[240] Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsun

“The long, long road over the moors and up into the forest—who trod it into being first of all? Man, a human being, the first that came here. There was no path before he came.” [4] Growth of the Soil is about man and nature, blood and soil–specifically how a man named Isak cultivates a [...]

Bookish Companion, a Matt’s Musing

A sudden thought takes hold of my mind, thus a Matt’s musing. We made love the next morning. It was Saturday and we had a long, leisurely breakfast in the diner around the corner. I enjoyed weekends and the chance to have breakfast with Corey. We nosed around in bookstores that afternoon. Corey looked both [...]

Blurbs and Praises

This week’s Booking Through Thursday concerns with blurbs. Honestly I do not pay attention to blurbs . I usually turn to the first chapter and start reading to get a feel of a book. In light of this blurb issue, that is pertinent to the book that I current peruse, I do want to say [...]

[239] Surprising Myself – Christopher Bram

“It frightened me because Corey was a guy. I wanted to protect it because such a love was so ridiculous and fragile. Love was for marriage, and I couldn’t marry Corey . . . I couldn’t distinguish the excitement of my fear from the excitement of love.” [61] Joel Scherzenlieb grows up at a time [...]

A Consolidated List of 100 Novels

Sometimes I can be a “web-fly” who searches the inernet for interesting poll results. My favorite lists, indubitably, are lists of books. Since they can be very subjective matter, just like the “listmania” that users can compile on Amazon, I try to ignore lists that reflect sheer personal whims. I came across this post that [...]

[238] Pygmalion – George Bernard Shaw

“You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on), the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always [...]

Taking Notes

Do you take notes while reading – either for your reviews or for yourself? How/where do you make these notes (on the page, post-its, scrap paper, notebooks etc)? I take my reading notes very seriously because it is the act of conversing and interacting with the authors and their words. Notes are testimony to my [...]

Belated Report on Read-a-thon

Everyone must be recovering from the 24-hour read-a-thon as the blogsphere is awfully quiet. Yesterday morning at 5, the aroma of the pot of dark-roast coffee kicked off my read-a-thon. I finished the second half of Fixer Chao, a brilliant debut by Han Ong, and wrote a review of it. That was an encouraging beginning [...]

[237] Fixer Chao – Han Ong

“I had entered this world of privilege where the people had taken me in as one of their own, and had been entirely comfortable divesting themselves of ugly things in my presence. These people, in my imagination, lived in a glass bubble filled with money, aerated and sent flying in all directions.” [100] Never say [...]

Questions for Authors

If you could ask your favorite author (alive or dead) one question … who would you ask, and what would the question be? The recalcitrant self in me strikes again because I simply cannot resist asking just one question. The inquisitive mind will disclose some of the questions that still make me contemplate every now [...]