Themes & Projects Mysteries, December 2008–January 2009
Maritime literature, January–March 2009
Melville read-through, part I, Typee—White-Jacket, December 2009–January 2010
Whirlwind tour of Russian literature, February–May 2010
Epistolary literature, July 2009–June 2010
Melville read-through, part II, Moby-Dick—Billy Budd, July–September 2010
The Unstructured Clarel Readalong, August–September 2010
The Art of the Novella Challenge, August 2011
The bibliographing Reading Challenge, January 2011–present
|
By nicole
Last week, during my vacation, I sat down a few times with Penguin Classics’s Essays and Aphorisms by Arthur Schopenhauer.* I liked how modern so much of them seems. Parts of the section on books and writing could practically have been published today by some curmudgeon or other. I thought it was a bit [...]
By nicole
Is there a book that you wish you could “unread”? One that you disliked so thoroughly you wish you could just forget that you ever read it?
Now, on the one hand the answer to this question is “no,” because the whole reason I do my best to finish books I am hating is [...]
By nicole
More graphs! After the positive response to Monday’s post, I must say, I knew I had found my Spirit Readership. These are based on a slightly different set of books than the others, as I realized I had somehow left out The Spider’s Palace from my first graphs. For shame! I’ll start with the boringest and work my way up. Continue reading By popular demand…
By nicole
Nikolski is the story of three people connected tenuously through a used bookstore in Montreal’s Little Italy, specifically through a curious history of pirates that passes through that bookstore. That little book is a gem; we are first introduced to it by Noah, a teenager born and raised on the road in Western Canada.
[...]
By nicole
As you may have been able to tell, I’ve been feeling a bit scattered lately with my nonthemed reading. Of course, a theme was new for me, and this is how I’ve always read I’m sure. But it is starting to seem so disorganized! I’ll show you, with a scatter plot. This is how [...]
By nicole
It appears lately I can only blog for a week at a time, and then I fail. Well, I’m off work and traveling this week, so last week was pretty busy with prevacation stuff to take care of. And I could really use this vacation, I’m sure it will help the blogging along with [...]
By nicole
Smith, that is.
Are you in adversity? Do not mourn in the darkness of solitude, do not regulate your sorrow according to the indulgent sympathy of your intimate friends; return, as soon as possible, to the day-light of the world and of society. Live with strangers, with those who know nothing, or care nothing [...]
By nicole
It felt good last week to be back in a pretty bloggy mode. I’m hoping to continue it, though I don’t have so much material built up yet. Yesterday I read The Old Man and Me, by Elaine Dundy, though you’ll have to wait for the full scoop until it’s closer to its release. [...]
By nicole
Yesterday I said I was writing about Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, but that’s not strictly true. I was really writing about “Notes from the Neogene,” “unquestionably one of the most precious relics of Earth’s ancient past, dating from the very close of the Prechaotic, that period of decline which directly preceded the Great [...]
By nicole
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub is a real feat of absurdity. How trite to simply describe it as Kafkaesque but there’s no escaping it. A nameless narrator wanders around “the Building” on a Mission he doesn’t understand, for days on end, meeting no one who makes sense, seeking refuge in bathrooms, wondering all the [...]
|
"As is quite clear, the enchanter interests me more than the yarn spinner or the teacher."—Vladimir Nabokov
Currently Reading Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
4:50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie
Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta
|
Recent Comments