PARAPHRASES from The Fatigue Artist, a novel by Lynne Sharon Schwartz * The
lordly Hudson took on a sheen--beyond it glittered a magical little enclave
resembling Oz--which was actually Hoboken, New Jersey. * One
drop of water is nothing--massed in a tidal wave, everything gives way before
it. Air is nothing--massed in a tornado,
whole towns crumble. *
In Praise of Public Libraries Informative article on two books and a film by
Sue Halpern
Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help
Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life by Eric Klinenberg
Crown, 277 pp., $28.00; The Library Book by Susan Orlean Simon and Schuster, 319
pp., $28.00; and Ex Libris,a film directed by Frederick Wiseman
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/04/18/in-praise-of-public-libraries/ Thank you, Muse reader!
Cheddar-Cayenne Coins by Fine Cooking Issue 62 The rolled log of dough may be
frozen for up to a month and then thawed for about an hour on the counter or in
the refrigerator overnight. Or bake the
coins ahead, wrap short stacks in plastic, pack the stacks in plastic
containers, and stash them in the freezer.
Thaw at room temperature (or put the frozen coins right in the oven) and
warm them for a few minutes at 325°F to refresh them. yields about 4 dozen 1-1/2-inch coins These are fairly spicy, so use a smaller
amount of cayenne if you want a milder kick. Find recipe at https://www.finecooking.com/recipe/cheddar-cayenne-coins
"In zoos, as in nature, the best times to visit are
sunrise and sunset. That is when most animals come to life. They stir and leave their shelter and tiptoe
to the water's edge . . . They sing
their songs . . . The reward for the
watching eye and the listening ear is great." "Blessed be shock. Blessed be that part of us that protects us
from too much pain and sorrow." Life
of Pi, a novel by Yann Martel
Yann Martel
was born in Salamanca, Spain in 1963 of Canadian parents who were doing
graduate studies. Later they both joined
the Canadian foreign service and he grew up in Costa Rica, France, Spain and
Mexico, in addition to Canada. He continued to travel widely as an adult,
spending time in Iran, Turkey and India, but is now based mainly in
Montreal. He obtained a degree in
Philosophy from Trent University in Ontario, then worked variously as a
tree planter, dishwasher and security guard before taking up writing full-time
from the age of 27. His first
book, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, was published in
1993 and is a collection of short stories.
This was followed by his first novel, Self (1996). In 2002 Yann Martel came to public attention
when he won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction for his second novel, Life
of Pi (2002). The
novel tells the story of one Pi Patel, the son of an Indian family of
zookeepers. They decide to emigrate to Canada and embark on a ship with
their animals to cross the Pacific. Life
of Pi has been published in over forty countries and territories,
representing well over thirty languages, and a film of the book, adapted by Ang
Lee, was released in 2012. In 2004, a collection of short stories was
published entitled We Ate the Children Last. His latest books
are the novel Beatrice and Virgil (2010), a New York Time
Bestseller and a Financial Times Best Book; 101 Letters to a Prime
Minister (2012), a collection of letters to the prime minister of
Canada; and his latest novel, The High Mountains of Portugal (2016). https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/yann-martel
Rice Bowl with Smoked Fish, Quick Pickles, and Dill from
David Tamarkin’s Cook90 is a
fast take for weeknight eating. Good
quality smoked fish becomes the center of a bowl built on rice (or any cooked
grain), seven-minute eggs cooked to perfection, and the bright bite of quick
pickled vegetables. https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/rice-bowl-with-smoked-fish-quick-pickles-and-dill
Since I first cracked the pages on One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia
Maquez, I have completely agreed that
its first sentence is one of the greatest ever written in English (no small feat
for a book written in Spanish—most readers know the Gregory Rabassa
translation). That particular line makes many short lists, but
what often goes overlooked is that this is only the first splash in a
cascade: the book has not only one of
the best first sentences, but also one of the best (enormous) first paragraphs,
first chapters, and, arguably, first three chapters in literature. Another passage I’ve always been impressed by
makes up the bulk of Chapter 3 of Brave New World by
Aldous Huxley; it begins when Mustapha Mond makes his first appearance and runs
through the end of that chapter. It’s a
tour de force of postmodern narrative—again, no small feat, in this case
because it was written in 1931 while the beginning of postmodernism is
generally pegged a couple of decades later.
To note just one more example, I’m a huge fan of a short passage
in A High Wind In Jamaica by
Richard Hughes, which delves startlingly into the non-human nature of
children. Less than 800 words long, it
is third-person narrative insight at its finest; who can argue against the
wisdom that “babies are, after all, one of the most developed species of the
lower vertebrates”? A few months back I
came across a chapter in a more recent book,
the 2013 novel The Crane Wife by
Patrick Ness. The story begins on the
first page but, to my eyes, really launches itself in the fourth chapter. Even without reading the rest of the novel a
writer can learn a lot of things from this chapter. The revelation of character, primarily of
Amanda but also of Rachel (and even Mei) is excellent. The chapter is vulgar and it’s thoughtful;
it’s maudlin and it’s hilarious; it’s in the moment, but reveals the past while
foreshadowing the future. This, writers
and readers, is how it’s done. Christopher Daly, the better editor https://thebettereditor.wordpress.com/2019/02/27/fiction-master-class-the-crane-wife-by-patrick-ness/
riff raff In medieval French, there was then a set
expression rifle et rafle. These words are from the verbs rifler, to spoil or strip, and raffler, to carry off.
The phrase referred to the plundering of the bodies of the dead on the
battlefield and the carrying off of the booty.
The French phrase moved into English in the forms rif and raf or riffe
and raf, which meant at first every scrap, from which we may guess
that medieval plunderers were extremely thorough. It’s known by at least 1338 (it appears in
Mannyng’s Chronicle of English of
that date). Later it shifted sense
through a series of stages, first referring to one and all, or everybody, and
then later taking on the idea of the common people, those of no special social
standing. The phrase was abbreviated
to riff-raff and can be found in
Gregory’s Chronicle of London of
about 1470. It seems to have taken some
decades longer for it to have gone even further downhill and for it to be
associated in particular with the dregs of society. And in the early nineteenth century raffish appeared.
This adjective originally referred to somebody who was disreputable or
vulgar. Only later did it acquire the
undertones it now has of a person who is attractively unconventional. Read more at http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-rif1.htm
Authors! program presented by Toledo-Lucas County
Public Library Heather Morris (M)
April 15 | 7 p.m. Scott High School Morris' first screenplay, Witness,
was optioned by Academy Award-winning writer Pamela Wallace. In 2003, she met Lale Sokolov, a Holocaust
survivor who was made to work as a tattooist while imprisoned at the
Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Morris brought Sokolov’s experience to light, first in an award-winning
screenplay, and later in her New York Times best-selling debut novel, The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Get Tickets: $20
That makes sense; showing internal logic; rational, sensible. [from late 18th c.] quotations ▼
Antonyms: illogical, irrational, nonsensical, senseless
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 2073
April 4, 2019
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