October 2008
60 posts
netflix for books →
my brain is exploding right now. this is amazing.
finally found the perfect halloween costume →
national novel writing month →
anyone out there taking part in this? i just signed up and am a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of writing 50,000 words in 30 days. if you are going to be participating in nanowrimo, add me as a writing buddy for moral support: paperbackgirl.
updike and the women →
i don’t think i’ve ever read a book review before that evaded the actual book being reviewed for 3/4 of the piece. emily nussbaum certainly dampened any desire to check out john updike’s latest (her clear, CLEAR) intention, but it did spur me to add the witches of eastwick to my “to read” list.
the time traveler's wife: the movie →
starring rachel mcadams and eric bana
the time traveler's wife
a pretty satisfying read all in all. i was hooked on the story line after it became clear that this book about a time traveler rose above the typical pitfalls of time traveling stories—no predictable sequences involving conflicts from bringing old items into the future or vice versa.
while the story was captivating, the writing itself was a bit tedious at times. too many adjectives, too...
if you missed junot diaz's last reading... →
“every minute of his life since then has been marked by her absence, every action...”
– audrey niffenegger, the time traveler’s wife
the savage detectives.
the barrage of quotes i’ve been pulling from the savage detectives is probably an indicator of what i’ve been reading lately. i loved the book, but i have to say that it took some commitment (638 pages!) of non-linear plot lines and constantly shifting narrators. if you’ve ever visited mexico city the novel will drop you right into the noise, grit, and sidewalk vendors. i...
“i remember her laugh, boys, i said, night was falling over mexico city and...”
– roberto bolano, the savage detectives.
“the visual arts are ultimately incomprehensible. or they’re so...”
– roberto bolano, the savage detectives.
for a while, Criticism travels side by side with the Work, then Criticism vanishes and it’s the Readers who keep pace. the journey may be long or short. then the Readers die one by one and the Work continues on alone, although a new Criticism and new Readers gradually fall in step with it along its path. then Criticism dies again and the Readers die again and the Work passes over a trail of...
“all i know is that he left and for a long time i didn’t see him. it...”
– roberto bolano, the savage detectives.
unsafe at any read →
Kenneth Burke considered great imaginative writing “equipment for living,” and for Saul Bellow poetic and philosophical words were a “poor boy’s arsenal.” Kafka declared that literature “breaks up the frozen sea inside us.” (What a mess that would make.) We now know, thanks to Allan Bloom, that reading the “classics” is the only defense against the closing of the American mind and that — courtesy...
the devious bachelor →
Roald Dahl is famous for his mischievous children’s stories. But as Jennet Conant reports in “The Irregulars,” he was also a British spy. Conant, who has written popular accounts of the secret development of radar and the atomic bomb, shows that Dahl, a former R.A.F. hero, parachuted himself into Washington blue-blood circles in 1942 and used his embassy post to begin spying on Britain’s closest...
“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an...”
– Jane Eyre (via stewardesses)
“amor tussique non caelatur: neither love nor a cough can be concealed.”
– roberto bolano, the savage detectives
the savage detectives
pbgirl: i am so ready to be done with this bolano book
pbgirl: it's good
pbgirl: but it's 600 pages of testosterone
pbgirl: being inside a man's head that long is exhausting
bellarae: oh my
bellarae: noooo thank you
bellarae: at this point in my life
bellarae: the last thing i want/need is more testosterone
“You get a little moody sometimes but I think that’s because you like to read....”
– Pat Conroy (via everybodycares) (via lola912)(via justlearning)(via srsly)(via vesi)(via shesapsycho)(via nashamble)
Literature Map →
unicornology:
it’s like a world map of literature, amazing. if you ever need recommendations or authors in similiar vein of the ones you already dig, click this.
thanks for posting this—awesome resource!
author milan kundera accused of being an informant →
Kundera, 79, has lived in France since 1975 and it is there that he published his most famous books, including “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting,” “The Art of the Novel” and “Immortality.” He was granted French citizenship in 1981.
The author lives in virtual seclusion, only travels to his former homeland...
“furthermore: desperate readers are like the california gold mines. sooner or...”
– roberto bolano, the savage detectives
“then arturo’s mother started to talk about Chile and Mexico and marse...”
– roberto bolano, the savage detectives. i love the play on usted vs. tu.
“i thought: the vanity of writing, the vanity of destruction. i thought: because...”
– roberto bolano, the savage detectives
french writer wins nobel prize →
Mr. Le Clézio has written more than 40 books, 12 of which have been translated into English, an exotic canon of novels, essays and children’s books depicted by the academy as distilled from experience in Mexico, Central America and North Africa and suffused with a quest for lost culture and new spiritual realities.
“the american wanted to know why borges abhorred tape recorders. because...”
– roberto bolano, the savage detectives
“which goes to show how relative memory is, like a language we think we know but...”
– roberto bolano, the savage detectives
internet mad scientist has best personal library... →
The personal library of Walker Digital founder Jay Walker includes an actual Sputnik I satellite, ruby-bound books, and “a framed napkin from 1943 on which Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined his plan to win World War II.
fresh meat
last week i found myself in an unusual situation—my stack of books to read had dwindled down to one. it was a disaster. fresh reinforcements came from amazon.com this morning:
housekeeping by marilynne robinson. i’ve also read gilead and she just released a sequel to housekeeping called home.
kafka on the shore by murakami. LOVED sputnik sweeheart. i love that i can drop in casual...
“This paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never replace a hardcover...”
– alfred hitchcok
woolf's servants get their due →
Letters of Ted Hughes →
Undoubtedly it is his letters to and about Sylvia Plath that will hold the widest interest; they also contain some of his most directly expressive writing. Before getting to them, though, there are some splendid perceptions among the mass of explicating, along with biographical material that is useful, though not especially revealing.—richard eder
