January 2009
45 posts
“eventually that review forced me to realize that i had to be the one who decided...”
– curtis sittenfeld, on prep’s review in the new york times.
John Updike, Author, Dies at 76 →
(via robot-heart)
howls →
In June 1958, Allen Ginsberg wrote to Jack Kerouac about a series of catastrophes that had befallen members of their circle on the West Coast. Neal Cassady was in the San Bruno county jail, awaiting trial for having offered marijuana to a pair of undercover policemen. A woman friend — “little doomed Connie” — had fallen in with “some evil teaheads or something” and been strangled, according to an...
1 tag
junot diaz and jamaica kincaid at the 92nd st y.
instead of begrudging the crowd inside the auditorium at the 92nd street y, everyone seemed grateful for the extra body heat tonight. after a round of applause, junot diaz opened with a thank you to the audience for coming out on a night where “it’s totally brick outside.” always self-effacing, he followed it up with commenting that, “artists are scarcely as recognized as...
1 tag
american wife.
i’m glad my schedule was free this weekend because somehow i’d forgotten the literary power curtis sittenfeld holds over me. i tore through all 558 pages in the last three days and now am a little dazed to return to my own thoughts.
waiting for obama to replace bush in the white house before reading this novel proved to be a smart move. going into it i knew very little about laura...
“when you are the object of a person’s affection, do you naturally credit...”
– curtis sittenfeld, american wife.
“marrying a man who’s dull and nice is fine, or a man who’s cruel but...”
– curtis sittenfeld, american wife.
“part of the reason he was frustrating was that his comments were so close to...”
– curtis sittenfeld, american wife.
“…i believed that the secret of interacting with children—or it...”
– curtis sittenfeld, american wife.
“people recognized you or they didn’t, and it was unrelated to knowing you....”
– curtis sittenfeld, american wife.
american wife.
i just started reading american wife, by curtis sittenfeld. now that the bush family has returned to their rightful place, i feel safe enough to read this book on the off chance that it lessens my hatred by humanizing bush in some way.
i’m curious to see how sittenfeld approaches the characterizations of public figures loosely fictionalized—both of whom are still alive. i was...
thanks to everyone that made it out to the book...
it was great to meet you all face to face. i’m quite pleased with the books i came away with:
the fountainhead, ayn rand. not sure if i will like it but it is worth a read (especially for free!)
disgrace, j.m. coetzee. really excited about this one. i always pick it up in bookstores and never buy it. this might be a list jumper.
devil in the white city, erik larson. zero advance plot...
read goop, or peruse any 10th grade reading list.
mascarah mentioned that this week gwyneth paltrow’s goop newsletter would consist of book recommendations from herself and her closest friends. i subscribed to the newsletter immediately knowing this would be a gem of a comedy at the very least and it did not disappoint. basically everything on this list is pretty standard, with the exception of madonna’s selections. i giggled a little...
Every once in a while...
52books:
I think to myself, “Self, this book is too good and if you read it too fast your brain might explode. Go slow.”
So that’s what I do.
i’m guessing this is related to kafka on the shore. i read it so fast i had to read it again:)
“in this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only...”
– haruki murakami, after dark.
“that’s fine,” korogi says. “there’s no sense in forcing...”
– haruki murakami, after dark.
put it in writing. →
“He spent the remainder of that day searching for his son, Zafar, then he went...”
– how one book ignited a culture war, andrew anthony.
how one book ignited a culture war →
It’s 20 years since Iran’s religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced a death sentence on Salman Rushdie for ‘insulting’ Islam with his novel The Satanic Verses. The repercussions were profound - and are still being felt. Andrew Anthony traces the course of the affair, from book-burnings and firebombings to the dramatic impact it had on freedom of expression in a...
how to write a poem for the president →
Elizabeth Alexander has been commissioned to write a poem for Inauguration Day. But the checkered history of the form suggests it’s an almost impossible task—Jim Fisher
curtis sittenfeld writing 5 part novella about... →
sections are being posted to slate.com between now and the inauguration.
“there’s a hardness that happens, this dulling of everything that leaves...”
– andre dubus III, house of sand and fog.
“i know of life’s difficult times: there is always a time for them to begin...”
– andre dubus III, house of sand and fog.
house of sand and fog.
i’ve been a little MIA the last few days and you can blame andre dubus III for that. if you haven’t read house of sand and fog, stop what you are doing, direct yourself to amazon.com and take care of the situation. a friend lent me the book and for the last four days i have been clinging to its pages, swallowed up in the world dubus has created. i don’t want to divulge any plot...
“…and strangely even that was painful, like the space left by an aching tooth...”
– Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon (via robot-heart)
love this book.
“catch-22 did not exist, he was positive of that, but it made no difference. what...”
– joseph heller, catch-22.
“it was a man’s world, and she and everyone younger had every right to...”
– joseph heller, catch-22.
“they were four clean-cut kids who were having lots of fun, and they were driving...”
– joseph heller, catch-22.
“they were the most depressing group of people yossarian had ever been with. they...”
– joseph heller, catch-22.
NYC based bookworms...
mark your calendars for january 22nd. 52books and i will be co-hosting a recession book swap. more details to come!
new favorite tumblr →
Still Paging Mr. Salinger →
On Thursday, J. D. Salinger turns 90. There probably won’t be a party, or if there is we’ll never know. For more than 50 years Mr. Salinger has lived in seclusion in the small town of Cornish, N.H. For a while it used to be a journalistic sport for newspapers and magazines to send reporters up to Cornish in hopes of a sighting, or at least a quotation from a garrulous local, but Mr. Salinger...
America, ‘Amerika’ →
Most writers take years to become themselves, to transform their preoccupations and inherited mannerisms into a personal style. For Franz Kafka, who was an exception to so many rules of life and literature, it took a single night. On Sunday, Sept. 22, 1912, the day after Yom Kippur, the 29-year-old Kafka sat down at his desk and wrote “The Judgment,” his first masterpiece, in one all-night...
“she acts like she don’t like you.”
“she doesn’t like...”
– joseph heller, catch-22.
“hasn’t it ever occurred to you that in your promiscuous pursuit of women...”
– joseph heller, catch-22.