The Great Light Cage

Hamartia: The character flaw or error of a tragic hero that...

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 08:54:29 -0400

Hamartia: The character flaw or error of a tragic hero that leads to his downfall.

“Unusual Words Rendered in Bold Graphics by Maria Popova”

Does Love Survive Loss?

Tue, 29 May 2012 08:04:44 -0400

Does Love Survive Loss? :

“sharp tender shock”

Cool article in Slate re: Auden + Larkin

“Auden and Larkin each wrote powerful lines about love—and then had grave doubts about them. Why?”

Neil Gaiman on Diana Wynne Jones

Tue, 08 May 2012 07:19:11 -0400

Neil Gaiman on Diana Wynne Jones:

neil-gaiman:

Click on the link and you can read the poem I wrote to Diana when she dedicated Hexwood to me.

dwj2012:

As astute DWJ readers know, Hexwood was dedicated to Neil Gaiman. Here he shares his delighted response.

“Reading Diana out loud is a delight. Her books unpack very tightly, with scarcely a word wasted in a hundred thousand.”

Love Diana Wynne Jones :) Really great YA fantasy. (I’ve only read the Howl’s Moving Castle books, but I totally still read them now sometimes…)

fyeahenglishmajorarmadillo: I know this isn’t an armadillo, but...

Mon, 07 May 2012 17:19:05 -0400

fyeahenglishmajorarmadillo:

I know this isn’t an armadillo, but when I saw this picture on I Can Has Cheezburger I couldn’t resist adding this quote from Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” And I needed to share it with other English nerds that would find it as funny as I do.

[Picture: Background — black and white cat sitting by wall surrounded with shreds of wallpaper peeled off the wall. Top text: “ [“I’ve got out at last in spite of you and Jane] ” Bottom text: “ [And I’ve pulled off most of the paper so you can’t put me back.”] ”]

Photo

Mon, 07 May 2012 17:17:13 -0400

"Dear Sir: I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I like..."

Mon, 07 May 2012 17:15:37 -0400

“

Dear Sir:

I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as straitlaced, cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory. I like spurious, black-is-white words, such as mortician, liquidate, tonsorial, demi-monde. I like suave “V” words, such as Svengali, svelte, bravura, verve. I like crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty. I like sullen, crabbed, scowling words, such as skulk, glower, scabby, churl. I like Oh-Heavens, my-gracious, land’s-sake words, such as tricksy, tucker, genteel, horrid. I like elegant, flowery words, such as estivate, peregrinate, elysium, halcyon. I like wormy, squirmy, mealy words, such as crawl, blubber, squeal, drip. I like sniggly, chuckling words, such as cowlick, gurgle, bubble and burp.

I like the word screenwriter better than copywriter, so I decided to quit my job in a New York advertising agency and try my luck in Hollywood, but before taking the plunge I went to Europe for a year of study, contemplation and horsing around.

I have just returned and I still like words.

May I have a few with you?

Robert Pirosh
385 Madison Avenue
Room 610
New York
Eldorado 5-6024

”

- My new favorite job application letter, from 1934. He ended up winning an Oscar for screenwriting!

(via Letters of Note)

oliveryeh: “Ok aspiring fiction writers, if you’ve ever...

Mon, 07 May 2012 17:12:47 -0400

oliveryeh:

“Ok aspiring fiction writers, if you’ve ever wondered how to write a successful novel, the secret is here: kill off your characters. Of the handful of books that won the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2011, all 13 novels had the common theme of putting to death main characters…” Read more…

"Went and looked at the stars, but could not get quite the right sense of amazement, the thrill of..."

Sun, 06 May 2012 13:18:29 -0400

“Went and looked at the stars, but could not get quite the right sense of amazement, the thrill of emotion (I can get this really well at times) because L said: “Now come in. It’s too cold to be out.””

- Virginia Woolf, Diary Entry, 5 September, 1926. (via fuckyeahvirginiawoolf)

hitrecordjoe: hitrecord: Storm by TheSerpeantTheCharmer Hey,...

Sun, 06 May 2012 13:17:42 -0400

hitrecordjoe:

hitrecord:

Storm

by TheSerpeantTheCharmer

Hey, y’all - this beautiful illustration is in dire need of a Tiny Story. Who has one?

Contribute to our TINY STORIES volume 2 collaboration here!

there was a little dark cloud who fell in love with a shiny silk top hat and followed him round everyday and the cloud rained down on the top hat like fingertips on the back of your neck saying hello hello hello don’t you know me like I know you?

drive east til it doesn’t hurt because that is where i am...

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 05:11:24 -0400

drive east til it doesn’t hurt

because

that is where i am ;)

I have re-read this one several times since I first read it when...

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 18:17:35 -0400

I have re-read this one several times since I first read it when I was about 13. It’s definitely not my normal read now and it wasn’t then but it is fundamentally enchanting. The below review has some good points, but I think Stargirl skirts the ‘mary-sue’ elusive manic pixie stereotype. I never felt like, as a character, she was flat. Instead, I think it was realistically highlighting the fact that the narration wasn’t in her head, that, in fact, you can’t really know what someone else is thinking. The way the book deals in desert landscapes hits really close to home for me, and I find those sections breathtaking.

cinderellainrubbershoes:

Title: Stargirl
Author: Jerry Spinelli
Genre: Contemporary, Young Adult, Romance
My Rating: ★★★★

____

Picture your life—and everyone else’s around you—as a vast, boiling desert, occasionally littered with cacti and yuccas. For you, blandness is normality. You’re all content on playing chameleon, melting against the nondescript walls of conformity, swaddling yourselves with the safety of not being singled out. You’re a bundle, you’re a “we,” and you like everything to stay that way.

But glitches occur, no matter how perfectly shielded you think your system is. It may scare you one minute and enchant you the next, but when you realize it’s jeopardizing your perfect routines, you’re going to despise it. You’ll get the urge to banish it. It’s a rare event, but no worries—it’s only a normal stimulus of most people in your place.

This is the story of Susan “Stargirl” Caraway, the ‘glitch’ that cartwheeled her way into the “normal” lives of Mica High School students…and into the heart of sixteen-year-old Leo Borlock. With her floor-length skirts, pet rat, and a ukelele strapped to her back, she faces each day with a bounce in her step and a grin on her freckle-dusted face, not minding what everyone else will think of her.

I’d like to refer to Stargirl as a rebel, even if she only loosely fits in the category. Among my roster of female fictional revolutionaries, she—ironically—is the most normal. She’s not rising up against a cruel or corrupt government in a post-apocalyptic setting, nor is she preparing to serve cold dishes of revenge to those who did her wrong. She’s just being herself. It’s stereotype she’s ramming against. It’s no secret that in a world that forces you to be someone else, being yourself is perhaps one of the hardest battles you can ever fight. Not to Stargirl, though: she doesn’t even need to lift a finger to win it. She is not afraid to be unique…that is, before she fell in love. Leo is a typical MHS kid, and while he loves Stargirl so much, he doesn’t want to be turned into a social pariah because of their relationship. So he works to transform Stargirl into a normal girl, oblivious to what it will do to her.

However, Stargirl as a character is a tad too Mary Sue-ish (too Pollyannaish?), and because we haven’t seen her ‘side’ of the story, it’s easy to judge she’s a shallow, flat character. Perhaps that’s why Spinelli spun a sequel to mold her more? I’m not really sure. While I think the portrayal of the main female protagonist is decent, she needs more development.

Spinelli have spun a simple tale that will without a doubt resonate with every teenage heart that will encounter it. I marvel at the characterization of Leo, at how human he seems to be instead of being just another one-dimensional knight-in-shining-armor figure that pops up frequently in most of today’s young adult novels. He doesn’t recklessly rush to rescue his ‘princess’ when she’s in trouble; in fact, he even runs away from the scene, afraid of the prickly eyes and thoughts of the people around him. He is an ordinary boy torn between having to choose between the approval of the society and the happiness of being with the girl he loves. I understood his insecurities and behavior; I tasted his fears, and in the several nights he spent thinking on his moonlit sheets, it’s almost as if I caught a glimpse of everything he’s dreading. Sometimes I dislike him; sometimes I feel the urge to give him a sucker punch for not doing what he thinks is right “because the others think it’s wrong.” He’s like a bandwagon-riding, pesky little brother to me most of the time. I don’t know if it will make sense to you, but I began liking him because he so…unlikable.

The world-building is not precisely first-rate, but the setting greatly adds to the symbolism department of the novel. The desert stands for the collective “we” of MHS. Then there are “enchanted places” beyond the sand dunes and saguaros—places that are always there but you can never locate with your naked eye, places that represent someone like Stargirl. More than once, a character explicates how Stargirl is closer to what we all should be, and that something is inside us already. We just need to get in touch with it by using our hearts as our compasses.

The plot only takes a backseat here, since the enigmatic Stargirl steers the wheel of the story. There are a couple of twists and turns, but nothing that can imprint an indelible memory in my head. There are poignant scenes, hilarious scenes, and a mixture of both, but what really struck a chord with me are the times of ruminations and the conversations between Archie and Leo. :)

A magnificent portrayal of the celebration of nonconformity, Stargirl is one of the few books that are so plain on the surface but is beautifully labyrinthine when you delve deeper into it. Four stars for a great read! I can’t wait to get my hands on Love, Stargirl.

Underground New York Public Library: I love to see your beautiful usernames on my dashboard, it’s like an...

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 17:52:25 -0400

Underground New York Public Library: I love to see your beautiful usernames on my dashboard, it’s like an...:

This is my favourite thing today.

unypl:

I love to see your beautiful usernames on my dashboard, it’s like an epic poem is continuously streaming in. I shook some of them up in a tumblr just now, and here is the result:

Punk’d by eros, poems fall from my cursed lips.

profanity prayers audibly silent.

Crooked lust!

rereading favourite books

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 17:43:00 -0400

rereading favourite books:

read, if you, like me, are a regular perpetrator of the re-read

Chris Abani on the stories of Africa

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 06:58:00 -0400

Chris Abani on the stories of Africa:

Watch the whole thing for some interesting discussion on post-colonial lit or listen from 15.46 to hear a poem read out that will stop your breath in your lungs.

(text of the poem - but LISTEN to is. It’s made to be listened to.

Look what opened semi-recently!! :D Children, go forth and...

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 06:45:53 -0400

Look what opened semi-recently!! :D Children, go forth and submit.

laughingsquid: The Book of the Future

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 06:42:05 -0400

laughingsquid:

The Book of the Future

Here’s How to Condescend to 900 Job Applicants With a 3,000-Word Rejection Letter

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 06:36:50 -0400

Here’s How to Condescend to 900 Job Applicants With a 3,000-Word Rejection Letter:

Would I probably have had to desperately swallow my tears upon recieving this e-mail? Yes.

Is it pretty useful advice anyway? Also yes.

doctorwhogifs: “Books! Best weapons in the world.” The doctor...

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 14:50:44 -0500

doctorwhogifs:

“Books! Best weapons in the world.”

The doctor telling like it is.

warbyparker: Whoa. The MLA has officially devised a standard...

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 14:44:50 -0500

warbyparker:

Whoa. The MLA has officially devised a standard format to cite tweets in an academic paper. Sign of the times.

Definitely going to be useful for my degree. -_- (is it weird that I’m not being sarcastic?)

New Old Fairy Tales Found

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 14:42:11 -0500

New Old Fairy Tales Found