Entries categorized as ‘Reading Roundup’
This week’s RR is brought to you by books–actual, tangible, smellable, hardbound books. ‘Cause I went to the library this week. And we’re off:
From the introduction to Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss: “Part of one’s despair, of course, is that the world cares nothing for the little shocks endured by the sensitive stickler. While we look in horror at a badly punctuated sign, the world carries on around us, blind to our plight. We are like the little boy in The Sixth Sense who can see dead people, except that we can see dead punctuation.” I can’t believe this is the first time I’ve read this book. I feel like it was written by my soulmate. It’s glorious.
From a book that makes me alternately sad, mad, and in awe of both the native beauty of my home state and the blindness of profit-seeking developers to that beauty: “Florida is for sale, has been for a while now, and it makes me sad as hell. I’ll stay as long as I can, but one day soon it will all go: the marsh wrens and the butterflies, the cactus and blackberry vines, the old Cracker house, the feeling. And I wonder if the hawk should ever come back, just on a random flyover one day, singing its high, sweet whistle way up in the sky, if anyone here where this dirt street once was will even remember the kind of bird he is, or care enough to stop, just for a moment, and smile.” (Losing it All to Sprawl: How Progress Ate My Cracker Landscape, by Bill Belleville) Check out his blog.
Tune in next week…maybe I’ll read a newspaper!
Categories: Reading Roundup · writing + books
Tagged: books, florida, literature, punctuation, reading, Reading Roundup, weekly
(Reading Roundup is a semi-regular feature in which I share tasty bits of writing I’ve found.)
From My Pocket: Never tell your winter coat farewell, or April will play tricks on you. This one rings especially true to me this week, considering that Saturday we had 80-degree temps and since then it’s been 40-degree nights and 60-ish daytimes with a side of “very windy.” Not that I’m complaining, mind you.
Poet David Wojahn: We too often commit the hubris of thinking our desires can be gratified, or that gratifying them is going to give us the consolation we feel we need. These longings may prompt us to creative activity, and I guess the displacement of those longings is much of what poetry is about.
That’s all I’ve got today, kids. Whew. I don’t mind telling you that it’s been a hectic couple of weeks in Avenueland (more…)
Categories: Reading Roundup · my life
Tagged: decompress, focus, hectic, Reading Roundup, relax, resolutions, stress, struggle, transparency, worry
Being the word nerd that I am, I have a penchant for jotting down (or copying-and-pasting, as it were), pithy bits of crafty phrasing, comic genius or piercing insight from other writers. As these snippets do little other than provide me some personal satisfaction or amusement when I re-examine them randomly sometime in the future, I thought I should expand their reach. Thus, I propose to share with you a weekly-ish compilation of fun things I’ve read in the blogosphere and beyond.
From his column “First Shot” in Orlando Weekly (full disclosure: I work there), here’s Steve Schneider re: the DVD release of Juno: “At this very moment, girls across America are striving to get pregnant because it obviously makes you so damn witty.“
The People’s Nature is my new favorite eco/foodie site, for obvious reasons. [1. We are poor but don't want to eat chemicals or destroy the environment. 2. The writing is damn funny.] Ross provides the following nugget about blended beverages: “I don’t know why smoothies have to sound so infantile. There are many demographics that enjoy a delicious berry smoothie other than those that take a dump in their pants. I quite enjoy them and haven’t shat my pants for quite some time now.“
Orangette is so full of quotables. From her post titled “The way a cloud would” (never thought I’d be quoting a blog entry about meringue cookies for its exceptional writing): “Entire revolutions have been started because of shortages in bread - and that, people, was only bread. It’s scary, really, to think of what a lack of cocoa nib meringues might lead to. That’s why I got out the mixer.“
Categories: Reading Roundup
Tagged: first shot, juno, meringue, orangette, orlando weekly, people's nature, quotes, reading, roundup, semi-regular, smoothies, weekly
