Agatha Christie, An Autobiography

(Source: itsfromabook, via wegotelegance)

DIY Recycled Book into a Sketch Book. Tutorial from Cosmo Cricket here. 

(via fuckyeahbookarts)

APRIL

15. Richard Yates – Revolutionary Road

16. Suzanne Collins – The Hunger Games

17. Suzanne Collins – Catching Fire

18. Suzanne Collins – Mockingjay

19. John Green – The Fault in Our Stars

20. Bernhard Schlink – The Reader

21. David Lodge - Therapy

Scratch Travel Map of the World

(via teachingliteracy)

Mark Twain

(Source: libraryland, via cupicedtea)

I cannot relate completely, but the design is charming :)

(via teachingliteracy)

When copywriter Robert Pirosh landed in Hollywood in 1934, eager to become a screenwriter, he wrote and sent the following letter to all the directors, producers, and studio executives he could think of. The approach worked, and after securing three interviews he took a job as a junior writer with MGM.

Pirosh went on to write for the Marx Brothers, and in 1949 won an Academy Award for his Battleground script.

(source: Letters of Note)

Dear Sir:

I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as straitlaced, cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory. I like spurious, black-is-white words, such as mortician, liquidate, tonsorial, demi-monde. I like suave “V” words, such as Svengali, svelte, bravura, verve. I like crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty. I like sullen, crabbed, scowling words, such as skulk, glower, scabby, churl. I like Oh-Heavens, my-gracious, land’s-sake words, such as tricksy, tucker, genteel, horrid. I like elegant, flowery words, such as estivate, peregrinate, elysium, halcyon. I like wormy, squirmy, mealy words, such as crawl, blubber, squeal, drip. I like sniggly, chuckling words, such as cowlick, gurgle, bubble and burp.

I like the word screenwriter better than copywriter, so I decided to quit my job in a New York advertising agency and try my luck in Hollywood, but before taking the plunge I went to Europe for a year of study, contemplation and horsing around.

I have just returned and I still like words.

May I have a few with you?

Robert Pirosh
385 Madison Avenue
Room 610
New York
Eldorado 5-6024

(via coloredballoons)

If a man is only as good as his word,
then I want to marry a man with a vocabulary like yours.

The way you say dicey and delectable and octogenarian
in the same sentence— that really turns me on.
The way you describe the oranges in your backyard
using anarchistic and intimate in the same breath.

I would follow the legato and staccato of your tongue
wrapping around your diction
until listening become more like dreaming
and dreaming became more like kissing you.

I want to jump off the cliff of your voice
into the suicide of your stream of consciousness.
I want to visit the place in your heart where the wrong words die.
I want to map it out with a dictionary and points
of brilliant light until it looks more like a star chart
than a strategy for communication.
I want to see where your words are born.
I want to find a pattern in the astrology.

I want to memorize the scripts of your seductions.
I want to live in the long-winded epics of your disappointments,
in the haiku of your epiphanies.
I want to know all the names you’ve given your desires.
I want to find my name among them,

‘cause there is nothing more wrecking sexy than the right word.
I want to thank whoever told you
there was no such thing as a synonym.
I want to throw a party for the heartbreak
that turned you into a poet.

And if it is true that a man is only as good as his word
then, sweet jesus, let me be there
the first time you are speechless,
and all your explosive wisdom becomes
a burning ball of sun in your throat,
and all you can bring yourself to utter is, oh god, oh god.

“Untitled,” Mindy Nettifee (via clavicola)

(via gatsbyandallhisfriends)

Reading Challenge - 75 (or at least 50) Books in 2012

FEBRUARY and MARCH

7. J.M. Coetzee - Foe

8. David Lodge - Thinks…

9. Paul Torday - Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

10. Haruki Murakami – Sputnik Sweetheart

11. E.T.A. Hoffman – The Sandman

12. Kurt Vonnegut – Bluebeard

13. J.D. Salinger – Franny and Zooey

14. Julian Barnes - Flaubert’s Parrot

Ralph Waldo Emerson

(Source: im1004, via savianparma)

(Source: heygirlteacher)