January 2011
9 posts
5 tags
Non-Book Favorites of 2010: Miscellaneous
Sometimes (rarely), I enjoy things that aren’t related to books. Crazy, I know. Here are a few random things I discovered (or rediscovered) this year:
Native Shoes: Jefferson. Stylish like Chucks, comfy and airy like Crocs. Crucks. Chocks.
Broguiere’s Milk in glass bottles
Kaweco Sport fountain pen (bought at WORD in Brooklyn)
Silver cuff from Madewell
Sliced smoked...
Non-Book Favorites of 2010: Sound
Sometimes (rarely), I enjoy things that aren’t related to books. Crazy, I know. Here are a few audio things that I discovered (or rediscovered) this year:
Best Live Show: Sufjan Stevens at The Wiltern
Change Down (song) by Bonobo (from Dial “M” for Monkey): My new Ringtone!
Morning Theft (song) by Jeff Buckley (from Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk)
Lately (song) by...
4 tags
Non-Book Favorites of 2010: On Screen
Sometimes (rarely), I enjoy things that aren’t related to books. Crazy, I know. Here are a few visual things that I discovered (or rediscovered) this year:
Movies/TV/Games
The Wire. Okay, all of you, every single one who suggested I watch this show was totally correct. I never doubted you, but now I have no choice but to watch. I’m halfway through Season 3. I’m going to try...
December 2010
31 posts
“The porch was unpainted and its wood bleached to a silvery white. When the sky...”
– Tinkers
Paul Harding
“And as the ax bites into the wood, be comforted in the fact that the ache in...”
– Tinkers
by Paul Harding
Matilda Tattoo + extras!
Hey, hey, that’s MINE!! Yay!
tattoolit:
Here’s my new Matilda tattoo, with some of my favorite writers already added and a few blank spines to fill in down the road. The book she’s reading has the logo for publisher Two Dollar Radio.
1 tag
On the 14th Day of Xmas, Corpus Libris Honorably...
Mourning Diary by Roland Barthes
So fascinating to see grief and emotion melding with intellect in little daily snippets.
The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel
Taut and compelling prose, murky morality, and a story that develops as much by revealing secrets from the past as by events in the present.
The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich
If this book encountered Twilight in...
Tumblr has a problem...
Dude. I don’t get it. Has anyone actually had success using the queue function for Tumblr? It’s totally throwing off my Days of Xmas posts.
And while I’m asking questions: I can’t figure out how to comment on my own posts or how to respond to people who comment. Anyone, anyone?
3 tags
On the 13th Day of Xmas, Corpus Libris...
The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse
I picked up this book because David Mitchell mentioned it while I was interviewing him, and turns out it’s a pretty good lens through which to view David’s own work. It’s almost as though it articulates a project that Hesse began and Mitchell continues. Hesse imagines a world where cultural values essentially died and then were reborn (far in...
3 tags
On the 12th Day of Xmas, Corpus Libris...
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell
David Mitchell doing what he does best — weaving stories, inhabiting voices, melding genres, creating worlds, containing multitudes…
This is the book that I plan to foist on any desperate soul looking for fiction in the next week. Like Historical Fiction? Adventure Stories? Tales of Unrequited Love? Postmodern stylings? Just...
3 tags
On the 11th Day of Xmas, Corpus Libris...
Penguin 75 by Paul Buckley
Card-carrying cover geek. Right here, not ashamed. This book reproduces more than 75 of Penguin’s celebrated covers and shares reflections (positive and negative) from authors, artists, and designers. Perhaps the most interesting are the comments on the series covers that, in my mind, have come to define Penguin’s awesomeness in this realm.
5 tags
On the 10th Day of Xmas, Corpus Libris...
Bluets by Maggie Nelson
This narrative ripples like water. It reminds me of Anne Carson. Blue as color. Blue as philosophy. Blue as depression and as Eros. It is raw, this book. And thoughtful. And lyrical. The last two pages are phenomenal, but you can’t just skip to them - they are a culmination.
Quote from Everything Matters!
“Scenes rise and fade in rough chronological order…Each scene is backlit with a color that corresponds to the emotion the scene recalls: reds for anger and shame, rare yellows for joy, whites for varying degrees of apathy, and blues for sorrow. As you watch, it becomes apparent that blue is the predominant shade of your life, nearly ubiquitous, appearing so frequently that it turns...
3 tags
On the 9th Day of Xmas, Corpus Libris...
Everything Matters! by Ron Currie Jr.
A great novel, probably unlike anything else you’ve read. Imagine learning, on the day you’re born, when and how the world will end (in your lifetime). What would you do with that information? Good for fans of David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo.
“Was human cancer caused by an infectious agent? Was it caused by an exogenous...”
– The Emperor of All Maladies
by Siddhartha Mukherjee
3 tags
On the 8th Day of Xmas, Corpus Libris...
My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me edited by Kate Bernheimer
Best title of the year award - and apparently it encourages cannibalism! Familiar writers riffing on familiar stories and creating something completely new in the process. Look at the table of contents - I guarantee some of your favorite contemporary writers are there. Perfect for reading on the plane.
4 tags
On the 7th Day of Xmas, Corpus Libris...
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Skloot deftly weaves 3 compelling story lines — the life of Henrietta Lacks, a poor black woman in Baltimore who died of cervical cancer in the 1950s, the life of the cells that were taken without her knowledge and became the most ubiquitous cells in medical research, and the lives of her children. It is a story of race, class,...
5 tags
On the 6th Day of Xmas, Corpus Libris...
Detroit Disassembled by Andrew Moore
This is hands down the best photography book I’ve encountered in a long time. The images are at once stunning and horrifying, and they force you to think about society and waste and capitalism and rebirth and beauty. I am reminded of Polidori’s After the Flood and the contrasts between New Orleans and Detroit. Both are stories of decay and...
3 tags
On the 5th Day of Xmas, Corpus Libris...
What is All This? Uncollected Stories by Stephen Dixon
I have a crush on this book:
the cover, the paper, the heavy ink.
Touch it. Read two stories.
Try not to bring it home with you.
Fail.
On the 4th Day of Xmas Corpus Libris...
<Tumblr lost my original post. Grrrr: learning a new system>
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Incredibly well written and more inspiring than you’d expect, Mukherjee illuminates our changing perceptions of the disease and the truly astounding advances that have been made in its identification and treatment.
It may not surprise you to learn...
“Society, like the ultimate psychosomatic patient, matches its medical...”
– The Emperor of All Maladies
by Siddhartha Mukherjee
“By 1898, [surgery] had transformed into a profession booming with...”
– The Emperor of All Maladies
by Siddhartha Mukherjee
4 tags
On the 3rd Day of Xmas, Corpus Libris...
Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano
This stunning world history is nearly inexplicable. It is not linear in the slightest. Nor is it objective. Rather, it starts at a point and radiates outward in all directions. Reading these small, lyrical vignettes is like watching life form, cell by cell, civilization by civilization, with sparks of wonder melding with flashes of...
Unreliable narrator:
The best thing about this, the ultimate break-up song, is that I don’t believe a single word that the singer is saying. And yet…
It’s called “Lately” by The Helio Sequence, by the way.
“We go in a car wash, the brushes swish us all over but the water doesn’t...”
– Jack, the 5-year-old narrator from Emma Donoghue’s Room
4 tags
On the 2nd Day of Xmas, Corpus Libris...
Room by Emma Donoghue
The less you know about this book when you start reading it, the better. It’s best to learn and become aware as 5-year-old Jack does. He’s a narrator who will captivate you like Christopher John Francis Boone did in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. Room will bring tears of joy, sadness, and anger, it will quicken your pulse with fear,...
“But over the years of working at it, I came to think of translating as a room,...”
– From NOX by Anne Carson
5 tags
On the 1st Day of Xmas, Corpus Libris...
Nox by Anne Carson
This book, unlike many you’ll encounter, forces you (by its form and by its content) to inhabit its world. From the first page, there will be parts you don’t understand. But you must trust Carson to lead you, for she is a guide like none you’ve ever met. All you have to know is that she had a brother. He disappeared, then reappeared, then was gone...
