Non-required Reading

If you’re like me, you grew up reading everything under the sun, like the cereal boxes while you ate your breakfast, the newspapers held by strangers on the subway, the tabloid headlines at the grocery store. What’s the oddest thing you’ve ever read? (You know, something NOT a book, magazine, short story, poem or article.) [...]

Shhhhh: Silence is Golden

I enjoy going to the local library. My branch has a special LGBT collection that represents the neighborhood’s demographic and relevant. What used to be comfort and shared silence in an institution of knowledge is no more. Burst in shortly after the library opens is a bevy of SUVs strollers in which sit little human [...]

[354] Fraud – Anita Brookner

” [Anna] was far too good, of course, ever to think uncharitably of anyone. But she annoyed me, poor woman. She was too kind, made too much of an effort, fussed round me as she used to fuss round her mother. I wouldn’t have it, and I told her so. I didn’t want her for [...]

Reading and Reading Alone

Do you read books while you… …eat? … bathe?… watch movies or tv?… listen to music?… While you’re on the computer? How interesting that the moderator probably is not aware that she asked exactly the same question on exactly the same day one year ago. Last year’s question read: Do you – or are you [...]

[353] By Nightfall – Michael Cunningham

” It’s not lust, not precisely lust, though it has lust in it. It’s a pure, thrilling, and slightly terrifying apprehension in what he will later call beauty, though the word is insufficient. ” [110] Michael Cunningham is one of the few authors who can use the English language to present such beautiful, lyrical writing. [...]

[352] The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien

” The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. This is the illusion of aliveness. [from The Lives of the Dead, 230] What is [...]

Series or Stand-Alones

Series? Or stand-alone books? It doesn’t matter, although I have almost read only stand-alone books. I rather enjoy the notion of stumbling upon a good read, be it stand-alone or part of a series. Series makes up a substantial portion of mystery, true crime, and YA books, because the stories revolve around a key personality, [...]

Lambda Literary Award, LGBT Fiction

If you have never read LGBT fiction or would like to explore this genre more deeply, Lambda Literary Foundation would be a great starting point. Lambda Literary Foundation in Los Angeles announced the finalists for the 23rd Lambda Literary Award last week. This year the finalists were selected from a record number of nominations. More [...]

[351] The Street – Ann Petry

” When people are alone, they are always afraid of the dark, she thought. They keep trying to see where they are and the blackness around them keeps them from seeing. It was like trying to look into the future. There was no way of knowing what threat lurked just beyond tomorrow or the next [...]

A Batch of Classics

What is the last book you bought? Was it for you? for someone else? Have you read it, yet? This list kicks off another looting campaign: Death Be Not Proud John Gunther Autobiography of a Face Lucy Grealy O Pioneers Willa Cather Death Comes for the Archbishop Willa Cather The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien [...]