By Rose Murray: Compare Your [natal] Chart to Successful Authors!
Streaming service Hulu will soon have:
"A spanking-new, 10-episode adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s seminal dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale."
The Mysterious Ancient Origins of the Book, an article by Keith Houston
I agree with these thoughts:
Old Books are best!...
What though the prints be not so bright,
The paper dark, the binding slight?
Our author, be he dull or sage,
Returning from a distant age
So lives again. We say of right:
Old Books are best.
~Beverly Chew, 1886
My test of a good novel is dreading to begin the last chapter.
~Thomas Helm
The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.
~Samuel Butler
Could I write a decent novel? I highly doubt it and your link to the astro-indicators confirms that. I authored way too many technical documents for work, some containing several hundred pages, and received praise for those. I took a technical report writing class in college. With my Scorpio stellium containing Mercury, all in the sixth house, technical report writing was my redemption as an author...LOL. I also had a composition class in college and performed well, but only because I had distinct assignments to keep me on task.
ReplyDeleteI'm not inclined to read erotic novels, though I have dabbled in the genre. I've often thought that I'd like to explore that realm, should I endeavor a piece of fiction. Definitely fits my Scorpio. A number of years ago, I read a book of pornographically slanted short stories by various authors. Several of the shorts were excellent and written in a clean-cut fashion, not crudely, and the metaphors were evocative. Most authors of erotica choose to write in very physical parlance, but I find the mental, suggestive voyage more enticing than the destination.
Haven't read "The Handmaid's Tale"...don't subscribe to Hulu. A quick look at Wiki's entry sounds like the book touches on some of the erotica I mentioned in my previous paragraph.
I've mentioned several times that I really need to re-acquaint myself to my pending stack of to-reads. I came close last night, since I finished tasks early about nine-ish, but scanned Netflix and found "Sweet Bean", which I enjoyed.
The novels on the annual "Pulitzer Prize for Fiction" list is almost guaranteed to please me. I tried to find Tartt's "The Goldfinch", but wasn't successful locally...read her first novel "The Secret History" instead and found it very good, but strange and a bit unsettling. I've fallen into Anne Tyler's collection and have read most of her earlier books, with about five unread books in my to-read stack...you may have seen her book-to-movie "The Accidental Tourist".
LOL the last cartoon you posted, tweets with extra characters to the "words"...we seem to be going in that direction (or may already be there).
Reminder - The Mercury-Venus-Jupiter conjunction in late Virgo is at its finest tonight and tomorrow night. Just after sunset on the western horizon. Bonus with Mars-Saturn-Antares leaving conjunction in Sagittarius and can be seen after sunset overhead and a bit south, moving westward until about 10 PM or so. Hope your skies are clear tonight.
ReplyDeleteA comment from a piece about Oscar Wilde and De Profundis in The Guardian today:
ReplyDelete“Oscar Wilde was one of the very many people who had their hands read by Cheiro*. Cheiro predicted the events that followed, sadly. He was accurate in his predictions.
'The left hand is the hand of a King, but the right is that of a King who will send himself into exile.
Sadly, this prediction came true. Cheiro did not see Oscar again until shortly before the court case that was to send him into prison. He came to see Cheiro to see if the break in the right hand was still present. It was. But Cheiro said that surely his destiny could not be broken.
Oscar replied, quietly 'My good friend, you know well that fate does not keep road-menders on her highways.'
Cheiro did not see Oscar Wilde for several years after that, until Paris, 1900.
I have often wondered if one can change destiny. I think it depends on the future prediction. Could Mr. Wilde have changed his life so that he avoided the suffering he experienced? It does not seem likely.”
*Cheiro (William John Warner) an Irish astrologer and occultist.
Much discussion in the comments about whether Oscar should have fled to the continent – fate or free will, indeed!
mike ~ Me too neither - couldn't write a novel, I mean. I can dredge up a basic idea fairly easily, but can never put enough fancy dressing on it to sustain a novel. My choice of genre would always be sci-fi - as in your choice (erotic = Scorpio) it chimes with my Sun sign (Aquarius = futuristic imaginings).
ReplyDeleteI've read "The Handmaid's Tale" - I think you might enjoy it, mike, if you ever have the chance to read it. I seem to remember seeing a film (or TV) version, wasn't impressed, but the Hulu one, at 10 episodes must get into much more detail. Maybe Hulu will sell their version to Netflix eventually, when, and if, it goes to DVD.
I've become a very, very picky reader, as I've confessed before. I do, for some reason, get on best with older novels.
Thanks for the reminder re tonight's sky. Big banks of fluffy clouds have been around for the past couple of days, today looks clearer so far. Will try to remember to watch tonight.
Sabina ~ Tricky topic, fate or free will! Parallel universes might exist, containing slightly different life detail - variations on a theme - often similar but differently styled outcome. I'd guess that, had Wilde changed course, it would have led to a variation on the same basic theme; things might have been better, though might even have been worse.
ReplyDeleteSabina - Wilde took umbrage with a note left for him from the father of Wilde's love-interest, "For Oscar Wilde posing Somdomite [sic]".
ReplyDelete"At the height of his fame and success, while his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was still on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry prosecuted for libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The charge carried a penalty of up to two years in prison. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with men. After two more trials he was convicted and imprisoned for two years' hard labour."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde#Trials
Whether Wilde should have fled the continent after the trials really inflects from Wilde's rationale for having pressed charges that started the ball rolling. The first point of meeting Cheiro's predetermination of fate was Wilde's indignant reaction to the note.
"Be the Fiercest" Deshun Wang
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX4saxIfPYw
mike (again) ~ Wow! 80 is the new 55 then! ;-)
ReplyDeletePS - didn't see the starry sky last evening - we had a storm, around 7pm to 8pm leaving cloudiness above.