February 2012
5 posts
2 tags
Thought for the evening:  I am very sick of the “What we talk about when we talk about ________” title format. It was great the first time but now it is just tiresome and derivative; anything with this title actually encourages me not to read the work because I’m shallowly contrary like that.
Feb 10th
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Feb 9th
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Feb 8th
42 notes
3 tags
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami | Quarterly Conversation →
“Such outsized love stories as which Murakami embarks on in 1Q84 must be treated with extreme diligence, as they present sizable problems vis a vis believability, melodrama, and sentimentality. Murakami founders upon all three. It may sound ironic that a writer who indulges in the surreal as casually as Murakami would butt up against the problem of believability, but in attempting to piece...
Feb 6th
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Feb 2nd
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January 2012
13 posts
Jan 31st
1 note
1 tag
Rain Light by W. S. Merwin All day the stars watch from long ago my mother said I am going now when you are alone you will be all right whether or not you know you will know look at the old house in the dawn rain all the flowers are forms of water the sun reminds them through a white cloud touches the patchwork spread on the hill the washed colors of the afterlife that lived there long...
Jan 27th
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Jan 27th
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Jan 20th
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Jan 14th
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“It is a curious emotion, this certain homesickness I have in mind. With...”
– Carson McCullers (via psychotherapy) (via stephaniesays) Oh Carson.
Jan 13th
497 notes
zanmcquade replied to your link: Here Comes the Rooster - The Morning News If The Marriage Plot wins I will be very, very disappointed in all of the judges. Harbach all the way. I haven’t yet read The Art of Fielding so probably I shouldn’t say anything until next week or so when I do get to it. However, I love talking confidently about books that I know nothing about, so I...
Jan 13th
1 tag
Here Comes the Rooster - The Morning News →
(Even though I think this list is kind of horrible but what can you expect, it was a poor publishing year) I am spasming about with glee tonight. The Rooster is the most fun on the internet in March for bookish types and I’ve been looking forward to it for months now. I’ve read 7 1/2 of these already and will, of course, read the rest, even the ones that give me hives to even...
Jan 12th
Jan 10th
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Jan 7th
Jan 4th
14,147 notes
“From the time I learned to love Jade and was drawn into the life of the...”
– Endless Love, Scott Spencer
Jan 3rd
1 note
December 2011
13 posts
1 tag
“I guess a big part of serious fiction’s purpose is to give the reader, who...”
– David Foster Wallace, from an interview with Larry McCaffery for The Review of Contemporary Fiction, collected in Conversations with David Foster Wallace but also available online He says this often in different words, sometimes dubbing “suffering” with “loneliness.” In...
Dec 31st
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Dec 31st
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Dec 30th
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Dec 29th
Dec 21st
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Dec 16th
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Dec 16th
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Dec 15th
6 notes
4 tags
“So now [the days] were going to continue one after another like this, always the...”
– Madame Bovary, Flaubert, p. 54 of the beautiful Lydia Davis translation Today is Flaubert’s birthday. I discovered this by chance after purchasing Julian Barnes’ Flaubert’s Parrot at work, which inspired me to do some biographical digging on the great realist himself—this...
Dec 13th
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Dec 12th
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Dec 11th
5 tags
Dec 5th
514 notes
Dec 4th
November 2011
10 posts
Nov 30th
Nov 28th
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Nov 16th
1 note
[I Failed Him and He Failed Me]
[I Failed Him and He Failed Me] by Katie Ford I failed him and he failed me— Together our skinned glance makes a sorry bridge  For some frail specter who can’t get through. I failed him                  but maybe it was the lamp that failed, Maybe it was the meal, Maybe it was the potter  Who would not intervene, maybe the clay,  Maybe the plateau’s topaz, too steady to help,  Or was...
Nov 15th
Nov 13th
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Nov 10th
Nov 9th
Nov 7th
3,267 notes
Nov 6th
2 notes
“To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality...”
– Middlemarch, George Eliot! It’s only been a year but I’m getting a strong reread urge.
Nov 5th
1 note
3 tags
Nov 1st
October 2011
16 posts
Oct 30th
Oct 24th
4 notes
1 tag
Oct 24th
11 notes
Oct 20th
92 notes
1 tag
Oct 19th
3 notes
Oct 18th
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Oct 17th
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