After Life - Joan Didion

"Life changes fast.
Life changes in the instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
The question of self-pity."

Joan Didion has been one of my favourite authors ever since I first read Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I may have mentioned that, as a teenager, I used to imagine that she and John Gegory Dunne were my parents.

What Should I Read Next?

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of real readers' recommendations will suggest something."

ALA | Banned Books Week

"Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, the annual event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted.
Banned Books Week (BBW) celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one's opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met."

Paris Disparu

I'll have to get my hands on this before I go to Paris in the spring. I adored all the Atget photos of Paris as it was, although the changes there are less glaring than in other world cities. This book of walking tours sounds like it's right up my allée:
"A Walking Guide
to the Transformation of Paris "
by Leonard Pitt
Published in Paris - 2002

Walk through the heart of Paris with hundreds of photos, maps, and engravings in hand to discover a Paris that no longer exists.

A Bite-Sized Gem

Read this perfect little story and follow the link to find more:
When I was young, I was in the care of two women. Their names were Jane and Grace. Jane was very urbane, very breezy, very lipsticked. She never lifted a duster in her life. Grace was soft; she was proper and colourless. She told me Jane was a saint. Jane drank dry martinis straight up with a twist. Grace had a single sweet sherry before lunch on Sundays. Grace told me to sit on my potty and give it a good try. So I'd sit and sit and sit and imagine what was living in my body, in the little cave of my body, warm and comfortable and dry, and what wanted to come out. After a while I'd drift back into the nursery and Grace would say "Did you try?" and I would say that if she looked in my potty, she would see some try. Jane was hazy about bodily functions but she was pretty sharp about language. She didn't like rudeness. She hit me across the face in a public elevator. Men were watching, or maybe it was only one man. The first thing I stole was a Barbie head. It fit perfectly inside of my closed fist. Jane asked me how I managed to get another head for my Barbie and I said that my best friend's mother had driven by in her blue convertible and had pulled over to the side of the road and said "I knew you would want this: here it is." My best friend's mother looked like Grace Kelly and she used to sing in an off-key sort of way and most people would ignore it but I liked it, it made me happy. Jane said I had to take that Barbie head right back to where I stole it. God would be watching, she said. And how did I think I could get away with something like that, anyway? Who did I think I was? That summer I almost drowned. I was swimming with two girls. One had very broad shoulders and hunched her body over. She was hiding her chests, Grace said. The big girl had a younger sister who jumped around a lot. They were like a gorilla and a gorilla's tiny friend. The three of us tried pulling up the ropes that held the swimming raft in place. There were rocks weighing down the ropes and when I swam beneath the raft I could see the light of day above me and the deep green water, the sweet dark lake filled with flecks that sparked and bobbled like an invitation. When I dropped the rock the cord wrapped and twisted round my legs; it pulled me down. I looked up towards the bright surface of the water, the innocent legs of girls kicking around on a warm afternoon, and I was enthralled. One can only imagine what might happen next. One can only try.

Carolyn Smart rocks. She has published numerous books of poetry and a memoir, At the End of the Day. She's funny, too.

Hunger's Brides

”Hunger's Brides'' is the debut novel of Paul Anderson, a Canadian who spent 12 years writing it. Good website and I'll definitely be on the lookout for the book.
"An epic novel of genius and obsession , apocalyptic, lyrical, erotically charged. Spanning three centuries and two cultures, Hunger's Brides brings to vivid life the greatest Spanish poet of her time, Sor Juana In's de la Cruz, and plumbs a mystery that has intrigued writers as diverse as Robert Graves, Diane Ackerman, Eduardo Galeano and Nobel laureate Octavio Paz. Why did a writer of such gifts silence herself?"

Man Booker shortlist announced

"Zadie Smith's On Beauty, a tribute to Howards End set on a college campus, and Julian Barnes' Arthur & George, a historical novel about Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle, were among the finalists announced Thursday for Britain's Man Booker Prize. Others on the shortlist for the $91,800 award were John Banville's The Sea, Sebastian Barry's A Long Long Way, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and Ali Smith's The Accidental. Former Booker winners J.M. Coetzee, Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan were among those who didn't make the final list. The winner of the prize, open to writers from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth of former British colonies, will be announced at a ceremony in London on Oct. 10. Chair of the judges John Sutherland said the quality of the 17 books in this year's long list had been particularly strong and judges faced a difficult decision in culling 11 entries for the shortlist. The strength of the year's competition can be measured by the fact that three good books by previous Man Booker winners were finally not selected, he said Thursday.

I Could Use This

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I have thousands of books so it wouldn't be free for me.

Not-So-Good Names for Murder Mysteries.

"Not-So-Good Names
for Murder Mysteries.
BY KEVIN THORESON
- - - -
It Was Me
The Butler Really Did It. No Joke
Big Tobacco
It Was Suicide, Actually
Think Every Agatha Christie Novel, Only With Squirrels
Larry
"