July 2011
25 posts
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Paris Review Interview with Martin Amis →
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The War for Catch-22 - Vanity Fair →
“The agents were not impressed” with Catch-18, Heller recalled in a 1994 preface to a new edition of Catch-22. In fact, they found the story incomprehensible.” Read More http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/08/heller-201108?printable=true#ixzz1SrGidexR
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AND THEN THERE WERE NONE
AND THEN THERE WERE F*%$ING NONE!
Re-reading this treasure trove of a mystery novel was such a good decision. Agatha Christie, AKA Queen of Mystery, is one of my all-time favorites, especially if you measure by the amount of books of hers I have read. I love Poirot, Tommy and Tuppence, I think Marple’s OK. But this book, coming from this strange, omniscient, rollicking point of view, is...
Privatizing Libraries - An opinion →
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The Anthologist - Nicholson Baker
The idea behind The Anthologist is that the main character is collecting an anthology. He’s struggling with it. And his girlfriend Roz has recently left him.
Nicholson Baker is fascinating because this plot would only be good if he wrote it. Baker’s extreme interiority enables the sparsest plot to hum; boring subjects (in this case poetry) are enlivened. Paul Chowder makes fun of...
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walkwhilereading asked: Love the blog. No really, really, really (just used really three times, not lost on you I assume) like it.
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Obligatory Harry Potter Post
Of course I re-read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows the other night, staying up until 5:30 am to do so. My husband kept waking up thinking it was way earlier than it was. I just smiled and kept going.
I’m really excited for the movie, which I won’t get to see for a few weeks. But what I am mostly excited for, is to start over someday soon at Book One, and re-read the whole...
The Uncollected Essays →
tetw:
By David Foster Wallace
The ultimate David Foster Wallace resource. A complete list of his uncollected fiction and essays (links to everything that’s online).
The site also hosts a full list of published essays from his books (also has links where available).
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Elizabeth Costello
Some strange lady in a bookstore told me she loved Elizabeth Costello, and this was out of the blue while I happened to be reading it. She said “Elizabeth Costello, now there’s a beautiful book.” And I agreed.
I’d been slightly dissapointed in Diary of a Very Bad Year. But this book was finely crafted and almost tuneful. Using lectures as a conceit, the reader starts...
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“There was a woman I loved more than books, but now she is gone.”
– Sheila Heti, Ticknor
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Let’s Ban Books, or at Least Stop Writing Them →
“For years now the populist prophets of new media have been proclaiming the death of books, and the marketplace seems to back them up. Sales of print books in the U.S. peaked in 2005 and have been in steady decline since, according to publishers’ net revenue data reported to the Association of American Publishers.
Watching that trend, I find my grief for the state of civilization comes with...
How J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter Saved Reading -... →
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Jacob's Room
Virginia Woolf is a mistress.
Jacob’s Room seemed like a test she was giving herself, almost like a writing exercise. Only her practice turned into a thoughtful novella. I liked the nebulous aspects of this work, the looseness. The language felt relaxed and fluid, Woolf seemed to readily inhabit the various characters she had strewn across the pages. The de-centralization of the story...
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“Ignoring all the copies of the book you have written that are going to perish -...”
– J. M Coetzee - ELIZZABETH COSTELLO
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Gatsby without greatness - Roger Ebert →
“There is no purpose in “reading” The Great Gatsby unless you actuallyread it. Fitzgerald’s novel is not about a story. It is about how the story is told.Its poetry, its message, its evocation of Gatsby’s lost American dream, is expressed in Fitzgerald’s style—in the precise words he choose to write what some consider the great American novel.”
Books to Drool Over →
italicsmine:
At The Millions, we put together a big Most Anticipated Books post! There are some amazing reads coming out…
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THE PREGNANT WIDOW
The thing I loved best about The Pregnant Widow was the various settings. Amis wrote Italy and London emphatically; their heat, smog, auras. This book made me want to visit Italy in the summer, and made me want to walk around London aimlessly. Amis’ ability to evoke these places was profound, and specifically, every scene set near the Italian castle’s pool radiated with summer...
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OTHER PEOPLE WE MARRIED, and Emma Straub
I had heard wonderful things about this book. I went to BookCourt, where Ms. Straub works as a Bookseller by Day, and picked up a signed copy. I also happen to follow her on Twitter, where I am consistently thinking “huh” or “cool” at things she posts. While I admire her, and I do admire her, I was underwhelmed by her book. It felt fragmented and as is often the case...