just when you thought it couldn't get worse...

Oh, geez. How is it even possible that the John Edwards scandal could get worse? Well, it seems Andrew Young has sold his tell all book proposal to a publisher. Should I hold out any hope at all that the sex tape thing is not true? Lordy.

in these shoes...?

Just love this song. That is all.

This is why we do this

Denis Cass is the author of "How I Almost Lost My Mind Trying To Understand My Brain."

Olive Kitteridge 2009 winner of Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

I loved this book and am full agreement with the Pulitzer committee's decision. What a difference a year makes as I don't know what they were thinking with regard to last year's winner.

“Olive Kitteridge,” a set of linked stories about a gruff, 60-something school teacher in a coastal town in Maine, is the work that has won its author, Elizabeth Strout, the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

“As heroines go, Olive Kitteridge is about as far away from a Disney princess as Maine is from Florida,” wrote Yvonne Zipp in her review of “Olive Kitteridge” for the Monitor (5/16/08). “Before her retirement, the gruff 60-something was ‘the seventh-grade math teacher that kids were scared of.’ And the years haven’t exactly mellowed her.”

“And yet,” adds Zipp, “as she stumps her way through Elizabeth Strout’s translucent new ‘novel in stories,’ ‘Olive Kitteridge’, she’s absolutely beautiful.”

“Strout makes a reader feel protective, even tender, toward Olive – despite her prickliness,” notes Zipp.

The 13 linked stories also serve as microcosms of small-town life, “with its gossip, small kindnesses, and everyday tragedies.”

Olive herself has conflicted feelings about her fellow man – “She didn’t like to be alone. Even more, she didn’t like being with people.”

And yet, in the end, writes Zipp, “When Olive’s story is over, she doesn’t end with bitterness, but equal parts gratitude and regret. ‘It baffled her, the world. She didn’t want to leave it yet.’ Readers will know just how she feels.”

When tackling a Maine coastal town, Strout knows whereof she writes. She was raised in small towns in Maine and New Hampshire.

She is also the author of “Amy and Isabelle” (1998), a mother-daughter young adult novel set in a small New England town, and “Abide with Me” (2006) about a minister in a Maine town during the Cold War.

Source: The Christian Science Monitor

Congratulations to Elizabeth Strout on a well-deserved honor.

Quotable - best I can think to tell them is...

"It is harrowing for me to try to teach 20-year-old students, who earnestly want to improve their writing. The best I can think to tell them is: Quit smoking, and observe posted speed limits. This will improve your odds of getting old enough to be wise."

~ Barbara Kingsolver, celebrating a birthday today

Laughter

"Laughter is wine for the soul — laugh soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness. Comedy and tragedy step through life together, arm in arm. ...
Once we can laugh, we can live."
~ Sean O'Casey

Quotable - we lost a lot a lot more than we saved

Nothing is forever, certainly not an independent bookstore. A lot of things killed our bookstore, including the terrible economy and the incessant information overload that makes reading a book like a quaint rite from the past. But if we lost it out of indifference, or to save a buck or two on Amazon, we lost a lot more than we saved.

~ Peter Applebome, NYT

let's dance

Put on your red shoes and dance the blues...

Quotable - When a bookstore goes away

But a bookstore is not just a place to buy books. If you don't know what I mean by that, I'm guessing that you don't hang out much in bookstores. And when a bookstore goes away, it's usually not replaced by another bookstore. It's just gone.

Years ago, when a restaurant went out of business in my hometown, the heartbroken owner put up a sign: "The End of Our Dream." It occurs to me that when a bookstore announces that it's giving up the ghost, the sentiment on that sign applies to a lot more people than just the owner.

~ Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune

A cali girl puzzle