BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE:THE JOYS OF READING

UPRISINGS

I saw a book titled UPRISINGS and, thinking it was a 
nonfiction account of revolutions and rebellions, I
purchased it. It was only after I got the book home
did I realize it was a book about baking with yeast.
    One book title I never got right was Willy
Sutton's Memoirs of a Bank Robber. When Willy was
asked why he robbed banks, he repli4d "Because 
that's where the money is.' Thus, I assumed
the title of his memoir was Where the Money is.
The actual title is Where the Money Was. That
makes much more sense, since once Willie Sutton
left the bank he took the money with him.
   A very strange title is MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY by
Charlie Chaplin. What other person's autobiography 
was he planning to write? 
   But then there is 
My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by  Jenn Shapland| Tin Househttps://tinhouse.com › book › was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award in Nonfiction, and was long listed for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal.
**

SEAN CONNERY TELLS ABOUT THE BIG BREAK HE RECEIVED
WHEN HE WAS 5 YEARS OLD

See the AFI honors Sean Connery. 
About 5 minutes into his speech.

MICHAEL HERR & STANLEY KUBRICK

Lately he (Kubrick) had been thinking of
making a movie about the Holocaust. Kubrick
bugged Herr every few weeks to read Hilberg,
until finally Herr said, "I guess right now
I just don't want to read a book called
The Destruction of the European Jews." "No,
Michael," Kubrick replied, "The book you
don't want to read right now is The Destruction
of the European Jews, Part Two."

David Mikics. Stanley Kubrick: American 
Filmmaker. (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2020)
**
POP QUIZ
!.Who was the first American author to earn
a million dollars through his writings?

2. Henry David Thoreau called this poet
the greatest Democrat who ever lived. To
whom was he referring?

3. Only two presidents of the United States
published books of poetry. Who were they?

4.what great American novelist received a
patent in 1873 for a self-pasting scrapbook?

5. What Nobel Prize winning author wrote for
his high school newspaper under the byline 
Ring Lardner, Jr?

(Answers below)

**
EDMUND SPENSER


Edmund Spenser

Was not much of a fencer. Hence, sir,

He wd with pen & ink prefer to toil,

Dispensing with epee, saber & foil.
LJP

**

THE ACT OF READING

(The characters in Flaubert are like recipes
in Escoffier, we are surprised to see how much
is left out.) We read about Carbourg in Proust,
and are unprepared for what we find when we 
actually get there. The act of reading is always
a matter of a task begun as much as of a message
understood, something that begins on a flat surface,
counter or page, and then gets stirred and chopped
and blended until what we make, in the end, is a
dish, or story, all our own.

Adam Gopnik. "Cooked Books" in The New Yorker
(April 9, 2007)
**
THE LOVE OF READING

" I was a voracious reader. I loved the library.
I loved bookstores. My mom had to kind of limit
on it because I was flying through books so quickly.
I love, love, love books."

Gabrielle Union, author of the memoir You Got'
Anything Stronger, quoted in "By the Book" (The
New York Times Book Review (September 12, 2021)

**

ANSWERS TO THE POP QUIZ

L. JACK LONDON
2. WALT WHITMAN
3. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS and JIMMY CARTER.
A reviewer in The New York Times wrote of
President Carter that"...the very qualities
that helped cripple him as a politician are
also the qualities that make him a mediocre
poet."
4.MARK TWAIN
5.ERNEST HEMINGWAY
***


THOMAS HARDY


Thomas Hardy—
When he laughed wd go har-dee
Har-hah, 
followed by a sorrow-filled sigh.
Deep down he was a very serious guy.


Louis Phillips