Author Archives: admin

Cunningham’s The Hours

March 31, 2008 – 7:24 am

“She is always afraid of getting trapped between floors in this elevator — she can all too easily imagine the long, long wait; the cries for help to tenants who might or not might not speak English and who might or might not care to intervene; the strange numbing deathlike fear of standing there, alone, for a considerable time, in the brilliant, stale-smelling emptiness, either looking or not looking at her distorted reflection in the dim circular mirror fastened to the upper right-hand corner.”

You might want to take the stairs today…

In Michael Cunningham’s novel The Hours, he intertwines the stories of three women including Virginia Woolf. In this sentence, he repeats “might or might not” to emphasize that whether the neighbors speak English or you choose to look in the mirror, it will still be a frightening experience. His description makes the elevator tomb-like. Just as with this character, our imagination is often a scarier place than reality.

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Weekend Words: Does Kindle Appeal to you?

March 29, 2008 – 8:31 am

Have you heard of Amazon’s Kindle? Touted as a “revolutionary wireless reading device,” it is a paperback-sized $400 gadget on which you can read books, magazines, newspapers, and even blogs. Amazon says it is temporarily sold out due to customer demand. Hhhmmm… maybe I am old-fashioned but I like actual books. Curling up with a plastic device to read a novel? I don’t think so. Even if I could get past the price, the whole concept is unappealing. Amazon markets it as “completely mobile” and “easy to use” for both left and right handed people with a non-glare screen — well, so are real books! Amazon says it is “paper-like” yet I like the feel of real paper made from natural materials like wood or cotton. I like the glossy paper of magazines with their high-quality photos. I like the graphic fonts of newspapers. I even like the smell of books. So while I appreciate technology which brings convenience to my life, when it comes to books, no technical advancement is necessary.

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Hillary Clinton on Health Care

March 28, 2008 – 8:19 am

“I know that there are a lot of experts who may disagree about how to get to universal health care, but they agree with me that in the absence of universal health care it’s very difficult to control costs, and it’s extremely hard to incentivize quality improvements at the level you need to really see results.”

Actually, this sentence is the opposite of stunning. Incentivize?! I dislike adding suffixes to real words to make new ones which supposedly sound more important. Politicians love to do this. Incentive is the noun which has been hijacked into the fancy “incentivize” or incent (as a verb). I was surprised that Merriam Webster actually lists this as a word. After people misuse a word long enough, I guess good old Webster relents and decides it’s a word.

Head to http://www.nyt.com/ for Clinton’s interview.

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E. B White Quote

March 27, 2008 – 8:52 am

“We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting laundry.”

This thought comes from the Letters of E. B. White. As someone who appreciates the little things (and does a lot of laundry!), White’s simple sentence resonated with me. As you would expect, Letters is filled with wise, funny sentences. It will be an inspiration for the writers among us.

Thanks to one of my favorite magazines for reminding me of this quote in its April issue. www.realsimple.com

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Zadie Smith’s On Beauty

March 26, 2008 – 8:21 am

“And 83 Langham is a fine middle-class house, larger even than it looks on the outside, with a small pool out back, unheated and missing many of its white tiles, like a British smile.”

Here Zadie Smith describes the shabby New England house which a family lives in — the husband a white Englishman and his wife of 30 years African American. Smith could have simply wrote that the house needed repairs but instead she tells a much richer story by writing paragraphs about exactly how the house is unkempt and what that says about its inhabitants. Smith is a gifted writer of multi-cultural family stories, also the theme she wrote about in her first novel White Teeth. Also, as one reviewer wrote “she’s funny as hell.” I think she’s a fresh voice. What do you think?

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Steinbeck’s East of Eden

March 25, 2008 – 8:50 am

“We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.”

John Steinbeck is explaining in the middle of his long and classic novel East of Eden that he believes the only story is that humans are caught in a net of good and evil. This sprawling masterpiece is an engaging story of generations of two families set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas Valley. It’s both a powerful family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis. Do you agree with his premise that there’s only one basic story?

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Doctorow’s Ragtime

March 24, 2008 – 8:26 am

In this scene of E. L. Doctorow’s 1974 novel Ragtime, a father and son go to a Giant’s baseball game.

“As the trolley came across the bridge they could see on the bluff overlooking the wooden stands several huge trees which, lacking leaves even in this season, supported derbied figures of men who preferred not to pay to enter the park but to watch the game festooned in the branches like black flowers swaying in the wind.”

I was so struck by this original book when I first read it in college. It is not a linear story but a combination of scenes and people which gives a unique perspective of America in the early 1900’s. It is filled with visual sentences such as this one in which you can see the black-hatted men dotting the trees. It is a poetic, dramatic story which weaves historical people with Doctorow’s characters. What did you think of Doctorow’s writing style?

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Weekend Words: Happy Blogiversary !

March 22, 2008 – 8:42 am

I’ve been blogging for two months now – yeah! Having twin almost-five-year olds makes for busy (and joyous!) days. So I’m especially happy to find time each day for this writing project. Hello to my readers in the UK, Canada, Belgium and Israel just to name a few countries who are visiting. I hope you’re finding books to add to your reading list, and are inspired as writers. I’ve loved books since I was first read to as a child so I’m excited to keep reading, writing and blogging.

This is your site as much as mine. I welcome your recommendations for sentences and your comments. What is your all-time favorite book? What sentences take your breath away? Happy reading!

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Haruf’s Plainsong

March 21, 2008 – 7:49 am

“Afterward, when she was calm again, after the doctor had left, she went into the air outside the Holt County Clinic next to the hospital, and the light in the street seemed sharp to her and hard-edged, definite, as if it were no longer merely a late fall afternoon in the hour before dusk, but instead as if it were the first moment of noon in the exact meridian of summer and she was standing precisely under the full illumination of the sun.”

A teenage girl is leaving the doctor after he confirms she is pregnant. Kent Haruf describes the light to show this defining moment in her young life. It was no longer any afternoon; she feels she’s standing under a spotlight. Haruf tells us before the novel begins that Plainsong means a simple, unadorned melody and that is the writing style you find in this quiet, beautiful book. If you are a writer, I think you’ll be inspired by how much Haruf conveys without fancy vocabulary or complicated sentence structure. Blogging about books I’ve read years ago is sometimes like re-discovering old friends. I need to read this one again.

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Steve Martin’s Shopgirl

March 20, 2008 – 7:46 am

“Her penalty is that the men she attracts with her current package see her only from a primitive part of their brains, the childish part that likes shiny objects that make noise when rattled.”

That struck me funny since it was only a few years ago that my kids’ eyes were drawn to shiny objects – so true! I’ve never heard a woman dressing to be a plaything described this way. Using the word “package” is perfect since it focuses on the exterior. In this passage from Martin’s novella, he paints a full picture of this character who lives in image-conscious Los Angeles adding that at thirty-two she doesn’t know about forty “and she is unprepared for the time when she will actually have to know something in order to have people listen to her.”

Martin is a perceptive writer. Perhaps the best humor comes from people who are keen observers of human nature, as Martin is. It’s a witty and engaging book; have you read any of his writing?

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