Books have many uses

Wall to wall bookcases in my house provide entertaining insulation.

On a low table they act as a pedestal for a lamp.

Scattered messily across the sofa they prevent the big dirty dog from jumping up.

.....And you can always read them.....

Harper Lee

On this day in 1926 Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama.

Reckoning at the Houellebecq Corral

Revenge of hippy mum on enfant terrible

Basically my mother has never understood anything about what I am; she never understood my father either.

Events in Literary History

On this day in 1882 Ralph Waldo Emerson died at the age of seventy-eight. Although Emerson's last decade was one of increasing debility it was also one of international accolade and local adulation.

50 best cult books

What is a cult book? We tried and failed to arrive at a definition: books often found in the pockets of murderers; books that you take very seriously when you are 17; books whose readers can be identified to all with the formula ' whacko'; books our children just won’t get…

I've read 25 of them (had to or I wouldn't have been cool back in the day) and still have a few on my bookshelf that remain unread; I never heard of eight of them.

L'Affaire

I like to read a Diane Johnson novel when I travel to France and I was pleased to see this one at the Book Depot before my recent trip. These books are a little fluffy but are perfect for reading on an airplane or when holed up in a holiday rental. My husband was disappointed that I'd brought this novel along as it was way too girly for him to pick up when he'd finished his novels too quickly. Tough luck, I say.
Amy Hawkins is an American dot-com millionaire who travels to France to learn how to be a grownup. She wants to know how to cook, how to ski, how to decorate, how to look after old tablecloths. The story starts in the French Alps where the well-meaning Amy meddles in a situation involving avalanche victims. She funds the medical transfer of Adrian Venn from France to a London hospital, setting into motion legal events that have serious ramifications for Mr. Venn's heirs. There are affairs galore, cultural misunderstandings and an eventual rapprochement. The story begins in the Alps but eventually moves on to Paris. We see that all of French social life unfolds in a virtual small village wherein a small elite group interacts. Americans are treated with some derision or disdain and Amy feels slighted. After all, she's only trying to put into practice the ideals of Prince Kropotkin, the anarchist who promoted social cooperation.
Amy is also seeking true love. After several false starts she finds what she was looking for although,inmy view, she seems to lack the necessary passion to sustain an affair. Nonetheless there are enough twists and turns to keep things interesting

What beer goes with Mother Goose?

Book-Beer Pairings
Via Coudal

100 Best First Lines from Novels

Entry #95 is the longest opening sentence and is written by an author I haven't read:

Once upon a time two or three weeks ago, a rather stubborn and determined middle-aged man decided to record for posterity, exactly as it happened, word by word and step by step, the story of another man for indeed what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal, a somewhat paranoiac fellow unmarried, unattached, and quite irresponsible, who had decided to lock himself in a room a furnished room with a private bath, cooking facilities, a bed, a table, and at least one chair, in New York City, for a year 365 days to be precise, to write the story of another person—a shy young man about of 19 years old—who, after the war the Second World War, had come to America the land of opportunities from France under the sponsorship of his uncle—a journalist, fluent in five languages—who himself had come to America from Europe Poland it seems, though this was not clearly established sometime during the war after a series of rather gruesome adventures, and who, at the end of the war, wrote to the father his cousin by marriage of the young man whom he considered as a nephew, curious to know if he the father and his family had survived the German occupation, and indeed was deeply saddened to learn, in a letter from the young man—a long and touching letter written in English, not by the young man, however, who did not know a damn word of English, but by a good friend of his who had studied English in school—that his parents both his father and mother and his two sisters one older and the other younger than he had been deported they were Jewish to a German concentration camp Auschwitz probably and never returned, no doubt having been exterminated deliberately X * X * X * X, and that, therefore, the young man who was now an orphan, a displaced person, who, during the war, had managed to escape deportation by working very hard on a farm in Southern France, would be happy and grateful to be given the opportunity to come to America that great country he had heard so much about and yet knew so little about to start a new life, possibly go to school, learn a trade, and become a good, loyal citizen. —Raymond Federman, Double or Nothing (1971)

Read all of them at American Book Review
Via

The Booksellerof Kabul

Norwegian journalist, Åsne Seierstad, wrote this non-fiction work that reads like a novel after living with a bookseller and his family in Kabul for three months in 2002. It is a stinging indictment of the role of women in Afghan society. The bookseller, Sultan Khan (not his real name), is considered a liberal Afghani. The women in his household are not made to wear the burqa; he did jail time for selling books that were banned by the Taliban. Yet he discarded his loyal wife of 16 years to take a 16 year old bride. Leila, his unmarried sister is a virtual slave to the family. His sons are denied an education and instead are forced to work in his stores. He has a poor carpenter with numerous dependents jailed for stealing some postcards from his shop. It is this dichotomy that Seierstad explores. She portrays the bookseller as a tyrant and everyone in his family, male and female, as unhappy. He and his family hold a different view of the situation and the real life Sultan Khan, Shah Rais, is suing the author for misrepresenting his household and doing damage to his reputation. It's a fascinating read. Having read the Rais family's rebuttal I'm still trying to decide whether Khan is the monster portrayed in the novel or if Seierstad simply failed to grasp the complexities of Afghan society.

Shakespeare and Company, the movie.

Great flick courtesy of Grow a Brain

A Parisian's Paris

Phillippe Meyer tells us that gentrification, immigration and tourism have ruined Paris. I suspect it's just a ploy to dissuade tourists from visiting the City of Light. He does "ride alongs" with firemen, postal workers, teachers and a non-occupational group, gays, to bring us this portrait of Paris as it is experienced by the people who live in it. Despite describing Paris as a cultural crime scene, his love of the city is evident. I found myself mourning the loss of neighbourhoods I'd never seen. I live in a tourist town that has experienced many of the same tragic consequences that Meyer describes. Though I feel a twinge of guilt at being part of the problem tourism has created there his ploy won't work on me; I love that city despite its flaws and plan to continue visiting it until the price of oil puts transatlantic air travel out of financial reach. So there, Mr. Meyer!

Library Hotel, dedicated to categories of the Dewey Decimal System

My kind of place!

The Library is a showcase of classic contemporary design and functionality. Each of the ten guestroom floors is dedicated to one of the ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal System.

Library Hotel, New York City