the remembered…” – The Tragedies of Others (RT Guernica)

“Knowing nothing of the Tsarnaevs’ motives, and little about Chechens, the American media tore into Wikipedia and came back with stereotypes. The Tsarnaevs were stripped of their 21st century American life and became symbols of a distant land, forever frozen in time. Journalist Eliza Shapiro proclaimed that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was “named after a brutal warlord”, despite the fact that Tamerlan, or Timur, is an ordinary first name in the Caucasus and Central Asia.”  The Wrong Kind of Caucasian (RT Al Jazeera)

“In that moment, Gordon was the ultimate hipster Renaissance woman I aspired to be, a feminist rebel who could make avant-garde art all day, then cook a killer dinner for her family at night.” Kim Gordon Sounds Off, on Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon (RT Elle)

“True preaching must always consider lost people who are present and how to in some way invite them to turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ. In a teaching context where the focus is on maturing believers the evangelism component is simply not equally present. This explains why formally trained preachers who have spent years on a Bible college and/or seminary campus are generally speaking less evangelistically.” What’s the Difference between Preaching and Teaching? (RT The Resurgence)

“D. had sent it to me after we broke up—four years after we’d split, more than fifteen years ago now. What I’d completely forgotten was that he’d read the book first and made notes throughout, some as simple as, “I like this” or “For Luke,” a professor we’d had a class with together at Vassar. In the poem “Still Life” he’d simply underlined the word berries.” – Notes from a Bookshop (RT The Paris Review)