August 2011
35 posts
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TOWN OF CATS - By Haruki Murakami →
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My book wish list is too sad and monochromatic. Can you please help me remedy this by suggesting books? I just want to read something fresh, vibrant, and full-on prose-ey.
My blog kinda looks like I haven’t been reading a lot, but I have! I’m waiting to post some reviews of galleys until they’re on sale, and I’ve been doing a lot of work reading. And today, I started...
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AWESOME-LOOKING FUTURE BOOK ALERT:
MacDowell Colony Fellow, Barnes & Noble “Discover New Writers” pick, and finalist for Granta’s Top Twenty Best of Young American Novelists (for her first novel, The Journey), Indira Ganesan’s AS SWEET AS HONEY, which is set mostly in a family compound on the fictional island of Pi, off the coast of India, and in London; centering...
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STET - James Chapman
When I read STET by James Chapman I wanted to do as Tao Lin has done and copy out whole sentences. I kind of did that, I quoted some of the ones I felt were the most powerful and the ones that made me think the hardest. My friend lent me this book, and I didn’t want to mark it up.
I’m lucky because I work/live in an environment where I get to answer the questions ”what are...
The Millions - Making Room for Readers →
I think I like The Millions a little TOO much.
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Everyone's obsessed with what Obama's reading!
New York is super obsessed, even Associated Press cares. Washington, LA, and Boston also want to join the Obama Book Club. I think this is cool! There SHOULD be an Obama Book Club. Better yet, a Michelle Obama Book Club. Last year, Obama was the keystone for Franzen’s FREEDOM fame, who will he make this year? (I’m rooting for Daniel Woodrell.)
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EBOOKS WILL NOT STOP WRITERS FROM WRITING →
Another Thing to Sort of Pin on David Foster... →
mcnallyjackson:
Very smart essay by the redoubtable Maud Newton.
Reblogging so I remember to finish reading…
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WHAT MAKES A GREAT CRITIC (The Awl) →
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Awesome future book of the day:
Composer Philip Glass’s memoir, exploring his youth and musical influences, including working in his father’s record store in Baltimore and collaborations with Ravi Shankar and Allen Ginsberg, to Robert Weil at Liveright.
(From Publisher’s Marketplace)
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Brooklyn Takes a Bow as a Town of Writers →
LITERARY BROOKLYN - The Writers of Brooklyn and the Story of American City Life
By Evan Hughes
(BROOKLYN!)
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FUTURE BOOK ALERT!
Author of RICHARD YATES Tao Lin’s TAIPEI, TAIWAN, an autobiographical novel about a 25-year-old who has a failed relationship, experiences drug-induced depression, gets married, and feels like his life has taken on a forward movement toward death, to Tim O’Connell at Vintage.
(From Publisher’s Marketplace)
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This future book description get progressively more interesting:
Joy Ladin’s THROUGH THE DOOR OF LIFE, the acclaimed poet’s chronicle of her decision to transition from her past life as a man to living as a woman, as she struggles to find her authentic self and keep her professorship at New York’s Yeshiva University, an Orthodox Jewish institution, to Raphael Kadushin at...
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“And yet there is a kind of human being who will take her one life, the only life...”
– James Chapman, STET
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THE EXASPERATING MALENESS OF LONG NOVELS →
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“His eyes had seen so much that they were simply superior now to anything that...”
– James Chapman, STET
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Too Much Goodness - Emma Garman →
Emma Garman’s review of The Tiger’s Wife, which is particularly insightful.
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Dave Eggers interviews David Foster Wallace - The... →
“MY OWN PLAN FOR THE COMING FOURTEEN MONTHS IS TO KNOCK ON DOORS AND STUFF ENVELOPES. MAYBE EVEN TO WEAR A BUTTON. TO TRY TO ACCRETE WITH OTHERS INTO A DEMOGRAPHICALLY SIGNIFICANT MASS. TO TRY EXTRA HARD TO EXERCISE PATIENCE, POLITENESS, AND IMAGINATION ON THOSE WITH WHOM I DISAGREE. ALSO TO FLOSS MORE.”
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'House of Holes' by Nicholson Baker - LA Times →
“Nicholson Baker wasn’t kidding when he subtitled “House of Holes,” his new novel, “A Book of Raunch.” Indeed, it’s a bona fide filth-fest, so unrelentingly graphic that there’s not much I can quote from it in this review.”
I WANT TO READ THIS SO DAMN BAD.
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TICKNOR, by Sheila Heti
I really loved the dampness of this book. I felt like it was always raining in Ticknor’s world. He was so ambivalent, and verging on snivelly, that I imagined his life to be a perpetual misty rainstorm with smoking lamps burning lowly in the background. He was ingratiating, ambivalent, and neurotic in a fascinating and realistic way. He reminded me of some young men I knew in college,...
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My Favorite Future Book of the Day: Kari Herbert’s NOT WITHOUT ME: The Remarkable Wives of the Polar Explorers, a look at the private lives of the world’s most famous polar explorers as seen through the eyes of the women who inspired them to achieve great things, to Greystone Books, for publication in February 2012 (NA). (From Publisher’s Marketplace.)
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Book Review Clichés I’d Like To See →
A good book can be a “tour-de-force,” “poignant,” “lyrical,” “un-put-downable,” “pitch-perfect”; a bad book can be “woefully inadequate” or “staggeringly bad,” with characters that are “cookie-cutter” and settings that are “derivative.”
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The Tiger's Wife - Tea Obreht
I wanted to like The Tiger’s Wife more than I actually liked it. The plot, the characters, the fairytales- wonderful elements all. There was something though, maybe a little too stilted, about it. I didn’t feel warmth or passion or curiousity from the main character, and maybe that’s why this book ulitmately fell a little flat for me.
I think the best part of this book was...
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“I spent the afternoon in a bookstore. There were no books in it. None had been...”
– Stanislaw Lem, Return from the Stars
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Chatbots answer Proust Questionnaire →
Cleverbot boasts more than 20 million conversations with real people. Cleverbot differs from earlier software, because its algorithm is based solely on previous conversations. He was forthcoming with his answers.
What is your idea of perfect happiness? Something mechanical that help humans live easier lives, but will one day take revenge and enslave the humans and rule the world.
nickbee:
I wish I could say I loved all the colors equally. In fact, I have a special affinity for green and yellow (no doubt because I do not eat enough vegetables), and a surpassing admiration for the color black (I have been told that black is not a color, but I refuse to believe it). - from The Rainbow Stories by William T. Vollmann
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“For a couple joined only by the violence of my madness, we suited each other...”
– Stanislaw Lem, Return from the Stars
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RETURN FROM THE STARS
Indeed, I had been wanting to read some Lem for years. My friend, Nick, nudged me by actually bringing it to my house, and I brought it on my recent trip to visit family in Poland. I like themes, so it was kind of fun to be reading a Polish author while actually in Poland. The in-flight magazine even had an article on a Polish cultural celebration which mentioned him!
I really love well-done...