Literary Flack

vintageanchor: Crash course in Shakespeare. Source (and easier...

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 10:13:09 -0500

vintageanchor:

Crash course in Shakespeare. Source (and easier to view): http://tinyurl.com/bbbl6s3

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 17:46:45 -0500

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.

GREAT list! I have read all of these (except William F. Buckey,...

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 14:35:48 -0500

GREAT list! I have read all of these (except William F. Buckey, Jr.).

vintageanchor:

When The Official Preppy Handbook was released in 1980, it contained a reading list of WASPy lit. Being obsessed with reading and lists, many of us here have read them all. Here’s the list in full. Which books have you read? What books should be added to this prestigious list?

PREP I: The Basic Reading List

REQUIRED
*The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
*A Separate Peace by John Knowles
*A Good School by Richard Yates
*The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
*Tom Brown’s School Days by Thomas Hughes
*Goodbye Mr. Chips by James Hilton
*Tea and Sympathy by Robert Anderson
*This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
*Love Story by Eric Segal
*The Headmaster by John McPhee
*Good Times/Bad Times by James Kirkwood, Jr.
*Rector of Justin by Louis Auchincloss
*The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
*Lawrenceville Stories by Owen Johnson
*The Belles of St. Trinian’s by Ronald Searle

OPTIONAL
*The Duke of Deception by Geoffrey Wolff
*The World According to Garp by John Irving
*anything by George Plimpton
*anything by William F. Buckley, Jr.

SandyHatesBooks: SAVE THE DATE: Sandy Hates Books Fundraiser

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 15:15:22 -0400

SandyHatesBooks: SAVE THE DATE: Sandy Hates Books Fundraiser:

sandyhatesbooks:

Save the date, and save the store! On Saturday, November 17, 12–8pm, we’re hosting a day-long book fair featuring drinks, music, and some of our favorite authors. We will share more details with you as they come. A big thank you to everyone for the incredible outpouring of support we’ve…

“People who count their chickens before they are hatched,...

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 09:01:37 -0400

“People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately.”
— Oscar Wilde in Letter from Paris (May 1900)

vintageanchor: Jennifer Egan’s Top Ten Book List1. The Golden...

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 08:50:40 -0400

vintageanchor:

Jennifer Egan’s Top Ten Book List

1. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (1962).
2. The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard (1980).
3. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (1905).
4. Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys (1939).
5. Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871–72).
6. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952).
7. Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne (1759–67).
8. Underworld by Don DeLillo (1997).
9. Germinal by Émile Zola (1884).
10. Don Juan by Lord Byron (1819).

Visit the site to learn more about her life and work and to see the picks of 140 other leading writers: www.toptenbooks.net.

Heart Jenny Egan. Oh boy, more books that I need to read!

The chickens love corn on the cob. Here are Lorraine, Roz, and...

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 22:03:58 -0400

The chickens love corn on the cob. Here are Lorraine, Roz, and Dolly (left to right) enjoying a freshly picked cob.

The amazing paper wasp nest on our quince tree. It’s a...

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 21:13:49 -0400

The amazing paper wasp nest on our quince tree. It’s a huge wasp condo, like on the Upper East Side.

vintageanchor: Perfume that smells like new books!Paper...

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 15:50:49 -0400

vintageanchor:

Perfume that smells like new books!

Paper Passion, a scent from Geza Schoen for Wallpaper* magazine, makes its wearers smell like freshly printed books. I suppose it can be alternated with “In the Library,” a perfume that smells like old books.

Paper Passion fragrance by Geza Schoen, Gerhard Steidl, and Wallpaper* magazine, with packaging by Karl Lagerfeld and Steidl.

“The smell of a freshly printed book is the best smell in the world.” Karl Lagerfeld.

It comes packaged with inside a hollow carved out of a book with “texts” by “Karl Lagerfeld, Günter Grass, Geza Schoen and Tony Chambers.”

More here.

What’s the difference between a lawyer and a...

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 21:40:33 -0400

What’s the difference between a lawyer and a catfish?

One’s an ugly, scum-sucking bottom feeder and the other is a fish.

Two of the chicks (a month old now) left the hen house and...

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 23:22:00 -0400

Two of the chicks (a month old now) left the hen house and explored the run today for the first time. The white chick found a slug and ate it.

‎”Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the...

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 07:39:23 -0400

‎”Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” —Anton Chekhov

vintageanchor:

Show me, don’t tell me.

“Rocky Graziano” Stanley Kubrick (as posted by one...

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 18:28:00 -0400

“Rocky Graziano”
Stanley Kubrick

(as posted by one our authors on Facebook earlier today).

vintageanchor: “It is not the brains that matter most, but that...

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 16:13:50 -0400

vintageanchor:

“It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them…the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.”
―Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Happy 86th birthday Harper Lee! vintageanchor: “Son,” she...

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 17:34:44 -0400

Happy 86th birthday Harper Lee!

vintageanchor:

“Son,” she said, and spit between her fingers, “what you’ve got in your britches is no news to me, and no concern of mine: hell, I’ve fooled around with nobody but boys since first grade. I never think like I’m a girl; you’ve got to remember that, or we can’t never be friends.”
—from Truman Capote’s OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS (1948). The tomboy character, Idabel Thompkins, which Capote based on friend Harper Lee, chides the main character Joel when he is embarrassed to undress in front of her.

Happy Birthday to Alabama-born [Nelle] Harper Lee (1926), author of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, which features a character Dill, based on Capote.

Great — now I’m hungry and I want to go home and...

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:47:40 -0400

Great — now I’m hungry and I want to go home and read.

vintageanchor:

Cupcakes de libros de Victoria’s Kitchen.

Today is the anniversary of the birth of lyricist E.Y....

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 12:56:48 -0400

Today is the anniversary of the birth of lyricist E.Y. ‘Yip’ Harburg(1896; d.1981), who penned the words to ‘Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?’ (1932) and ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ (1939), among others…

“Cabin in the Sky” with Harold Arlen (1943)
“Bloomer Girl” with Harold Arlen (1944)
“April in Paris”
“It’s Only a Paper Moon”
“Lydia the Tattooed Lady”
“How Are Things in Glocca Morra?”
“Old Devil Moon”
“Then I’ll Be Tired of You”
“When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich”
“Down with Love”
“Free and Equal Blues”

"Personally I’m not a fan of sex – I’ve always regarded it as a disappointing substitute for a cup of..."

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 19:08:17 -0400

“Personally I’m not a fan of sex – I’ve always regarded it as a disappointing substitute for a cup of tea.”

- Tim Stanley, The (London) Telegraph

An author (sorry, no names) was telling me about a sex toy shop...

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 22:10:05 -0400

An author (sorry, no names) was telling me about a sex toy shop in London called Coco de Mer. While looking for the store on line, I found the palm tree of the same name (Lodoicea maldivica). The seed of the tree is pictured above. You gotta love the Brits.

“No one ever committed suicide while reading a good book, but...

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 21:36:22 -0400

“No one ever committed suicide while reading a good book, but many have tried while trying to write one”
—Robert Byrne, author of Standard Book of Pool and Billiards