hemingWay of the Day: on robots

Posted on April 15, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Lots of people call this weapon the doodlebug, the robot bomb, the buzz bomb and other names hatched in the brains of the keener Fleet Street types, but so far nobody I have ever known who has fought him has referred to Joe Louis as Toots. So we will continue to refer to this weapon as the pilotless aircraft in this release from your pilotless-aircraft editor, and you can call it any of those quaint or coy names you wish, but only when you are alone.

from London Fights the Robots, printed in Collier’s on August 19, 1944

(please catch the irony in the title of his article! did he get to name it himself?)

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Midweek Miscellany & hemingWay of the Day: on Spanish whisky

Posted on March 2, 2011 by pagesofjulia

I have a sprinkling of things to share with you today.

One. I have updated my blogroll (look right–> and down some) to include all the blogs that I (try to) visit every day. And you will see ABOVE the blogroll, a short list of My Very Favorites. Check ’em out.

Two. I have a very favorite blog post of the day to share with you, too: it’s a review of a book called To Bed With Grand Music by Marghanita Laski and you can find this delightful post here. I am super intrigued by the idea of this book, and it’s completely due to the discussion of it by the Book Snob, so thank you Book Snob! This one goes on the list. Check that out, too.

Three. I am still reading By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, and still loving every minute of it. I may have to put it down at some point to pick up An Incomplete Revenge, the next Maisie book. But fortunately, as a collection of short pieces, By-Line is a pretty good book to put down and pick back up. I should also confess to now being in the middle of no fewer than five books. Hm. (The others are Whatever You Say I Am by Anthony Bozza; The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien; Dust by Martha Grimes; and The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Eclectic, a bit.)

Four. Now for my daily quotation out of By-Line.

Beer is scarce and whisky is almost unobtainable. Store windows are full of Spanish imitations of all cordials, whiskies and vermouths. These are not recommended for internal use, although I am employing something called Milords Ecosses Whisky on my face after shaving. It smarts a little, but I feel very hygenic. I believe it would be possible to cure athlete’s foot with it, but one must by very careful not to spill it on one’s clothes because it eats wool.

(from Hemingway’s dispatch on Sept. 30, 1937 from Madrid, in covering the Spanish Civil War. incidentally the subject of perhaps my most favorite novel ever, For Whom the Bell Tolls, for which Hem pretty obviously collected his material during the very time when this dispatch was written.)

Does this make you laugh? It does me. I’m having a good day of laughing while I read; I usually laugh at the posts of Useless Beauty, books i done read, TERRIBLEMINDS, and Hyperbole and a Half, too. It’s a good day when you laugh out loud while reading.

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Teaser Tuesdays: By-line: Ernest Hemingway. and, hemingWay of the Day: on tucking in shirts

Posted on February 22, 2011 by pagesofjulia


Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!


I am so very much enjoying this different selection of Hemingway’s writing. He’s one of my very very all-time favorites, and I’ve read all his fiction, and while I love to reread it, it’s always nice to find something new in his familiar style. Here’s a tidbit for you from page 44:

Bismarck said all men in the Balkans who tuck their shirts into their trousers are crooks. The shirts of the peasants, of course, hang outside. At any rate, when I found Hamid Bey – next to Kemal, perhaps the most powerful man in the Angora government – in his Stamboul office where he directs the Kemalist government in Europe, while drawing a large salary as administrator of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, a French capitalized concern – his shirt was tucked in, for he was dressed in a grey business suit.

I liked Hem’s method here of implying his feelings about Bey using the words of a third party.

I was also pleasantly surprised just this morning to read in my daily Shelf Awareness email about a new book, released TODAY, by Paula McLain. It’s called The Paris Wife, and it is a historical novel about Hadley, Hemingway’s first wife, and the Mrs. Hemingway of his dispatches at least early in By-Line: Ernest Hemingway where I am reading now. I have ordered this for my library and am in danger of being the very first to check it out. I love anything Hemingway and share McLain’s concern that Hadley is not exhaustively covered in studies of Hemingway’s life. I look forward to reading about her even if it’s fiction. Thanks you Ms. McLain.

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