Quote de jour

I'm trying out a different format this week. With a surplus of photos of all the new blooms, my cup runneth over. Ditto with reading material. The word of the day: excess. Often, it's enough to scan ad copy, browse through articles and get the Gestalt of the magazine. Out of the billions? of little random snippets of information, it's curious which tidbits find their way into my writing. The cut of a man's trousers, a dish of artichokes, a crumbling ruin in Turkey, or a new shade of lipstick. It's all about authentic details and random choices that are anything but.


Books: one children's book, two short story collections and one novella. Way too much to read, let alone absorb in two weeks, but they are all whippet slim compared to last week's megalithic door stop.

Trick of The Tale is a compilation of fairy tales from around the globe with trickster animal like ravens and foxes. The pen and ink illustrations by Tomislaw Tomic (who lives in Croatia) are pure magic. I've noticed an increase in short story collections of late. Boundary pushing writer and princess of dark, Mary Gaitskill has written her third collection of short stories, Don't Cry. I've read a couple so far and they are as her usual fare of troubled characters in bad relationships.
 
Joyce Carol Oates is one of my favorite writers. I would willingly bow and scape at her feet for an ounce of her prolific talent. Dear Husband is her latest, and I'm loving these short stories. She proves over and over again how writers can break rules but after they've mastered them. Oh to be able to write one paragraph spanning two and a half pages that works. No mean feat.

I haven't even opened the pulp fiction cover of Jane Hamilton's skinny novel/novelette Laura Rider's Masterpiece. It's garnered tons of press. She must have a great publicist. It's touted to be a riotously funny tour de force. Let's hope. It's hard to focus on reading  when my garden is looking like a psychedelic dream. Yes, that's me wearing peace sign jammies.