3 Tuesday tune

Here's a fun song and silly video to jumpstart your Tuesday ("See Fernando" by Jenny Lewis). It's really hard not to love her.

6 Monday inspiration

5 Literature's Best Opening Lines

Stylist Magazine compiled a list of the best 100 opening lines from books. I picked my favorites from the list, along with pictures of the book covers; see if you can match the books to the openers.

1.

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

2.

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

3.

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York."

4.

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.”

5.

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”

6.

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.”

7.

For a long time, I went to bed early."

8.

1801 – I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.”

the answers (don't cheat!)
1. j.d. salinger, catcher in the rye 2. leo tolstoy, anna karenina (the only one of these, admittedly, that i haven't read!) 3. sylvia plath, the bell jar 4. f. scott fitzgerald, the great gatsby 5. gabriel garcia marquez, love in the time of cholera 6. charlotte brontë, jane eyre 7. marcel proust, swann's way 8. emily brontë, wuthering heights

3 On the radar

Things that caught my eye this week:

this bikini

these tattoos

this color-coded blog


these books

this portrait

this style column

these gooey goodies

this magazine

this website

Finally, I have to thank the wonderful Ana for redesigning my blog. I'm in love!

0 Picture + poem

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods
By Lord Byron

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

photo

1 Old Hollywood

These photos capture spontaneous moments of old Hollywood stars. Recognize any of these faces?









via

0 Book Club: The Picture of Dorian Gray

My Kindle broke on me me while I was in Madrid (am I the only person who has trouble with them?), so I picked up The Picture of Dorian Gray in the English language section of a local bookstore. It's Oscar Wilde's only known novel, and it always seemed to me like one of Those Books that Everyone Read in High School and Actually Liked. The thing is, we only read books my George Orwell at my high school. Mrs. Matthews failed to tell us that Animal Farm was actually about Stalin-era Soviet Russia, not just a story about talking pigs and horses.

The first fifty pages of Dorian Gray took forever to get through because I was stopping at practically every paragraph and underlining another clever / wise / witty quote that I wanted to remember. The hedonistic Lord Henry (or Colin Firth, for those of you who have seen the movie) is meant represent a typical dandy of late-19th century Victorian England. Although he's used as a symbol of the over-indulgence and superficiality of that culture, can I admit that he was my favorite? His opinions are so over-the-top and entertaining that it's no wonder Wilde is one of the most highly quoted people in the history of the English language. A favorite:

Ah! Realise your youth while you have it! Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.

For those of you who haven't read it, the story is this: Dorian Gray is a young, beautiful man who becomes the subject of a painting by the artist Basil Hallward. While sitting for Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry, who preaches a "new hedonism," in which beauty and fulfillment of the senses are the only things that matter. He reminds Dorian, "when your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you." Dorian is profoundly affected by Lord Henry's words, and after seeing the beautiful portrait of himself, muses:

I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose?...Oh, if only it were the other way! If the picture should change, and I could be always what I am now!

Dorian's wish comes true and, as his morals grow looser and he begins to act in selfish, heartless ways, the portrait becomes an older, uglier, tormented picture of himself. Meanwhile, the person of Dorian remains ageless. Wilde's novel is a haunting, gripping book that remains a page-turner a hundred years after its publication. Also: the themes of a society's over-reliance on beauty and youth are no less accurate today. For those of you who also were stuck with allegory-free Animal Farm in 10th grade: here's your redemption.