Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Monday, August 29, 2011
A Room of One's Own
I read the book "A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf a while ago, and I just wanted to share my favorite quotes:
"When a subject is highly controversial-and any questions about sex is that- one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one"s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker."
"Women were not allowed in the library of Oxbridge unless accompanied by a Fellow of the college or with a letter of introduction (To think that not that long ago women were not allowed in certain places unsupervised is just crazy to me!)
"At the thought of all these women working year after year and finding it hard to get (the money for a girls college) together, and as much as they could do to get (the money), we burst out in scorn at the reprehensible poverty of our sex. What had our mothers windows? Flaunting in the sun at Monte Carlo?"
"Professors, schoolmasters, sociologists, clergymen, novelists, essayists, journalists, men who had no qualification save that they were not women, chased my simple and single question- why are women poor?"
"It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that submerged truth sometimes comes to the top."
"Life for both sexes is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything...it calls for confidence in oneself."
"What I find deplorable...is that nothing is known about women before the 18th century."
"There is no mark on the wall to measure the precise height of women. There are no yard measures neatly divided into the fractions of an inch, that one can lay against the quality of a good mother, or the devotion of a daughter, or the fidelity of a sister, or the capacity of a housekeeper. Few women even now have been graded at the universities; the great trials of the professions, army and navy, trade, politics, and diplomacy have hardly tested them. They remain even at this moment almost unclassified."
"When a subject is highly controversial-and any questions about sex is that- one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one"s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker."
"Women were not allowed in the library of Oxbridge unless accompanied by a Fellow of the college or with a letter of introduction (To think that not that long ago women were not allowed in certain places unsupervised is just crazy to me!)
"At the thought of all these women working year after year and finding it hard to get (the money for a girls college) together, and as much as they could do to get (the money), we burst out in scorn at the reprehensible poverty of our sex. What had our mothers windows? Flaunting in the sun at Monte Carlo?"
"Professors, schoolmasters, sociologists, clergymen, novelists, essayists, journalists, men who had no qualification save that they were not women, chased my simple and single question- why are women poor?"
"It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that submerged truth sometimes comes to the top."
"Life for both sexes is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything...it calls for confidence in oneself."
"What I find deplorable...is that nothing is known about women before the 18th century."
"There is no mark on the wall to measure the precise height of women. There are no yard measures neatly divided into the fractions of an inch, that one can lay against the quality of a good mother, or the devotion of a daughter, or the fidelity of a sister, or the capacity of a housekeeper. Few women even now have been graded at the universities; the great trials of the professions, army and navy, trade, politics, and diplomacy have hardly tested them. They remain even at this moment almost unclassified."
Friday, June 24, 2011
The Wilder Life
I read this book: it's really good. Especially if you're as big a fan of the "Little House" books as I am.
From Publishers Weekly:
Starred Review. Obsessed with Laura Ingalls Wilder and her Little House books about an 1880s pioneer family, children's book editor and memoirist McClure (I'm Not the New Me) attempts to recapture her childhood vision of "Laura World." Her wacky quest includes hand-grinding wheat for bread, buying an authentic churn, and traveling to sites where the Ingalls family attempted to wrest a living from the prairie. Discovering that butter she churned herself was "just butter," McClure admits she "felt like a genius and a complete idiot at the same time." Viewing a one-room dugout the Ingallses occupied that was "smaller than a freight elevator" prompted McClure to admit that "the actual past and the Little House world had different properties." McClure finally tells her boyfriend, "I'm home," after recognizing that her travels stemmed from her reaction to the recent death of her mother. Readers don't need to be Wilder fans to enjoy this funny and thoughtful guide to a romanticized version of the American expansion west.
(Apr.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
From Publishers Weekly:
Starred Review. Obsessed with Laura Ingalls Wilder and her Little House books about an 1880s pioneer family, children's book editor and memoirist McClure (I'm Not the New Me) attempts to recapture her childhood vision of "Laura World." Her wacky quest includes hand-grinding wheat for bread, buying an authentic churn, and traveling to sites where the Ingalls family attempted to wrest a living from the prairie. Discovering that butter she churned herself was "just butter," McClure admits she "felt like a genius and a complete idiot at the same time." Viewing a one-room dugout the Ingallses occupied that was "smaller than a freight elevator" prompted McClure to admit that "the actual past and the Little House world had different properties." McClure finally tells her boyfriend, "I'm home," after recognizing that her travels stemmed from her reaction to the recent death of her mother. Readers don't need to be Wilder fans to enjoy this funny and thoughtful guide to a romanticized version of the American expansion west.
(Apr.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Friday, June 10, 2011
The Picture of Dorian Grey
These are my favorite quotes from the book by Oscar Wilde:
"If it was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that, I would give everything! Yes, there was nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!"
"There is no literary public in England for anything except newspapers, primers, encyclopedia. Of all people in the world, the English have the least sense of the beauty of literature."
"Nowadays people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing."
"Basil...puts everything that is charming in him into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life is about his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense. The only artists that I have ever known, who are personally delightful, are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what the make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize."
"Women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders."
"Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the nobelest motives."
"The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbor with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account...I have the greatest contempt for optimism."
"Yes, Dorian, you will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit."
"What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on campus. They would mar its beauty, ad eat away its grace. They would defile it and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would always be alive."
(Dorian): "I know how people chatter in England. The middle classes air their moral prejudices over their gross dinner tables, and whisper about what they call the profigacies of their betters in order to try and pretend that they are smart society, and on intimate terms with the people they slander. In this country it is enough for a man to have distinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against him. And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite."
"How fond women are of doing dangerous things!" laughed Lord Henry. "It is one of the qualities in them that I admire most. A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on."
"Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all."
"If it was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that, I would give everything! Yes, there was nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!"
"There is no literary public in England for anything except newspapers, primers, encyclopedia. Of all people in the world, the English have the least sense of the beauty of literature."
"Nowadays people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing."
"Basil...puts everything that is charming in him into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life is about his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense. The only artists that I have ever known, who are personally delightful, are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what the make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize."
"Women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders."
"Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the nobelest motives."
"The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbor with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account...I have the greatest contempt for optimism."
"Yes, Dorian, you will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit."
"What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on campus. They would mar its beauty, ad eat away its grace. They would defile it and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would always be alive."
(Dorian): "I know how people chatter in England. The middle classes air their moral prejudices over their gross dinner tables, and whisper about what they call the profigacies of their betters in order to try and pretend that they are smart society, and on intimate terms with the people they slander. In this country it is enough for a man to have distinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against him. And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite."
"How fond women are of doing dangerous things!" laughed Lord Henry. "It is one of the qualities in them that I admire most. A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on."
"Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all."
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Lulu.com scam
"Lulu.com has much controversy buzzing on the forums. They have not been paying us royalties on sales even though the number of sales are listed on our creator's revenue."
click here to read more
Thank you to "SNM Horror Magazine's Blog" for providing this info. It is instances like this that make me really glad I'm a zinester.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Fluff
Light reading
Some books are inspirational. Others are intellectually stimulating or emotionally comforting. Then there are those juicy, mindless reads that are only good for a plane ride or the beach. Which books or authors fall under this last category?Submitted By fixnwrtr
Click here for answers
The first books that always come to mind are the "Chic Lit" genre. While there is some pretty hilarious and well-written chic lit, it always counts as "fluff" for me. So does the Twilight series. I am too much of an Anne Rice fan to ever put that series before her. I'm sure Stephanie Meyer is a great writer, I am fine with giving credit where credit is due, but you really have to be something special to write vampires the way that Anne Rice did. Twilight is more of a soap opera, so it's perfect for the crowd who is into that whole "romance novel" scene.
Another is the "UK Chic Lit" genre. Bridget Jones, Jemima J., and the like. The UK wit is something that I gravitate more towards than my own Western, American wit. It is much less likely that you will find a UK writer whom is as content to wallow in their own ignorance as those you come in contact with across the pond. Add to the fact that they put much bigger emphasis on being polite and civilized in their day to day life, it seems to give them much more creativity when they sit down to write a novel script. All that repression can do your imagination good, I suppose.
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