Monthly Archives: July 2007
Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick
I’ve been trying to decide what to say about Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick for quite a while now, and I’m still not sure. I feel conflicted not so much about the book itself but about what I actually feel … Continue reading
Novel reading, continued
There were so many good things people wrote in answer to my questions from yesterday, that I want to highlight them up here in a post. My blog readers never do let me down! I might as well put my … Continue reading
Novel reading
Today I have a couple of questions: first of all, have you ever heard somebody say that they only read nonfiction, that they don’t read novels because they aren’t true? That they want to learn about the world and therefore … Continue reading
Filed under Books
Jane Austen in Context
Just a quick post to say that I picked up Jane Austen in Context yesterday and am enjoying it very much. It’s a collection of essays by various critics, edited by Janet Todd; the essays fall into three categories, “Life … Continue reading
Filed under Books
Why I blog
The “why I blog” meme, which Emily tagged me for, is a good subject to take up tonight because I’ve been feeling uninspired by the blog lately, and I’m hoping that by writing about blogging I can get some inspiration … Continue reading
Riding and reading
Yes, I rode my bike yesterday. No, it wasn’t a good idea. I thought I’d try, just to see what it felt like, particularly since I’ve felt the tiniest bit better because of the medication I’m on. But it will … Continue reading
Filed under Books, Cycling, Fiction, Nonfiction
I needed something funny today
Via The Little Professor — check out limericks here and here. The idea is to write limericks based on famous poems. Some of the ones people have come up with are hilarious (especially in the second link). It’s a gray, … Continue reading
Filed under Links
Wittgenstein’s Mistress
I recently finished David Markson’s novel Wittgenstein’s Mistress, and I thought the book was smart, beautiful, unique, and, at times, moving. At times I found it dull. As this novel is something I think I can safely call experimental, I’m … Continue reading
Notes on Proust
I’m reading and enjoying Roger Shattuck’s book Proust’s Way, but I found myself puzzled and amused by part of one chapter where he complains bitterly and at length about how awful the 1989 Pléiade edition of Proust’s novel is. He … Continue reading
Final Diagnosis
One more health update, and then maybe I can stop writing about it for a while. I found out today that I have Graves’ disease, an auto-immune disorder that affects the thyroid. My endocrinologist thought this is what I’d turn … Continue reading
Filed under Life
Reading and school
I would guess most readers have books and authors that school has ruined for them, probably because of a disliked teacher or a bad classroom experience. For me, whenever I come across Pirandello’s play Six Characters in Search of An … Continue reading
Updates
I have just a quick post today to say that I enjoyed Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love very much, and now have to decide if I want to read Love in a Cold Climate, in the same volume, or … Continue reading
Sigrid Nunez and other things
Right now I’m intensely aware of how changeable I am; last night when I wrote my post about wanting comfort reads I really, really meant it, but shortly after I wrote about that desire I read a post on the … Continue reading
Comfort reading
The best cure for getting a little bit tired of reading is, of course, a trip to the bookstore. Hobgoblin and I went on Friday night and I didn’t find anything I liked, being a bit too tired to enjoy … Continue reading
Reading and illness
I’m going to write more about being sick, for which I’ll apologize right now — I don’t like dwelling on this, really, except that it’s hard to dwell on anything else. It’s not a plea for sympathy, at any rate; … Continue reading
The Heart’s Intermittences
I just read a marvelous passage from Roger Shattuck’s book Proust’s Way; it’s on how Proust captures consciousness: The descriptions of consciousness as rarely whole and beset by impossible desires for otherness show how deeply flawed life is. [In Search … Continue reading
Filed under Books
Oh dear
I’m not sure I like this. My result from the “which book are you?” quiz: You’re The Catcher in the Rye! by J.D. Salinger You are surrounded by phonies, and boy are you sick of them! In an ongoing struggle … Continue reading
Filed under Books
Boswell’s Presumptuous Task
I really, really enjoyed this book — I enjoyed it because I’m fascinated by Boswell and Johnson, but also because it’s a book that has so many interesting things to say about eighteenth-century culture (I wrote about Boswell and 18C … Continue reading
Filed under Books, Nonfiction
Diagnosis
This is just a brief post about my health; I’ll be back to books soon. I just finished Boswell’s Presumptuous Task and would like to write about it — it’s a wonderful book. But for now — today I learned … Continue reading
Elaine Pagels and popularizations
I read this post from The Paper Chase about Elaine Pagels’s latest book The Gospel of Judas with interest; I’ve read a couple of Pagels’s books, The Gnostic Gospels most memorably, and I enjoyed them. I felt I learned a … Continue reading
Filed under Books, Nonfiction
