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This topic is for Quotations about Books & Reading and related comments.

I found the following at an online catalog:

Click on thumbnail.

Also see:


"You can’t buy happiness , but you can buy books and that’s kind of the same thing." -Anonymous

Quote for the day; "While money can't buy you happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery." Groucho Marx

Nina, thanks for the quote!

One of my favorite quotes about money is:

"I never been in no situation where havin' money made it any worse." ----Clinton Jones

Joy H. wrote: "This topic is for Quotations about Books & Reading and related comments."That's a good money quote too. I agree with it.

Joy H. wrote: "This topic is for Quotations about Books & Reading and related comments." In 1770, Captain Cook asked a native Australian to name the long-legged, hopping animal he saw there. The native replied, "kangaroo," which in his tongue meant, "I don't know."

"All modern American literature comes from one book, Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn." Earnest Hemmingway

The more I hear about Hemmingway, the more of a jerk he seems to have been. Stephen Hunter paints him in a very unkind light in a couple of books.

He was one of my grandfather's favorite authors while Mickey Spillane was one of mine. Typical that we should fall on opposite sides of the fence like that. I enjoyed reading for the sake of entertainment while Grandpa always thought it had to be enlightening. (He was editor, owner, & publisher of "The Long Islander", a newspaper started by Walt Whitman.) He called my books trash, I called his boring, although I did like "The Old Man & The Sea". I found out that Hemingway & Spillane had a very similar argument.

Nina: thanks for the interesting information and quotes.

Jim: That is so great about your grandfather once being editor, owner, & publisher of "The Long Islander"! Here's a link to the newspaper:
Interesting about the different opinions.

As for Hemingway, I have mixed feelings about his work. Below is some of what I wrote in my review of his book (which I listened to as an audiobook): A Moveable Feast:
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"Actually, I didn't see why people raved about it so much. Except for Hemingway's mention of famous people, I didn't find it that interesting or extraordinary. The writing seemed so matter-of-fact and plain. Even the descriptions seemed matter-of-fact. I suppose that was Hemingway's style. At least I experienced the book, even though it didn't carry me away. It was something I had always wondered about, having heard the expression "a moveable feast" so many times."
My review is here: /review/show...
======================================================

I also listened to some of Hemingway's short stories. (The Short Stories) I wasn't drawn in.
My review: /review/show...

PS-There's a movie based on Hemingway's life ("Hemingway")(1988):

My review: /review/show...

Here's a couple of quotes by Mickey Spillane about Ernest Hemingway

Now what happened with Ernest Hemingway was that he wrote this nasty piece about me. I never say anything bad about a writer. Some are better than others, that’s all. And some make more money. But anyway, I got aggravated at him writing that piece about me, cause none of it was true. So I was on a show in Chicago, a live TV show. It was in a big theatre and there was a stage audience, and the guy who was interviewing me said, “Did you read that piece that Hemingway wrote about you?�� And I said, “Hemingway who?�� It brought the house down, but he hated my guts after that.
Excerpts from the Strand magazine interview I found here:


The excerpts are a quick read & include the pictures behind the bar story & some other interesting observations. If you can, read through it.

"Hemingway hated me," Spillane said in a 2001 interview. "I sold 200 million books, and he didn't. Of course most of mine sold for 25 cents, but still ... Those big-shot writers could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar."
From an obituary I found here:


Spillane & Hemmingway were similar in a lot of ways; contemporaries, authors, both were larger than life in their real lives, so they butted heads. They make an interesting comparison between the artisan & the artist.

While looking for the quotes, I came across an interesting book, Re-Covering Modernism: Pulps, Paperbacks and the Prejudice of Form. It's way too expensive to buy & not in any of my libraries, but I put it on my Paperbackswap wish list.

Drat, just lost my whole message, which were some interesting quotes by Spillane about Hemingway.

While looking for the quotes, I came across an interesting book, Re-Covering Modernism: Pulps, Paperbacks and the Prejudice of Form. It's way too expensive to buy & not in any of my libraries, but I put it on my Paperbackswap wish list.

I'm too lazy to retype the entire thing, so read this excerpt of an interview with Spillane. It has most of them & covers him pretty well.


Basically, both authors had a lot in common & it caused them to butt heads. Their dynamic is a good comparison between the artist & the artisan, IMO. While I have a lot of respect for both, I'm far more comfortable with the latter. They're easier going.

Jim, Message #10 above seems to be the one you think you lost.
Thanks for the interesting information!

"If you want to know how God feels about money, look a the people
he gives it to."---Dorothy Parker.

I realize it was fiction, but the novel, "Paris Wife," told me more about Hemmingway than any other of the myriad things I'd read or heard about him and I came away not liking him at all. I used to say Hemmingway and I worked for the same newspaper; not at the same time, of course. Now I don't.

Arnie wrote: ""If you want to know how God feels about money, look a the people he gives it to."---Dorothy Parker."

"To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and keep absolutely sober."
---Logan Pearsall Smith

Nina wrote: "I realize it was fiction, but the novel, "Paris Wife," told me more about Hemmingway than any other of the myriad things I'd read or heard about him and I came away not liking him at all. I used to..."

Nina, yes, it seems that Hemingway's first wife, Hadley, got a raw deal.
Below is a link to my review of The Paris Wife:
/review/show...

Jim, thanks for the links about Mickey Spillane and Hemingway. I enjoyed the anecdotes, especially the one about the picture in the restaurant. :)

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EXCERPT: (Mickey Spillane talking in an interview):
"...it was a very old restaurant and the place was down on the Florida Keys. The girl behind the counter had a picture of Hemingway—he used go fishing down there—and she had put it in a frame and put it up behind the cash register. I used to go diving out there, around the area. She’d found out who I was, and one day she said to me, “Can I have your picture?�� So I gave her a picture, and she put it up next to Hemingway’s. Then Hemingway came in one day—I hate telling this story because it sounds like I’m making fun of Hemingway and I’m not, cause I liked him—and says, “What’s his picture doing up next to mine?�� And she says, “I know him, too.�� And he says, “Well either you take down his picture or you take down mine.�� So she took down his picture and gave it back to him. Now that’s not a nice story to tell. [laughing]"
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I liked reading your review and others. I agreed with both.

Joy H. wrote: "Jim, Message #10 above seems to be the one you think you lost.
Thanks for the interesting information!"

It is. Wow. That's what I get for typing during work!
;-)

Jim, as long as you get your work done at work, they shouldn't mind if you do a little side-stuff on the computer. (That's what one of my old bosses told me when I complained that his secretary was typing recipes.) LOL

Nina, thanks for your comments!

I am walking to the library to pick up, "Canada," by Richard Ford. It is our book of the month for my book group next month. Have any of you heard or read it?

Haven't heard of it, Nina. Will look into it. Thanks.
Canada by Richard Ford

I read a bit of the reviews; not in detail as I don't want to know much before reading the book, Canada. However, it was interesting to read that most of us don't think of bank robbers as having children. Another however, a college friend of mine who married a lawyer happened to have a baby in the same hospital as myself on the same day. My husband told me he had just seen him in the elevator and congratulated him. The next morning we read in the newspaper he'd been arrested robbing a bank. You never know.

Nina, Wiki has a page entitled: "List of bank robbers and robberies". It's at:
Gee, there are a lot of them!

Interesting that they listed Patty Hearst.

ANOTHER GOOD QUOTATION ABOUT BOOKS:

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.�� ---Mark Twain

"The jottings we make in the books we own may well be among the highest tributes we pay to authors. They are signs of respect, signs of engagement. What more could a writer hope for?"
---Andrew D. Scrimgeour, NY Times article: "Scribbling in the Margins"

FROM:

"You write your first draft with your heart. You re-write with your head. The first key to writing is to write--not to think."
---"William Forrester" (Sean Connery) (In the film "Finding Forrester" [2000], written by Mike Rich

"Write drunk; edit sober." ---Anon.; often attributed to Ernest Hemingway

"One Written Word is Worth a Thousand Pieces of Gold". ---Chinese/Japanese proverb
SEE BOOKS:
_ Thousand Pieces of Gold_ by Ruthanne Lum McCunn
_A Thousand Pieces of Gold: Growing Up Through China's Proverbs_ by Adeline Yen Mah

Trivia: Books were invented in Egypt around 2800 B.C., following the invention of paper. The Egyptians used scrolls of paper to form books, but it was the Greeks who first bound folded sheets together by hand. Byblos-the port from which the Greeks imported their paper-gave its name to the first book, the Greek Bible.

Thanks for the interesting facts, Nina.

Joy, I am loving the metaphors in "Lucia, Lucia." as they are mesmorizing in their simplicity and beauty. And there aren't too many which I think spoils a book. Too much of a good thing. Here is one I like: "The water meets the shore and ripples onto the sand, forming a glittery hem."

Nina, that's a beautiful metaphor! So easy to picture! Thank you. I'll try to remember it the next time I go to the beach.

Just saw a not very long good movie; interesting and good acting(British). Emma Thompson had a bit part. The title, "Education," and because you were a teacher Joy, I thought you might appreciate this one. It's a Netflix.

Thanks for the suggestion, Nina. My Netflix records show that I watched that movie in 2010. I gave it 4 stars out of 5. That means I must have liked it, but, aside from the description, I have no memory of what the story is about. I probably would remember if I started watching it again.

I'm currently streaming a Netflix movie called "Music of the Heart" (1999), starring Meryl Streep as a music teacher. (Oscar-nominated drama, based on a true story) It's very good so far.


"Story of a schoolteacher's struggle to teach violin to inner-city Harlem kids."

Aidan Quinn is very appealing in this film. Of course, Streep is terrific, as usual.

I liked the movie you are describing very much.

"If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness. For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation."

--Anaïs Nin (1903��1977), French-born American writer

The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 2: 1934-1939
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 3: 1939-1944
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5: 1947-1955
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 6: 1955-1966
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 7: 1966-1974

I received the following quote in a Twitter notification:

"Never make fun of someone if they mispronounce a word.
It means they learned it by reading.�� -Anonymous

You can see the quote on Twitter here:

I twittered the following comment under the quote:

"But I still had to laugh when my son's then girlfriend pronounced the composer Chopin's name as "choppin" (as in choppin' wood)."

Joy, This morning I am off in a few minutes to go to the dentist and I needed a laugh and you gave me one. Thanks.

Nina wrote: "Joy, This morning I am off in a few minutes to go to the dentist and I needed a laugh and you gave me one. Thanks."

Glad you saw it, Nina. I still smile about "Choppin" !