I read Ben Franklin’s auto-biography last year (see post here), and do recall his “13 virtues.” The Art of Manliness, which I only recently discovered, has been running a series on all of them. Hopefully I can find time to go back and read the others, but this one on tranquility is really spot-on:

Art of Manliness post on Tranquility

The last paragraph matches well with one of my favorite sayings: “You can’t change the people you deal with (or the things that have happened), only your reaction to them.”

I am not sure where I got the desire to read Twain, but maybe it was from the Greg Bottom’s book I recently read. Anyway, I picked up “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” and read a fair amount of that, and I will get back to it, but I really wanted to read Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. So I grabbed them both on a recent trip, and read Tom Sawyer first based on published date.

This book contains “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” “Tom Sawyer Abroad,” and “Tom Sawyer, Detective.” All are entertaining reads, though it does take a little time to get used to the writing with all the misspelled words, “southern grammar,” etc.

Only a few quotes:

He had discovered a great law of human action — without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

…

I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.

This one goes along with “Wild at Heart,” which I am also reading now (look for a post in the next few weeks…) In that book, masculinity, or a man’s heart, is defined as having three main desires, one of which is “a battle to fight,” or put in other words, “Do I have what it takes?”

… he said it ‘most broke his heart to think how time was slipping away, and him getting older and older, and no wars breaking out and no way of making a name for himself that he could see. Now that is the ways boys is always thinking, but he was the first one I ever heard come out and say it.

I got this book for Kelly, but when I started flipping through it, looking at the pictures, and reading about them, I couldn’t put it down! Now, I certainly admit that I don’t know much about lighting, but I would have to say that McNally is a genius at it (and most of you know I don’t use that term often!). Of course, being married to a photographer, I know how they see things differently, and look for and notice things that I never do. But here light was presented to me in a whole new way.

Here is a quote from McNally on light, which is strikingly similar to a quote here about words I posted a few days ago…

I have always thought of light as language. I ascribe to light the same qualities and characteristics one could generally apply to the spoken or written word. Light has color and tone, range, emotion, inflection, and timbre. It can sharpen or soften a picture. It can change the meaning of a photo, or what that photo will mean to someone. Like language, when used effectively, it has the power to move people, viscerally and emotionally, and inform them…

It is not a technical manual on lighting by any means, but instead written in a way non-photographers and photographers alike can both understand and appreciate what he has done on some of these photos.

Definitely worth even if you are not a photographer but ever take pictures!

by Greg Bottoms.

I happened to see this when Kelly and I were at the Fearrington on a “Winter Getaway” as we browsed McInthosh’s book store. When I opened the book, the title “LSD in Raleigh” caught my eye, and as I started reading I saw the event occurred at the same Lalapalooza concert I was at. (No LSD for me!) After reading a little of the story, I thought I’d get the book. I am a short story fan, but it seems like this genre is out of favor these days. Or at least I don’t see it very often.

The first few stores are much less dark than the latter stories, but they are all good reads. Almost all of them have a writer as the main character.

Only a couple quotes:

• I understand that the better one gets at writing, the more one can do with language, form it and reform it like so much clay, pack it with density or strip it down, the harder writing gets……
• All writers, at least all the ones I know, regardless of background, gender, ethnicity, tend to be outsiders to some degree, socially guarded, a little scorched on the inside, entraced by the world yet not quite trusting it completely…

One other note… One of the stories makes me want to read The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake so I’ve added that to my amazon wish-list.