Calories . . .

Always a concern after Thanksgiving . . .

The past . . .

Too Early For Christmas

Hard to Be An Artist

One thing to know as an artist: Even if you're successful, you will have a day job.  For a long, long time.  Maybe even the rest of your life.

The Aesthete

http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Whats-Your-Reading-Personality-Quiz?cid=fb_own_own_ReadQuiz

 

Not surprisingly, I got:

 

The Aesthete

You've read many works by classic authors—from Virgil and Shakespeare to Tolstoy, Stendhal, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, Ralph Ellison, Pablo Neruda and F. Scott Fitzgerald—and you savor books by award-winning contemporary authors, from Salvage the Bones and A Visit from the Goon Squad, to The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, On Beauty, Gilead or What Is the What. Plot and pacing are less important to you than the originality of the author's imagination and use of language. You revere writers whose words can exalt everyday experience into a shareable sublimeness. "Home was an idea, and like Arcadia it was lost in the past," Kate Atkinson writes in Life After Life. Discovering fresh perceptions like this is the reason you read. You're not put off if a sentence is as long as a paragraph, or if a paragraph fills a whole page, as long as the power of the author's voice continues unbroken. Nor do you mind if the book's characters are wicked, if the hero is unlucky; or if the settings are alien or hostile. The Aesthete can love Land of Love and Drowning without supporting witchcraft or adultery, and can adore The Way We Live Now without rooting for pyramid schemes. This sort of reader doesn't need a happy ending, or a neat Aesopian resolution. This sort of reader wants to immerse herself in the author's language and raptly take it all in.

What compels you above all is the sense of the author's sustained gift of expression, whether it be lyrical, understated or sonorous.

Guess What!

Guess What I haven't gotten around to doing . . .

I prefer humor, but these are pretty wise words.

Bookaholics

I should be more useful, but I'm still not quite aware that I'm in the United States again . . .  Jeez, when did I get so old?

I wish I got dinner . . .

 Strictly for my amusement . . .

I'm Back

FYI, I'm back in the States.  At least one of you didn't pray hard enough, because I didn't see, meet or get near Emun Elliott.  :(  The closest I got was walking on the beach of Moray Firth.  And if you don't know how this relates to Emun Elliott, read his list of appearances on imdb.com.

I'm still grossly behind in real life, so I'll probably not have much time to blog for a while.  But here are some pics.  The no fouling sign is from Scotland, the scenery shot is from Ireland (the black dots are cows walking on the beach) and Emun Elliott from the above mentioned role.