Category Archives: Books

10 of My Favorite Quotes on Writing

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Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college. –Kurt Vonnegut

 

Write without pay until somebody offers pay. If nobody offers within three years, the candidate may look upon this circumstance with the most implicit confidence as the sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for. –Mark Twain

 

The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are.  –Ray Bradbury

 

Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. –Elmore Leonard

 

The first draft of anything is shit.—Ernest Hemingway.

 

Omit needless words. –William Strunk

 

The only rule for writing I have is to leave it while I’m still hot… –William Faulkner

 

Whoever wants to tell a story of a sainted grandmother, unless you can find some old love letters, and get a new grandfather?  –Robert Penn Warren

 

When you write the thing through once, you find out what the end is. Then you can go back to the first chapter and put in a lot of those foreshadowings. –Flannery O’Connor

 

As far as I’m concerned the entire reason for becoming a writer is not having to get up in the morning.  –Neil Gaiman

Book Review: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide, #1)The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (H2G2) follows an earthling, Arthur Dent, as he is introduced to galactic hitchhiking by a Betegeusian named Ford Prefect. This duo joins the other sole-remaining human and the Galactic president aboard a stolen ship. Along with a chronically depressed robot, the group gets to the bottom of life’s grandest questions.

I just finished re-reading this book. I wouldn’t have figured there was any reason to review a 34-year-old book. To my knowledge, there isn’t another movie in the works. Surely, everyone who is likely to read it already has, right? Young people like new stuff, and if you’re… let’s say… youthfulness-challenged and haven’t gotten around to it then it’s probably not your cup of tea (which, sad so say, means you are likely devoid of a sense of humor.)

Then I saw a “best in 2012” list by genre, and H2G2 was on it. Yes, I realize that “best-seller” lists are a euphemism for “most-printed” and are not a perfect indicator. Of course, when I went to look for said list, I was unable to re-discover it. It may have been the “top 20 books used to prop up the corner of a coffee table” for all I can prove. However, in looking for the list, I did find H2G2 on a lot of other lists including best-selling books of all time and most popular sci-fi of all time.

In short, read this book.

I don’t want to give a lot of spoilers, but here are just a few of the things H2G2 will do for you:

-It tells you the answer to life, the universe, and everything. (Now everything else will be anti-climactic and thus stress-free.)

-You’ll never look at a mouse the same way.

-It tells you what you need in order to hitchhike through the Milky Way (Spoiler alert: a towel.)

What more could one want from a book? (If you say vampires or zombies, I’ll choke you through your USB port.)

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NASA Finds Poetry by Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings.

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The poetry of Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England was thought to have been completely lost when the Earth was demolished to make way for an interstellar expressway. However, a scrap was found adrift in space. Scientists believe the sheer awfulness of the poem may have made it impervious to incineration, which is to say that the rays of the Vogon demolition beams refused to land upon the piece.  

 

Your Love

Your love, it warms me
like a midsummer’s flatulence.
I reel like a sorority girl in her
first instance of crapulence

I’m cocooned in an embrace
that reeks of tepid tapioca.
Tapioca, all lumps and fangs
fangs so very, very… very pointy.

[INTERPRETIVE INTERLUDE:  Herein the reader is encouraged to recreate their own impression of the first two stanzas through a capella interpretive dance…

Well, that should be quite enough, shouldn’t it? You got a bit carried away, I should say.]

Your squarish face squishes in my Winnebago memories
I’m a steel town girl on a Wednesday night that is so dim, dimmish, darkid.
Fluffernutter is like butter but jaundiced by mallowy goodness
Spreading it on pickled herring makes a treat that smells like feet

–          a quart of milk

–          lima beans

–          three frozen pizzas

–          hemorrhoid crème (not the mint kind this time)

And brings out the wicked amour of one who is without more, sans  more.
But I need more; I must have… something, something [you get the drift.]

In summary, you are the wind above my wings.

[Dear estate of Douglas Adams, Please do not sue me. I am so very, very… very poor. That goes for the estates of Bette Midler and Hall and Oates as well…  (Oh, you say those people are alive? Really?)]

Book Review: Takagi Oriemon, Budo Hero of Shiroishi

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9781447769033Takagi Oriemon: Budō Hero of Shiroishi by Mamiya Hyoemon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an English translation of a book that was written long ago. The translation is by the Jinenkan Honbu Dojo — specifically Manaka Unsui (the head [Kancho] of the Jinenkan) and his students Robert Gray, Maurizio Mandarino, and Eric Shahan. The original is entitled Budo Shiroishi no Ei and was written in Japanese.

The book is the story of the seven-year warrior pilgrimage (musha shugyo) of a warrior named Takagi Oriemon who lived from 1625 to 1711. Takagi founded a martial arts school that, as was typical, branched out over the centuries. As I understand it, there are two or three descendant schools still in existence today.

Takagi was legendary for his strength. The book offers many accounts of descriptions of both his physical strength (from moving boulders to help farmers to chopping down a house to create a fire break) and his strength of mind (e.g. staying where others were afraid to because of hauntings.) However, mostly it portrays Takagi as a supremely humble and virtuous man. He misses no opportunity to assist those in need of help, and always humbly declines reward. He does not use his great power for wanton destruction, but does punish the wicked when no other choice remains.

Unlike Musashi’s Book of Five Rings or Yagyu’s The Life-Giving Sword, which are mostly about strategy, this book is mostly examples of virtuous living with a few strategic concepts thrown in.

I can offer a test for whether a reader might enjoy this book or not.

You’ll love this book if you:
– are fascinated by biographies of great martial artists.
– enjoy learning about life in Japan during the Tokugawa period.
– enjoy morality tales and the example set by great men and women.
– like to be inspired by people who really had their stuff together.
– don’t mind the occasional ghost story.

You won’t like this book if you:
– are an editor or English teacher and things like errant apostrophes make your head explode.
– are turned off by the flouting of conventional writing style (multi-speaker paragraphs of dialogue abound in this book.)
– find that ghost stories or supernatural elements completely ruin an otherwise down-to-earth read.
– find typos grate on your nerves.
– are really grossed out by gory manga-style line drawings (they are not all like that, but some are.)

I had to deduct at least a star for the many grammatical and formatting deficiencies of the book, but I still think everyone would gain from reading it and seeing the life example set by Takagi Oriemon: Budo Hero of Shiroishi.

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Book Review: Breakfast with Buddha

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Breakfast with BuddhaBreakfast with Buddha by Roland Merullo

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Merullo’s “Breakfast with Buddha” is a classic road-trip / odd couple tale. I found it to be engrossing and engaging. It is a book that attempts to convey life lessons as it entertains. In my opinion, this type of book succeeds best when the lessons do not draw too much attention to themselves, but rather subtly plant a seed. In some cases Roland Merullo’s book succeeds on this regard, and in other cases his middle-of-the-road protagonist comes across as a bit preachy and holier-than-thou.

The set up is a road-trip from New Jersey to North Dakota in which a spiritual but only vaguely religious skeptic is joined by a Tibetan Buddhist Rinpoche. The Rinpoche conveys life lessons, largely of a Buddhist nature but somewhat non-denominational, to the protagonist — often at breakfast (hence the title.)

Merullo does a great job creating a character who considers himself spiritual, but who is not so comfortable with spiritualism that is out of line with western rationalism or which expresses religiosity in the doctrinaire Western tradition.

The protagonist, Otto Ringling, undergoes a sort of transformation that is satisfying –though some may find it to have gone a skosh too far.

Those who my Religious Studies professor called Homo religiosis will likely find the book objectionable, but atheologists (not atheists, but those not believing in religion, though believing in god / God / gods) will probably relate to it quite nicely.

I recommend it.

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