A Rare Saturday Post

I loved the Daily Literary Quote so much, I had to immediately Web-nap it:

"You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."

Mary Oliver

Enjoy your weekends, bloggees!

From: Real Life

"Winners forget they're in a race, they just love to run."

This was in my fortune cookie last night. I think this sentiment applies to writing too. What's the best fortune you ever got?

From: "Sugar, We're Going Down"

"I'm just a notch in your bedpost,
but you're just a line in a song."

Fall Out Boy

Houston, I Have a Problem.

So, I don't know if you pay attention to the Just Reading list over there, but I've been reading Jellicoe Road since 2009. I am in a reading slump, y'all. It's not Jellicoe Road's fault. The book is great, but it got lost in the Christmas shuffle and never managed to regain my attention. I keep meaning to finish it, but now every time I see the orange spine on my coffee table, it feels like work. I'm so sorry Melina Marchetta. It's not you. It's me.

Something won't let me give up on Jellicoe Road. There's a mystery that I'd still like to solve.

Bloggees, do you get into reading slumps? How do you handle them? Start something new? Read an old favorite? Got any recommendations of titles that will get my finger hovering above the next page button?

From: "Closer to the Heart"

"The men who hold high places
must be the ones who start
to mold a new reality
closer to the heart."

Rush

My husband ruled the radio all weekend, so my head's spinning through classic rock lyrics this morning. Sometimes I get so used to the words, I don't hear them anymore. This one struck me as so apt for the times, I stopped in my tracks and jotted.

From: Music for Chameleons

"I started writing when I was eight... not knowing that I had chained myself for life to a noble but merciless master. When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended solely for self-flagellation."

Truman Capote

Me loves this.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, --
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.

Emily Dickinson

From: The Paper

A motivational article by Dani Shapiro appeared in the LA Times a week or so ago. In the article, Shapiro ponders what makes great writers. My favorite quote of the article:

"Every single piece of writing I have ever completed -- whether a novel, a memoir, an essay, short story or review -- has begun as a wrestling match between hopelessness and something else, some other quality that all writers, if they are to keep going, must possess.

Call it stubbornness, stamina, a take-no-prisoners determination, but a writer at work reminds me of nothing so much as a terrier with a bone: gnawing, biting, chewing, until finally there is nothing left to do but fall away."

I also love that she calls the publishing industry "the nerdy distant cousin of the rest of media."

Read this article if you've ever wondered if your continuing to write in the face of all the doom and gloom of the industry is yet another manifestation of your subconscious need to harm yourself.

Short on time? It's nothing new.

"But when shall I paint my starry sky, that picture which preoccupies me continuously?"

Vincent van Gogh

Now Showing: My Indecisive Side

I poster-napped this one from a library supply company. Sometimes I contemplate going back to school for an MLS so I can live the crazy life of a librarian. I've also considered enrolling in med school (after I finished editing a book on Emergency Medical Services), or just being boring and getting a PhD in literature. Just wondering--if money and time were no issue, what crazy direction would you take your life in?

"I've survived a lot of things, and I'll probably survive this."

J.D. Salinger's passing bums me out, but this article about Salinger by Lillian Ross got me thinking about his utter awesome-ness.

I've probably read Catcher in the Rye more than 20 times, and loved it more each time, but I don't think it'd be half as wonderful without J.D. Salinger being a total punk in real life. He saw the connection between being a writer and being narcissistic, and he avoided ruin by isolating himself from people who wanted to lavish him with praise--something he considered damaging.

In the New Yorker article, Lillian Ross says:

"The older and crankier he got, the more convinced he was that in the end all writers get pretty much what’s coming to them: the destructive praise and flattery, the killing attention and appreciation. ...He talked about how easily writers could become vain, complaining that they got puffed up by the same 'authorities' who approved putting monosodium glutamate in baby food."

Have you read The Catcher in the Rye? Should we have a group reading of the original YA novel? I'll lead the discussion. Let me know if you're in, or if you're just a crummy phony.

From: "What Do Women Want?"

"I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath..."

You can hear Kim Addonizio read this poem aloud by visiting the Academy of American Poets Web site.

Loves her. Don't want to infringe on copyright though, so go read the whole thing. Read more from her book Tell Me at her author's Web site.

You Say It's My Birthday?

Over the weekend, Booknapped turned 1 year old!

I reminisced by looking over my first few posts. It's sort of like scanning a first draft when you're a few hundred pages into your manuscript. I had an idea of what I wanted to do here at Booknapped, but I really wasn't sure. You can sense that I'm blogging blindly, screaming into a megaphone and hoping somebody hears, and more importantly, listens.

So reader peeps, thanks so, so much for listening. I hope you find a book, a poem, a song you never heard before and that you LOVE. I hope it latches onto your brain like an ear worm and hypnotizes you until you forge to your independent book store for an inspired purchase.

Also, if you've been thinking about blogging, but telling yourself you don't have time, creativity, or a host of other qualities you think you need, stop bitching and start a revolution.