Book Format

Quick thought: While I don’t dislike Oprah, I often think whether it’s necessary of her to endorse a book? I mean, I am bothered by her “O” seal that goes directly on the cover. Oprah doesn’t make a book classics if the book can hold its own. And if a book can hold its own, [...]

[263] The Good Life – Jay McInerney

” Loving isn’t the same as wanting, Luke. And it’s certainly not the same as having. It’s not about desire and self-fulfillment. In the end, it’s about wanting what’s best for the other person. It’s about giving and even, sometimes, letting go. Sometimes I think love is more about renunciation than possession. ” [327] The [...]

Speechless

Like Edward Kennedy? Try a Porn Star…, originally uploaded by moleskineboy.

Why Reading? What Does Literature Do?

I’ve seen this quotation in several places lately. It’s from Sven Birkerts’ The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age: To read, when one does so of one’s own free will, is to make a volitional statement, to cast a vote; it is to posit an elsewhere and set off toward it. [...]

Book Ideas, New Purchases

First of all I have to report a scandal: I was appalled to see that at the Borders “If you like this…then try…” shelf, right next to the Edward Kennedy biography stand The Sexual Life of Catherine M. and Sinner Takes All: A Memoir of Love and Porn. How shocking! I have been scouring the [...]

“Anna Karamazov”

After the frustration with Bret Easton Ellis’s Less Than Zero, I have been recommended Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney, a new author to me. Upon a closer look, the book is written in second-person narrative, and it deals with decadent cycle of sex, drugs, and hustling. I think I’m done for this subject [...]

To Keep, or Not to Keep

Do you keep all the books you ever buy? Just the ones you love? Just collectibles? What do you do with the ones you don’t want to keep? Ideally I would keep all the books I bought—until the bookcases overflow and my apartment becomes cluttered. The unspeakable bondage to books—that intimate sense of attachment and [...]

[262] While England Sleeps – David Leavitt

” Yes, Philippa had forced me to confront the foolishness of my delusions; yes, I now recognized it was Edward whom I loved. And still I was afraid of what it would cost me, what people might say about it, this improbable union between writer and ticket taker . . . worst of all, most [...]

Reading Notes: Prospectus

Claire from Kiss A Cloud and several book bloggers are forming an Asian reading Group in which they will be reading together one book set in Asia or written by an Asian author every three months. The group will feature The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck in March and Love in a Fallen City [...]

Telly and Reading

You may have noticed–the Winter Olympics are going on. Is that affecting your reading time? My answer to today’s Booking Through Thursday question is summarized in one word: No. Nothing can ever get into the way of my reading, and television is at the very rock bottom of the list. Whether it’s Miss Universe Pageant, [...]