Erin O'Riordan writes smart, whimsical erotica. Her erotic romance novel trilogy, Pagan Spirits, is now available. With her husband, she also writes crime novels. Visit her home page at ko-fi.com.
February 16, 1957: Actor and reading enthusiast LeVar Burton is born in Landstuhl, West Germany. His father Levardis Robert Martyn Burton Sr. was serving as a U.S. Army Signal Corps photographer at the time. Burton’s mother Erma Gene was a teacher and social worker.
These are some of my favorite episodes of the podcast LeVar Burton Reads.
[Guest Post] It is not uncommon for some phrase to be memorized out of the whole book of our favorites. It was so catchy, so memorable or simply was in the fullness of time. Users of a popular social network gathered together just some out of those, which are the most popular ones. Here are the eight quotes on the top of the list:
“That's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and WORTH the doing.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
“No”, he said quickly. “Never. Stay friends? Try to grow a small rose garden on the ashes of broken feelings? No, this will never work for you and me. It happens only after small affairs and it looks fake. Love should not be spoiled by friendship. The end is the end.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, Arch of Triumph
“I don`t care what you think about me. I don`t think about you at all.”
― Henri Gidel, Coco Chanel
“I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves...”
― Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Grey
“I won`t think of it now. I will think of it tomorrow.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
“I don`t ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender In The Night
“That is the most difficult thing of all. It is far more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself correctly, then you are truly a man of wisdom.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
About the Author: Melisa Marzett is a young lady who nevertheless has gone through many books, met lots of people, and can come up with an opinion on anything, really. Working for bigpaperwriter.com at this time, she is eager to write more and more. She has passion for writing and it would be delightful to her to get to know more. She is never tired of what she does and will gladly accept a challenge to write a guest post whatever the topic would be.
As you may recall from this post, I adore the Jay-Z/Kanye West parody song "Bitches in Bookshops" so much, I devoted an entire Pinterest board to it. Now, just in time for National Library Week (April 13-19, 2014), the creators of that literary masterpiece are back with another Kanye-based piece of inspired parody filmmaking, "Hardcover Bound 2."
You remember Kanye's video "Bound 2," right? In which the rapper and his gorgeous fiancee Kim Kardashian (Kimye for short) canoodled on the back of a motorcycle?
And then Seth Rogen and James Franco - straight guys* and platonic BFFs - re-created the video scene-for-scene, including the make-out session?
And Ellen DeGeneres and her gorgeous wife Portia di Rossi made a parody "Bound 2"-themed winter holiday card?
Well, now the video has fallen into the hands of LaShea Delaney and Annabelle Quezada, and the result is bookish perfection.
Your eyes, get tired…
From readin’, a good book
On a Saturday night
From readin’ a good book
So just grab your good book
And put on your glasses
On a Saturday night
Readin’, your - aw huh honey
All that other media lame and you know it now
Stackin papers with some glue then ya press it down
Bound
Bound
Met my book club on a Wednesday Brave New World put me in a frenzy
Were Orwell and Bradbury friendly?
Assigned 1984, but read it already!
Reading Jung for my grad dissertation
Then Freud’s Dream Interpretations
Essays on sex aberrations
Fill the page with mad annotations Fight Club was a rad adaptation
Palahniuk gives me heart palpitations!
How you gonna be loud at my station-
Makin noise around all these librarians?! Uhh!
This bestseller shit
This that Alchemist, Giver, Old Yeller shit
This that Harper Lee and Scarlet Letter shit
Got a first edition straight off of Alibris
Your eyes, get tired…
From readin’, a good book
On a Saturday night
From readin’ your - aw huh honey
Open up and press pause on The Book Thief
The book’s usually better than the movie.
Bound
Bound
I read Sylvia Plath in the bath Confederacy of Dunces when I want to laugh In Cold Blood without even blinking
I mean damn what was Capote-pote-pote pote thinking
Ey, you remember watchu first read
Okay, I don’t remember what I first read
Prob’ly, it was Dr. Seuss, eh?
Silverstein- or Maurice Sendak
Realist magic- Borges and Murakami Toni Morrison, Allende, Salman Rushdie
Perusin’ Malthusian theory,
Edgar Allan Poe when I feel like something eerie
They ask me what’s next on my reading list-
Ever start a book that you can’t finish?!
Caryl Churchill and Tracy Letts, I
Think I’ll make time for Samuel Beckett
Books can help you overcome lotsa things
You know, I know,
Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Your eyes, get tired…
From readin’, a good book
On a Saturday night
From readin’ a good book
So just grab your good book (Reeeeaaaaaaadin')
And put on your glasses
On a Saturday night
Readin’, your good book.
Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooks….
*Update December 2014 - I'm not actually sure James Franco is a straight guy. He doesn't seem to want a label - which is cool, because people aren't products on the store shelves that have to be labeled. He's said he's not gay, but he may yet be one of my people, the bi/pans, or at least heteroflexible. Not that there's anything wrong with being straight.
I have a sad today: it's Thursday, but my usual Thursday indulgence in my pop cultural obsession Person of Interest has been preempted by the Republican National Convention. I'm not saying I don't care about politics; I do. However, the speeches given at both the Republican and the Democratic national conventions tend to be content-poor, essentially meaningless self-congratulatory blather having little to do with any actual political issues. If I'm going to watch nonsense on TV, I'd like to choose the nonsense, please. When I want glassy-eyed individuals chanting "Four legs good, two legs bad," I'll crack open Animal Farm.
Now watch this sexy literary nonsense.
I thank my Google+ friend Kimberly Chapman for introducing me to this literary-themed pop song. It's not quite as clever and fun as "Bitches in Bookshops," but then again, so little on YouTube is.
This isn't new (Bloom uploaded it in 2010) - obviously, Ray Bradbury was still alive when it was made. He passed away in June of this year. I just learned about this video yesterday, though. This Rachel Bloom (http://www.racheldoesstuff.com/) is a funny chick - and judging by her name, probably a Yiddish-American woman like my mom's mom.
If my name was Bloom, I'd tell people I was related to Isaac Nathan Bloom, even though he's a fictional character in From Here to Eternity. Dublin has its James Joyce Bloomsday, but Honolulu should have an Isaac Bloomsday, on which we get really drunk and make out with boys, but then do NOT feel guilty about it afterwards, 'cause it's not 1941 anymore and Bloom, you were born that way. James Joyce and James Jones sound pretty similar anyway, so why not?
There must be thousands of how-to books on writing out there. It makes sense, right? If you’re a writer who is good at writing, clearly you’ll want to share your knowledge with others through your favored medium. Have you ever heard an expert trying to explain their field, though? Just like listening to a nuclear scientist tell a layperson about their latest research, writers aren’t always the best at explaining the tricks of the trade to a broad audience. There are some good ones out there—you just have to persevere. I’ve sifted through the chaff and found five books on writing that won’t leave you groaning or scratching your head.
For the beginning writer, reading about craft can be, well, mysterious. It doesn’t seem so much a craft as some mystical process which happens in a writer’s head under a full moon on the winter solstice. Koch taught at Columbia University’s creative writing program for decades, and he’s clearly used to explaining the mechanics of fiction to those who are new to writing. His tone is that of a kind mentor, and he offers practical tips and interesting quotes from some of the most well-known authors out there.
Sci fi legend Ray Bradbury serves up inspiring writing advice in these ten short essays. Here you won’t find tips like how to outline or pace a story. The book is more about getting outside one’s head and tapping the creativity inside of them; consider this the zealous antidote to Koch’s sage, practical advice. While some might dismiss this as the same vague mysticism that comes with lots of writing advice, it’s more empowering than that—it can get me excited about writing, even when I’m sure I’m ready to give the whole thing up and become an accountant.
I would recommend all three volumes of this set, even though I’ve only linked to one. These Paris Review interviews are by far some of the most intimate and candid ones out there: instead of the standard Time magazine softball questions, you find the writers in a relaxed atmosphere actually sharing how they work and think about their writing. As fiction writing is still largely a man’s game, this set can be inspiring for any experienced or amateur lady writers out there.
You can consider this the antidote to the Paris Review interviews. If you’re familiar with the literary magazine The Believer, you’ll recognize its funny, slightly off tone in the interviews of this book. Writers as diverse as Grace Paley and Haruki Murakami are interviewed by fellow writers. The questions aren’t only casual and funny, but also revealing—you’ll get a glimpse into their personal life, which, as a neurotic writer myself, I am always interested to see.
It’s only the truly masochistic person that decides to pursue writing seriously. Because of this, most writers have a pretty close relationship with self-deprecation. As you watch a new work unfold from its choppy, undeveloped self into something more readable, it’s always tempting to abandon it midstream and call yourself a failure. Lamott’s book offers valuable advice on getting over your own perfectionism and self-esteem hang-ups—something that all writers deal with. It’s personal and well-written, and I often turn to certain chapters for an inspiring pick-me-up.
