Untamed Tongues: Wild Words from Wild Women, by Autumn Stephens

Stephens collected inspirational, wise, and humorous quotes from a wide variety of women; here are my favorites...

"The more articulate one is, the more dangerous words become." May Sarton

"Nobody's interested in sweetness and light." Hedda Hopper

"I don't have the time every day to put on makeup. I need that time to clean my rifle." Henriette Mantel

"I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond." Mae West

"I'm just a person trapped inside a woman's body." Elayne Boosler

"Kiss my shapely big fat ass." K.T. Oslin

I'm no lady: I'm a member of Congress, and I'll proceed on that basis." Mary Norton

"I have a brain and a uterus, and I use both." Patricia Schroeder

"As a woman, I can't go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else." Jeanette Rankin

"I think extreme heterosexuality is a perversion." Margaret Mead

"I learned that women were smart and capable, could live in community together without men, and in fact did not need men much." Anna Quindlen

"A girl can wait for the right man to come along but in the meantime that still doesn't mean she can't have a wonderful time with all the wrong ones." Cher

"The only jobs for which no man is qualified are human incubators and wet nurse. Likewise, the only job for which no woman is or can be qualified is sperm donor." Wilma Scott Heide

"In twenty years, I've never had a day when I didn't have to think about someone else's needs. And this means the writing has to be fitted around it." Alice Munro

"But oh, what a woman I should be if an able young man would consecrate his life to me as secretaries and technicians do to their men employers." Mable Ulrich

"I have bursts of being a lady, but it doesn't last long." Shelley Winters

"No day is so bad it can't be fixed by a nap." Carrie Snow

Fahrenheit 451, March read for Canon Book Group

Due to childcare issues, I wasn't able to attend the discussion for this book; unfortunately this was a meeting I really didn't want to miss because I wanted some feedback regarding readers' rights and how to combat book-hatred.

I believe I read this in high school well over 20+ years ago (long enough to have neither memory of how I felt nor what I thought of it), so this reading wasn't tainted by past opinion. I managed to get a copy of the 50th anniversary edition, which has 2 introductions and a forward; I always enjoy reading an authors' insights to their work, and I wish more authors currently publishing would include them. Reading bits about how Bradbury "fed on books," about being a passionate versus an intellectual writer, about how we don't have to literally burn books as long as we continue to "fill the world with nonreaders, nonlearners, nonknowers,"; well, these thoughts truly make me cling to my books and to my writing all the more happily, if desperately.

Unfortunately, I failed to create a quote-slip as I read this book. Finding my favorite passages would take another re-read, which I can't afford to do right now (aside from owing the library 2 bucks on the lateness of the book). That will have to wait for my own copy to find its way to me.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes to think about their reading material (given that there are many books which don't require that sort of effort... not that I'm knocking their entertainment value--I read plenty of that sort myself), to those who are committed to having personal libraries, an to those who compulsively share and foster a love of books to the next generation.

(141st edition) Thursday Thirteen #8: 13 Songs I Have to Sing Along With

Thirteen Things about Marina




Unfortunately, I'm not doing a book-related one this week, but I really needed to get something up here... so, these are songs that I'm prone to sing along to whether listening to iTunes or to the radio. For now, only my son has to put up with actually listening to me, and I'll likely stop when there's no longer any joy in it for him.

1. West Texas Lullaby--Toni Price
2. Every Rose Has its Thorn--Poison
3. Take it to the Limit--Eagles
4. True Blue--Madonna
5. Grow Old with You--Adam Sandler
6. Blue--Leann Rimes
7. Since I Don’t Have You--Brian Setzer Orchestra
8. Rave On--Buddy Holly
9. It Doesn’t Matter Anymore--Linda Ronstadt
10. Lean On Me--Club Nouveau
11. For Baby (For Bobbie)--John Denver
12. La Bamba--Los Lobos
13. Bitch--Meredith Brooks




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Book Meme: Titles A-Z

The rules:

*Fill in each letter of the alphabet with a title of a book that you've read that begins with that letter (e.g. American Psycho for the letter A).
*Articles (a, an, the) don't count in alphabetizing, so skip to the first letter of the next word (i.e. A Thousand Splendid Suns would count for the letter T, The Great Gatsby would count for the letter G, and so on).
*Titles that start with or are entirely composed of numbers will be alphabetized by how they would be spelled when written out (i.e. 1984 would count as an N for Nineteen Eighty-Four).
*The letter X space will be special. The title will only have to include the letter X to count (i.e. Don Quixote). This isn't necessarily as easy as it sounds.

A - American Gods by Neil Gaiman
B - Black Dahlia by James Ellroy
C - The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
D - Death at Devil's Bridge by Robin Paige
E - Edge of the Sea by Rachel Carson
F - Friends, Lovers, Chocolate by Alexander McCall Smith
G - Grimm’s Last Fairy Tale by Haydn Middleton
H - House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
I - I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron
J - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
K - The King is Dead by Sarah Shankman
L - The Last Wolf of Ireland by Elona Malterre
M - Murder on a Bad Hair Day by Anne George
N - The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
O - Orlando by Virginia Woolfe
P - Painted Truth by Lise McClendon
Q - Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice
R - Round Ireland with a Fridge by Tony Hawks
S - The Strange Files of Fremont Jones
T - 12 Sharp by Janet Evanovich
U - Untamed Tongues by Autumn Stephens
V - The Vile Village by Lemony Snicket
W - A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle
X - Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Y - You On a Diet by Roizen/Oz
Z - Zombies of the Gene Pool by Sharyn McCrumb

If I had the energy at this point, I'd fancy it up with links to my reviews, but I will just have to settle for a simple list.