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Books R Us
Our house
is full of books, from floor-to-cathedral ceiling, stuffed into nooks
and crannies, piled up on bedstands. John has a horror story about his
family losing four generations' worth of books to a house flood in
1977, and ever since he's been pathologically obsessive about
possessing books. Jeannie merely LOVES books.
John has
been fortunate to have some great writers as teachers, most of whom
are also our friends. Here are the websites of five of the finest!
Here's the
website of the Florida International University program, from which
John received his Creative Writing MFA in 2001: FIU
Creative Writing Program
"Some
books leave us free and some books make us free."
-Ralph
Waldo Emerson
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Movies Too
From the
16th through early 19th centuries the common cultural referent
among educated people was the Greek and Latin classics, and only the
upper classes had the leisure to learn them. With the Industrial
Revolution books and newspapers became widely available, and the novel grew
as an art form. Great books making up what academes call the Literary
Canon became the common referent. Sometime in the late 1960’s American
television began a brief heyday as the one thing we all had in common.
By the 80’s Hollywood became our common denominator, and extended its
reach worldwide. The cultural element more of us have in common than
anything else is the movies we’ve seen. (The Internet threatens to
fragment that commonality.)
Anyway, these are the movies John and Jeannie love. There are some
threads which run through the list, but some are completely off-base.
What did Mark Twain say about consistency and small minds? If you wanna know more about these pics
go to
The Internet Movie Database far and away the most comprehensive
site for info on movies. Are these movies any good? Go to the great
movie review site: ROTTEN
TOMATOES: If you want to know more about these or other movies,
check out Movie Review Query
Engine And to find the award winners
Oscar.com:
If you love
movies enough to want to WRITE them, check out these websites:
Project
Greenlight ,
scriptapalooza.com , MovieBytes
& Scriptware |
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10 Books John &
Jeannie Love and Recommend to EVERYONE:
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1. Swan Song, Robert McCammon (also
Stinger) |
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2.
Killing Mr. Watson, Peter Matthiessen (also At Play
in the Fields of the Lord) |
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3. Possession, A. S. Byatt |
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4. The Great & Secret Show, Clive Barker |
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5. Lost Boys, Orson Scott Card |
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6. Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver |
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7. All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy |
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8. The Stand, Stephen King |
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9. Under The Volcano, Malcolm Lowry |
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10. Love Warps the Mind a Little, John Dufresne |
Our Favorite
Books Websites:
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ABOUT MUSIC
We don't agree much on music. Jeannie's taste is much more
eclectic than John's. But we both listen to Web Radio and visit
music sites. Our friend Tom DeMarchi is a TRUE aficionado. To Tom,
music is a religion and Elvis Costello rules the pantheon. Here
are a few of our music sites, and a bunch of Tom's. Some are
artist sites, others interest or review sites. A few are Tom's
sugestions for best places to BUY music.
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John & Jeannie's Favorite Movies:
(Some John, Some Jeannie, Most Both, in no particular order.)
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The Abyss (Director's Cut)
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The Best Years of Our Lives
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Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
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Something Wicked This Way Comes
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One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
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- Blade Runner
(Director's Cut)
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A Streetcare Named Desire
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John Frankenheimer's
movies:(ie Manchuran Candidate, Andersonville, Ronin) -- he's
related to John through their mothers.
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