Harper Lee explains where her novel came from.

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12 Books That End Mid-Sentence

Way back before The Sopranos made people angry/confused for cutting to black out of nowhere, books were messing with the heads of readers by daring to not use a period as the last typeset keystroke on the very last page. Here are 12 Books That End Mid-Sentence

The Iron Bridge

The Iron Bridge

I am standing on a disused iron bridge
that was erected in 1902
according to the iron plaque bolted to a beam,
the year my mother turned one.
Imagine—a mother in her infancy,
and she was a Canadian infant at that,
one of the great infants of the province of Ontario.

But here I am leaning on the rusted railing
looking at the water below,
which is flat and reflective this morning,
sky-blue and streaked with high clouds,
and the more I look at the water,
which is like a talking picture,
the more I think of 1902
when workmen in shirts and caps
riveted this iron bridge together
across a thin channel joining two lakes
where wildflowers now blow along the shore
and pairs of swans float in the leafy coves.

1902—my mother was so tiny
she could have fit into one of those oval
baskets for holding apples,
which her mother could have lined with a soft cloth
and placed on the kitchen table
so she could keep an eye on infant Katherine
while she scrubbed potatoes or shelled a bag of peas,
the way I am keeping an eye on that cormorant
who just broke the glassy surface
and is moving away from me and the bridge,
swiveling his curious head,
slipping out to where the sun rakes the water
and filters through the trees that crowd the shore..

And now he dives,
disappears below the surface,
and while I wait for him to pop up,
I picture him flying underwater with his strange wings,

as I picture you, my tiny mother,
who disappeared last year,
flying somewhere with your strange wings,
your wide eyes, and your heavy wet dress,
kicking deeper down into the lake
with no end or name, some boundless province of water.


by Billy Collins
from Sailing Alone Around the Room
Random House 2002

Via 3quarksdaily

The Song Of Wandering Aengus

Music by Philip Leitch, Donovan on verses by W.B.Yeats. Illustrations by Cronogeo.

Child's Play

Australian author David Malouf's fourth novel was written in 1982. It's been sitting on my bookshelf for more than a decade and I finally decided to read it. It is written in the voice of a young man in Italy planning the murder of a famous writer.  He goes into work each day, has co-workers that he doesn't know too well and awaits the word from above that it is time to act. Initially I thought this was a post 911 terrorist novel and was surprised that it was inspired by a bombing in Bologna in 1980. The novel proceeds with an almost hypnotic calm. The protagonist is just an ordinary fellow living a boring life, studying the life of the man he is to kill, while waiting for the call that will shake things up. The ending, when it finally comes is anti-climactic.
Two short stories were included with Child's Play. Eustace is the story of young girls in a residential school whose innocence is defiled by a dangerous young man who finds his way into their dormitory by night.
Prowler is about an intruder who invades homes in a Brisbane suburb, sometimes naked, sometimes armed. There are enough incidents reported that a special investigation squad is struck. Fear envelopes the community but none of the victims is able to identify the prowler. Physical descriptions vary greatly. Women leave their windows open despite the threat. Why? Who knows? It's curious.

Malouf is an interesting writer. If you like his writing you'll like this. 

Shakespeare's Tragedies

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Famous Novels' First Sentences, Mapped

I'm old enough to have been taught diagramming in school and, unlike many, I found it very useful.
Perhaps that's why I found this enjoyable to read.

A Diagrammatical Dissertation on Opening Lines of Notable Novels, is a series of simple Reed-Kellogg sentence diagrams.

More at the Link

Book Fountain

Book Fountain, Cincinnati Public Library  (Photo J.F Schmitz)

Dinner with Mr. Darcy: Recipes from Jane Austen’s Novels and Letters

I do love literary cookbooks and Dinner With Mr. Darcy is no exception. How about a dinner party featuring Mr. Bingley’s white soup, Lady Middleton’s apricot marmalade, Margaret Dods’s pigeon pie?

This recipe sounds easy enough:

APRICOT MARMALADE AND APRICOT “CAKES”
Lady Middleton successfully deploys “apricot marmalade” (which we would now call jam) to stop her daughter’s attention-seeking screams. The apricot cakes are made from thick purée, which is dried in the oven to make delicious, chewy sweets.

Makes 2 quarts (2 liters)
18 oz (500g) fresh apricots or dried apricots, reconstituted overnight in apple juice 

1 ¼ cups (250g) preserving sugar for marmalade 

1 ¾ cups (350g) preserving sugar for cakes 

Pit the fruit and boil it until tender — about 30 minutes. Then rub through a sieve or purée in a blender, stir in the sugar and bring back to a boil. Boil until the sugar has dissolved. 

To make apricot cakes, spoon the mixture into oiled muffin cups and smooth down. Leave in a very low oven, 175°F (80°C) to dry out for 5–6 hours, turning them over halfway.

More literary treats from Georgian England at Brain Pickings

Kurt Vonnegut Infographic by Maya Eilam

 Maya Eilam  presents Kurt Vonnegut’s theories about archetypal stories in infographic form.

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10 Modern Authors Who Write Old School

Some authors would be lost without a computer but here are 10, Neil Gaiman and Amy Tan among them, who eschew technology and opt for typewriters or even pens and pencils instead.

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Mavis Gallant’s Spanish Diary Excerpts

The New Yorker has published excerpts from Mavis Gallant's diaries covering the period when Gallant was living hand to mouth in Spain, giving English lessons and anxiously waiting for payment for her New Yorker stories to arrive via her literary agent, Jacques Chambrun.

Mavis Gallant, 91, Dies

Mavis Gallant in 1981. Ian Barrett/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press

Mavis Gallant, an acclaimed short-story writer who was abandoned as a child and later left Canada for Europe, where she made her name writing about the dislocated and the dispossessed, died on Tuesday at her home in Paris. She was 91.
More at NYTimes.com

Orwell With Pup

George Orwell holds a puppy during the Spanish Civil War in 1937. Ernest Hemingway can be seen in the background.

Via Ferocious Sprout

Alice in Wonderland creator loathed fame, letter reveals

Charles Dodgson is known to have been a shy man, but the author of Alice in Wonderland so hated the fame his fiction brought him that he sometimes wished he "had never written any books at all", a letter being auctioned next month shows.

Read more at  theguardian.com