I love dictionary.com as it helps me when my son asks for the definition of a word I know the meaning of but cannot put into words. Enter this convenient app. They’ve also got some interesting blog posts and slideshows. Here are some recent ones I enjoyed :
Continue reading “Some Interesting Posts by Dictionary.com”
Category: Poetry
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The Girl From The Well, by Rin Chupeco
If you only read only book this year… Well, you need to rethink your priorities if you only read one book a year.
Okay.
Let me start over.
If you’re wondering what book you should read next, and you’ve got a few hours of uninterrupted reading time (since you won’t be able to put this book down until you’ve finished every last word), Rin Chupeco has written a book that should appeal to almost every reader.
Sometimes prose, sometimes poetry, The Girl From The Well is not a typical ghost story. Interwoven themes of love, hate, family, murder, revenge, redemption (deep breath) and even Japanese history (which I haven’t fact checked yet as I finished the book, checked out http://www.rinchupeco.com, then began free writing this review), come together seamlessly in this novel. The imagery Ms. Chupeco paints is vivid throughout whether describing sounds or visuals. This is the first book in a long time which I read straight through, as opposed to my usual: chapter 1; last ten or so pages; chapters 2 thru the end.
There is a bit of a Stephen King influence (sorry, I only like Firestarter and The Shining), in that we learn about the background of a character then never see her again, while some characters who get a whole chapter are only described in one or two sentences. Overall the Editor in my head was (mostly) content to stay quiet.
If you still aren’t convinced, then consider this: on Rin’s site she claims she has hugged Neil “God” Gaiman THREE times.
Wolverine’s super healing ability would be her super power of choice.
She lists her husband under “pets”.
Oh, and she’s a bit OCD (no nines!).
How can you not want to read her writing?
[In other news, my blog gag order might be removed soon. Yay!]
Blessed Be
Have You Read More Than Six Of These Books?
Have you read more than six of these books? (reprinted from Facebook Notes)
(by Kim Ross James on Thursday, November 18, 2010 at 12:24am, as copied from JESSE HOLLANDER’s page)
Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.
I have posted the list twice — the first time without my notes to make it easy for you to go through the list and/or add your own notes without the need to delete mine.
The SECOND list is exactly the same, except that they include my comments and answers.
INSTRUCTIONS: Copy this FIRST LIST into your NOTES.
Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety.
Italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read only an excerpt.
Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses! Feel free to add comments too.
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazu Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
MY ANSWERS:
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
(see 54)
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
(highly recommended)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
(why not the Torah? or the Bhagavad Gita?)
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
(never heard of this one)
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
(yes, i have read them all, including the sonnets.)
(see 98, which is ”Hamlet”. they couldn’t come up with another book?)
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
(all 1024 pages of the paperback. Many, many times. One of the rare times the movie AND the book are both excellent.)
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
(ugh. SO not worth it.)
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
(not as good as 31, Anna Karenina)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
(READ THIS BOOK! The best English version is published by Penguin, translated by David Margashak)
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
(EXCELLENT book. Tolstoy weaves the lives of many characters together so smoothly that I had no trouble following the plot)
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
(see 36)
34 Emma – Jane Austen
(see 54)
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
(see 54)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
(see 33. this is the only one I could get through without skimming…)
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
(one of the main reasons I learned Spanish — to read this in the original language it was written in. Well worth it!)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
(argh! Just put all the Jane Austin books together and put in some NEIL GAIMAN!!!)
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
(see 81)
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
(see 81)
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
(I’d recommend the annotated versions for a first read. Or a second. Or a third…)
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
(A Little Princess was better)
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
(why not put The Complete Works of Dickens?)
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazu Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
(how can you eat a pig after reading this?)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
(see 14, “Complete works of Shakespeare”)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
Missing: Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allen Poe, Neil Gaiman
How To Properly Insult Someone (updated, again)
After dealing with my son’s dad, his last three girlfriends (one of whom sent 350+ in 24 hours from different email addresses–one using my cats name. Do the math. Yeah.), a person who once lied to sound more like me but when called on her rewriting history decided to try and insult me (13 texts when I awoke. Because I’d blocked her on Facebook. Thirteen. Couldn’t make it up if I tried.), etc, I have decided to write a short piece on How To Properly Insult Someone. I.e., How To Insult Someone So You Are Not Laughed At / Made To Look Like An Idiot.
RULE #1: Stick to the truth. The truth hurts.
RULE #2: If the person is better looking than you, do not attempt to insult their looks.
An example from my most recent hater, “Nobody likes a fat girl with crooked eyebrows”. (*snort* *giggle*)
This is coming from a girl whose eyes are close set (a sign of lower intelligence) and a huge man-jaw, made ever more prominent by her latest eating disorder.
First off, I chose to get fat so guys wouldn’t hit on me. Yet they still do. A lot. So that was a miss.
As for my eyebrows? I didn’t care if they were even or not.
As for why they are penciled on? See…
RULE #3: Find Our The Insultees Medical History So You Don’t Look Stupid
I had cervical cancer my last year of college, plus a few more years. My brows grow in patchy. So I pencil them. If I care, I make them even. If I’m meeting someone who had one friend til I introduced her to mine, I don’t care if they’re even.
This latest frenemy thinks I’m living in the past. If someone refers to the past, but won’t go into detail, it’s probably so you won’t be hurt…
RULE #4: If You’re Trying To Insult Someone Who Refers to Part, But Not All Of The Past– They Are Trying To Spare You The Truth
“You’re obsessed with the past because it was the best time of your life…I’ve blocked you from my iPhone.” (Recent frenemy, once again showing lower intelligence.)
First, you’re showing your lack of intelligence by having an iPhone. The most basic research will show you the many problems with iPhone. Androids are infinitely better.
Secondly, no, my life with my son, now, is the best. HOWEVER, what I didn’t want you to know is how they were laughing AT you, not WITH you.
We would try and schedule hang-outs without you because someone would have to take care of you (tho we all knew you had to be faking it. But since everyone else was above average intelligence, we weren’t sure if things affected one if average intelligence– you– differently.)
One of the many jokes about you was if I’d kissed a boy, he’d better not get drunk around you because you had a thing for my leftovers but they had to be drunk to do you.
When we met for lunch and you said you didn’t meet up with a certain someone because you’d go at it– how many times in the first few years was he sober during the act? Did he ever take you on a date like he did with me? (BTW, I know the answers, from him. No, he’s never been sober. No date; wouldn’t want to be alone in public. Still embarrassed. Wouldn’t hook up now unless drunk and horny and first one there because you’d apparently do anyone I’ve been with.)
RULE #5: Know What You’re Talking About
Back to the frenemy. I didn’t read thru all thirteen texts but from what I read:
— you call me crazy. (Lol.) I have been in therapy, by choice, with various therapists over the years, but none for less than three years with one visit a week. All of them have declared me sane. Quite sane.
Can you say the same? (Nope.)
When I blocked you on Facebook, you texted me to tell me I was blocked from your iPhone. Yet when I used a friends phone to text you back, lmao, you said, lol, that I was crazy for using another method of response.
What does that make you for texting me when blocked on Facebook??? Lmao.
Those close set eyes give away your average IQ (nothing to be ashamed of. Someone has to be average.), so I’ll explain:
According to YOUR logic, if one is blocked on one medium and uses another, they are crazy. Like when you were blocked on Facebook and texted me, you were… (Psst. The answer is “crazy”.)
Update: despite being told I was using a friend’s phone, frenemy texted him. Something about how ” [I] win, she’s going back to [her] life! Thin”.
He called to tell me of the text and asked if “thin” was all she had and could text and tell her what a pathetic nutjob she is.
I told him not to. If thin is all she has, she is more sad and pathetic than we all thought (my friends and I).
Anyone can lose weight. I’ve been thin. I’ve been so thin that one could see the outline of my internal organs. (Tho I owe that to the cancer.)
And as fluffy as I may be, on my worst day, in my attention getting jeans, T, and sneakers, with uneven eyebrows, I still LOOK BETTER THAN YOU.
You see, your hatred and jealousy make you ugly on the inside and it shows on the outside.
Yet I don’t hate you. I pity you. If thin is all you’ve got– not your son or husband, etc– I feel bad for you.
— you made some comment about getting a job and people with fibromyalgia having jobs blah blah blah. First off, nobody with fibromyalgia has JUST fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia ALWAYS comes with another illness.
So, let’s see, first of all, fibromyalgia is not all that is physically wrong with me. But the other things — herniated discs and such — are none of your concern.
Let’s just say with my physical disabilities, I have been unable to find a job. So I created one: I work as a freelance / ghostwriter.
Which brings me to your husband. You said he couldn’t find a job. He has no disabilities. Where’s the problem?
Oh, wait: solution.
Marry a girl with low self-esteem. Have her work to support husband AND his kids from previous relationship.
Give Low Self-esteem a kid.
Send Low Self-esteem out to work and support husband, kid with husband, and husbands kids from previous relationship.
Problem solved for husband.
— from an ex of my son’s dad: ” it must suck knowing that your dad hates you.”
(Odd. Then why does he make a point of seeing my son and I once a week? And email more often?)
“It must suck knowing that your mom hates you.”
(Hmmm… Which “mom”? Biological? The ex-stepmother who was more a mom than my own, whom I’m still in touch with despite being married to a man– not my dad–for the past two decades?)
Put those two together and you get someone throwing darts with a blindfold. (Oddly, her eyes were close together, too.)
— I cut and pasted the thirteen texts sent by frenemy so friends could read and comment. Apparently, frenemy says something about my being an ” attention whore”. Well, that really gave me a good laugh. But you know what? She must be right since it took her 6+ years to get thru a city college and she has a masters in sociology, the easiest of all studies.
But she was referring to me. The attention whore who didn’t leave her apartment for two years. The girl who got fat so guys wouldn’t hit on her. The girl who has worn jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers or Doc Martins her whole life.
Methinks someone is jealous that the girl in the last paragraph received more compliments than the frenemy in her ill-fitting dress the time they hung out.
It must suck to starve yourself, get all dressed up, and still have everyone look at the “fat chick with uneven eyebrows” and have nobody look at you.
I see where the hate comes from.
— from all three of my son’s dad’s girlfriends: “he doesn’t want you. He wants me.” Oh, please. Take him. I’ll PAY you to take him!
Each girlfriend was the same.
They’d say he doesn’t want me, move on.
I’d say, “Take him, with my apologies. I don’t want him.”
They’d say, “Then why are you all over him? He tells me everything.”
And I’d say, “So, he’s the one telling you this. But all the calls on his phone are TO me. You’re in front of MY place; I’ve NEVER been to yours.” Etc.
He’d come to me with a choice: have sex or my /our son comes home with cuts and bruises. I said, “Neither. Have sex with your girlfriend. Be a dad to your son. And tell your girl to leave me alone.”
And the truth would come out: he wanted two girls to physically fight over him. And these dumb girls would fall for it, hook, line, and sinker.
I’m sure my frenemy has given me more rules, but, honestly, I have better things to do than read all of her texts. I’ll put them in the folder with the ex-girlfriend who sent 350+ emails in 24 hours a few years ago. One day I’ll read them.
Lol.
Maybe not.
All I know is Frenemy keeps emailing me and I’ve told her three times: you are harassing me. If you contact me again, I will get a restraining order.
Yup, after all this time, she’s still obsessed with me.
Sadly, even after reading this blog, the only insult she could come up with is, “Your blog with zero comments.” Lol. As if all comments are public. And, even if I had zero comments, who cares??? I don’t. Apparently she does. I guess she wants her idol to have more public comments…
Either way, the lesson you should take from this is:
RULE #1: Stick To The Truth. The Truth Hurts.
P.S. Frenemy: you know who and what you are.
When diagnosed with cancer, I removed all negativity from my life.
As I’ve told the girlfriends of my son’s dad: do not contact me again or there will be a restraining order against you.
Blessed Be.
Dee Kat
what if, too
and what if i am
the true reincarnate
of napoleon,
won’t they all be surprised.
but i’ll bet the old hens
will cluck among themselves,
“i knew it all along,
the way she carried herself.”
yes,
and don’t they have
better things to do
than going to church
on sunday mornings
when they could sleep late
and fill in
the new york times crossword puzzle
in pen
if only the little old jewish men
hadn’t done it on saturday
(because every good jew
gets it delivered on saturday)
and what if i really am
the true reincarnate
of no-one special,
would they say
they knew it all along?
waiting for him
so there is this girl
i want to slap
and of course
she walks by as
i’m waiting for him
he told me to wait but
i’ve got to get home
to try to get rid
of the roaches crawling
all over my apartment
(eddie says
to become one with them
but i don’t like
my naked body
and i don’t like them
crawling under my skin)
and i hate
waiting for people
especially him
because it’s not like
we’re going out anymore
so why i still want
to slap this girl
he cheated on me
with is a mystery to me
and there is this
goddamn roach problem
but he’ll know i waited
from the cigarette butts
i’ve left behind
angel on a pedestal
wonder is the color of your skin
touched lightly beneath my fingertips
softly loving my wetness
i am disappearing
in your lust-flavored fairy tales
which i believe
despite my better judgment
i know you
your kind.
and i let myself fall and
convince myself
i am yours and you are mine
and our love
smells of bees
and the stickiness
is all the remains
when you shed your wings
and walk away.
