Oxford Publications and Other Books ( #AtoZChallenge )

 

Oxford Publications

     In previous posts I have offered several other Oxford Publications from my shelves.  They publish some very beautiful reference works that fill up a bookshelf very nicely.  I particularly like this Illustrated Oxford Dictionary.  It's a monster of a book that is quite lovely.  My edition is a hardback edition from 1998.  I believe I got this as part of an special introductory promo offer to a major book club.  I've gotten a lot of books as a result of those introductory promos.

Organizing

       If there is one thing I should probably read about it's organizing.  I've got plenty of books on the topic but they are unorganized scattered willy-nilly throughout the house. I particularly like the look of Organizing Plain & Simple by Donna Smallin.  I wonder what's inside?  I should look so maybe I can start getting more organized.  I need the advice.

Organized Crime: An Inside Guide to the World's Most Successful Industry by Paul Lunde

     

        Well, I may not be organized, but crime is.  I couldn't tell you where I got this book or why I got it, but I got it.  Leafing through it the content seems pretty interesting.  Probably a good reference if I were writing something about organized crime.

Joel & Victoria Osteen

     Several years ago my wife and I started watching Joel Osteen on television  He was easy to listen to though not always theologically precise.  I just liked his speaking style.  His books are also easy fare. I didn't read Victoria's book (though my wife did) but I'm sure it's more of the same.  Their books can be quite encouraging.  Become a Better You is one of the books on our shelves.

O-zone by Paul Theroux

      Haven't read this yet, but what a great book for 'O'.  This is a futuristic science fiction novel by the same author who gave us Mosquito Coast.  I have that movie on DVD and it's pretty good.  This book came out in 1985.  Not sure how or when I acquired it.  Now that I realize what the book is about I think I should move it up higher on my future read list.

       

       

Out of Control by Leslie Cockburn

       Only vaguely do I remember buying this book in Missoula MT sometime in 1987.  There's a bookmark from the bookstore inside the covers.  This political piece of journalism was being talked about on television a lot at the time and that's where I heard about the book.  Since I was living on the road at the I didn't buy too many books, but apparently I wanted this one enough to get the new hardcover release.  I might read this again, but now it would be more history than current affairs.  There's enough crazy stuff going on in our times that maybe I don't need to read the political intrigue of 40 years ago.

Omnivore by Piers Anthony

         In 1968 I bought this book from the Doubleday Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Club.   I'm sure that I read it at the time I got it, but that was over 50 years ago. Perhaps I'll read it again someday, but it's not high on my to-read list.  The book is still in decent condition considering all the moves it's made through the years.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac 

       Though I've been very aware of this book for most of my life, I did not read it until relatively recently--sometime in the past 10 years.  Finally, I purchased a copy of the book and set in reading it. Since it's a book mostly about road life it was definitely in my realm of interests.  This is the kind of book I might consider writing one day.  The book was written in my lifetime and takes place during the years right before I was born.  It's a bit of contemporary pop history which is something I really enjoy reading about.   Not the best book I've ever read, but well worth the read.

Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy

        Did I say that Cormac McCarthy is one of my favorite authors?  I know I already mentioned him in my 'M' post, but this book is well worth getting a mention.  Published in 1968, this was his second novel.  It's dark, creepy, and a bit disturbing--all the best of a McCarthy novel.  If you like Faulknerish fiction then you might like this one.  The tale is a story of incest, mystery, and a journey of finding the secrets of a hidden truth.

Collected Works by Flannery O'Connor

        Cormac McCarthy might be one of my favorite authors, but Flannery O'Connor is even higher on that list.  My collection has several books by her with some duplication in stories.  I love her writing as well as her demented sense of humor and wacky story imagination.  I was first turned on to O'Connor by my creative writing professor Dr. Robert Drake at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.  He was passionate about her work and filled me with that passion.  Her body of work is relatively small, but it is powerful.  If you have not read anything by Flannery O'Connor and you consider yourself a writer then you need to get something by her and delve into it.  Her short stories are her best work.   Be careful as you might be offended by her seeming racial insensitivity, but it reflects the times about which she writes and the types of characters she writes about.  I'd suggest starting off with a story like "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" or "Revelation" which are two of her more well-known stories.  They're all good though. If you treat yourself to reading something by O'Connor, I hope you'll come back to my blog to tell me what you think.

Owen Fiddler by Marvin D Wilson

        Early in my blogging days I came across Marvin D Wilson's Old Silly Blog.  I'm not sure what happened to him, but maybe one of my readers can tell me.  The blog links that I have for him don't seem to work now.  I have two books by him on my shelves including the one shown.  You can read my Amazon review of this book here.   

     Anything in this list that catches your interest?   How organized do you tend to be?  Are you a fan of the literature of the American South?  

Contemplating Sense of Place (Flashback Friday)

       
       Where exactly is your "home"?   Do you have a place where your roots are?   Or as the adage goes, "where your heart is"?   In this post I'll be reflecting on this concept of having a home, a place of connections, and being from somewhere...

       IT'S FLASHBACK FRIDAY - A TIME OF THE MONTH WHERE YOU CAN REPUBLISH AN OLD POST OF YOURS THAT MAYBE DIDN'T GET ENOUGH ATTENTION, OR THAT YOU'RE REALLY PROUD OF, OR YOU THINK IS STILL RELEVANT ETC. THIS BLOG-GO-ROUND IS HOSTED BY MICHAEL G D'AGOSTINO FROM A LIFE EXAMINED--THAT'S WHERE YOU'LL FIND THE REST OF THE PARTICIPANTS OR TO JOIN UP YOURSELF.

THE POST I'VE CHOSEN FOR THIS MONTH FIRST APPEARED ON TOSSING IT OUT ON MONDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2010. TO SEE THE ORIGINAL COMMENTS TO THAT POST YOU CAN CLICK ON THE TITLE BELOW TO BE TAKEN TO THE ORIGINAL POST. MY REASON FOR CHOOSING THIS PARTICULAR POST, BESIDES IT BEING AS RELEVANT NOW AS THEN, IS THAT IT IS RELATED TO MY MOST RECENT BATTLE OF THE BANDS POST AND IT'S RELATED TO THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN ON MY MIND RECENTLY. ..

Where're you'all from?

            Robert Young Drake was a professor of English at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville from 1965 until 1999.  A noted English scholar and author, Robert Drake was most associated with his homespun stories about the fictional West Tennessee town of Woodville.  Drake was well known for his story-telling skills in the rich dulcet tones of an aristocratic southern gentleman.  After suffering a stroke in 1999, he was forced to leave his beloved teaching position, returning to his hometown of Milan, Tennessee where he died on June 30, 2001.

               I was fortunate to have had Dr. Drake as my professor of creative writing for two classes when I attended the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in the early 1970s.  One of the corrections he made to my thinking had to do with roots and what we think of as home.

              In the first class we were given the assignment to write about ourselves so that Dr. Drake could get to know his students a little better. This was to be a brief autobiography that included where we were from.  My story was the example that he always looked for to teach one of the first lessons about being a writer.

             Since I had moved around a lot in my life I wrote that I wasn't really from anywhere.  My hippie philosophy at that time tended more toward existentialism.   I tried to portray myself as the rootless wanderer in life who was searching for self and purpose.  That was the cue for Dr. Drake's lecture on roots.

             "Everybody's from somewhere," he enunciated in his rich southern accent.  He went on to give examples of writers like his favorite, Flannery O'Connor, who was from Georgia.  Writing, he explained, is an extension of who we are and an expression of our experiences and our heritage, all of which has roots in particular place and time.

               It was in that class that I began to appreciate my Tennessee home.  Even though I hadn't been born there and hadn't grown up there, it was the place that felt most like home and the place with which I could most identify myself.

               When we think about writers, we frequently associate them with place.  With Hemingway it might be Key West or Steinbeck the central California coast.    Many of us think about Hannibal, Missouri when we think of Mark Twain even though he did most of his writing elsewhere--but it was that place that shaped and influenced much of who he was and what he wrote.

                 As Dorothy Gale from the Wizard of Oz was to find out in her fantastical visit, there's no place like home.  A writer can take us anywhere imagination can contrive, but the story has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is inside of each of us.

                 Where are you from?  What do you consider to be home?  How does it influence your writing?  

Sparkfest! Part 3

            Today I offer my final topic for Sparkfest!.  Follow the link to find entries from other participants.

Is there a book or author that changed your world view?

            I was enthralled by science fiction in my earlier reading days.  I still recall in third grade having read a Robert Heinlein novel, the name which eludes me now, which sparked my imagination about the possibilities of literature.  The sci fi adventures of Tom Swift were a steady diet of reading that I consumed, along with the mysteries of the Hardy Boys.  

            Later, when I was in junior high school and had money of my own to spend, I joined the Doubleday Dollar Book Club and began reading a wider range of literature.  Taking advantage of the special introductory offers, I soon had memberships in the Science Fiction and the Mystery Book Clubs as well.  I was now buying books on a monthly basis and my library was expanding at a rapid pace.  

            Then, there were the books and other literature that we had to read for school.  The standard English curriculum usually provides a decent overview of literature that is considered great or essential reading for a college bound student.  I read, or at least gained an awareness of many of these works of literature.  Compared to other students where I attended school I think I was probably pretty well-read.

          After I started taking literature classes in college, my world view changed dramatically as far as literature.  My introduction to Southern Literature opened my eyes to a different way of writing and thinking than what I had previously been reading.   Now I listed my favorite authors as being Mark Twain, William Faulkner, and Cormac McCarthy among others.   I could relate to many of the things about which they wrote.

         When I was attending the University of Tennessee at Knoxville in the early 1970s, my creative writing professor Robert Drake introduced me to the author who would have the biggest affect on my world view and the way I wrote.  The author was Flannery O'Connor.  She had an accessible style that made her works easy to read, but her themes and stories were unique, almost like a Southern Gothic version of the Twilight Zone writing that had influenced me so much when I was younger.  O'Connor had written the types of things that were similar to what I had begun to write at that time.  I began to see that there was a place for literature that dealt with Christian issues without being overtly Christian literature.

          I like reading a good message, but I don't want it to be in my face.  A good story with a Christian theme can be told without the author preaching it.  O'Connor's stories are usually about people who are not especially good and sometimes pure rotten, but she raises questions that make the reader think.  I can read her stories repeatedly and always see a profundity in her message--a message which is not always immediately evident.  O'Connor entertained me with her stories, but provided me with mental nourishment which gave my mind something to chew on after the story had passed.

         Flannery O'Connor's writing made me realize that substantive religious writing didn't have to be a glowing feel-good story from Sunday school class.   Nor did writing stories with religious themes require scaring the reader with hell-fire preaching.  Sometimes a story can merely cause a reader to contemplate ideas that have universal application and to realize that many of us may have similar questions that may not always have the easiest answers.  Fiction should entertain, but it should also enrich us in some way.   Flannery O'Connor showed me that good fiction should have hidden layers and subtleties that make the stories stick with us long after we've read them.

         Are you a fan of Southern Literature?   Do you think fiction should contain a message that stimulates thinking?   Do you prefer a story that is obvious or one with underlying messages?    What was your journey as a reader like?

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Persnickety Penman: Where're you'all from?

            Robert Young Drake was a professor of English at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville from 1965 until 1999.  A noted English scholar and author, Robert Drake was most associated with his homespun stories about the fictional West Tennessee town of Woodville.  Drake was well known for his story-telling skills in the rich dulcet tones of an aristocratic southern gentleman.  After suffering a stroke in 1999, he was forced to leave his beloved teaching position, returning to his hometown of Milan, Tennessee where he died on June 30, 2001.




               I was fortunate to have had Dr. Drake as my professor of creative writing for two classes when I attended the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in the early 1970s.  One of the corrections he made to my thinking had to do with roots and what we think of as home.

              In the first class we were given the assignment to write about ourselves so that Dr. Drake could get to know his students a little better. This was to be a brief autobiography that included where we were from.  My story was the example that he always looked for to teach one of the first lessons about being a writer.

             Since I had moved around a lot in my life I wrote that I wasn't really from anywhere.  My hippie philosophy at that time tended more toward existentialism.   I tried to portray myself as the rootless wanderer in life who was searching for self and purpose.  That was the cue for Dr. Drake's lecture on roots.

             "Everybody's from somewhere," he enunciated in his rich southern accent.  He went on to give examples of writers like his favorite, Flannery O'Connor, who was from Georgia.  Writing, he explained, is an extension of who we are and an expression of our experiences and our heritage, all of which has roots in particular place and time.

               It was in that class that I began to appreciate my Tennessee home.  Even though I hadn't been born there and hadn't grown up there, it was the place the felt most like home and the place with which I could most identify myself. 

               When we think about writers, we frequently associate them with place.  With Hemingway it might be Key West or Steinbeck is central California coast.    Many of us think about Hannibal, Missouri when we think of Mark Twain even though he did most of his writing elsewhere--but it was that place that shaped and influenced much of who he was and what he wrote.

                 As Dorothy Gale from the Wizard of Oz was to find out in her fantastical visit, there's no place like home.  A writer can take us anywhere imagination can contrive, but the story has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is inside of each of us.

                 Where are you from?  What do you consider to be home?  How does it influence your writing? 





--
            

         

Persnickety Penman: How to be a Good Liar

          Are you a good liar?  If you are writing fiction you need to be.  One of the definitions of a lie is something that is not true, which is essentially the same as fiction which is a made up story.

          The difference from a moral standpoint is that the liar is intentionally twisting the truth in order to deceive others in a way that will be pontetially be hurtful to somebody if the lie is discovered.  And even if the lie is never discovered the character of the liar is weakened, making it easier for that person to fall into a habit of deception. The story teller of fiction, however, is pretending, playing with untruths as those who play along willingly suspend their disbelief in order to pretend that the lie, the story being told, is true, for the purposes of entertainment and mental stimulation.  The story teller tells untruths with fingers crossed and knowing winks to his or her audience as they consent to play along.

          Last Monday we looked at accuracy and fact in our writing.  I pointed out that fiction should contain enough fact to make it believable.  Writers should present their material in a way that it appears to be believable if they want readers to take them seriously.  Even the most far-fetched fiction should be grounded in something that the reader can relate to.  If you want to take a reader to a fantastic realm where they've never been, then you have to provide them with a touchstone from which to begin, otherwise you may as well write your story in your own made up language and hope at some point the reader will figure out what you are saying. 

        When I attended the University of Tennessee in the early 1970's, I was very fortunate to have taken two writing of fiction classes led by the notable Southern fiction short story author and Flannery O'Connor scholar, Robert Drake.  At that time, my writing interest often leaned toward surrealistic fiction.  On one of my stories his notes read, "Boo! What is this all about? Even fantasy must keep one toe on the ground."  Other stories that he returned to me had similar notes, and in retrospect I understand why.

        How does a con man-- be it a politician, a religious leader, a crook, or what have you--win us over?  They have to sound like they know what they are talking about.  In order to do that they must have a fairly good grasp on facts and figures, they must be reasonably familiar with their topic, and they must come across as sincere experts in their fields.  If you can see through a conman it is difficult to be duped.

          As writers we are like actors or magicians or any master of illusion who is trying to win an audience to believe that what we are doing is real.  We are pulling a con to deceive the imagination of the reader to believe in the worlds, the characters, and the situations the we have created so that they walk away amazed with what they've just read.  We scare them, thrill them, or move them to tears because we have made the imagined so real that the reader really wants to believe that our story is true.

       How good of a liar are you?  What do you think makes your made up stories more believable?  Can you think of a fiction that has seemed so real to readers that it has been mistaken for truth?