More muses...

By popular demand...here are some more photos of the muses adorning the walls of Paris' Hotel les Jardins du Trocodero. 

As lovely as they are - Clio, Euterpe, Polyhymnia et al - I'm still searching for Calliope...!

Aussie government says get lost...in books

They've been doing it in Russia, now the Australian government has jumped on the bookwagon and launched a campaign to get Aussies reading. Phew! Finally a positive note to sing amid the chaos of current politics.
I'll go so far as to forgive them for using that wearisome old Mister Beige Ray Martin as the front man for the campaign - whose autobiography (yawn) conveniently gets a plug - only because the message is greater than the publicity stunt. 
In a series of TV ads linked to a nationwide in-store publicity drive, the Australia Council for the Arts is encouraging people to drop into their local bookshop, pick up a book and 'get lost, get fresh, get hooked, get real, get comfy, get reading!' 
It comes with a booklet spruiking '50 books you can't put down' to give the uninitiated some ideas on what to read. It's an ok selection...a little too middle of the road for me but probably just right for those who ordinarily baulk at the thought of picking up a book instead of the TV remote or the Wii controls. 
As an added incentive, if you buy one of the recommended books you get a free copy of the anthology '10 Short Stories You Must Read in 2010', all written by homegrown authors.
Great initiative! Hope people give it a go.

Walt reads Whitman

After stumbling across Bono reading Bukowski online recently, I had a look around for other luminaries reciting classic poems on the net. And guess what I found? 
Through the magic of technology, a host of greats have been resurrected to read to camera their celebrated works. Blake, Frost, Poe, Whitman, Dickinson - the list goes on. Not sure that technology has quite mastered the masters yet (Walt's crazy eyebrow appears to have a life of its own...) but it's a bit of a giggle to think that Mr Whitman might have delivered his bold and noble poem O Captain! My Captain! a little something like this:

Lists of Literary Lists

To conclude this self-proclaimed Literary List Week, I bring you Top 20 Top 10 Literary Lists, courtesy of one of my favourite websites, AbeBooks. 
Put together by the staff of AbeBooks, who search high and low to unearth out of print and rare reads for insatiable bibliophiles, this compilation explores delightful and obscure fields such as: Top 10 Beloved Animals in Fiction; Top 10 Egg Books; Top 10 Most Expensive Irish-Authored Books Ever Sold on AbeBooks.com; and, Top 10 Books In Which Things End Badly.
Enjoy!

Top 5 Famous Literary Hotels

Which literary residences have outlived the authors they inspired? And who keeps track of things of importance such as this?
It has been reported that the Grand Hôtel des Bains — Thomas Mann’s residence on the Lido and the backdrop for his novella Death in Venice — will close its doors to be converted into luxury apartments.
Coming to you from the world wide web's inexhaustible supply of 'lists', a writer by the name of Chelsea Bauch nominates five famous hotels that have earned their place in literary history. You can check out her list here.
Take a look at two of her top five:

New York's Hotel Chelsea: 'A go-to residence for artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers for more than a century — many of whose non-monetary payments still decorate the walls — this infamous landmark has inspired as many scandals as it has stories. Dylan Thomas lived and died on the premises, poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso matched intellectual wits within its walls, Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey there, and other literary guests (both short and long-term) have included Thomas Wolfe, Eugene O’Neil, and William Burroughs.'

The Stanley Hotel, Colorado: 'Although accounts vary regarding the basis for the Overlook Hotel — the isolated and endlessly creepy setting of Stephen King’s The Shining — it’s widely reported that King conceived the basic novel idea while staying at this out-of-the-way Colorado hotel with his wife. The Stanley Hotel’s Georgian style is just one of several accommodations that King reportedly drew from for his chilling house of horrors, but this is apparently where it all started.'


Can you add to the list?

Top 10 Classic Literature Video Games

Did you know that somebody, somewhere, has turned The Great Gatsby into a video game?! 
'Spend a summer on a jazz-fueled adventure based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s legendary novel. Experience the Roaring Twenties first-hand as you uncover secrets behind the richly decadent facade. Explore one of the most tragic tales in literary history,' says the spiel.
'...Recreate Fitzgerald’s famous prose, assemble your own library and earn trophies to share with friends on Facebook.'
I have zero interest in gaming but perhaps it's a welcome relief from the bizzare role-play world of Halo: Combat Evolved, Metroid Prime et al.
Discovering the evolution of Gatsby from Penguin Classic to video game console inspired Flavorwire to dream up a list of: 10 Unlikely Classics That Would Make Great Games. 

Best Dressed Literary Figures

Reading an article in the SMH by novelist John Marsden, whose Tomorrow series is apparently epic among teenagers (?) and is on its way to the big screen, I was curious when he said: 'I'm not a visual person. I see words not pictures. I don't notice faces, clothing, hairstyles. There are few descriptions of such things in my books. I can have an hour's conversation with someone I've just met, run into them an hour later and not recognise them.' 
Maybe that's why I haven't read any of his books? The idea that a person can look at something and not perceive some dual impression of form as well as function is incomprehensible to me.
Especially when it comes to characters and their clothes! Today's list comes courtesy of Flavorwire, whose writer Judy Berman had the brilliant idea to nominate Literature's 10 Best Dressed Characters. Bravo! I do admire most of the inclusions and am particularly pleased that Madame Bovary got a guernsey - however it must be said - there are a couple of glaring omissions. 
Where is Anna Karenina? 

And Marguerite Duras' nameless girl in The Lover, the girl with an imagination that surpasses her grim reality and who goes to school wearing evening shoes?:
"I'm wearing a dress of real silk, but it's threadbare, almost transparent. It used to belong to my mother...It's a sleeveless dress with a very low neck. It's the sepia color real silk takes on with wear. It's a dress I remember. I think it suits me. I'm wearing a leather belt with it, perhaps a belt belonging to one of my brothers...This particular day I must be wearing the famous pair of gold lamé high heels. I can't see any others I could have been wearing, so I'm wearing them...Going to school in evening shoes decorated with diamanté flowers... These high heels are the first in my life, they're beautiful, they've eclipsed all the shoes that went before...

Here's a couple from Flavorwire's list:

In Breakfast at Tiffany's Truman Capote writes of Holly Golightly: “She was still on the stairs, now she reached the landing, and the ragbag colors of her boy’s hair, tawny streaks, strands of albino blond and yellow caught the hall light. It was a warm evening, nearly summer, and she wore a slim, cool black dress, black sandals, a pearl choker. For all her chic thinness, she had an almost breakfast-cereal air of health, a soap and lemon cleanness, a rough pink darkening in the cheeks. Her mouth was large, her nose upturned. A pair of dark glasses blotted out her eyes. It was a face beyond childhood, yet this side of belonging to a woman. I thought her anywhere between sixteen and thirty; as it turned out, she was shy two months of her nineteenth birthday.”

Gustave Flaubert describes Emma in Madame Bovary: “She would come directly, charming, agitated, looking back at the glances that followed her, wearing her flounced gown with gold eyeglass, her dainty shoes, all sorts of elegant trifles that he had never enjoyed, and exhaling the ineffable seduction of yielding virtue.”


Who do you think should have made the cut?

Literary List Week...

This week is Literary List Week on Rubyfire Writes. Cyberspace seems to be full of people making lists - top 50 this, top 20 that, top 3-gazillion something else - so I've been stashing away a few literary lists for your reading pleasure. 
To get you in the mood, take a look at this Huffington Post selection: Nine of the Most Amazing Bookstores in the World. I'm excited to say I can cross three of these off my list of yet-to-see shops and, happily, add to my 'holiday' list an additional six destinations.
In 2008 The Guardian named Selexyz Bookstore in Maastricht, Holland, the best bookstore in the world. This heavenly store is located inside a refurbished Dominican church that dates back to 1294. Wow.

El Ateneo in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was once a theatre named The Grand Splendid (which, in 1929 premiered the first ever movie with sound).

A homegrown entry - Gould's Book Arcade in Sydney, Australia. Bob Gould started selling books in the inner west suburb of Newtown in 1967. Bob has over a millions books and records to sell either in the store, in storage or on line.

'Amazing' means different things to different people. I could add a few, perhaps more humble, bookstores to the list. You tell me yours and I'll tell you mine...!

The lost muse...

Spent a night in Paris at the Napoleonic era Hotel les Jardins du Trocodero. In trawling through accommodation options on the web, this one had a distinct point of difference... Yes it was located virtually at the foot of the Eiffel Tower and near the great museums of Paris, yes it had a hairdryer (you may mock, but this is a prerequisite when one is off to a wedding), yes it had air-conditioning (it was 40 degrees outside!), and yes it was decorated with period furniture. But the best feature was this: artists from the École des Beaux-Arts have painted murals of the muses throughout the hotel. Yes!
Imagine my dismay then, when after jumping in and out of the lift to see which muse occupied each floor, I found everyone except the best muse of all...Calliope. She, the muse of heroic poetry - the wisest and most assertive of the nine muses - was nowhere to be found. And sadly, the only place in this lovely hotel entirely lacking in charm was at the front desk. When I asked the manager where Calliope was he gave me a dark stare and a brusque 'I don't know!'.
Sigh.....perhaps he was a wannabee writer too? I guess I'm not the only one in this world calling for Calliope.

Bookshelf porn

Look - a new favourite blog! There's a fresh mouth-watering image posted each day. I especially like one reader's comment:

"Dear people who read Bookshelf Porn, I am sure you are all smart, super good-looking, talented, funny and you probably smell good too."

But of course.

You may wish to divert your computer screen from public view so you can check out these luscious delights in private...

French letters

Found these gorgeous old postcards from the 1950s in a tiny shop in the medieval town of Eze, perched on the edge of a soaring cliff above Ste-Jean Cap Ferrat on the Cote D'Azur. 
But what do they say?? Do you speak French? Translation please! 

In the meantime, a thousand different possibilities are weaving tales inside my head...

I have a dream...

This is for my friends meeting tomorrow night at our literary salon session... keep writing keep writing keep writing...let us find out what we know!
Thanks to Coelho Culture for spotting this image.

Man caves

On the subject of Hemingway yesterday...I came across this picture of his writing room. This is the spot in Key West, Florida, where Hemingway penned For Whom the Bell Tolls and Death in the Afternoon, probably while drinking a Scotch, smoking a cigar and contemplating the mementos he collected from his adventures in Africa and Cuba. Hemingway converted an old carriage house on his property into this writing studio. Note his famous Royal typewriter on the desk.

Also found two photos of Mark Twain's man cave high atop a hill on his sister's property in Elmira, New York. In this sanctuary Twain wrote Life on the Mississippi, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In 1874 he described his writing hut in a letter to William Dean Howells:

“It is the loveliest study you ever saw…octagonal with a peaked roof, each face filled with a spacious window…perched in complete isolation on the top of an elevation that commands leagues of valley and city and retreating ranges of distant blue hills. It is a cozy nest and just room in it for a sofa, table, and three or four chairs, and when the storms sweep down the remote valley and the lightning flashes behind the hills beyond and the rain beats upon the roof over my head—imagine the luxury of it.”

I love my writing room too. It just needs thousands more words to spill out of it...