"I love film. But it can't in any way do what a book can. In the first place, a film has only two hours to make you fall for it. Not much time."
A Bookpuddle reader sent me the above comment.
Movies vs. Books.
We have wrestled with this subject before, haven’t we?
Anyone who argues that movies are superior, [how do I say this?] umm… their campfire is not one I want to warm my cold hands at.
Last weekend, I watched The Door in The Floor, hoping to see something worthy of John Irving’s A Widow For One Year. [Movie was re-named, and only went to Part One of a three-part novel].
I was very disappointed.
I agree with the above reader’s statement, which was in reference to the same movie.

Seldom will I flagrantly endorse a book.
Seldom will I compel you to RUN to the store and buy a book.
Seldom is one as god… I mean as good as this one is, though.
And, it has just been issued in paperback format, [not only in the U.S., but also here in the Great White North, I saw it just tonight, in all of its shiny paperback glory, at Chapters…] so…. now you have no excuse.

There’s this great guy I’ve been seeing.
Wait a minute, let me rephrase that.
When I go to my favorite Starbucks after work, there’s this other guy who also sits there and reads voraciously as though the world was scheduled for demolition tomorrow!
He's a lot like me, in other words.

Well, here I am on the final leg of my holidays.
Still visiting. Still having fun. Still eating.
But come Monday, it is back to the coal mines for me. Tomorrow I will be boarding a plane and flying back home. Back to my meowing Jack, and the snowbanks I left behind in Ottawa.
At the end of each year I like to reflect upon the books I have read over the past 12 months. I reminisce about each one and see which come to the forefront as being especially memorable and worthwhile.

Wow! I’ve had the most relaxing weekend
Ever. While winter has been frosting the
Windows and filling the driveway, my
Friend and I have been lazing about
In the hot-tub talking, reminiscing
About so many things. Listening
To a lot of terrific music. Also
Just generally catching up
With each other. Eating
And laughing 2 much.
At one point, I even
Wrote a poem, &

The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright & The Taliesin Fellowship
By Roger Friedland & Harold Zellman.

I hate being too busy.
Really hate it.
And lately I feel that I have been too busy to write anything about the great books I am reading.
For instance, I just finished reading Ken Follett’s World Without End.
Loved it. Did I write about it? No.
Before that, Laura Kipnis’s The Female Thing: Dirt, Envy, Sex, Vulnerability.
Terrific book. Did I write about it?
NO!

Inspired by what Dorothy at Of Books And Bicycles did with her Nov.7th posting, I am going to do a meme-thing involving the letters of my blogname.
Here is the criteria, the rationale, the raison d’etre:

Looking Behind

I

Especially on quiet, satiated evenings it will happen.
Walking down the street I will suddenly stop
And turn toward a sense of myself approaching me.
Not of being followed or stalked, but quite the opposite.
The impossibility of pursuit. As though I alone exist
And my steady apparition.

II

Let Me Kiss Your Tongue

What happened next, I love.
No questions. You did not hesitate.
Someone may have had something to ask.
But, oh. Dearest.
In that certain darkness, my eyelashes playing horizon
Drinking, drank up the spectacle of that glistening muscle
Emerging from your full-wet lips,
On my sentence.
No clarification.

Just a few words about the book I am currently reading.
→ THE THING IS TERRIFIC ←
Granted, I am not even half-through Mark Haddon’s newest novel, A Spot of Bother [lately, I only have about an hour a day to read…. so busy am I] but the thing is fantastic.
One wants not to set it down!
Short pithy chapters. Hilarious stuff. No… serious stuff.

← Eric and Pattie (circa long time ago).
In my humble opinion, one of the most beautiful songs of all time, both lyrically and musically, is Eric Clapton’s Wonderful Tonight.
It was written for his then girlfriend and future wife, Pattie Boyd. His nickname for her, was Nell.
In his memoir entitled Clapton, Eric gives us the context of the song’s composition:

This morning, I received a personal email from a very astute Salingerian aficianado regarding my allusion to Salingerism in yesterday’s blog entitled I Like Airports.
In there, [and thinking myself witty as hell at the time of composition] I had said → I replied, as Holden Caulfield might have done, by saying, “Who doesn’t?”

Blackwing

Poison lies in wait, not about
To fill three trumpets with spit
While someone beats a drum. Not
Quite. It knows to tread softly up

← George Michael is writing a book. A memoir.
And quite a lucrative deal, indeed. A publishing official with knowledge of the negotiations said the deal was worth at least $6 million for British rights alone, among the biggest publishing contracts ever for that market, and at least $7 million overall. ← I plagiarized that last sentence from an article I saw in the paper today.

← Why is this man smiling?

I’ll tell you why!
He’s smiling because he just found out he can buy that mansion that is twice the size of his current mansion!

Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation…
-- Portia in The Merchant of Venice, Act 4, Scene 1 –

Have a great Monday!

1. The drive is often the best thing about traveling.
2. I love a good snuggle with my husband when I'm cold.
3. I often use pasta when I am cooking.
4. I'm reading Little Women right now; I love it.

Toilet Paper

This morning, elbows on knees
I gazed at a roll of it,
Wondering what the ancients did.
Long ago. Way before toilets even.
And which came first, the toilet
Or the paper?

All we really know is that
Everywhere, ubiquitously,
There is some -- or so we hope.
But it is even beyond hope.

Tonight, I finished what I consider to be an essential book.
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath.
A novel about a woman who lost it!
As in, her mind.

Wonderfully written, even though I still do not know what a bell jar is?
My research has only unearthed that the title referenced the fact that a bell jar essentially traps something to keep it on display. And supposedly, Plath used the bell jar as a metaphor to talk about the repression of women in American society.
See… I did not get that last point at all.
But, I seem to never see feminism when it is supposed to be there.
For instance, I love Margaret Atwood.

The First Time

What would you say to my
I love you?
For the first time.
We once wondered.

Tell me to take it back?
Rewind the tape? Or
Say it again? Louder?
As I recall, there was indeed
An echo, but never louder.
Not once did you hear it
Louder, than the first time.

Can someone, anyone out there, please tell me how it can already be the month of March?
No, seriously, though. In a matter of hours, it will be MARCH!
March?
What the hell happened to February?
Am I going senile? Did I sleep through January or something?
Even with the extra day here, the 29th, I’m sorry, but something seems mightily askew!
Why does it feel like I was just back home not so long ago, for Christmas?
Is this just a classic symptom of old age?
Is the rest of this year going to be just as fleeting?
According to Robert Frost… perhaps…. perhaps it is!

The sun was warm but the wind was chill,


No, I was ignored. When anyone took any notice it was to point out what a twit I was, and laugh at me. This was the best possible preparation for the life of a novelist. If you have grown-ups fussing over you and encouraging you and taking an interest, you begin to think you're important, and furthermore that you need and deserve their attention. After a while you become incapable of working without someone else motivating you.

-- Montreal --

Some of you may be wondering where I was all weekend.
The Bookpuddle has been silent of its usual ripples.
Montreal.
That’s where I was… oh yes, now I remember.
Montreal is a nutso place!
And while there, I discovered something I had not known about this city.
[Girlfriends, listen up. →] Montreal has the largest interconnected underground shopping system in the entire world.
That’s right. Not just Canada.
No.

Those of you familiar with my blog will know that one of my favorite authors, perhaps my #1 favorite living author, is Jose Saramago. Recently, someone named “Bruno” sent me a link in the comments section of a past blog.
Thank you Bruno, whoever you are.
The link brought me to a youtube clip that shows the great author’s reaction to [presumably] his first viewing of the movie Blindness, which was based on his 1995 novel of the same name.
To Saramago’s right is his wife, Pilar del Rio, and to his left, [the man who kisses him on the forehead] is director Fernando Meirelles.
Even though I am of the opinion that this clip is somewhat of a gross violation of a very private moment that essentially should not have been caught on film, yet even so, I cannot resist the urge to place it here on Bookpuddle.

I am sitting at Starbucks and just randomly thinking, as I sometimes do.
I am still slogging through a couple of non-fiction books, and just took a break from that to read a bit of the Nick Adams stories by Ernest Hemingway.
Just chillin’ out after a long day at work.
In this lull of a moment, while getting another coffee, three horrendously deep philosophically challenging scenarios have sprung unbidden into my mind, and I pose them to you…

#1.
You are wandering around in a blind fog and you are starving to death. Literally, you could almost die. Then the fog lifts, to reveal the following three equi-distant buildings. To which of these would you mostly likely drag yourself?

a) McDonalds.

Just wondering…
Have you ever gotten involved with a book like for instance

Hey!
A dear reader, and dearer friend, informed me that I share my birthday [December 4th] with a legendary literary figure.
Rainer Maria Rilke, one of the German language’s greatest 20th Century poets. Born in Prague, Bohemia.
Yesterday, I turned 44.
Rilke turned 132.
And I thought I was an old fogey! This guy is ancient!

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up