don’t take yourself too seriously
- ‘To “know how to wear clothes” is another way of saying that Grant embodied class, which is to say high class: Grant wore well-tailored clothes, and he knew how to hold himself in them. But he came from nothing, and the way he wore clothes was just as much of a performance as his refined trans-Atlantic accent, his acrobatic slapstick routines, and his masterful flirtation skills.’
- ‘I could write a thousand words just on the way that Katharine Hepburn holds her chin, or the magnificence that is Russell’s wardrobe in His Girl Friday.’
- ‘To be Grant-esque is to be the immaculate socialite, sartorially refined, and the object of affection and admiration.’
(via Scandals of Classic Hollywood: Cary Grant’s Intimate Bromance | The Hairpin)
2011 in books
I’m going to go ahead and put this here. These are all the books I read cover to cover in 2011.
Presented without any comment! Other than to say that 6 were especially horrible and I read them with growing dread. I will leave it up to you to guess which ones.
1. Life of Pi, Yann Martel
2. The Dante Club, Matthew Pearl (re-read)
3. Beatrice & Virgil, Yann Martel
4. When Everything Changed, Gail Collins
5. Weight, Jeanette Winterson
6. Lady Chatterly’s Lover, D. H. Lawrence
7. Welcome to the Monkeyhouse, Kurt Vonnegut (re-read)
8. The Shallows, James Fallows
9. Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
10. Right Ho, Jeeves, PG Wodehouse
11. American on Purpose, Craig Ferguson
12. The Bad Beginning, Lemony Snicket
13. Machine of Death, Various
14. The Imperfectionists, Tom Rathman
15. The Demon-haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan
Baking and listening to the Doctor Who proms. And coffee, always coffee.
And now, tree decorating.
Today’s agenda: planes. Goodbye east coast, hello Midwest!
My extensive notes before starting Chapter 35.
No, your cold black heart was melted by a robot and a shadow.
What I call “the cover design test” would be useful in Comp Lit discussions: i.e. if your theory of meaning (Marxist, Post Structuralist, Feminist, Freudian, Post Colonialist, etc.) cannot translate into a commercially viable book cover, then it fails at properly describing your text.”
—
JACKET MECHANICAL: 1. Fictions
Catching up on some reading; I read this footnote and reread it and thought “Dang, why didn’t any of my lit classes ever talk about the cover?”
Guys, I woke up and had Scrivener open so I finished pasting an existing story into it in the hopes that it’ll make it easier to organize and finish, and now I want to call in sick to work and do this all day.
I guess that’s a good sign, but I have to go to work now.
I don’t have the energy or attention span to read what I want to finish reading (more Carl Sagan, obv.) and I don’t want to watch anything. So I’m sitting here chairdancing to the newest Black Keys album.
Highly recommended.
