Friday, July 31, 2009
Library fan nears 25,000th book
"An avid reader in south west Scotland is on the brink of borrowing her 25,000th book from her local libraries."
Thursday, July 30, 2009
The Journey Home
This novel by Icelandic writer and businessman, Olaf Olafsson, tells the story of Disa Jonsdottir, an Icelandic native currently working as a cook in a small country inn in England. Disa lives a bland life with a gay companion and patron, Anthony. The intense emotion of her youth was dampened, if not eradicated , when the love of her life was taken from her by the horrific events of WW2. She finds some solace in the sensual world of food.She has resisted returning to her homeland but a medical diagnosis convinces her that it is now or never. The journey elicits memories, some of them uncomfortable, that alternate with the present. We are exposed gradually to the tragic history that has made her what she is. We are also given an insight into familial mental illness and the effects of abandonment on character. It's a lyrical novel with rich imagery. I recommend it.
I also recommend Olafsson's novel Absolution.
A New Taste of Hemingway’s Moveable Feast
The re-edited version of Ernest Hemingway’s Paris-based memoir sheds new light on his heartbreaking breakup of his first marriage. More
Excuses, Excuses
An Excerpt from Teacher Man
How could I have ignored this treasure trove, these gems of fiction and fantasy? Here was American high school writing at its best—raw, real, urgent, lucid, brief, and lying. I read:
• The stove caught fire and the wallpaper went up and the fire department kept us out of the house all night.
• Arnold was getting off the train and the door closed on his school bag and the train took it away. He yelled to the conductor who said very vulgar things as the train drove away.
• His sister’s dog ate his homework and I hope it chokes him.
• We were evicted from our apartment and the mean sheriff said if my son kept yelling for his notebook he’d have us all arrested.
Via
Monday, July 27, 2009
Sunday, July 26, 2009
A Blog About Forgotten Bookmarks
I work at a used and rare bookstore, and I buy books from people everyday. These are the personal, funny, heartbreaking and weird things I find in those books.
Via
Saturday, July 25, 2009
André Kertész: On Reading
In Chimneys, we find ourselves on a New York rooftop, two pairs of cranked chimneys framing our view, in the foreground. A fully draped washing-line runs horizontal across the background; and only eventually do we spot a lady in the mid-distance, huddled on a sun-chair with her newspaper. Presumably she's grabbing a few moments' rest after hanging up the washing, and Kertész's layout neatly hides her away from initial view, just as she hides herself away in the world of her reading.
Exit wounds
Poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy commissions war poetry for today
Today, as most of us do, poets largely experience war - wherever it rages - through emails or texts from friends or colleagues in war zones, through radio or newsprint or television, through blogs or tweets or interviews. With the official inquiry into Iraq imminent and the war in Afghanistan returning dead teenagers to the streets of Wootton Bassett, I invited a range of my fellow poets to bear witness, each in their own way, to these matters of war.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
61 essential postmodern reads
Essential postmodern books
I have read these:
I have read these:
- Margaret Atwood's "The Blind Assassin"
- John Barth's "Giles Goat-Boy"
- William S. Burroughs' "Naked Lunch"
- Dave Eggers' "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius"
- Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter"
- Vladimir Nabokov's "Pale Fire"
- Flann O'Brien's "At Swim-Two-Birds"
- William Shakespeare's "Hamlet"
- Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five"
- ....and some of David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest"
Monday, July 20, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Frank McCourt, author of Angela's Ashes, Dies
"For most of his life, until he was well into his 60s, Frank McCourt wasn't a writer, he was a teacher. But it is as a writer, the author of the wildly successful memoir Angela's Ashes, that he will be remembered. He died on Sunday in New York of meningitis. He was 78 years old."
The Inheritance of Loss
When Sai's parents are killed in an accident in Russia she is sent to live with her grandfather, a retired judge, in a moldering mansion in the beautiful foothills of the Himalayas. Kiran Desai's Booker winning novel (2006) chronicles Sai's passage into adulthood and her first infatuation and the struggle of Biju, son of the judge's cook, who is trying to make his way in the underbelly of New York in the 1980s. Their stories are set against the political backdrop of the Nepalese uprising. The characters of Sai, her Nepalese boyfriend, Gyan, The Cook, The Judge, Biju and even Mutt, the dog, are finely crafted. We gain considerable insight into the idyllic postcolonial lifestyle lived by the foreign-educated anglophile elite. They share a nostalgia for the good old days and the British Empire that seems tragically misplaced. The judge has allowed the discrimination he encountered while in school in England to fade from his memory and he embraces the foreign culture because he despises his own. In fact he despises almost everything but his granddaughter and his dog. Desai moves seamlessly from jolly old Cambridge society to modern-day Kalimpong and New York City. Immigration is placed under the microscope :"It was horrible what happened to Indians abroad and nobody knew but other Indians abroad. It was a dirty little rodent secret."
The novel culminates in a clash between various realities: that of the pampered upper class, the poverty stricken Nepalese and the immigrants. All are forced to re-evaluate their position in the modern world. A great read.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Monday, July 13, 2009
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Eighty Years of Book Cover Design by Faber and Faber
"Currently celebrating its 80th anniversary, Faber & Faber has always been associated with strong cover designs, surveyed in a new book by Joseph Connelly. Have a look at some of the artwork that has adorned its titles down the decades"
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Playboy to provide first look at final Nabokov novel
Magazine acquires first serial rights to The Original of Laura, the unfinished novel Nabokov wanted to be destroyed.
Saturday, July 04, 2009
Small Town Stories
Edward Hogan's top 10 out-of-town tales
A few of my favourites are included here. The Ice Storm made me fall in love with Rick Moody. Annie Proulx's reference to "twisted faced losers" in Close Range is now part of my lexicon. Alice Munro, William Trevor and Patrick McCabe, oh my.
You don't need to write about big cities to say big stuff,' says novelist Edward Hogan. William Trevor, Alice Munro and Annie Proulx are among his small-town stars.
A few of my favourites are included here. The Ice Storm made me fall in love with Rick Moody. Annie Proulx's reference to "twisted faced losers" in Close Range is now part of my lexicon. Alice Munro, William Trevor and Patrick McCabe, oh my.
Friday, July 03, 2009
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Summer Books - National Geographic Traveler
Renting a villa in Umbria this summer? Perhaps you’re hiking in Nepal or just lazing on a Bermuda beach. Or you may be taking the kids on their first U.S. road trip. Whatever your plans, we have a book for you, selected from our online Ultimate Travel Library of classic and new reads with a great sense of place. Each of these books will illuminate your destination, give you unexpected tips on what to see and do, and keep you turning pages during that long flight or that sunny poolside afternoon.
I've read at least half of these. My faves are 2,24,25,31,32, 34, 39.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Ghosts in the Library!
Last year (just in time for Halloween), George Eberhart of the American Library Association posted on this blog a list of libraries that are said to be haunted. Now the library ghosts are back, by popular demand.
Read more here
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