Siri Hustvedt on Jane Austen

Happy holidays clubbers!!

For Austenites (lovers of Jane Austen’s work) and for all those who are reading THE SUMMER WITHOUT MEN, here goes a “Christmas present”: a video where Siri Hustvedt reflects on Jane Austen’s work and its importance today.
(I’ve just noticed Jane Austen is the author we’ve mentioned the most here…!).
Enjoy your watching (and your readings):


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytoCUi8sYn8

MINI SAGAS

I just came across this website where they publish 50-word stories, like the mini sagas we worked with in the past. I saw this one and just wanted to share it:

"He gazed longingly, desire written in every fiber. The irresistible scent teased him. Quick slip and grab; the prize was his!

She was too fast, and caught him by the ear. Disappointment sank into the pit of his stomach.
Mother put him on time-out. No apple pie until after dinner."

Tennessee Williams's "The World I Live In"

Here you have extracts from "The World I Live in" an essay by Tennessee Williams which may enrich our reading of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (and, by extension, our worldview!).Hope to see you this Wednesday to discuss about it!

Do you have any positive message, in your opinion?
Indeed I do think that I do.
Such as what?
The crying, almost screaming, need of a great worldwide human effort to know ourselves and each other a great deal better, well enough to concede that no man has a monopoly on right or virtue any more than any man has a corner on duplicity and evil and so forth. If people, and races and nations, would start with that self-manifest truth, then I think that the world could sidestep the sort of corruption which I have chosen as the basic, allegorical theme of my plays as a whole.
(...)
Why don't you write about nice people? Haven't you ever known any nice people in your life?
My theory about nice people is so simple that I am embarrassed to say it
Please, say it!
Well, I've never met one that I couldn't love if I completely knew him and understood him, and in my work I have tried at least to arrive at knowledge and understanding.
I don't believe in "original sin". I don't believe in "guilt". I don't believe in villains and heroes-only right or wrong ways that individuals have chosen, not by choice but by necessity or by certain still-uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances, their antecedents.
This is so simple I'm ashamed to say it, but I'm sure it's true. In fact, I would bet my life on it. And that's why our propaganda machines are always trying to teach us, to persuade us, to hate and fear other people on the same little world that we live in.
Why don't we meet these people and get to know them as I try to meet and know people in my plays? This sounds terribly vain and egotistical.
I don't want to end on such a note. Then what shall I say? That I know that I am a minor artist who has happened to write one or two major works? I can't even say which they are. It doesn't matter. I have said my say. I may say it still again, shut up now. It doesn't depend on you, it depends entirely on me, and the operation of chance or Providence in my life.

This essay first appeared in the London Observer, 7 April 1957

To read the whole essay go to:

http://books.google.es/books?id=VcyFkNOYsFgC&pg=PA181&lpg=PA181&dq=the+world+i+live+in+tennessee+williams&source=bl&ots=fmzy5bBqU-&sig=iUVjH-tH9DPngV-HZDM5rzhtDG0&hl=es&ei=9N3lTpDxO9SAhQfR6smFAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&sqi=2&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=the%20world%20i%20live%20in%20tennessee%20williams&f=false

WRITING - Connections

YOU HAVE TO LISTEN TO THIS:
http://www.metmuseum.org/connections/writing#/Complete/

Researcher of Medieval manuscripts Wendy Stein discusses her fascination with writing and its history.

"If somebody hands me something that I need to sign and hands me a ballpoint pen, I will reject it."

Over 400 Xmas card every year!! OMG.

But I do like pens with a continuous flow too and FONTS!

I've kept a journal since I was 9, I keep writing letters and postcards and I love anything that's handwritten (with only ONE exception to this rule). I can see how my handwriting has evolved in so many ways, ant it's actually kind of funny to see the e-/in-volution.

The idea she mentions about "Your personhood conveyed through handwriting", I personally think it's BEAUTIFUL.

What do you think about writing? Handwriting? What about your writing experience?

WHAT'S YOUR FAVOURITE SIMILE, LIKE?

The worst similes are sometimes just a hair's breadth away from the striking dislocation of the best.

A late-night investigation into why a group of teenagers could be heard laughing like sozzled hyenas downstairs while the rest of us tried to get to sleep revealed the cause as this list of 56 hilarious similes, purportedly from US high school students.

I'm attaching the first ten as a sample, check the rest out here:

Borrowed from this blog.

1. Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.
2. He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree.
3. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
4. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
5. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
6. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
7. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
8. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
9. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
10. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

ONLY FOR JANE AUSTEN FANS...

... who I know are very numerous in our book clubs!

Jane Austen biographer discovers 'lost portrait'

Biographer Dr Paula Byrne is convinced that 'imaginary portrait' was actually drawn from life

Jane Austen scholar Dr Paula Byrne claims to have discovered a lost portrait of the author which, far from depicting a grumpy spinster, shows a writer at the height of her powers and a woman comfortable in her own skin.

The only accepted portraits of Austen to date are her sister Cassandra's 1810 sketch, in which she looks cross, and an 1870 adaptation of that picture. But when Byrne, biographer of Evelyn Waugh and Mary "Perdita" Robinson and with an Austen biography due out in 2013, was given a portrait of a female author acquired by her husband, Shakespeare scholar Jonathan Bate, at auction, she was immediately struck by the possibility that it could be a lost drawing of Austen.

Read the whole article here.

8 MAJOR BENEFITS OF READING

Now that the 1st book club meeting is approaching, take a look at this article on the advantages of reading:

http://lifedev.net/2009/06/reading-makes-you-better/

Do you still need more reasons to get your reading started?

BOOK CLUBS... starting soon!

Do you like READING?

Join the EOI-SANTIAGO BOOK CLUBS!

DISCOVER the pleasure of reading real books in English

SHARE your impressions and comments with other readers

IMPROVE your English and your language skills

GENERAL INFORMATION:

- The Book Club is addressed to advanced students. Former EOI students are also welcome.

- Meetings will be held once monthly.

Extensión de Noia (IES Virxe do Mar)	Tuesday 22nd November at 8 pm (Laboratorio linguas) jlago@eoisantiago.org
Extensión de Ribeira (IES Nº 1)	Wednesday 23rd November (Room 103) dpastoriza@eoisantiago.org
Extensión de Santiago (IES de Sar)	Wednesday 23rd November at 8pm (Room 10) alosada@eoisantiago.org

Visit the book club blog: http://novelteaclub.blogspot.com/

Great book Covers Post 1

Don't judge a book by it's cover: NOT!

Trip to Porto Slideshow

Some members of the CLEOIS Book Club accompanied the Portuguese Department of EOI Coruña to Porto to see Lelo & Irmao and enjoy the sights, sounds, smells, feelings and tastes of Portugal. Here is a taste of some images.

WORLD DIGITAL LIBRARY

The World Digital Library (WDL) makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.

Access here.

LOST DAPHNE DU MAURIER STORIES FOUND

Bookseller unearths five early Daphne du Maurier tales including a risqué short story entitled 'The Doll'.

A bookseller's dedicated attempts to root out the early work of Daphne du Maurier have resulted in the recovery of five lost tales by the enduringly popular author of Rebecca and Jamaica Inn. Most startling among them is "The Doll", published in 1928 when Du Maurier was barely into her 20s – a macabre short story about a man who discovers that the girl he's smitten with is besotted with a mechanical sex doll.

Read the whole story HERE.

JOHN LE CARRE DONATES ARCHIVE TO OXFORD

John Le Carré has gifted his literary archive to Oxford University, including a first manuscript for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy which reveals how different the book could have been.

Quite a good idea to prevent fights among heirs...

Being a lover of cooking and cookbooks, I can't help posting this!

We can't deny cooking is fashionable at the moment - just look at all the cooking programmes across channels, cooking competitions, etc

And the commercial impact is so obvious that in France they're getting ready to start the second edition of the Festival du Livre Culinaire, with more than 200 publishing houses present there showing their books and sharing experiences for 3 days. I wish I was there!

KAZUO ISHIGURO - Never Let Me Go

Yes! We finally have the trailer for Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go.

It is set at Hailsham boarding school. It is clear that Hailsham is not a normal boarding school, from the peculiar way the teachers - known as "guardians" treat the students to the stern emphasis on keeping healthy and the external boundaries that separate the school from its surroundings. We discover as the children do that they are actually clones intended to provide vital organs for non-clones ("originals"). The students are not taught any life skills, though the teachers encourage the students to produce various forms of art and poetry. The best works are chosen by a woman known only as Madame. Students believe she keeps their work in a secret Gallery although this is not discussed with guardians (from Wikipedia).

Have you already read the novel? I haven't yet, but it's next on my list...

JANE EYRE

Romantic novels seem to exert a special fascination on film-makers and that's shown in the fact that they keep been adapted to be shown on the silver screen.

The Brontë sisters (Charlotte, Emily and Anne) were a threesome who really made an impact on English literature with their novels Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and Agnes Rey.

The 3 novels have already been turned into movies, but in a few days a new version of Jane Eyre will be released, written by Moira Buffini and directed by Cary Fukunaga, with quite an amazing setting. Even if you haven't read the novel (which I recommend) you should watch the earlier movie (1996) by Franco Zeffirelli with William Hurt as Mr Rochester, and also the 1944 one starring Orson Welles.

Here's the trailer of the new one:

E-BOOKS IN SPANISH LIBRARIES

Everybody is talking about e-books, lots of people also own one and others would like to have one. The question, however, is: How are public libraries going to deal with the issue of new technologies, and most especifically, e-readers?

Well, here's what's going on. The experience started in the Biblioteca Central de Cantabria and it has already spread to 15 libraries throughout our country, including University libraries such as Universidad Politécnica de Madrid , which has included the devices as part of their Plan de Fomento de la Lectura.

How does it work? If you are interested, you pay for the service and you can take home an e-reader with up to 1,000 e-books and you can borrow them for 15-45 days. PROBLEM: Some people are complaining because they want "something other than just the classics" and also books without copyright, which are the ones that people borrow the most.

I think this is really changing the way libraries go about borrowings and it is also sparking controversy and triggering change: "What can our library offer that others don't?" for example.

But until publishing houses face the challenge of digital editions, and offer updated lists of recent books, maybe this will probably make no difference in terms of borrowings in public libraries.

Not to mention the poor legibility of some devices and also the fact that some readers lack the habit of reading on a screen instead of paper.

What do you think? Do you think e-readers are a good tool to attract new readers?

SAD, SAD, SAD

The number 2 traditional bookstore in the US may file for bankruptcy reorganization, and is planning to close down 200 of its 674 stores.

Read more info here. I have to say I find it extremely sad, I visited several Borders bookstores while in the US and it was kind of the "Walmart" of bookstores: huge and very affordable prices.

NEIL GAIMAN & TERROR

Very good news! Another one of Gaiman's book, Good Omens, is being adapted for a 4-part TV series (story here).

Also, for lovers of terror, here's a documentary which you can watch online for free about H.P. Lovecraft. It includes comments by Guillermo del Toro, N. Gaiman, Peter Straub and John Carpenter.

Enjoy!

Watch more free documentaries

Book Crossing

This is a new concept for book sharing on the web. Like Sting says "if you love somebody, set them free." Follow your book on its new life around the globe. It's called Book Crossing and in this time of crisis, why the hell not?

NEVERWHERE EVERYWHERE

TV series, comic book, novel, movie... this man never stops! Here's an appetizer before you actually dive into the novel. Here's an interview:

And a snippet from the TV series. However, I'd recommend reading the book first!

Interview with Cormac Mccarthy

In his first television interview ever, Cormac Mccarthy sits down with Ophra at the Santa Fe Institute to talk about his theories on writing. He admits that his Pulitzer-prize-winning novel, The Road, is a love story to his son and that he is still aiming for perfection. Meet the author of All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men and a lifetime of extraordinary novels:

http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Ophras-Exclusive-Interview-with-Cormac-Mccarthy-Video

EL CAIRO - Alef Bookstores "The Taxi of Knowledge"

Alef bookstores in Egypt have started a new project of putting books in taxis in October, called “The taxi of knowledge”. The goal of the project is to urge Egyptians to read by utilizing the time they spend stuck in the traffic jam.

This is a step to expand the effect of reading books to ordinary people other than the potential readers who go to bookstores. This is because Egyptians generally do not read; do not like to spend their time or money on books, since they see it as a waste. So, if there is an opportunity to read an interesting book instead of staring blankly out the taxi's windshield, without spending a penny, why not?

I'm not a regular user of taxi services, but I think it's a great initiative. Do you know of any others similar to this?