Final Straw? a Monday Musing

How much time (or how many pages) do you give a book that you aren’t really enjoying before you’ll set it aside? If you’re reading it for a book group discussion, or for review, will you give it more of a chance then, say, a book you’re reading for your own interest? Why, or why [...]

Reading Notes of a Couch Potato: Satanic Verses

I am happy to hear that many of you are reading or planning to read The Master and Margarita. To say the very least about the book, it’s a very clever story-within-a-story reading. The Master has simply taken what is normally perceived as religious material and breathes in it a social context—one that is characterized [...]

“Unread”

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? I usually finish a book, or at least trying to skim through through it if it doesn’t live up to my expectation. To unread it would be more [...]

My Reading Journal

Since this blog is named after a journal, and after reading Wendy’s post on her journal, I want to share with you about my journal. The picture shows you my two latest journal entries: reviews of Half of a Yellow Sun and The 19th Wife. Since 2001, I have used only Moleskine journals. The beginning [...]

[207] Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“The North was wary: it feared domination from the more educated South and had always wanted a country separate from the infidel South anyway . . . the South, too, eager for independence, accepted this constitution . . . At Independence in 1960, Nigeria was a collection of fragments held in a fragile clasp.” [195] [...]

Gift Certificates, a Monday Musing

Do you give gift certificates to book stores as presents? If so, do you give for actual stores or online stores? Do you like to receive them yourself? My answer is similar to the question of whether I give (and receive) books as gifts. I give gift certificates to bookstores as presents to friends who [...]

The Satanic Verses

Note: Moleskine will be on vacation until Tuesday, May 26. Thanks to some of you who have alerted me of the subtle connection between The Master and Margarita and The Satanic Verses. I’m bumping this one up to be my next read after Half of a Yellow Son. The notorious novel, first published in 1988, [...]

They Make Me Feel Brand New?

What book would you love to be able to read again for the first time? I am tempted to say the Agatha Christie mysteries but that I have read so many of them and sometimes my faculty of memory is confused over different tales make them all the more refreshing to re-read. Books of which [...]

[206] The 19th Wife – David Ebershoff

“each representative claimed his was the way of Christ . . . for I came to understand, almost instantly, that for two thousand years men have been claiming there is but one way to God: Mine! Satan chuckled over this war of opinion . . .” [241] The 19th Wife weaves together two stories, one [...]

Mikhail Bulgakov

A few days ago the discussion on my reader’s profile raised the question of the different translations on The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. To the best of my knowledge, you may find seven current editions of this modern Russian classics at the bookstores: [Top from left] Penguin Classics, Vintage Classics, Oneworld Classics and [...]