YesButNoButYes (Free subscription) | 07/22/2008
I thought some of our literary fans might enjoy this Ballantine Ale ad featuring Ernest Hemingway from days long ago. This one was part of a famous Ballantine campaign that included many popular iconic writers (John Steinbeck was also...
Paris Parfait (Free subscription) | 07/22/2008
Climbing the stairway home, Telegraph Hill Historic District, San Francisco. "Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments." - John Steinbeck,...
Seeking Alpha (Free subscription) | 07/20/2008
Ashkan Karbasfrooshan submits: During the Great Depression, farmers would destroy crops in order to create some kind of floor price for their fruits and vegetables, even though many of their fellow citizens were starving to death. John Steinbeck chronicles this plight in Grapes of Wrath , a book I will pretend to have read (I actually read some of it, but man that book was thick). Today, despite homelessness...
World Hum (Free subscription) | 07/16/2008
They’re among the now-legendary writers who contributed to the American Guide Series, a product of the Federal Writers’ Project during the Great Depression. The project put writers to work creating guides to U.S. states, regions and cities. In the last few years, the guides have seen “a resurgence of interest,” according to New York Times writer William Yardley . Douglas Brinkley also wrote in the...
"Thoughts of Joy..." (Free subscription) | 07/14/2008
Author: John Steinbeck Genre: Classic Lit Published: 1937 Personal Rating: 4.75/5 Yearly Count: 94 During the 30's, George and Lennie are California farm laborers that are tired of traveling from job to job. To keep their spirit alive, this brain and brawn duo dream of owning their own farm one day. George wants to be independent and live off his own land and Lennie wants to take care of the rabbits....
teachergirl (Free subscription) | 07/11/2008
Several weeks (0r months) ago, Cupcake pointed me in the direction of Lisa at Clusterfook . Lisa is going through some difficult times, to put it mildly. She is doing many, many things to make the difficult times bearable. One of those things is getting her marriage blessed in the Catholic Church. I had friends in college...imagine. Mike was a mild mannered Georgia boy. I think he was a Methodist or...
Circle of 13 (Free subscription) | 07/11/2008
The Pigasus was used by John Steinbeck as a personal stamp with the Latin motto Ad astra per alia porci (to the stars on the wings of a pig). The pigasus was supposed to symbolize Steinbeck as "earthbound but aspiring.... A lumbering soul but trying to fly...(with)...not enough wingspread but plenty of intention." Coincidentally, Pigasus was a character in the Oz books written by Ruth Plumly Thompson...
Languor Management (Free subscription) | 07/10/2008
In the New York Times, Henry Alford on the hazards of translating literally--a crime which I am often guilty of--and a quiz! A clerk in a Yokohama bookshop once told John Steinbeck’s wife that yes, he had a copy of...
Poor Mojo Newswire (Free subscription) | 07/08/2008
Quiz - Transloosely Literated - NYTimes.com A book’s journey from one language into another can be perilous. The Russian title for J. D. Salinger’s classic tale of adolescence translates as “Above the Precipice in the Rye.” A clerk in a Yokohama bookshop once told John Steinbeck’s wife that yes, he had a copy of Steinbeck’s “Angry Raisins.” Has this bumpy road gotten any smoother in recent years? Let...
Ravings of a Corporate Mommy (Free subscription) | 07/01/2008
John Steinbeck once wrote "So in our pride we ordered for breakfast an omelet, toast and coffee and what has just arrived is a tomato salad with onions, a dish of pickles, a big slice of watermelon and two bottles...
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical² (Free subscription) | 06/30/2008
John Steinbeck, call your office Mfk'n banks According to The Consumerist , Bank of America is in the Elite 8 of the Worst Companies in America. This is one reason ... “ Reader Gary used his Bank of America credit card to pay $2 on a parking meter in Washington, DC. Bank of America treated it as a cash advance and slapped him with a $10 fee, as well as a higher APR. When Gary called to complain, he...
Christian Science Monitor (Free subscription) | 06/30/2008
I just finished re-reading John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. I love all of Steinbeck’s books and have been a life-long fan of his. I particularly like this non-fiction tale of his road trip around the USA in the early 1960’s, when our country’s landscape was so different, and because it is such an unassuming record [...]
TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home (Free subscription) | 06/25/2008
Almost instantly, when I looked just now, I found ten pirated copies of John Steinbeck’s books online even though they’re illegal to download here in the States and certain other countries. No, I won’t link to the little site that offers them. The big point here is something else: they were scanned from paper [...]
The Sheila Variations (Free subscription) | 06/23/2008
Next book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt: East of Eden, by John Steinbeck I just love this book so much. There's one sentence in it about springtime coming to Salinas Valley in California (I looked...
The Sheila Variations (Free subscription) | 06/21/2008
Next book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt: The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck I was always an East of Eden fan myself - and while some people find fault in East of Eden, find...
