[303] Mudbound – Hillary Jordan

” Went off to fight for my country and came back to find it hadn’t changed a bit. Black folks still riding in the back of the bus and coming in the back door, still picking the white folks’ cotton and begging the white folks’ pardon. Nevermind we’d answered their call and fought their war, [...]

Update on Reading Deliberately

I’m keeping my fingers cross while waiting for my new gadget, the Amazon Kindle 3G + Wifi. I was thinking how the new electronic reader will change my reading habit. For sure I won’t read any less than I do now. I’m thinking I can add more non-fiction to my reading list as I usually [...]

eReader: Amazon Kindle 3G + WiFi

I am drinking the cool-aid. The new Kindle 3G + WiFi comes with pretty much all the features I prefer in an electronic reader. 1. The e-ink provides better contrast in text and images. 2. Unlike LCD screens, Kindle’s screen reads like real paper, with no glare. Read as easily in bright sunlight as in [...]

[302] Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham

” Well, then let me say that she can hardly have been a very good woman to treat poor Edward as she did. Of course, it was a blessing in disguise. If she hadn’t run away from him he might have had to bear that burden for the rest of his life, and with such [...]

Maugham: A Writer’s Life

No one can be more eloquent, exhaustive, and incisive than Somerset Maugham on the subject of a writer’s life. This passage is taken out of Cakes and Ale, in which the narrator, a literary gentleman named Willie Asheden, who might very well be Maugham himself, reflects upon being a writer. “I did not pay attention, [...]

Reviewing

This week’s musing asks: Do you review books? If so, for who? If not, have you ever thought about doing so? Why, or why not? From day one this blog has been dedicated to reviewing books—literary fiction, classics, and literature. Since I’m not affiliated to any publishers, nor am I a contributing writer to any [...]

Plinky

Plinky is a great source of prompts for blog posts. I have selected a few literary ones: What book could you read over and over? I know I have said it many times: The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. It was banned during the author’s lifetime in Russia, since he was ridiculing Joseph Stalin [...]

[301] London Triptych – Jonathan Kemp

” I had never known such happiness. Sometimes I thought I might explode with the intensity of it. It’s strange to recount all this, to tell all this to you, knowing that you will never hear it. There hasn’t been a single day in here I haven’t thought about you, wondered what you’re doing, and [...]

Books Podcast

Do you ever listen to book-related podcasts? If so, which ones and why? (Include the URLs for people who aren’t familiar with them.) I rarely listen to audio books but I do listen to a weekly podcast. Every Thursday, the National Public Radio updates its book podcast, a 20-minute broadcast on author interviews, suggested reading, [...]

[300] Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

” That is the secret of happiness and virtue—liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny. ” [1:26] Through genetic design and subconscious sleep-learning, the people who govern the World State in Brave New World seek to control human beings for the sake of social [...]