A shockingly modern novel is The Garden of Eden. This is the second of Ernest Hemingway's posthumously published novels (begin in 1946, pub. in 1986)
and I confess that I had stayed away from old Ernest for some time, remembering a particularly boring read in The Old Man and the Sea back in my high school days. This book wouldn't exactly be fit for the high school set , but maybe it would have had me reading the man's books for the almost seven years I secretly avoided his renowned tomes. This book has got a tortured writer terrified of his own success, a crazy sexpot wife who picks up threesome candidates, sexy European settings, the booze is constantly flowing. You can almost smell the sex in the salty Meditereanean breeze or on the pungent breath of your seductive lunch partner whose had a few martinis.
I can only feel as if this book can end in a Gatsby-esque pleasure-driven perversion of love.... I'll keep you posted on what happens in this salacious read...belles don't watch soap operas, they read romantic realism!
Me mindlessly surfing the net can evidently benefit someone. I am now a frequent visitor to
FreeRice.com! Here's how it works: you play the vocabulary game (perhaps a slightly more valid activity than endlessly checking your MySpace account ), you proceed to get smarter/enjoy yourself for a voluntary amount of time, you help the UN's World Food Programme provide food for refugees and the impoverished in developing countries.
Essentially, everyone wins! Visit 
Here are extra few shots from my visit to Allen Ginsberg's old casa. Dashiell Hammett's apartment was #20 on the left-hand side (coming from Pine Street) of the short street, named after its famous literary resident. If you are in the neighborhood, check out the site. Smarties stop and smell the history!
Here is my pick for a choice literary spot within the City! This is the Nob Hill apartment building at 755 Pine Street- where A.G. wrote the epic poem "Howl" . Directly across Pine is Joice Street. You can climb the wall of steps in this picturesque alley and look out beyond the top of Ginsburg's former rooftop. Imagine the specters that arose in the depressed, drug-addled mind of this poet as he stared into the brightly lit upper floors of the Sir Frances Drake Hotel in the distance. The blazing fiery eyes of a sadistic monster met his gaze in the cottony fog--Moloch. The looming ornate tower of the lodge (which turns 80 years young this year) cannot be seen any longer from this vantage point (other hotels built in view), but I still appreciate standing in the footprints of unique thinkers. My hope in sharing these pictures to channel some thought and energy into thinking lyrically about our world, the places we encounter. And since it is National Poetry Month.....I thought I would challenge myself AND you folks out there to put together a short poem (any old format/style) about Ginsberg, Howl, houses, SF, your leftovers, I don't care----whatever ideas and feelings these images evokes.
So here it goes....
Joice Street
A slanted street reels
Its like the tech gin and
Tonic plates knows these panes
Show where I sleep
My house on the hill
Means
The starving & keeling of hearts
For my casual whims
The ease of the breeze
Halfway ascended Joice’s steps
I am at the Mother Mary’s knees
Inhaling fog, Gog and Magog
Find Me
I AWAIT YOUR POETIC OFFERINGS EVERYONE :)
As if this little landmark of inspiration weren't enough of a reason to get off your duff on a nice afternoon in SF, yet another stop off on this "book it" powerwalk could include the apartment of novelist, Dashiell Hammett. He is best known for his gritty detective novels. Among these,The Maltese Falcon has pretty much defined (or set a damn good precedent for) the noir genre for generations of crime writers.Hammett's old haunt can be found just east of A.G.'s Pine Street locale on get this...Dashiell Hammett Street.
More pictures to post, Y'ALL.... BOTB.
(For me at least) It takes a significant amount of time for me to get integrated back into the routine of things at home. I think I love being a nomad. And that makes me less receptive to immediately diving full-speed ahead into a brutal work week. Oh, I "worked it" (like all Southern belles know how to do), but I didn't like it. I still have not fully unpacked my bags from Florida. I am still smelling my beach towel from Cocoa Beach, FL, in attempts to rekindle the beautiful thoughts of searing sun and sand and sea. Sun-tan lotion scent steals the show when I pick up the bloated, water-logged pages of Doris Lessing's The Cleft. 
This was my "beach read" and I am only halfway through it. For those of you who may have been interested in following Paulo Coehlo's The Pilgrimage along with the site, fear not. We will begin our sessions concerning his work again. I have also just begun to take graduate-level classes again for my M.A. in Literature. I am currently taking a Contemporary World Poetry Class and I am really gaining exposure to writing from all over the globe. A poem that I wished to share with you all harkens back to a post dated March 4, 2008 in which I was discussing my reading of Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche's Half of a Yellow Sun. A Nigerian poem "Funeral Sermon, Soweto" by Wole Soyinka really made an impact on me, particularly after reading the horrible accounts of genocide condoned by government sanctions during the country's Biafran War. The tone of the piece is never overbearing, or preachingly political. The victimized implore their audience to simply TAKE NOTE of their plights as fellow human beings asking for the seemingly undeniable right to mourn the loss of their ancestors and a simpler time without violence.
FUNERAL SERMON, SOWETO
Wole Soyinka
We wish to bury our dead. Now a funeral
Is a many-cultured thing. Some races would
Rope a heifer to the slaughter stone, or
Goat/ram/pig or humble cockerel,
Monochrome or striped,spotted, seamless-
The soothsayer rules the aesthetics or,
Rank and circumstance of the dear deceased.
Market rates may ruin devout intentions.
Times austere are known to sanction disrespect,
Spill thinner blood than wished. Still,
Flow it must. Rank tunnels of transition
Must be greased, the bolt of passage loosened
Home-brewed beer or smuggler's brands, prestigious,
Froth and slosh with ostentation, belch
In discreet bubbles like embarrassed mourners
At the wake. The dead record no disavowal.
We wish to mourn our dead.
Is custom overlooked? No. Our heads
Are shaven clean. Cropped close. Neglected. Matted
Thick with ritual unguents, spiked with clay
Or fiber. Ceremonials well rehearsed,
All outward acts of group cohesion, smothering
Loss, performed. Our headgears bear clan colors.
Portraits,mementos, icons, elders' mats
Laid out in proud parade, mute debts
Of honor, surrogates to vanished breath.
Mummers, griots,play out lineage roles.
The feats, the voices, reverential anecdotes...
All to bind us to the "dead but not forgotten."
O dearly beloved, we wish to mourn. But first,
Shall we lance some ancient tumuli? Probe
Some birthly portents, glorified demise?
"When beggars die..." You know the verse...
But if heavens launch comets to proclaim
The death of kings, archaeological probes
Catalogue our earthly supplement-- spent
Rhetoric of skills our earth hoards yield:
Vaults of coins to bribe the other world,
Inlaid bowls, golden lamps, cryptic stellae,
Astral calculus engraved on marble
Mausoleums--the astrologer's final computation?
The jewelled word hilt, "rich beyond all dreams."
A geography of stasis and cerebral feats
Cheek by jowl across the centuries.
Heliolatrous Incas. Slave and palm oil
Aristocracy on blood-soaked Niger creeks--
Their sportive obsequies arced human skulls,
Fresh-tissued, point to point of silver lances--
Innovative variants of the polo game!
Have we treasures to inter, dear brothers
And sisters? Do we play polo in Soweto?
We wish to bury our dead. Others
Boast horsemen sentinels, ranged in Chinese
Catacombs, silent guards on vanished
Dynasties. Or their Nilotic counterparts--
Did time stand still for these? The labor hours--
Gathering, grading, grinding, mixing,
Mapping the hour of star and moon alignment
To stuff the royal orifice with spices.
Draining toes swelled tuberose with pomp
To ease the slide of rings and golden anklets.
Calf amulets of ivory. Seals on each finger
Equals a nation's ransom. Casque or death mask,
Mines to rival Nature's undiscovered hoards.
Queen, princeling, favorite cat, each
Scrolled in own sarcophagus surround the god-king.
Antechambers lined with lesser beings
Extend the ministry beyond the end
To imagined wants of their lone, lordly dead.
O dearly beloved, seeking solace ever,
Distractions of the mind to ease keen pangs
As we move to bury our dead, we pause only
To contemplate these ancient vanities--
Mongol, Pharaoh, proud Asantehene
All, too lean in frame to fill their grandiose
Subterranean schemes, a troubled sleep
Of ranked retainers swells. Nerveless arms
Redress lost battles, amplify the dream
That thrust a mildewed gauntlet at mortality.
Awesome pyramids on burning sands,
Cunning combs of mind in mountain wombs,
Absentee landlords of necropolis, peoples
By vassals, serfs you dared not leave behind--
How phrased your priests their Final Unction?
Even in death. beware insurrection of life,
And life after debt? Of blood?
We wish to bury our dead. Let all take note,
Our dead were none of these eternal hoarders--
Does the buyer of nothing seek after-sales service?
Not as prophetic intuitions, or sly
Subversive chant do we invoke these ancient
Ghosts, but as ritual homily
Time-honored in the offices of loss.
Not seeking martyrdom, the midnight knock,
Desecration of our altar, vestments,
Not courting ninety-day detention laws,
The state seal on the voice of the man--and God...
We wish only to bury our dead. Shorn
Of all but name, our indelible origin,
For indeed our pride once boasted empires,
Kings and nation builders. Seers. Too soon
The brace of conquest circumscribed our being
Yet found us rooted in that unyielding
Will to life bequeathed from birth, we
Sought no transferred deed of earthly holdings.
Slaves do not possess their kind. Nor do
The truly free.
We wished to bury our dead,
We rendered unto Caesar what was Caesar's.
The right to congregate approved;
Hold procession, eulogize, lament
Procured for a standard fee. All death tariff
Settled in advance, receipted, logged,
A day to cross the barriers of our skin,
Death was accorded purchase rights,a brief license
Subject to withdrawal--we signed acceptance
On the dotted line--"orderly conduct" et cetera.
We now proceed to render earth's to earth.
We wish to mourn our dead. No oil tycoons
We, Mandela, no merchant princes, scions
Of titles lineage. No peerage aspirants
Nor tribal chieftains. Only the shirtless
Ghetto rats that briefly left
The cul-de-sac of hunger, stripes,
Contempt. The same that rose on hind legs
That brief hour in Sharpeville, reddening
The sleepy conscience if the world. We,
The sludge of gold and diamond mines,
Half-chewed morsels of canine sentinels
In nervous chain stores, snow-white parks.
Part-crushed tracks of blind Saracens,
The butt of hippo trucks, water cannon mush.
We, the bulldozed, twisted shapes of
Shanty lots that mimic black humanity.
Our dead bore no kinship to the race
Of lordly dead, sought no companion dead
To a world they never craved.
We set out to mourn our dead, bugling
No Last Post, no boom of guns in vain salute.
But others donned a deeper indigo than the bereaved.
Unscheduled undertakers spat their lethal dirge
And fifty-eight were sudden bright-attired,
Flung to earth in fake paroxysms of grief.
And then we knew them, counted, laid them out,
Companion voyagers to the dead we mourned.
And now, we wish to bury our dead....
To answer your question, DinometerDeb, I am enjoying this book (Coehlo's The Pilgrimage) so far and I would recommend it, along with some more work of his:
AND 
