hi all, what do you think of my new header? like it…hate it?
Hi all, I’m in the process of changing the layout of the site and making a new header….although I don’t know if I’ll keep it….p.s. the one you see there isn’t the new one
I had a sudden urge to purchase some books. And so I did.
Invisible by Paul Auster
Sinuously constructed in four interlocking parts, “Invisible” opens in New York City in the spring of 1967 when twenty-year-old Adam Walker, an aspiring poet and student at Columbia University meets the enigmatic Frenchman Rudolf Born, and his silent and seductive girlfriend Margot. Before long, Walker finds himself caught in a perverse triangle that leads to a sudden, shocking act of violence that will alter the course of his life. Three different narrators tell the story, as it travels in time from 1967 to 2007 and moves from New York to Paris and to a remote Caribbean island in a story of unbridled sexual hunger and a relentless quest for justice. With uncompromising insight, Auster takes us to the shadowy borderland between truth and memory, authorship and identity to produce a work of unforgettable power that confirms his reputation as one of America’s most spectacularly inventive writers.
The Tetherballs of Bougainville by Mark Leyner
At the outset of the latest act of literary terrorism by the Esquire columnist and author of Et Tu, Babe, a thirteen-year-old boy named Mark Leyner is waiting for his father to be executed by lethal injection. Suddenly he learns that he has only one day to submit his entry for the Vincent and Lenore DiGiacomo/Oshimitsu Polymers America Award for the best screenplay written by a student at Maplewood Junior High School. The problem is that Leyner hasn’t even come up with a title.
The answer to that predicament is The Tetherballs of Bougainville, a bona fide novel that comprises memoir, screenplay, and movie review (with a little classy porn thrown in). Navigating the most remote tributaries of our popular culture, Leyner makes us weak with laughter while telling unnerving truths about the way we live right now.
Old Men in Love by Alasdair Gray
Men in Love, like The Arabian Nights, is about a storyteller whose stories contain other stories. As in Alasdair Gray’s Lanark, 1982 Janine, Poor Things, and The Book of Prefaces, this one has many styles of narrative and location. Periclean Athens, Renaissance Florence, Victorian Somerset mingle with Britain under the New Labour Party, viewed from the West End of Glasgow. More than 50% is fact and the rest possible, but must be read to be believed.
The Sunlight Dialogues by John Gardner
Who is the Sunlight Man?
Sheriff Fred Clumly is trying to unravel mysteries surrounding a drifter called “The Sunlight Man,” who is jailed for painting the word “LOVE” across two lanes of traffic in the small town of Batavia, New York, and later suspected of murder. Vivid, compassionate and often disturbing – with an astonishing cast of characters – this expansive novel is John Gardner’s masterpiece.
The Time of the Doves by Merce Rodoreda
With her mercurial husband dead and the Spanish Civil War raging, Natalia struggles to protect her two small children and clings to memories of her brief marriage and its equal portions of joy and misery.
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.
Great Apes by Will Self
When artist, Simon Dykes wakes after a late night of routine debauchery, he discovers that his world has changed beyond recognition. His girlfriend, Sarah, has turned into a chimpanzee. And, to Simon’s appalled surprise, so has the rest of humanity. Simon, under the bizarre delusion that he is ‘human’, is confined to an emergency psychiatric ward. There he becomes of considerable interest to eminent psychologist and chimp, Dr Zack Busner. For with this fascinating case, Busner thinks may finally make his reputation as a truly great ape.
Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
This title is describes as part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon. Private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog. It’s been awhile since Doc Sportello has seen his ex-girlfriend. Suddenly out of nowhere she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. It is easy for her to say. It’s the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that ‘love’ is another of those words going around at the moment, like ‘trip’ or ‘groovy’, except that this one usually leads to trouble. Despite which he soon finds himself drawn into a bizarre tangle of motives and passions whose cast of characters includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a murderous loan shark, a tenor sax player working undercover, an ex-con with a swastika tattoo and a fondness for Ethel Merman, and a mysterious entity known as the Golden Fang, which may only be a tax dodge set up by some dentists. In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the sixties, you weren’t there…or…if you were there, then you…or, wait, is it.
Alasdair Gray: A Secretary’s Biography by Rodge Glass
‘Alasdair Gray was not always the rapidly ageing, fat Glasgow pedestrian he likes to describe on the inside leaf of his books. There was once a time when he was young. A time when he was really rather thin. Many years when he went unpublished and unrecognised. This book aims to document, as faithfully as possible, that journey from son of a box-maker, encouraged to paint, write and do whatever made him feel good, to septuagenarian “little grey deity” (as Will Self has called him). For the first time in his life, Alasdair claims to be completely satisfied and well-paid (he lived in debt until 1990), and now lives a settled, happy day-to-day existence with Morag, painting his mural at the Oran Mor arts centre five minutes walk from his home most days, while (at the time of writing) taking occasional periods off for writing several books. Aside from work, Gray’s pleasures include daytime whisky, giving money away, reading books by people he doesn’t have to meet and “having my way”. This book will look in depth at the people, events, books, paintings, plays, poems and circumstances that conspired to make the man as he is today.’ RODGE GLASS Suiting form to subject, Rodge Glass has brought the inventive techniques of Gray’s fiction to bear on the biographer’s role. Mixing a chronological narrative of his subject’s life (at the rate of one chapter per decade) with his own diaries of meeting, getting to know and working with the artist, writer and campaigner, narrative and diaries eventually dovetail in a riotous final chapter on the publication of Alasdair Gray’s latest novel, Old Men in Love, in October 2007.
Well, it’s been a terrible day today. I’ve mostly spent the day in bed sleeping. My nose is stuffed and overflowing, my stomach feels as if it’s on a boat that happens to be moving an extremely choppy waters. I’m really disappointed and I tried to read today but trying to read when you feel like shit is akin to trying to find a polar bear in a haystack. It just doesn’t happen.
Bah! I suppose there’s always next year.
I loved participating in the Read-a-Thon so much last time I thought I’ll give it another go. I’m weird like that, y’see. The main differences this time are that a) I’m going to read more and b) stay awake for the full 24 hours, beauty sleep be damned!
I haven’t formulated any real reading list and so I might not stick to it like a deformed sea-urchin. So, the preliminary list is this:
The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littel. I still haven’t finished this, I’ve put it on hold for the time being (not that it isn’t good but my brain can’t handle a lengthy and demanding book like that while having to squeeze something resembling academic work out of my feeble mind). It probably be the first book I begin with for reasons that are easy to understand.
I’m going to read some comics this time too:
From Hell by Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell
Top 10 vol. 1 and 2 by Alan Moore & Gene Ha
and for some light and brilliant reading I’ll probably re-read Bone for the hundredth time.
I haven’t thought of much apart from those. I’m going to look around and have a nosy at other peoples’ lists.
Isn’t Neil Young great.[1]
I’m having a break from writing essays. It’s hard work doing the minimum you can do. I’m dreading looking at my Google Reader feed. Question: do people look at new comments on their new posts?
In other news, the booklet that I designed came back from the printers last week. I haven’t got it on me at the moment, but I’ll take a photo of it when I do.
[1] I’m not calling Neil Young a woman, nor am I calling him a woman of my dreams that would be odd.
I’ve been a real slacker with updating this blog. I’ve hardly looked at it, I’ve just looked at my Google Reader, and I have over 500 posts to look at. Gulp.
So, what have I been up to lately? Well, I’m currently writing essays. It’s OK so far. I have to write my dissertation next semester, which is somewhat daunting.
I suppose once I’ve handed my essays in I can update this blog more often. Well, between the moments when I’m not revising. Heh, me revising!
What do I love about my blog? I like my header, and I think my blog is clean and plenty of white space so it doesn’t look too cluttered. I like some of my reviews, and some of posts have been quite good. Also, I like my comments around the place, I think I write some interesting comments…occasionally.
By next BBAW I want my blog to be bigger and better. I want to write more reviews and more bookish posts, just more bang for your buck (your metaphorical money, unless of course you want to pay me)…
- 1. Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?
The thought of eating while reading repulses me, how could anyone want to eat while reading…think about all the mess.
- 2. Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
I use post-it notes; I use those small ones so I can bookmark a section and then write it in my database of quotations.
- 3. How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?
None of the above. I can remember where I am without the need for a marker. I can pretty much remember everything I read.
- 4. Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?
Both.
- 5. Hard copy or audiobooks?
Hard copy, I can’t listen to audiobooks. I retain information through reading it.
- 6. Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?
If the chapter is short then yes, if not then anywhere.
- 7. If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?
No, because that would be silly. You’re reading and you have a flow going on, why would you want to upset that? Just remember the word and check later.
- 8. What are you currently reading?
The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell
- 9. What is the last book you bought?
I bought a few books last, check them out at my Edinburgh post
- 10. Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or canyou read more than one at a time?
I can read four at a time. I don’t care what some people say, I can still understand them perfectly.
- 11. Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read?
Any time, any place baby. That’s how I roll.
- 12. Do you prefer series books or stand alone books?
Stand alone. Usually.
- 13. Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?
Um, no but I would recommend Lanark by Alasdair Gray.
- 14. How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?)
The booklovers nightmare. It’s changed over the years from genre, last name, random. It’s now organised as all non-fiction grouped together, organised by literary crit., sciences, biography, philosophy etc. Then poetry, then plays and then fiction.
