August 2010
58 posts
4 tags
Picking Bones From Ash
Picking Bones From Ash, Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s first novel was a stirring powerful story. I love novels that are deeply immersed in a culture different than mine but still feel familiar, traversable, to me. Picking Bones from Ash, mostly set in Japan, was precisely that. I don’t understand Japanese, and there were some Japanese words. I don’t know much about Japanese art or...
I started “Picking Bones From Ash” this weekend. Without the quotations that sentence looks very horrifying.
I finished Money by Martin Amis. I truly loved it. http://booksijustread.com/post/1026155350/money-by-martin-amis
I just reached 100 followers on my Tumblr blog! Thank you to everyone who reads BOOKSIJUSTREAD! I’m very excited! THANK YOU!
3 tags
3 tags
3 tags
3 tags
3 tags
3 tags
Money, by Martin Amis
I have to say, Money by Martin Amis was a finely tuned piece of literature. This book was the closest I’ve ever been to feeling like I was reading a car. That doesn’t make sense. But it’s true. This book was like a car, it was fast, oily, noisy. I felt like it had an exhaust pipe.
I’ve never read anything by Amis before, but I am a big Christopher Hitchens fan and...
3 tags
“A great novel is the intimation of a metaphysical event you can never know, no...”
– Zadie Smith, Fail Better
You need to read this if you write or read. I would say it’s a must read.
Thanks, Dan for sending me this.
RT @Nucky29: @booksijustread @googlebooks @randomhouse its never too early to start reading…. #babies #ilovebooks http://twitpic.com/ …
I read in the park yesterday. It was so nice, I might do it again today.
Americans need more and better translated literature! http://booksijustread.com/post/1009010023/on-literature-in-translation
This weather is perfect for bunking down with a book. What are you reading right now? Me? Money by Martin Amis.
How Authors Really Make Money: The Rebirth of Seth... →
(via blatternetzitate)
Awesome description of what publishing looks like nowadays!
3 tags
On literature in translation
A startling number of books published in America are translated from other languages. The number is three per cent.
As a lover of foreign writers, and literature in translation, I find this sad and I wonder what this means. Do Americans hate reading literature in translation? Do publishing companies want to avoid the fuss? Do Americans think American English is the supreme literary...
I just can’t handle people hatin’ on DFW. I take it personal. I need to stop paying attention so I don’t get sad!
RT @parisreview: I have no skepticism about language. I know it can bamboozle. But I am a believer. - William Gass http://tpr.ly/aUhI6z
“All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first...”
– Ernest Hemingway (via outcry) (via libraryland)
Interview with Gunter Grass →
This interview is really amazing, no joke.
I’m starting Money by Martin Amis today, because my husband just read it and wants to talk to me about it. : D
1 tag
Brooklyn Book Festival Program! →
2 tags
FRANZEN HYPE ROUNDUP/Book Review Skepticism
NYT REVIEW GUSHES
OBAMA???!
THE GUARDIAN RAVES
A friend said she’d lend me The Corrections, so I am excited to form my own opinions about this “Franzen” fellow. I have started to really distrust book reviews lately, considering the amazing reviews that Super Sad True Love Story received. NPR examines the question: are New York Times Book Reviews Fair? I do think the...
5 tags
Michael Pollan, Food Rules
I quickly read Michael Pollan’s Food Rules this evening. I know how cliche this is, but lately I’ve been really wanting to eat better. Along with this, I’ve set myself some goals for this winter, including learning how to roast the perfect chicken.
But I’m a pescatarian!
So reading Food Rules kind of helped me, because the way Michael Pollan writes about food and...
http://booksijustread.com redesign! What do you think of the new look? I am also going to add a sidebar or links, so send me yours!
3 tags
The Mezzanine, by Nicholson Baker
I just read The Mezzanine, by Nicholson Baker. I was perplexed when I began. I’d been thinking that a book about everyday life, about inner thoughts, and the information that ties up our brains needed to exist. I thought that a book that would be boring, aside from being fascinating, needed to be written. And here I was, reading just such a book.
The Mezzanine was lyrical, profound,...
2 tags
“Why should we need lots of nostalgia to license any pleasure taken in the...”
– Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GUILTY PLEASURE!
1 tag
“That was the problem with reading: you always had to pick up again at the very...”
– Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine
“botanical gradualness” -The Mezzanine
I started Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine this morning. 41 pages in and I’m already entranced.
Does anyone have a copy of The Corrections I could borrow? I always return borrowed books, I promise.
Mr. Rochester: Creepy or Lovely? →
Reading The Tin Drum was like reading Voltaire in Coney Island. On a ferris wheel. http://booksijustread.com/
2 tags
The Tin Drum
This morning I finished Gunter Grass’ The Tin Drum. I think this may have been one of the best books I read all year.
The Tin Drum was mostly set in my birth city, then Danzig, now Gdansk. And I think that fact may have helped me bring this book to life. I felt like I knew what Grass was talking about. His descriptions of the city, from a meandering small person’s point of view,...
3 tags
Tao Lin Profile in The Observer →
A friend just told me she read all of The Hunger Games series in a day. These books just shot up my TO READ list.
Famous Literary Affairs →
1 tag
“My poor mama’s coffin was black. It tapered in a wonderfully harmonious...”
– Gunther Grass, The Tin Drum
All I want to do today is read on the beach. But I guess I’d feel weird reading The Tin Drum on the beach…
RT @LT_VT: The Recursive Loop Line RT @randomhouse: RT @booksijustread: @randomhouse David Foster Wallace should have a station on the T …
RT @52weeks_52books: @booksijustread just read Breakfast at Tiffany’s - totally in love w/ Holly Golightly!!
3 tags
Franzen Profile in TIME →
I actually want to finish this article, as it’s an excerpt. I’ve never read anything by Franzen but I’ve been considering it for sometime now, which book of his should I start with?
1 tag
N + 1 on Treme →
If you haven’t watch Treme yet, you should.