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

Short on time? It's nothing new.

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

Vincent van Gogh

"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.

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.

Access Denied, Stressballs

"Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

From: "The Dead"

"She was walking on before him so lightly and so erect that he longed to run after her noiselessly, catch her by the shoulders and say something foolish and affectionate into her ear. She seemed to him so frail that he longed to defend her against something and then to be alone with her...

Like the tender fire of stars, moments of their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of, broke upon and illumined his memory. He longed to recall to her those moments, to make her forget the years of their dull existence together and remember only their moments of ecstasy. For the years, he felt, had not quenched his soul or hers. Their children, his writing, her household cares had not quenched all their souls' tender fire. In one letter that he had written to her then he had said: "Why is it that words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?"

Like distant music these words that he had written years before were borne towards him from the past. He longed to be alone with her. When the others had gone away, when he and she were in the room in the hotel, then they would be alone together. He would call her softly:

"Gretta!"

Perhaps she would not hear at once: she would be undressing. Then something in his voice would strike her. She would turn and look at him...."

from "The Dead", a story in Dubliners, a short-fiction collection by James Joyce who said "One of the things I could never get accustomed to in my youth was the difference I found between life and literature."

Lines from Our Old Comrade, Shakespeare

Wake, Bloggees!

Wipe the sugar plum dust out of your eyes and let's get back to producing stuff.

I'm talking to myself, you know. I've spent these holidays contemplating and plotting, strategic planning, and now I'm putting all the whosits and whatsits into place. 2010 is going to blow our minds.

"When thou wakest,
Thou takest
True delight
In the sight
Of thy former lady's eye:
And the country proverb known,
That every man should take his own,
In your waking shall be shown:
Jack shall have Jill;
Nought shall go ill;
The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well."

So said Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream

I am feeling optimistic. Tell me, what is your great big goal for 2010?

Don't dream it, be it.

"...Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!"

"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"

Charles Dickens
A Christmas Carol

Oh, what fun! Audible is giving A Christmas Carol read by Tim Curry (!) to all of its members for free, and I'm loving it. If you don't dig audiobooks, you can still read it for free at Gutenberg. But seriously, you should try the audio version. Tim Curry totally brings the sexy back to Dickens.

From: A Room With A View

"Though you fly to Greece, and never see him again, or forget his very name, George will work in your thoughts till you die. It isn't possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal."

A Room With A View
E. M. Forster

The Booknapper's Code of Ethics

"There are moments when, whatever the posture of the body, the soul is on its knees."

Victor Hugo

I saw this quote on the Interwebs this morning on one of my many quote of the day feeds, and I fell in literary love as I often do. The quote was attributed to Victor Hugo and copied all over the place, but no one said what work it was from.

The editor in me is annoyed. What if it wasn't Hugo at all? What if it was Napoleon or Mussolini? It matters. Words are important. That's why you're here.

Anyway, I visited my favorite virtual place (aside from Booknapped) and scanned Les Miserables and there was the quote in a love letter from Marius to Cosette.

Something else I learned? Hugo says "There are moments when..." quite a bit. We all have our little stylistic turns of phrase, no? My beta tells me I say "then" a lot. She means too much, but she's being nice, and I appreciate that.

Anyway, I got sucked into Les Miserables and I time traveled to my childhood when my father took me to see the play at the Walnut Theatre in Philadelphia, and made me read the book first. Made me research Victor Hugo at the library. Took me out to dinner and made me talk about the differences between the book and the musical.

The Booknapper was born.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it:

Go to Gutenberg and read a book or even part of a book. Think of the long line of writers, and innovators, and individuals who made possible reading classics online free. Think of your own words and how you labor and agonize over each one. They should be read, and they should be attributed.

Booknapping is human. Giving credit is divine.

I Should Be So Lucky

Happy Birthday Thoreau!

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

So if you've been visiting Booknapped from way back, you might've noticed that I'm a major Henry David Thoreau fan. I formally wish a happy posthumous birthday to someone who is much cooler than I will ever be.

You know all those quizzes that ask who you'd like to have dinner with, dead or alive? I always choose Thoreau.

Who do you choose?

From: Confessions of Saint Augustine

"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet."

Saint Augustine

Found: Good Advice

"To thine own self be true."

William Shakespeare

Found: Truth

"If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to."

Dorothy Parker

From: Walden

"No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new."

Walden
Henry David Thoreau


When other kids were saying, I wish I was born in the 60s or 70s, I was all, I'd like to live in the transcendental period. Lately, I've been meaning to re-read Walden, but never got around to it until I stumbled upon DailyLit.

Go register and choose a book (you can pay for something new or choose something free from the public domain). They send you a page or two every day via email or RSS feed. I love my morning dose of transcendentalism.

What time do you dream of visiting?

Found: Truth

"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."

Henry David Thoreau

Found: Old Stuff

After attending the SCBWI writers retreat this weekend, I am now subscribed to 1 million blogs. Today, Roger Sutton over at Read Roger posted this quote from a 1943 book about kids and reading:

"Girls, like boys, are seeking life, but in a different way. They need some so-called boys' books with moving plots and an adventurous hero to take them out of themselves and to keep them from becoming too introspective; for the opposite reason boys need some of the so-called girls' books, for their suggestions of self-analysis and wholesome sentiment."

You can read more on his blog.

Found: "Hints to Young People"

A couple of years ago, someone told me they were throwing out an attic full of old books, and I should come over and get whatever I want. When I got there I was told that all the books "worth anything" had been taken, but I found a few strange items to keep anyway.

Among them was the GAY'S ILLUSTRATED CIRCLE OF KNOWLEDGE : Forming a Household Library of Scientific and Useful Information--one of those strange old awesome books with intricately decorated title pages. It's awesome, and here is the first paragraph from an essay called, "Hints to Young People."

"Make the most and the best of yourself. Your destiny is in your own hands and your fortune will be your own making. Are you making the most of the one life that is intrusted to you? Are you putting to the best uses the natural abilities of body and mind with which you have been entrusted? Or are you droning through life, steadily and surely drifting behind those of less ability than yourself, men who with fewer talents than you possess are making the most of themselves.

Think of this. Put the question squarely to yourselves as we put it for you, and answer it honestly. Are you making the best of yourselves?

If not, now and only now is your chance; make a radical change and make it at once. Begin a new life and rise out of the old ruts. Do your own thinking and acting. Strive to be a man among men, [or a woman among women] with a worthy purpose and a pure ambition; then will the world not only be better for your living in it, but you will be better for having lived in the world."

There you go, young people. Thems some good hints.