September 2011
19 posts
3 tags
HOME - Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson is an astonishing writer. I love her writing. It’s really perfect, there’s no other way for me to describe it. She assumes a perfect voice, her diction is impeccable, her sense of pathos and sentiment is pitch-perfect. She is a literary giantess.
HOME is about Glory, the daughter of Reverend Boughton, who is the friend of Reverend John Ames, the protagonist of...
2 tags
“I try to imagine someone telling Shakespeare to relax.”
– Elias Canetti
2 tags
The Last Words of Famous Writers →
These are mind-boggling.
3 tags
“I have been a frequenter of libraries over the years. It’s the last place...”
– Marilynne Robinson, HOME
2 tags
“[ ] [ ] does Tree of Codes function [ ] [ ]? Sort of. [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Polish [ ]...”
– Some clever soul at HTMLGiant reviewed Jonathan Safran Foer’s cut-out quasi-novel Tree of Codes by applying the exact same technique to a review of the book from the Guardian. The result is glorious. (via booksinthekitchen)
BEST THING EVER
4 tags
FUTURE BOOK ALERT:
Jon Scieszka’s WHO DONE IT?, a murder-mystery anthology with stories from over 70 authors (Dave Eggers, Sara Shepard, Lemony Snicket, Adam Mansbach & Ricardo Cortes to name a few) in regards to the alleged murder of Herman Mildew, the most cantankerous editor in the history of publishing, with proceeds to benefit the literacy non-profit 826nyc, to Daniel Ehrenraft at...
2 tags
THE HUNT FOR HEMINGWAY →
TAGLINE - In an epic life of perpetual motion—Paris, Pamplona, Mount Kilimanjaro, Key West, etc.—one place was truly home to Ernest Hemingway: the Finca Vigía, his rustic estate outside Havana. It was kept by the Cuban government as a shrine in the half-century since his suicide, and its full contents remained a mystery until 2002. One of the American team that finally gained access, A. Scott...
3 tags
The Bathroom - Jean-Philippe Toussaint
THE BATHROOM is the kind of book that will change the way you write, if you read it and you’re a writer. It’s the kind of brain-knocking book that doesn’t even need to build on itself until you realize how great it is. It’s very short, a novella I would say, and the stylishness and brevity of it make for powerful reading. Along the lines of Camus, Toussaint presents a...
5 tags
FUTURE BOOK ALERT JUST FOR DAN!New Yorker magazine cartoon editor Bob Mankoff’s HOW ABOUT NEVER — IS NEVER GOOD YOU FOR YOU?, a memoir in words, illustrations, cartoons, and other ephemera covering his thirty-four years as a cartoonist, to Gillian Blake at Holt, in a pre-empt, by David Kuhn at Kuhn Projects (World). (From Publisher’s Marketplace)
100 Best First Lines From Novels →
vintageanchor:
1. Call me Ishmael. – Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851) 2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. – Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813) 3. A screaming comes across the sky. – Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) 4. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to...
2 tags
Another FUTURE BOOK by a Rapper!
Rapper Nas’s memoir IT AIN’T TOO HARD TO TELL, written with Toure, with the inside story on some of his most famous lyrics (with almost 20 million units sold), and promising to break his long-held privacy with thoughts on everything from his relationships with Carmen Bryant and ex-wife, Kelis, his public disputes with Jay-Z, Bill O’Reilly and...
3 tags
THE LITTLE BRIDE - Anna Solomon
Anna Solomon’s novel, THE LITTLE BRIDE, is historical fiction at its best; literary, about the pioneer days, and introspective. It’s also timeless, which is an aspect of historical fiction that matters. I like literary fiction to read like an old memoir, like the Little House series or Anne of Green Gables. I like to look through windows into past times, and Solomon has acheived...
3 tags
Child of God - Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy’s CHILD OF GOD was short, but the word sweet could never be used in connection. The book is like a small spring- powerful, snapping, and almost recursive. McCarthy’s protagonist Ballard is a monster in the way that only he can write. While reading, I believed Ballard could actually exist, he feels so real, and he’s bone-chilling. I could almost see him...
3 tags
4 tags
PLAY IT AS IT LAYS - Joan Didion
The most severely good book I’ve read since BLOOD MERIDIAN. Which led me to start another Cormac McCarthy book today, CHILD OF GOD.
A whirlwind of unease, PLAY IT AS IT LAYS is the portrayal of a sad and lost woman who finds comfort in stress and danger- constantly driving at high speeds on the freeway.
This book feels like it came out of Didion whole. It was natural, it was goddamn...
3 tags
Today I started PLAY IT AS IT LAYS, but Joan Didion. I’m already feeling crunched-up inside by her amazing sentences. I’ve never read her fiction before, but after reading The White Album and The Year of Magical Thinking, have been thinking about her and respecting her as a writer. So excited to read this novel.
I am so excited for the reviews I have been writing for some amazing...
4 tags
THE GOSPEL OF ANARCHY by Justin Taylor
When I first started THE GOSPEL OF ANARCHY, by Justin Taylor, I wasn’t sure if I liked it. But I realized my reading pace was quick, like when I really really like a book. I read 140 pages in one day, actually, a work day even. It was around page 140, when I closed the book for the night, that I realized what is so great about this book- it’s open-mindedness and inclusiveness. THE...
3 tags
FUTURE BOOK ALERT: Just released from a halfway house, rapper T.I.’s (aka Clifford Harris, Jr.) POWER & BEAUTY, written with David Ritz, “a fictional tale about two childhood friends torn apart by dangerous dealings on the streets of Atlanta,” to William Morrow, for publication in October 2011. (From Publisher’s Marketplace)