Vox’s posts tagged oscar wilde

A Book Glut.

nobody@vox.com(christal) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 03:03:20 +0000

I have counted and there is precisely 20 weeks left in the rest of the year and I have thought and plotted the perfect way to challenge myself and it is to select 20 books to read by the new year. Wait, I can hear you all already, that is no feat because I read to the exclusion of all else anyway. But this is different. I chose books that I have been putting off reading and stuff that I have had laying around for years. I am going to try to read one of these challenge books per week and the Charlaine Harris books aren't included. So I'll be reading about 8 books a week to get my other goal of reading the Harlequin Blaze books out of the way. And now onto my list, and this is in no order.

Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Grey
Jonathon Stroud - The Golem's Eye
John Steinbeck - The Moon is Down
Christopher Moore - You Suck, a love story
Jeff Lindsay - Darkly Dreaming Dexter
Terry Goodkind - Wizard's First Rule
Kathy Reichs - Bones to Ashes
Herman Melville - Moby Dick
Sarah Dessen - Someone Like You
CC Humphreys - Jack Absolute
LJ Smith - The Vampire Diaries
Greg Behrendt & Liz Tuccillo - He's Just Not That Into You
Cassandra Clare - City of Bones
Charles DeLint - The Wild Wood
Amy Tan - The Kitchen God's Wife
Upton Sinclair - The Jungle
Robert Louis Stevenson - Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde
Ian McEwan - Atonement
Neil Gaiman - Coraline
Ellen Schreiber - Vampire Kisses
Charlaine Harris books to read... Club Dead, Dead to the World, Dead as a Doornail, Definitely Dead, All Together Dead, From Dead to Worse

Vampire Kisses

As you can see I didn't really put things that I would naturally read for the sake of reading. Or I guess I did but it's been a weird compulsive time of it lately and I have been setting aside books that I would normally read. Tithe didn't even make the list so that will have to be something I actively search out.

The first book I'm going to read is Vampire Kisses. My plan is to pick the book on Sunday and then have it read by Tuesday night. This week will be my trial run. Of course some books like Wizard's First Rule and City of Bones are bigger than others so we will play it by ear. I am pleased with my plan and I am going to try to keep this frame of mind and not get into my whiny, self indulgent habits. It's because of them that this list was born anyway.

The Haunting (Harlequin Blaze)

As for what I read today... I just finished Hope Tarr's The Haunting. It was a Harlequin Blaze book so one more down. The story was more than a little silly. I could have maybe gotten behind it were it not for the obviousness of the bad guy. I figured it out the second he was mentioned and was left wondering why they couldn't. Also there is one part where the bad guy was left wetting his pants by the good guys efforts of justice and then two pages later the good guy is sitting in the same chair. Ewwww much? I realize that this is a popcorn romance and not highly developed plot driven writings of the classics but still I think something a little more entertaining could have been issued. I have read good popcorn romances. I also think that I just don't like reading Hope Tarr books. I think the last book I read by her was silly too. I'll hurry up and read all hers so I can get them out of the way. Then wash them down with other authors that I like more. There is a plan.

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Quote of the Day

nobody@vox.com(tianglim) — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 17:13:58 +0000

"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."

-- The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

In a world where everything is expressed with dollars and cents, i always strive to look beyond the paper value of things. How much does an iPhone costs? USD199. How much for a geeky iPhone experience? Priceless. = )

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deeper and deeper - senseuality

nobody@vox.com(karlos) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 00:19:02 +0000

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses
just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul

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;-)

nobody@vox.com(lǝɥɔɐɹ) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:06:51 +0000

Anyone-imagination

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On Oscar Wilde

nobody@vox.com(Nex) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 06:37:14 +0000

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde was a genius.

I don't mean that in the typically glib internet way of idolizing dead people merely because their names are vaguely odd -- no, the man was truly the epitome of wit. I'm clever as all fuck, and generally have a rejoinder for any situation, but Mr. Wilde would no doubt talk circles around me were he still alive.

And that's not even mentioning how his fame as a writer will probably dwarf my own for eons.

To wit:

"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his."

Yeah, it's a simple statement, but how profound is that? Extremely! That's how! And the thing about Wilde is that his entire life is full of such statements. Yeah, he's an author of great renown, but I think his greatest legacy is almost certainly his reams of clever quotations.

With that in mind, I've decided I need to start working up some great quotations if I'm going to be remembered millennia after my passing.

Ok. Got one. How's this sound?

"No duck is ever as ugly as the egg it leaves behind."

Yeah. That's right. Let that shit percolate in your brain for a few seconds.

Suck on that one Wilde!

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The Peacock Room

nobody@vox.com(Aubrey) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 05:42:01 +0000

On four walls he painted a glittering, gilded cacophony, golden feathers dripping down leather walls, wings that panted against the ceiling, multitudes of patterns that made a mockery of empty space.

Peacocks make human noises; they scream and cry in jagged, lonely tones. But nature apologized to the male of the species for this atonality by providing him with iridescent rainbows that glistened and rippled as he moved, with an aurora borealis glowing from his feathers. Painters, and all aficionados of color, love his betrayal of earthiness, his irresponsible exhibitionism. He was seemingly made for negligence and beauty.

Beardsley drew skirts of peacock's tails that curled around the ankles, and clouds of feathers that breathed over Salome's shoulder:

Hothouse Feathers

Wilde made the peacock a symbol of languor and decadence; James MacNeil Whistler dedicated an entire room to this stunning bird with a cry like Lazarus waking in his tomb.

In 1876 Frederick R. Leyland commissioned Whistler to decorate his dining room. Leyland's preferences were serious and symmetrical and he should have known better than to let such an artistic sprite into his home.

Using pots full of gold metallic leaf, he covered the ceiling and panels of the walls in a thin layer of liquid metal, the alloy that began humbly as grains rolling in the bellies of streams and rivers. He then chose one color and investigated its darknesses, chosing its varied shadows as carefully as if they were the newest silks from Lyons. This palette of blue - prussian, cobalt and indigo - was used to sew a textile of feathers that flowed with impatient currents, wings that were as lush and stiff as brocaded draperies, tiny aristocratic heads poised on necks a swan would envy.

Four peacocks were created: four golden tapestries embroidered into the walls; four gardens clipped into a manicured maze that branched into gilded tangles; four streams of light siphoned from the sun and diluting that bright star. He called his glowing aviary: "Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room".

Light Cut Into The Dark

In a creative thrill Whistler wrote to Leyland, telling him that his dining room was "really alive with beauty - brilliant and gorgeous while at the same time delicate and refined to the last degree".

Leyland hated it. He hated the sunburst of feathers that blazed across his dark room like a sunset caught in a bottle. He hated the tendrils of plumes that charted burnished rivers from wall to wall. He hated the effete delicacy of the poised and posing birds. He hated their inescapable loveliness.

He hated Whistler's price.

There was a violent quarrrel - not surprising with two such high examples of ego - and Leyland eventually agreed to pay...half of Whistler's stated amount. He intensified the insult by paying in pounds instead of guineas. Pounds were the currency of trade, not of artists and other professionals. Furthermore, in the 1870's, a pound was worth twenty shillings, with the guinea twenty-one. Whistler lost the arguement, lost money and lost face.

But he got the last laugh.

He gained access into the offending room and painted one more masterpiece. It was a confrontation between two peacocks, frozen in the movements of an angry ballet: one standing with its feet straddling a pile of silver shillings, its throat a path of aggressive ruffles, alluding to Leyland's favored ruffled shirts. The other peacock, recoiling before its rich and greedy rival, has a silver crest feather resembling the lock of white hair that curled above Whistler's forehead. This altercation was called, "Art and Money, or, The Story of the Room."

Ruffled Feathers

This was finished in 1877. Whistler never stepped foot in the room again.

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