[242] The Calligrapher’s Daughter – Eugenia Kim

“You must always think first of your family, your father, and put your own thoughts and desires last. We live in hard times hat we pray will get better. Hard times. You must be careful and obey your parents in all things. Agreed? [10]
Nicknamed Najin when she was eight, the heroine in The Calligrapher’s Daughter [...]

[241] Maurice – E.M. Forster

Read my first review from almost three years ago.
Maurice looked at him with tenderness. He was studying him, as in the earliest days of their acquaintance. Only then it was to find out what he was like, now what had gone wrong with him. Something was wrong.” [114]
Written in 1914, E.M. Forster was ahead of [...]

Last Call for Reading: Help Me Decide

Have you fulfilled (if any) your reading goals this year? As the days of 2009 are numbered, and that the holiday seasons imply considerable disruption to reading routine, do you have an immediate list of books that you’d like to finish before year-end? Willful abstinence from joining reading challenge affords a flexibility to peruse books [...]

Nobel Prize for Literature

While I do not doubt the literary merits of Nobel prize of Literature winners, and the honor is awarded to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced “in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.” Maybe it’s the ideal direction [...]

[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 patch [...]

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 intellectual [...]

[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 given [...]

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 [...]

[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 never. [...]