I can't sleep…
“Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author’s words reverberating in your head.”
~ Paul Auster
Sources: Quote – thank you creatingaquietmind. Image: Artist Natalya Gaida via desvandelecturas.
“The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.”
~ Ernest Hemingway
Sources: Quote – billieisaguysname via iamabrusselssprout. Image – RT.com
“If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that makes a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story.”
Other writing tips from my favorite authors:
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Thank you Maureen at Magnolia Beginnings for presenting me with The Booker Award. It’s a tall order to list my top 5 books of all time (so I’m giving you 11). And, I’ve excluded “self-help”, “business” and “autobiographies” from this list. Here we go:
My nominees for The Booker Award are listed below. If you choose to participate, the rules of the award are to: 1) Nominate 5-10 bloggers and let your recipients know. (2) Post The Booker Award picture. (3) Share your top 5 books of all time.
I’ve read books. Let’s say hundreds. Maybe more. (That’s not to brag, the point is coming.) Rather than focus on the wonderful books that I’ve read and the vast amounts of information, learning and pleasure that I’ve derived from this pastime, I spend an inordinate amount of time dwelling on the less than 1% of the books that I haven’t finished. The incomplete. My inability to finish.
Resting firmly on top of this list is Ulysses by James Joyce. That’s the cover on the right. The book, the same hideous cover, has been sitting next to my desk for eight years. It stares me down. It torments me. Here come the low guttural whispers: Quitter. Not capable. Not good enough. Over your head. Farm boy. Loser! Public school project.
I happened to come across a recent article in Publishers Weekly titled “The Top 10 Most Difficult Books” and the festering sore opens wide again.
“…The “Difficult Books” series is devoted to identifying the hardest and most frustrating books ever written, as well as what made them so hard and frustrating…If you can somehow read all 10, you probably ascend to the being immediately above Homo sapiens…”
Here we go. Intelligentsia slapping me around again. You want to hit nerve – – hit me here. Hit me. Neanderthal man immediately surfaces.