February 2012
11 posts
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“Lately I’ve noticed a disturbing tendency in myself to accept things the...”
– Roberto Bolano, The Savage Detectives
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The Missionary Position
This book is a polemic against Mother Theresa and makes big, but interesting claims.
I went into this with high expectations that weren’t quite satisfied. (I’m sure Hitch would have had some sort of funny quip about sex in response.) This book was a long essay, and I think it could have been more powerful shorter. As it was, the length made it feel un-credible, not incredible. It...
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Random Family
It is my fervent belief that this book should be required reading in every high school in America. It’s that good, so good that I think if every high schooler read it, this country would be better, filled with more emotionally developed people, maybe filled with people who are more understanding and empathetic.
This book is devastating. It’s not a feel-good book, and actually this...
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“There’s a time for reciting poems and a time for fists.”
– Roberto Bolano, The Savage Detectives
So I started The Savage Detectives yesterday and of course already love it, and I hate to be that lame as to already be quoting it (from the 6th page and I’m only 49 pages in) when I could be using this time to read it, but, come on! This quote might be...
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Motherless Brooklyn - Jonathan Lethem
Just about when the title of the book is explained, I started to love Motherless Brooklyn. That’s when I saw the tenderness and humanity in it, the little gem of something shining through the prose. Somehow, I assume that Lethem loved this book the same way as he was writing it, an expansion as he got to know his characters better, as they lived and did in his own neighborhood; his...
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She Came to Stay - Simone de Beauvoir
I’m trying to think of an un-offensive way to write that She Came to Stay was like Hemmingway at his best but if he was a woman. It was set in Paris, and about the peaceful love between two that turns into self-doubt in one. We usually only get this story from a male perspective, Hemmingway’s, but in She Came to Stay we see the woman’s side. The love between Francoise and...
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“He hadn’t known how stupid pain could make you and thought it should be...”
– Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
January 2012
20 posts
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“Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work.”
– Jennifer Egan
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“What he loved in horses was what he loved in men, the blood and the heat of the...”
– Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
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The Passage, or, Reading for Work
There are those of us who have taken our love of reading to a weird level: we read for a living. It’s not easy to get a job like this, there are lot of people who would give up their dignity to work someplace “glamourous” where they can get paid to “read” books. Some of us are lucky, and have achieved this glorious dream. After working at some crappy internships,...
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“I had to shift in my seat, even, and I was amazed at how a man who didn’t...”
– Dana Spiotta, Stone Arabia
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“And I believe few things are as despicable and dishonest as faking an obsession....”
– Dana Spiotta, Stone Arabia
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Bossypants!
As a total Tina Fey fangirl, I was surprised I hadn’t read Bossypants yet, and when my mother-in-law found out, she bought it and sent it to me right away. She loves Tina Fey too, and we’ve talked about how we both wanted to be her when we grew up. Only neither of us could really explain exactly what this would have sounded like if we had mentioned it back in the day. And now we...
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The Flame Alphabet - NYT review →
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MOONDOGS - Alexander Yates
Moondogs, by Alexander Yates, is fantastical and adventurous, but it also contains some truth about human nature within it’s “mystical realist” pages. Even though you’re reading about a seemingly super-powerful rooster, a magical posse of men, and an earthquake-causing lady, you’ll also be witnessing some human emotion that normally does not coexist with such fantasy...
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WHAT WAS JD SALINGER WORKING ON? →
“Suppose Salinger completed a dozen books while holed up in Cornish and left them for his heirs to sort through upon his death. If they all consist of “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” then Salinger’s reclusion will be viewed as a selfish act, void or even destructive of creativity, and he will retain his reputation as having been an eccentric recluse.”
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THE FLAME ALPHABET - Ben Marcus
We are all going to hear a lot about The Flame Alphabet and its author Ben Marcus in the coming months, which in my opinion is very good. Because this is the kind of book that gets hotly debated in bars. I anticipate controversial reviews. Not unlike those of one of the authors whose blurb graced the back cover of the very beautiful jacket, Thomas McCarthy. McCarthy’s Remainder and C...
hold-en asked: you know the nineteen eighty four you have? The beautiful copy you posted a picture of? What is the front cover like and where did you buy it? :) xoxo
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“How are they to be figured, this man and he? As master and slave? As brothers,...”
– J.M Coetzee, 2003 Nobel Prize Lecture, “He and His Man”
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LOVE AND SHAME AND LOVE
Peter Orner’s Love and Shame and Love is one of the prettiest books you’ll find at the bookstore, and reading it is pure pleasure not only because of the way it feels and looks (it’s the best trim for a book I’ve ever seen!) but because of the prose. The prose feels weightless and effortless and flowing, but it’s meticulous, crafted, and careful.
The first chapter...
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FUTURE BOOK ALERT!!!!
NYT bestselling author of HOUSE OF HOLES and HUMAN SMOKE Nicholson Baker’s next novel and a work of nonfiction, moving to David Rosenthal and Sarah Hochman at Blue Rider Press, for publication in 2013 and 2014 respectively, by Melanie Jackson at Melanie Jackson Agency (NA).
(From Publisher’s Marketplace.)
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Artemisia - Anna Banti
I read Artemisia because of an essay of Susan Sontag’s, which happens to also be this edition’s introduction. It’s a good introduction, indeed, how could it have been better if it made me want to read the book? Even so, I wasn’t prepared for the loveliness that was Anna Banti’s Artemisia.
Banti has written an homage to this historically significant character,...
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I just got back from vacation and read so much while I was away! I have a bunch of reviews to write, but in the meanwhile, I’m so thankful to everyone who reads and interacts with BooksIJustRead. Thank you so much for making my literary life a full and happy one! I’ve expanded my reading horizons thanks to you, and am proud and excited for every note, comment, and email I receive. I...
December 2011
21 posts
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“We’ve tried to build our love beyond each individual moment, yet we can...”
– Simone de Beauvoir, She Came to Stay
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House of Holes
House of Holes was an amazing, raucous, funny, and titillating read. I’m going to dissect why each of these adjectives are perfect descriptors of Baker’s Book of Sex.
Amazing - the writing here is incredible. Baker’s usual fine-tooth adjectives and methods for description were turned on their heads, yet stayed intact. Instead of an intensely introspective word garden, Baker...
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My 11 favorite books of 2011!
Here are the 11 books I read in 2011 and liked best in alphabetical order by author:
THE MASTER AND MARGARITA - Mikhail Bulgakov
STET - James Chapman
THE MARRIAGE PLOT - Jeffrey Eugenides
PORNOGRAFIA - Witold Gombrowicz
TICKNOR - Sheila Heti
NEVER LET ME GO - Kazuo Ishiguro
GRAVITY’S RAINBOW - Thomas Pynchon
HOME - Marilynne Robinson
SWAMPLANDIA! - Karen Russell
SANATORIUM UNDER...
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Here is an audioclip of THIRD REICH by Roberto...
Margaret Atwood Interview with Deborah Treisman →
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Who Will Be the Literary Legends of Our Era? →
David Foster Wallace
Marilynne Robinson
Jonathan Franzen
Cormac McCarthy
To name a few…
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“He had often wondered what difference it would make. But the emptiness in place...”
– Alice Monro - ”Leaving Maverley”
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“I have withdrawn, to be sure, and refuse to fight. But within the safety of my...”
– The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery (I posted this quote a long time ago, but still love it.)
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“Then came a new resident, a musician in his 80s with a touch of forgetfulness...”
– A beautiful, beautiful paragraph from this story in The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/us/an-aging-jazz-pianist-finds-a-new-audience.html?emc=eta1
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“My fiction is simply something that goes on between my mind and the page.”
– The Situation in American Writing: Marilynne Robinson
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ToBS R1: hating on Jonathan Franzen vs. hating on... →
LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS.
I should write a follow-up: people nagging you to read FREEDOM vs people insisting INCREDIBLY LOUD is fine fiction.
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State of Wonder - Ann Patchett
State of Wonder is a lush and living novel about Marina, a scientist, who travels to Brazil. She’s chasing two phantoms- the story about the death of her colleague, Anders, and the woman he was chasing, a scientist whose lab, in the depths of the rainforest, is developing a drug for the company Marina works for. She’s caustic, selfish, and disdains interption. In a way, Marina is...
“Some time has passed since I last raised my voice to the multitude, and whereas...”
– Harper’s Magazine, On Simple Human Decency, Ben Metcalf
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“Friendships, like friends, all die. All those gone nights of witty...”
– Peter Orner, Love and Shame and Love
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“Even when I talk about the book it’s always like “if you had an aerial picture...”
– Karen Russell, at this awesome AWL interview!