Eric's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 04 May 2025 13:18:29 -0700 60 Eric's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise]]> 60834549 From "one of the most soulful and perceptive writers of our time" (Brain Pickings): a journey through competing ideas of paradise to see how we can live more peacefully in an ever more divided and distracted world.

"Nothing less than a guided tour of the human soul...A masterpiece." -- #1 New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert

Paradise: that elusive place where the anxieties, struggles, and burdens of life fall away. Most of us dream of it, but each of us has very different ideas about where it is to be found. For some it can be enjoyed only after death; for others, it's in our midst--or just across the ocean--if only we can find eyes to see it.

Traveling from Iran to North Korea, from the Dalai Lama's Himalayas to the ghostly temples of Japan, Pico Iyer brings together a lifetime of explorations to upend our ideas of utopia and ask how we might find peace in the midst of difficulty and suffering. Does religion lead us back to Eden or only into constant contention? Why do so many seeming paradises turn into warzones? And does paradise exist only in the afterworld - or can it be found in the here and now?

For almost fifty years Iyer has been roaming the world, mixing a global soul's delight in observing cultures with a pilgrim's readiness to be transformed. In this culminating work, he brings together the outer world and the inner to offer us a surprising, original, often beautiful exploration of how we might come upon paradise in the midst of our very real lives.]]> 240 Pico Iyer 059342025X Eric 4 3.51 2023 The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise
author: Pico Iyer
name: Eric
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/04
date added: 2025/05/04
shelves:
review:
Maybe more like 3.75, but still a bewitching journey and a serendipitous nonfiction analog to “Light Years”—whether exploring the earth or each other, “Paradise� is neverendingly elusive�
]]> Light Years 174622 308 James Salter 0679740732 Eric 5 fiction
—Ĕ�

(Reread April 2025)
My original review still stands. I’d add that after almost two decades of more life experience, this book hits twice as hard and the prose seems twice as beautiful. ]]> 4.08 1975 Light Years
author: James Salter
name: Eric
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1975
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/28
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: fiction
review:
An insightful, honest dissection of a marriage and the forces that bear down on a couple in love with each other and others.

—Ĕ�

(Reread April 2025)
My original review still stands. I’d add that after almost two decades of more life experience, this book hits twice as hard and the prose seems twice as beautiful.
]]> The Book of Delights: Essays 59892277 The New York Times bestselling bookof essays celebratingordinary delights in the world around usby one America's most original and observant writers, award-winning poet Ross Gay.

As Heard on NPR's This American Life

“Ross Gay’s eye lands upon wonder at every turn, bolstering my belief in the countless small miracles that surround us.� —Tracy K. Smith, Pulitzer Prize winner and U.S. Poet Laureate

The winner of the NBCC Award for Poetry offers up a spirited collection of short lyrical essays, written daily over a tumultuous year, reminding us of the purpose and pleasure of praising, extolling, and celebrating ordinary wonders.

In The Book of Delights, one of today’s most original literary voices offers up a genre-defying volume of lyric essays written over one tumultuous year. The first nonfiction book from award-winning poet Ross Gay is a record of the small joys we often overlook in our busy lives. Among Gay’s funny, poetic, philosophical delights: a friend’s unabashed use of air quotes, cradling a tomato seedling aboard an airplane, the silent nod of acknowledgment between the only two black people in a room. But Gay never dismisses the complexities, even the terrors, of living in America as a black man or the ecological and psychic violence of our consumer culture or the loss of those he loves. More than anything else, though, Gay celebrates the beauty of the natural world–his garden, the flowers peeking out of the sidewalk, the hypnotic movements of a praying mantis.

The Book of Delights is about our shared bonds, and the rewards that come from a life closely observed. These remarkable pieces serve as a powerful and necessary reminder that we can, and should, stake out a space in our lives for delight.]]> 288 Ross Gay 1643753282 Eric 3 4.09 2019 The Book of Delights: Essays
author: Ross Gay
name: Eric
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/17
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Selected Poems (Penguin Modern Classics)]]> 214371 368 Paul Celan 0140189203 Eric 0 to-read 4.43 1970 Selected Poems (Penguin Modern Classics)
author: Paul Celan
name: Eric
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1970
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Rabbit, Run 217519
THE WASHINGTON POST

Harry Angstrom was a star basketball player in high school and that was the best time of his life. Now in his mid-20s, his work is unfulfilling, his marriage is moribund, and he tries to find happiness with another woman. But happiness is more elusive than a medal, and Harry must continue to run--from his wife, his life, and from himself, until he reaches the end of the road and has to turn back....]]> 320 John Updike 0394442067 Eric 5
Three-plus decades on, with much more experience and much less innocence, Rabbit, Run is a stunner—I knew the contours of the plot already and the last 50 pages rip in ways I was not expecting at all. I’m still reeling. I almost want to read the next three books again, if only to feel closer to my dearly departed father, who gave these to me. If only had I read them sooner. He was no Rabbit, at least in how his shortcomings manifested, but I can sense the affinity my father must have had for the character and all the questions he put to the reader.

I worry Updike’s suburban (read: straight, white) milieu won’t survive this polarized DEI vs anti-DEI climate that won’t go away any time soon. Which is sad, because if one can see past the middle America backdrop, there’s a lot to be learned from—and moved by—the empathetic humanity so richly realized in Updike’s crystalline prose. ]]> 3.59 1960 Rabbit, Run
author: John Updike
name: Eric
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1960
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/12
date added: 2025/04/12
shelves:
review:
I read this more than three decades ago, and I don’t have a strong memory of it. Now with the other three Rabbit books down the hatch, coming back to where it all started is almost cosmic in its circular motion.

Three-plus decades on, with much more experience and much less innocence, Rabbit, Run is a stunner—I knew the contours of the plot already and the last 50 pages rip in ways I was not expecting at all. I’m still reeling. I almost want to read the next three books again, if only to feel closer to my dearly departed father, who gave these to me. If only had I read them sooner. He was no Rabbit, at least in how his shortcomings manifested, but I can sense the affinity my father must have had for the character and all the questions he put to the reader.

I worry Updike’s suburban (read: straight, white) milieu won’t survive this polarized DEI vs anti-DEI climate that won’t go away any time soon. Which is sad, because if one can see past the middle America backdrop, there’s a lot to be learned from—and moved by—the empathetic humanity so richly realized in Updike’s crystalline prose.
]]> <![CDATA[Anniversaries, Volume 1: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, August 1967–April 1968]]> 56489670 The first volume of a titanic masterpiece of twentieth-century literature, named one of the best books of 2018 by The New York Times critics.Published to great acclaim as a two-part boxed set in 2018, Anniversaries is now available as two individual volumes. It is August 1967, and Gesine Cresspahl, born in Germany the year that Hitler came to power, a survivor of war, of Soviet occupation, and of East German Communism, has been living with her ten-year-old daughter, Marie, in New York City for six years. Mother and daughter find themselves caught up in the countless stories of the world around stories of work and school and their neighborhood, with its shifting and varied cast of characters, as well as the stories that Gesine reads in The New York Times every day—about Che Guevara, racial violence, the war in Vietnam, and the US elections to come. Now, with Marie growing up, Gesine has decided to tell her daughter the story of her own childhood in a small north German town in the 1930s and �40s. Amid memories of Germany’s criminal and disastrous past and the daily barrage of news from a world in disarray, Gesine, conscientious, self-scrutinizing, with a sharp sense of humor, struggles to describe what she has learned over the years and what she hopes to pass on to Marie. Marie, articulate, quizzical, with a perspective that is very much her own, has plenty of questions, too.Uwe Johnson’s intimate portrait of a mother and daughter is also a panorama of past and present history and the world at large. Comparable in richness of invention and depth of feeling to Joyce’s Ulysses and Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, Anniversaries is one of the world’s great novels.]]> 912 Uwe Johnson 1681375567 Eric 0 currently-reading 4.35 1971 Anniversaries, Volume 1: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, August 1967–April 1968
author: Uwe Johnson
name: Eric
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Herbert Hunke Reader 2328206 Herbert Hunke Eric 0 to-read 4.23 2000 The Herbert Hunke Reader
author: Herbert Hunke
name: Eric
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> By Night in Chile 230216511
A hypnotic deathbed confession revolving around Opus Dei, poetry, and Pinochet, By Night in Chile pours out the self-justifying dark memories of the Jesuit priest Father Urrutia. As through a crack in the wall, Urrutia’s nightlong rant provides a terrifying, clandestine view of those strange Chilean bedfellows: Church and State.]]> 130 Roberto Bolaño 0811215474 Eric 0 to-read 4.09 2000 By Night in Chile
author: Roberto Bolaño
name: Eric
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Abundance 176444106 Abundance is a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to rethink big, entrenched problems that seem mired in systemic from climate change to housing, education to healthcare.

To trace the global history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of growing unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, the entire country has a national housing crisis. After years of slashing immigration, we don’t have enough workers. After decades of off-shoring manufacturing, we have a shortage of chips for cars and computers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean energy infrastructure we need. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough.

Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next generation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the environmental problems of the 1970s often prevent urban density and green energy projects that would help solve the environmental problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions in matters of education and healthcare have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.

Progress requires the ability to see promise rather than just peril in the creation of new ideas and projects, and an instinct to design systems and institutions that make building possible. In a book exploring how can move from a liberalism that not only protects and preserves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and how we can adopt a mindset directed toward abundance, and not scarcity, to overcome them.]]> 304 Ezra Klein 1668023482 Eric 0 to-read 4.10 2025 Abundance
author: Ezra Klein
name: Eric
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism]]> 228578720 #1 New York Times Bestseller

�Careless People is darkly funny and genuinely shocking...Not only does [Sarah Wynn-Williams] have the storytelling chops to unspool a gripping narrative; she also delivers the goods." -Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

“When one of the world’s most powerful media companies tries to snuff out a book � amid other alarming attacks on free speech in America like this � it’s time to pull out all the stops.� –Ron Charles, The Washington Post

An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.

From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.

Sarah Wynn-Williams tells the wrenching but fun story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction when he learned of Facebook’s role in Trump’s election. She experiences the challenges and humiliations of working motherhood within a pressure cooker of a workplace, all while Sheryl Sandberg urges her and others to “lean in.�

Careless People is a deeply personal account of why and how things have gone so horribly wrong in the past decade—told in a sharp, candid, and utterly disarming voice. A deep, unflinching look at the role that social media has assumed in our lives, Careless People reveals the truth about the leaders of how the more power they grasp, the less responsible they become and the consequences this has for all of us.]]> 385 Sarah Wynn-Williams 1250391245 Eric 0 to-read 4.46 2025 Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
author: Sarah Wynn-Williams
name: Eric
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The One Inside 30212083 An extraordinary work of long fiction from the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright � a tour de force of memory, mystery, death, and life.

Sam Shepard's searing, evocative narrative opens with a man in his house at dawn, surrounded by aspens and by coyotes cackling far away as he quietly navigates the distance between present and past. More and more, memory is overtaking him: in his mind he sees himself in a movie-set trailer, his young face staring back at him in a mirror surrounded by lightbulbs. In his dreams and in visions he sees his late father � sometimes in miniature, sometimes flying planes, sometimes at war. By turns, he sees the bygone America of his childhood � the farmland and the feedlots, the rail yards and the diners � and, most hauntingly, his father's young girlfriend, with whom he also became involved, setting into motion a tragedy that has stayed with him. His complex interiority is filtered through views of mountains and deserts as he drives across the country, propelled by jazz, Benzedrine, rock and roll, and a restlessness born out of exile. The rhythms of theater, the language of poetry, and a flinty humor combine in this stunning meditation on the nature of experience, at once celebratory, surreal, poignant, and unforgettable.]]> 172 Sam Shepard 045149458X Eric 4 Lyrically scattered and sad. ]]> 3.51 2017 The One Inside
author: Sam Shepard
name: Eric
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves:
review:
(3.75 stars)
Lyrically scattered and sad.
]]> A Sport and a Pastime 52695265 208 James Salter Eric 4
Lyrical, melancholic, and very horny.]]> 3.62 1967 A Sport and a Pastime
author: James Salter
name: Eric
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1967
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves:
review:
(4.5 stars)

Lyrical, melancholic, and very horny.
]]> My Phantoms 61258974 First Love.

Helen Grant is a mystery to her daughter. An extrovert with few friends who has sought intimacy in the wrong places; a twice-divorced mother of two now living alone surrounded by her memories, Helen (known to her acquaintances as ‘Hen�) has always haunted Bridget.

Now, Bridget is an academic in her forties. She sees Helen once a year, and considers the problem to be contained. As she looks back on their tumultuous relationship—the performances and small deceptions—she tries to reckon with the cruelties inflicted on both sides. But when Helen makes it clear that she wants more, it seems an old struggle will have to be replayed.

From the prize-winning author of First Love, My Phantoms is a bold, heart-stopping portrayal of a failed familial bond, which brings humour, subtlety, and new life to the difficult terrain of mothers and daughters.]]> 208 Gwendoline Riley 1681376814 Eric 3 3.94 2021 My Phantoms
author: Gwendoline Riley
name: Eric
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/27
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[THE RAINBOW By Lawrence, D. H. (Author) Paperback on 01-Oct-2007]]> 138379142
D. H. Lawrence's controversial classic, The Rainbow, follows the lives and loves of three generations of the Brangwen family between 1840 and 1905. Their tempestuous relationships are played out against a backdrop of change as they witness the arrival of industrialization - the only constant being their unending attempts to grasp a higher form of existence symbolized by the persistent, unifying motif of the "rainbow". Lawrence's fourth novel, a prequel to Women in Love, is an invigorating, absorbing tale about the undying determination of the human soul.]]> 0 D.H. Lawrence Eric 4 4.50 1915 THE RAINBOW By Lawrence, D. H. (Author) Paperback on 01-Oct-2007
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Eric
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1915
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/21
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves:
review:
Strangely bewitching, considering the book is just a series of romances across generations of the Brangwen family. But Lawrence has a distinct way of rendering emotional interiority that must have been singular in its day because it still reads pretty singularly now.
]]> <![CDATA[Blue Note: Uncompromising Expression]]> 59468916 400 Richard Havers 0500296510 Eric 4 music 4.63 2014 Blue Note: Uncompromising Expression
author: Richard Havers
name: Eric
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2022/09/12
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: music
review:

]]> Q&A 205166231
“That would’ve been too easy and spontaneous for me, and I had to find a way to make everything more complicated.�

And yet for over thirty years, bestselling author, screenwriter, and New Yorker cover artist Adrian Tomine’s work has set the standard for contemporary storytelling. With Tomine, his readership has grown from the dedicated following of his comic-book series Optic Nerve to include a wider but still engaged, opinionated, and ever-inquiring public. And now, for the first time in print, Tomine responds to his readers directly, tackling their questions and comments with generosity, humor, and vulnerability.

Q&A is one part personal history, one part masterclass in crafting quality entertainment. With questions pulled from his time at the Substack Writers� Residency, and with additional, new material, Q&A is an indispensable addition to the collections of eagle-eyed fans and aspiring artists, writers, and cartoonists alike.

Tomine answers questions about his preferred tools, his creative process, the ups and downs of adaptation, and perhaps most importantly—how to pronounce his last name. Illustrated with drafts, outtakes, and photos from the artist’s personal collection, this rare peek into the mind of a contemporary cartooning giant lays out the method to his meticulous brand of madness. The artist looks back on his career in response to queries from his—maybe adoring but mostly curious—public with his signature dry wit and unflinching, self-deprecating honesty.]]> 168 Adrian Tomine 1770467300 Eric 0 4.00 Q&A
author: Adrian Tomine
name: Eric
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves:
review:

]]> Nothing Special 62039151
Warhol is composing an unconventional novel by recording the conversations and experiences of his many famous and alluring friends. Tasked with transcribing these tapes alongside several other girls, Mae quickly befriends Shelley, and the two of them embark on a surreal adventure at the fringes of the counter-cultural movement. Going to parties together, exploring their womanhood and sexuality, this should be the most enlivening experience of Mae's life. But as she grows increasingly obsessed with the tapes and numb to her own reality, Mae must grapple with the thin line between art and voyeurism and determine how she can remain her own person as the tide of the sixties sweeps over her.

For readers of Ottessa Moshfegh and Mary Gaitskill, this blistering, mordantly funny debut novel brilliantly interrogates the nature of friendship and independence and the construction of art and identity. Nothing Special is a whip-smart coming-of-age story that brings to life the experience of young girls in this iconic and turbulent American moment.]]> 240 Nicole Flattery 1635574315 Eric 4
Never mind it erodes the gauzy glorious patina of Warhol’s factory and instead reveals it to be a phantasmagoria of broken people all exploited by its ringleader. ]]> 3.00 2023 Nothing Special
author: Nicole Flattery
name: Eric
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves:
review:
Sally Rooney’s blurb says this book is “irreverent, agonizingly funny,� but I found it to be immensely sad. (Man, what’s Sally drinking?) Still, I really liked this—all the more amazing as I’m way past the expiration date of enjoying coming of age stories, however well-framed through more sanguine, weather-worn flash-forwards.

Never mind it erodes the gauzy glorious patina of Warhol’s factory and instead reveals it to be a phantasmagoria of broken people all exploited by its ringleader.
]]> Coventry: Essays 41940257 The Washington Post) whose narrator, Faye, perceives the world with a glinting, unsparing intelligence while remaining opaque to the reader. Lauded for the precision of her prose and the quality of her insight, Cusk is a writer of uncommon brilliance. Now, in Coventry, she gathers a selection of her nonfiction writings that both offers new insights on the themes at the heart of her fiction and forges a startling critical voice on some of our most personal, social, and artistic questions.

Coventry encompasses memoir, cultural criticism, and writing about literature, with pieces on family life, gender, and politics, and on D. H. Lawrence, Françoise Sagan, and Elena Ferrante. Named for an essay in Granta ("Every so often, for offences actual or hypothetical, my mother and father stop speaking to me. There's a funny phrase for this phenomenon in England: it's called being sent to Coventry"), this collection is pure Cusk and essential reading for our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, and dazzling to behold.]]> 256 Rachel Cusk 0374126771 Eric 3 Like most essay collections, hit and miss. But when it hits, watch out.]]> 3.73 2019 Coventry: Essays
author: Rachel Cusk
name: Eric
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/25
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves:
review:
(3.5 stars)
Like most essay collections, hit and miss. But when it hits, watch out.
]]> <![CDATA[The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image (Compass)]]> 455992 464 Leonard Shlain 0140196013 Eric 0 to-read 4.17 1998 The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image (Compass)
author: Leonard Shlain
name: Eric
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Steve: A Framework for AI and Identity Design]]> 217452048 330 Melani de Luca 908340417X Eric 0 currently-reading 3.00 Steve: A Framework for AI and Identity Design
author: Melani de Luca
name: Eric
average rating: 3.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ce que l'histoire fait au graphisme]]> 212721497 880 IMBERT Clémence 2940510865 Eric 3 3.50 Ce que l'histoire fait au graphisme
author: IMBERT Clémence
name: Eric
average rating: 3.50
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/15
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[High and Rising: A Book About De la Soul]]> 200576188 240 Marcus J. Moore 0358494885 Eric 3 3.60 2024 High and Rising: A Book About De la Soul
author: Marcus J. Moore
name: Eric
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves:
review:

]]> The Heart of the Matter 1044996
Scobie, a police officer serving in a wartime west-African state, is distrusted â being scrupulously honest and immune to bribery. But then he falls in love, and in so doing, he is forced to betray everything he believes in, with drastic and tragic consequences.]]> 272 Graham Greene 0140184961 Eric 4 3.96 1948 The Heart of the Matter
author: Graham Greene
name: Eric
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1948
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/06
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[On the Calculation of Volume II (Book II)]]> 208511276 Tara Selter’s epic journey through November 18th continues in Book II of the masterly On the Calculation of Volume from one of Scandinavia’s most beloved writers.

The first year of November eighteenth is coming to a close, and Tara Selter has returned to her hotel room in Paris, the place where it all began. As if perched at the edge of a precipice, she readies herself to leap into November nineteenth.

Book II of Solvej Balle’s astounding seven-part series On the Calculation of Volume beautifully expands on the speculative premise of Book I, drawing us further into the maze of time, where space yawns open, as if suddenly gaining a new dimension, extending into ever more fined-grained textures. Within this new reality, our senses and the tactility of things grows heightened: sounds, smells, sights, objects come suddenly alive, as if the world had begun whispering to us in a new language.

And yet as the world announces itself anew, Tara’s own sense of self is eroding, making her wonder just which bits of her are really left intact? “It is the Tara Selter with hopes and dreams who has fallen out of the picture, been thrown off the world, run over the edge, been poured out, carried off down the stream of eighteenths of November, lost, evaporated, swept out to sea.� She begins to think of herself as a relic of the past, as something or someone leftover, similar to the little Roman coin she carries around in her pocket, without a purpose or a place.

Desperate to recover a sense of herself within time, Tara decides to head north by train in search of winter, but soon she turns south in pursuit of spring, as she tries to grasp on to durational time through seasonal variations. Amazingly, On the Calculation of Volume Book II is all movement and motion―taking us through the European countries of the North and the South, through seasons, and languages―a beautiful travelogue that is also a love letter to our vanishing world. To be continued.]]> 176 Solvej Balle 0811237273 Eric 0 to-read 4.13 2020 On the Calculation of Volume II (Book II)
author: Solvej Balle
name: Eric
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[On the Calculation of Volume I]]> 208511270
Balle is hypnotic and masterful in her remixing of the endless recursive day, creating curious little folds of time and foreshadowings: her flashbacks light up inside the text like old flash bulbs.

The first volume’s gravitational pull―a force inverse to its constriction―has the effect of a strong tranquilizer, but a drug under which your powers of observation only grow sharper and more acute. Give in to the book's logic (its minute movements, its thrilling shifts, its slant wit, its slowing of time) and its spell is utterly intoxicating.

Solvej Balle’s seven-volume novel wrings enthralling and magical new dimensions from time and its hapless, mortal subjects. As one Danish reviewer beautifully put it, Balle’s fiction consists of writing that listens. “Reading her is like being caressed by language itself.”]]> 160 Solvej Balle 0811237257 Eric 0 to-read 3.88 2020 On the Calculation of Volume I
author: Solvej Balle
name: Eric
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Artful 15811569
In February 2012, the novelist Ali Smith delivered the Weidenfeld lectures on European comparative literature at St. Anne’s College, Oxford. Her lectures took the shape of this set of discursive stories. Refusing to be tied down to either fiction or the essay form, Artful is narrated by a character who is haunted—literally—by a former lover, the writer of a series of lectures about art and literature.

A hypnotic dialogue unfolds, a duet between and a meditation on art and storytelling, a book about love, grief, memory, and revitalization. Smith’s heady powers as a fiction writer harmonize with her keen perceptions as a reader and critic to form a living thing that reminds us that life and art are never separate.

Artful is a book about the things art can do, the things art is full of, and the quicksilver nature of all artfulness. It glances off artists and writers from Michelangelo through Dickens, then all the way past postmodernity, exploring every form, from ancient cave painting to 1960s cinema musicals. This kaleidoscope opens up new, inventive, elastic insights—on the relation of aesthetic form to the human mind, the ways we build our minds from stories, the bridges art builds between us. Artful is a celebration of literature’s worth in and to the world and a meaningful contribution to that worth in itself. There has never been a book quite like it.]]> 256 Ali Smith 1594204861 Eric 4 4.05 2012 Artful
author: Ali Smith
name: Eric
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/30
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves:
review:

]]> The Red Badge of Courage 6105755 The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foundation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with afford-
able hardbound editions of impor-
tant works of literature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-
fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring
as its emblem the running torch-
bearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inau-
gurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices.]]> 252 Stephen Crane 0679600442 Eric 4 4.00 1895 The Red Badge of Courage
author: Stephen Crane
name: Eric
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1895
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Three Talks: Metaphor and Metonymy, Meaning and Mystery, Magic and Morality (Kapnick Foundation Distinguished Writer-in-Residence Lectures)]]> 210690788 Three Talks is the first prose collection by the award-winning poet and educator Brenda Hillman. These short essays on six M’s of the art of poetry make the form accessible in a novel way, exploring words that might appear incompatible but become dancing partners in Hillman’s artistic metaphor and metonymy; meaning and mystery; magic and morality.

First delivered as a series of talks at the University of Virginia, the essays maintain a casual, intimate tone. A consummate artist and technician, Hillman explores a wide array of poetic examples, focusing on method, subject matter, and inspiration to demonstrate how the skills offered by poetry have become critically important for our present moment.]]> 96 Brenda Hillman 0813949432 Eric 4
I’m not a poet so a lot of this goes over my head or is at least peripheral to my own experience and expertise. But there’s also enough here for anyone, poet or otherwise, to be inspired by. I’ll probably never be the protest warrior that Hillman has become, but I do appreciate the nuance she brings to the endeavor, always grounding it in humanism and the specific. ]]> 4.40 Three Talks: Metaphor and Metonymy, Meaning and Mystery, Magic and Morality (Kapnick Foundation Distinguished Writer-in-Residence Lectures)
author: Brenda Hillman
name: Eric
average rating: 4.40
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/13
date added: 2024/12/13
shelves:
review:
(3.75 stars)

I’m not a poet so a lot of this goes over my head or is at least peripheral to my own experience and expertise. But there’s also enough here for anyone, poet or otherwise, to be inspired by. I’ll probably never be the protest warrior that Hillman has become, but I do appreciate the nuance she brings to the endeavor, always grounding it in humanism and the specific.
]]> The Winter of Our Discontent 4796
Set in Steinbeck’s contemporary 1960 America, the novel explores the tenuous line between private and public honesty that today ranks it alongside his most acclaimed works of penetrating insight into the American condition. This edition features an introduction and notes by Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw.]]> 291 John Steinbeck 0143039482 Eric 4
Yet, I’ve bemoaned the increasingly shrill politicizing of literature of late. What makes these books any different? Steinbeck, in all his social crusading, first, is never a pat sermonizer, and, second, he is simply a master stylist that is a joy to read. If Winter feels a little rough around the edges, Steinbeck’s literate verve can’t be denied and carries the day. Very little discontent in this reader…]]> 4.01 1961 The Winter of Our Discontent
author: John Steinbeck
name: Eric
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1961
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/29
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves:
review:
Is it time for a Steinbeck revival? 1962’s Travels with Charley certainly echoed the contemporary breakdown of discourse (political or otherwise) in the lead up to the most recent presidential election. And now the earlier (by two years) The Winter of Our Discontent could arguably be a proxy for the current economic disparity and the amorality that often comes with both the desperate struggle to get ahead and the people above pulling the strings to keep them in their elite aeries.

Yet, I’ve bemoaned the increasingly shrill politicizing of literature of late. What makes these books any different? Steinbeck, in all his social crusading, first, is never a pat sermonizer, and, second, he is simply a master stylist that is a joy to read. If Winter feels a little rough around the edges, Steinbeck’s literate verve can’t be denied and carries the day. Very little discontent in this reader�
]]> Jews Don't Count 52710961 Jews Don’t Count is a book for people on the right side of history. People fighting the good fight against homophobia, disablism, transphobia and, particularly, racism. People, possibly, like you.

It is the comedian and writer David Baddiel’s contention that one type of racism has been left out of this fight. In his unique combination of reasoning, polemic, personal experience and jokes, Baddiel argues that those who think of themselves as on the right side of history have often ignored the history of anti-Semitism. He outlines why and how, in a time of intensely heightened awareness of minorities, Jews don’t count as a real minority.]]> 144 David Baddiel 0008399476 Eric 4
Also helpful is Baddiel’s separation of Israel and being Jewish. They are only as connected as the individual Jewish person wants them to be, and for Gentiles to continuously conflate them like they are attached at the hip is antisemitism at its worst. If anything, the importance of Jews Don’t Count is that maybe it will make more progressive Jewish people stand up for themselves, even if, personally, I too often find ALL this identity politics/victimization Olympics to be overkill and exhausting. ]]> 4.17 2021 Jews Don't Count
author: David Baddiel
name: Eric
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/12
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves:
review:
Baddiel’s book is eye-opening in helping me realize how much I internalize a lot of the “Jews don’t count� mentality that infects much of the progressive left. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it repressed trauma, but maybe because I transcended the petty antisemitism of my youth, I’ve always diminished it as if it were a crutch or weak to acknowledge, in the past or present.

Also helpful is Baddiel’s separation of Israel and being Jewish. They are only as connected as the individual Jewish person wants them to be, and for Gentiles to continuously conflate them like they are attached at the hip is antisemitism at its worst. If anything, the importance of Jews Don’t Count is that maybe it will make more progressive Jewish people stand up for themselves, even if, personally, I too often find ALL this identity politics/victimization Olympics to be overkill and exhausting.
]]> Trust 123018721 WINNER of the Pulitzer Prize
The Sunday Times Bestseller
Best Books of 2022 pick - New York Times, Obama, TIME, Slate, Oprah Daily, Kirkus, LA Times, EW, Sarah Jessica Parker

Read by a full cast of narrators, Trust by Hernan Diaz is a sweeping, unpredictable novel about power, wealth and truth, set against the backdrop of turbulent 1920s New York. Perfect for fans of Succession.

Can one person change the course of history?

A Wall Street tycoon takes a young woman as his wife. Together they rise to the top in an age of excess and speculation. But now a novelist is threatening to reveal the secrets behind their marriage, and this wealthy man’s story - of greed, love and betrayal - is about to slip from his grasp.

Composed of four competing versions of this deliciously deceptive tale, Trust brings us on a quest for truth while confronting the lies that often live buried in the human heart.

'One of the great puzzle-box novels, it’s the cleverest of conceits, wrapped up in a page-turner' � Telegraph

'Genius' � Lauren Groff, author of Matrix]]> 416 Hernan Diaz 0593420322 Eric 3
Curious what the Pulitzer jury and countless critics saw that so bowled them over. Diaz’s previous novel, In the Distance, might have been a bit too beholden to Blood Meridian-era Cormac McCarthy, but it was a stunner where this book is not. ]]> 3.84 2022 Trust
author: Hernan Diaz
name: Eric
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/03
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves:
review:
Fitting I read this so soon after Martyr, as it has some of the same flaws. Trust is also a formal triumph, but it also feels overly trimmed at the expense of its slight, often airless core story. If this is supposed to be a commentary on capitalism, it’s a pretty obvious one. If it’s an exercise in shifting narratives, well, I guess I admire the conceit but I’m not very moved or impressed by where it takes us.

Curious what the Pulitzer jury and countless critics saw that so bowled them over. Diaz’s previous novel, In the Distance, might have been a bit too beholden to Blood Meridian-era Cormac McCarthy, but it was a stunner where this book is not.
]]> <![CDATA[Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens: Reportage (The Hungarian List)]]> 25245995
Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens is both a travel memoir and the chronicle of a distinct intellectual shift as one of the most captivating contemporary writers and thinkers begins to engage with the cultures of Asia and the legacies of its interactions with Europe in a newly globalized society. Rendered in English by award-winning translator Ottilie Mulzet, Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens is an important work, marking the emergence of Krasznahorkai as a truly global novelist.]]> 320 László Krasznahorkai 0857423118 Eric 0 to-read 3.97 2004 Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens: Reportage (The Hungarian List)
author: László Krasznahorkai
name: Eric
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Martyr! 139400713 A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.]]> 331 Kaveh Akbar 0593537610 Eric 4
Martyr has a lot of strands that, collectively, are initially and ambitiously alluring. By its conclusion, though, I was questioning how necessary they were. Strip away all the bells and whistles and the book feels a little, well, slight. There are times when Akbar overemphasizes the identity politics at the expense of the human, as if we weren’t wise or sensitive enough to their freight. It’s when they recede to reveal the characters� flawed humanity that book is most powerful.

I’m ambivalent about the final plot twist, even if I didn’t see it coming. But ambivalent more around how it is handled. The penultimate scene is cringeworthy in its lesson-laden pedantry, but the last pages are as beautiful as writing gets. Together, they epitomize the creative conflict Akbar struggles with. And considering that he is also a poet, I was a little disappointed that the language was often very prosaic for long stretches.

If anything, the book is an exhibit A example of the push and pull in contemporary literature between trying to present flawed humanity as it is lived and then this urge to be didactically political and consumed by simplistic identity politics. But, I’d still put Martyr in the plus column and I’m excited to see what Akbar does next.]]> 4.22 2024 Martyr!
author: Kaveh Akbar
name: Eric
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/23
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves:
review:
(3.75 stars)

Martyr has a lot of strands that, collectively, are initially and ambitiously alluring. By its conclusion, though, I was questioning how necessary they were. Strip away all the bells and whistles and the book feels a little, well, slight. There are times when Akbar overemphasizes the identity politics at the expense of the human, as if we weren’t wise or sensitive enough to their freight. It’s when they recede to reveal the characters� flawed humanity that book is most powerful.

I’m ambivalent about the final plot twist, even if I didn’t see it coming. But ambivalent more around how it is handled. The penultimate scene is cringeworthy in its lesson-laden pedantry, but the last pages are as beautiful as writing gets. Together, they epitomize the creative conflict Akbar struggles with. And considering that he is also a poet, I was a little disappointed that the language was often very prosaic for long stretches.

If anything, the book is an exhibit A example of the push and pull in contemporary literature between trying to present flawed humanity as it is lived and then this urge to be didactically political and consumed by simplistic identity politics. But, I’d still put Martyr in the plus column and I’m excited to see what Akbar does next.
]]> Last Words from Montmartre 18465930 Last Words from Montmartre. Unfolding through a series of letters written by an unnamed narrator, Last Words tells the story of a passionate relationship between two young women—their sexual awakening, their gradual breakup, and the devastating aftermath of their broken love. In a style that veers between extremes, from self-deprecation to pathos, compulsive repetition to rhapsodic musings, reticence to vulnerability, Qiu’s genre-bending novel is at once a psychological thriller, a sublime romance, and the author’s own suicide note.

The letters (which, Qiu tells us, can be read in any order) leap between Paris, Taipei, and Tokyo. They display wrenching insights into what it means to live between cultures, languages, and genders—until the genderless character Zoë appears, and the narrator’s spiritual and physical identity is transformed. As powerfully raw and transcendent as Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask, Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Theresa Cha’s پé, to name but a few, Last Words from Montmartre proves Qiu Miaojin to be one of the finest experimentalists and modernist Chinese-language writers of our generation.]]> 176 Qiu Miaojin 1590177258 Eric 0 to-read 3.90 1996 Last Words from Montmartre
author: Qiu Miaojin
name: Eric
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It]]> 12088899 448 Craig Taylor 0062005855 Eric 3 (3.5 stars) 3.86 2011 Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It
author: Craig Taylor
name: Eric
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/24
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves:
review:
(3.5 stars)
]]> <![CDATA[My Brilliant Friend (Neapolitan Novels, #1)]]> 35036409 My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Ferrante’s inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two women that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighbourhood, a city and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her two protagonists.]]> 331 Elena Ferrante Eric 4 fiction 4.08 2011 My Brilliant Friend (Neapolitan Novels, #1)
author: Elena Ferrante
name: Eric
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2019/01/01
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Name of This Band Is R.E.M.]]> 207611509
In the spring of 1980, an unexpected group of musical eccentrics came together to play their very first performance at a college party in Athens, Georgia. Within a few short years, they had taken over the world - with smash records like Out of Time, Automatic for the People, Monster and Green. Raw, outrageous, and expressive, R. E. M. 's distinctive musical flair was unmatched, and a string of mega-successes solidified them as generational spokesmen. In the tumultuous transition between the wide-open 80s and the anxiety of the early 90s, R. E. M. challenged the corporate and social order, chasing a vision and cultivating a magnetic, transgressive sound.

In this rich, intimate biography, critically acclaimed author Peter Ames Carlin looks beyond the sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll to open a window into the fascinating lives of four college friends - Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry - who stuck together at any cost, until the end. Deeply descriptive and remarkably poetic, steeped in 80s and 90s nostalgia, The Name of This Band is R. E. M. paints a cultural history of the commercial peak and near-total collapse of a great music era, and the story of the generation that came of age at the apotheosis of rock.]]> 464 Peter Ames Carlin 0385546947 Eric 0 to-read 3.98 The Name of This Band Is R.E.M.
author: Peter Ames Carlin
name: Eric
average rating: 3.98
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Richard McGuire - Then and There, Here and Now]]> 214186148 0 unknown author 3039690248 Eric 0 0.0 Richard McGuire - Then and There, Here and Now
author: unknown author
name: Eric
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/06
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves:
review:

]]> Pale Fire 21527802 Pale Fire published in 1962 after the critical and popular success of Lolita had made him an international literary figure.

An ingeniously constructed parody of detective fiction and learned commentary, Pale Fire offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures, at the center of which is a 999-line poem written by the literary genius John Shade just before his death. Surrounding the poem is a foreword and commentary by the demented scholar Charles Kinbote, who interweaves adoring literary analysis with the fantastical tale of an assassin from the land of Zembla in pursuit of a deposed king.

Brilliantly constructed and wildly inventive, this darkly witty novel of suspense, literary one-upmanship, and political intrigue achieves that rarest of things in literature: perfect tragicomic balance.]]> 315 Vladimir Nabokov Eric 4
A novel like no other I’ve read that almost transcends its impish formal trickery. I can’t help but suspect that there are many more layers to this I am missing, as my literary knowledge pales (ha!) next to Mr. Nabakov. He sure seems to be having fun, and that extends to us readers of the book, too. But does it move me or emotionally resonate? Not…yet. ]]> 4.17 1962 Pale Fire
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Eric
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/05
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves:
review:
(3.75 stars)

A novel like no other I’ve read that almost transcends its impish formal trickery. I can’t help but suspect that there are many more layers to this I am missing, as my literary knowledge pales (ha!) next to Mr. Nabakov. He sure seems to be having fun, and that extends to us readers of the book, too. But does it move me or emotionally resonate? Not…yet.
]]> From Bauhaus to Our House 531559 128 Tom Wolfe 0671454498 Eric 4 3.63 1981 From Bauhaus to Our House
author: Tom Wolfe
name: Eric
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1981
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/05
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves:
review:
Much like The Painted Word, Wolfe's distinct snark masks a deep knowledge of and engagement with the material—never mind a knack for much-appreciated frankness that cuts through a lot of the jargon-filled posturing of architecture theory. If Wolfe couldn’t predict where architecture was going, he certainly nailed the mechanics of how its practitioners build their theories and individual mythos.
]]> Homework: A Memoir 217388177 A portrait of a young boy, who keeps passing exams—and of a changing England in the 1960s and 1970s.

The only child of a dinner lady and a sheet-metal worker, Geoff Dyer grew up in the world of the English working hardworking, respectable, steeped in memories of the Depression and World War II. Accordingly, his memoir is not a story of hardship overcome but a celebration of opportunities afforded by the postwar settlement, of which he was an unconscious beneficiary. The crux comes at the age of eleven with the exam that has decided the future of secondary modern or the transformative promise of grammar school?

One of the lucky winners, Dyer goes to grammar school and begins to develop a love of literature (and beer and prog rock). Only later does he understand that this win entails a loss. The loss is of a sense of belonging and—since this very personal story contains a larger social history—of an eroded but strangely resilient England. “Happenings� were a key part of the sixties mythology; this book traces, in perfectly phrased detail, another kind of happening, whose roots extend into the deep foundations of class society.

Tracing a path from childhood through the tribulations of teenage sport, gig-going, romance, fights (well, getting punched in the face), and other misadventures with comic affection, Homework takes us to the threshold of university, where Dyer first feels the cultural distance from his origins that this book works so imaginatively and tenderly to shrink.]]> 288 Geoff Dyer 0374616221 Eric 0 to-read 4.31 2025 Homework: A Memoir
author: Geoff Dyer
name: Eric
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Cancer Ward 254316 Cancer Ward is both a deeply compassionate study of people facing terminal illness and a brilliant dissection of the “cancerous� Soviet police state.]]> 576 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Eric 0 to-read 4.23 1967 Cancer Ward
author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: Eric
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Final Cut 204316973 The beloved and award-winning author of BLACK HOLE's haunting and visually arresting story of an artist's obsessions, and the value and cost of pushing the boundaries of creativity

As a child, Brian and his friend Jimmy would make sci-fi films in their yards, convincing their friends to star as victims of grisly murders, smearing lipstick on the "bodies" to simulate blood. Now a talented artist and aspiring filmmaker, Brian, along with Jimmy, Jimmy's friend Tina, and Laurie—his reluctant muse—sets off to a remote cabin in the woods with an old 8 millimeter camera to make a true sci-fi horror movie, an homage to Brian's favorite movie: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But as Brian's affections for Laurie go seemingly unreciprocated, Brian writes and draws himself into a fantasy where she is the girl of his dreams, his damsel in distress, and his savior wrapped into one. Rife with references to classic sci-fi and horror movies and filled with panels of stunning depictions of nature, film and the surreal, Burns blurs the line between Brian's dreams and reality, imagination and perception. A master of the form at his finest, Final Cut is an astonishing look at what it means to truly express oneself through art.]]> 224 Charles Burns 0593701704 Eric 3 (3.5 stars) 3.73 2024 Final Cut
author: Charles Burns
name: Eric
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/01
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves:
review:
(3.5 stars)
]]> The Painted Word 2459534 1980, Paperback, 124 pages 121 Tom Wolfe 0553225618 Eric 4 art-photography 3.46 1975 The Painted Word
author: Tom Wolfe
name: Eric
average rating: 3.46
book published: 1975
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/23
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: art-photography
review:
If you can get past the inimitable Wolfe-ian snark and the bad (at least so far, in 2024) predictions, this is an intelligent and sober synthesis of art in the 20th century through the early 1970s. And, boy, would it have been fun to see Wolfe rampage through Postmodernism and all its tentacles...(Maybe he did, and I missed it?)
]]> <![CDATA[A Constellation of Vital Phenomena]]> 18428067
In the final days of December 2004, in a small rural village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa hides in the woods when her father is abducted by Russian forces. Fearing for her life, she flees with their neighbor Akhmed—a failed physician—to the bombed-out hospital, where Sonja, the one remaining doctor, treats a steady stream of wounded rebels and refugees and mourns her missing sister. Over the course of five dramatic days, Akhmed and Sonja reach back into their pasts to unravel the intricate mystery of coincidence, betrayal, and forgiveness that unexpectedly binds them and decides their fate.

With The English Patient's dramatic sweep and The Tiger's Wife's expert sense of place, Marra gives us a searing debut about the transcendent power of love in wartime, and how it can cause us to become greater than we ever thought possible.]]> 416 Anthony Marra 0770436420 Eric 5 fiction 4.10 2013 A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
author: Anthony Marra
name: Eric
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/21
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: fiction
review:
One of the better contemporary novels I’ve read in a long while. Brutal, beautiful, and ultimately unforgettable.
]]> <![CDATA[The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine]]> 205482574 From the shocking surreal twists of 'Street of the Beggars' to the Escher-like grammatical maze of 'The Boarding House' to the pseudo-fairy tale classic 'The Basement', this book explores uncanny domestic spaces, using the structures of the stories themselves as tools for re-inventing narrative possibility.]]> 176 Mario Levrero 1916751067 Eric 0 to-read 4.12 The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine
author: Mario Levrero
name: Eric
average rating: 4.12
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Totally Wired: The Rise and Fall of the Music Press]]> 60670034 336 Paul Gorman 0500022631 Eric 0 to-read 3.95 Totally Wired: The Rise and Fall of the Music Press
author: Paul Gorman
name: Eric
average rating: 3.95
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories]]> 1576188 The collected fiction of "one of the most original imaginations in modern Europe" (Cynthia Ozick)

Bruno Schulz's untimely death at the hands of a Nazi stands as one of the great losses to modern literature. During his lifetime, his work found little critical regard, but word of his remarkable talents gradually won him an international readership. This volume brings together his complete fiction, including three short stories and his final surviving work, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. Illustrated with Schulz's original drawings, this edition beautifully showcases the distinctive surrealist vision of one of the twentieth century's most gifted and influential writers.]]> 368 Bruno Schulz 0143105140 Eric 3 fiction Crocodiles is a feverish dream of a book. Schulz surely wrote some of the most evocative sentences in all of literature, and it's easy to draw lines of influence to other more contemporary writers, such as the Italo Calvino of the surreal Invisible Cities. The eponymous story in this collection is probably its most memorable one and requires multiple readings to fully appreciate. (The whole book probably requires this kind of close reading, to be honest.) Those looking for strong narratives in their fiction might be a bit bored here, though. My 3-star rating is a tentative one, simply because I need to spend more time with this work to fully appreciate it.]]> 4.16 2005 The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories
author: Bruno Schulz
name: Eric
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2011/04/09
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves: fiction
review:
Crocodiles is a feverish dream of a book. Schulz surely wrote some of the most evocative sentences in all of literature, and it's easy to draw lines of influence to other more contemporary writers, such as the Italo Calvino of the surreal Invisible Cities. The eponymous story in this collection is probably its most memorable one and requires multiple readings to fully appreciate. (The whole book probably requires this kind of close reading, to be honest.) Those looking for strong narratives in their fiction might be a bit bored here, though. My 3-star rating is a tentative one, simply because I need to spend more time with this work to fully appreciate it.
]]> All Our Yesterdays 61936138
At the heart of the novel is a concern with experiences that both deepen and deaden existence: adultery and air raids, neighbourhood quarrels and bombings. With her signature clear-eyed wit, Ginzburg asks how we can act with integrity when faced with catastrophe, and how we can love well.]]> 418 Natalia Ginzburg 1914198239 Eric 4 3.93 1952 All Our Yesterdays
author: Natalia Ginzburg
name: Eric
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1952
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/29
date added: 2024/09/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Designing San Francisco: Art, Land, and Urban Renewal in the City by the Bay]]> 32815162
Designing San Francisco is the untold story of the formative postwar decades when U.S. cities took their modern shape amid clashing visions of the future. In this pathbreaking and richly illustrated book, Alison Isenberg shifts the focus from architects and city planners―those most often hailed in histories of urban development and design―to the unsung artists, activists, and others who played pivotal roles in rebuilding San Francisco between the 1940s and the 1970s.

Previous accounts of midcentury urban renewal have focused on the opposing terms set down by Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs―put simply, development versus preservation―and have followed New York City models. Now Isenberg turns our attention west to colorful, pioneering, and contentious San Francisco, where unexpectedly fierce battles were waged over iconic private and public projects like Ghirardelli Square, Golden Gateway, and the Transamerica Pyramid.

When large-scale redevelopment came to low-rise San Francisco in the 1950s, the resulting rivalries and conflicts sparked the proliferation of numerous allied arts fields and their professionals, including architectural model makers, real estate publicists, graphic designers, photographers, property managers, builders, sculptors, public-interest lawyers, alternative press writers, and preservationists. Isenberg explores how these centrally engaged arts professionals brought new ideas to city, regional, and national planning and shaped novel projects across urban, suburban, and rural borders. San Francisco’s rebuilding galvanized far-reaching critiques of the inequitable competition for scarce urban land, and propelled debates over responsible public land stewardship. Isenberg challenges many truisms of this renewal era―especially the presumed male domination of postwar urban design, showing how women collaborated in city building long before feminism’s impact in the 1970s.

An evocative portrait of one of the world’s great cities, Designing San Francisco provides a new paradigm for understanding past and present struggles to define the urban future.]]> 432 Alison Isenberg 0691172544 Eric 0 currently-reading 3.70 Designing San Francisco: Art, Land, and Urban Renewal in the City by the Bay
author: Alison Isenberg
name: Eric
average rating: 3.70
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/26
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The End of the End of the Earth: Essays]]> 37941840
Franzen’s great loves are literature and birds, and The End of the End of the Earth is a passionate argument for both. Where the new media tend to confirm one’s prejudices, he writes, literature “invites you to ask whether you might be somewhat wrong, maybe even entirely wrong, and to imagine why someone else might hate you.� Whatever his subject, Franzen’s essays are always skeptical of received opinion, steeped in irony, and frank about his own failings. He’s frank about birds, too (they kill “everything imaginable�), but his reporting and reflections on them—on seabirds in New Zealand, warblers in East Africa, penguins in Antarctica—are both a moving celebration of their beauty and resilience and a call to action to save what we love.

Calm, poignant, carefully argued, full of wit, The End of the End of the Earth provides a welcome breath of hope and reason.]]> 230 Jonathan Franzen 0374147930 Eric 2 3.49 2018 The End of the End of the Earth: Essays
author: Jonathan Franzen
name: Eric
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2024/09/20
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves:
review:

]]> The Guest Lecture 59070298
Yet as she wanders with increasing alarm through the rooms of her own consciousness, Abby finds herself straying from her prepared remarks on economic history, utopia, and Keynes's pragmatic optimism. A lapsed optimist herself, she has been struggling under the burden of supporting a family in an increasingly hostile America after being denied tenure at the university where she teaches. Confronting her own future at a time of global darkness, Abby undertakes a quest through her memories to ideas hidden in the corners of her mind as she asks what a better world would look like if we told our stories with more honest and more hopeful imaginations.

With warm intellect, playful curiosity, and an infectious voice, Martin Riker acutely animates the novel of ideas with a beating heart and turns one woman's midnight crisis into the performance of a lifetime.]]> 256 Martin Riker 0802160417 Eric 3 3.49 2023 The Guest Lecture
author: Martin Riker
name: Eric
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/13
date added: 2024/09/13
shelves:
review:
Review here:
]]> Rabbit at Rest 646320 512 John Updike 0394589521 Eric 5 I’m gonna miss you, Rabbit� 3.82 1990 Rabbit at Rest
author: John Updike
name: Eric
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1990
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/08
date added: 2024/09/08
shelves:
review:
I’m gonna miss you, Rabbit�
]]> Selected Cronicas 26181345
"In 1967, Brazil's leading newspaper asked the avant-garde writer Lispector to write a weekly column on any topic she wished. For almost seven years, Lispector showed Brazilian readers just how vast and passionate her interests were. This beautifully translated collection of selected columns, or crônicas, is just as immediately stimulating today and ably reinforces her reputation as one of Brazil's greatest writers. Indeed, these columns should establish her as being among the era's most brilliant essayists. She is masterful, even reminiscent of Montaigne, in her ability to spin the mundane events of life into moments of clarity that reveal greater truths."—Publishers Weekly]]> 212 Clarice Lispector 0811224953 Eric 2 4.12 1996 Selected Cronicas
author: Clarice Lispector
name: Eric
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1996
rating: 2
read at: 2024/09/07
date added: 2024/09/07
shelves:
review:
Guessing the translation is the culprit here. Fun to occasionally dive into for a few pages, but I just couldn’t sustain much interest over the course of the entire book.
]]> The Maniac 214932061 From one of contemporary literature’s most exciting new voices, a haunting story centered on the Hungarian polymath John von Neumann, tracing the impact of his singular legacy on the dreams and nightmares of the twentieth century and the nascent age of AI

Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Times� Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale.

A prodigy whose gifts terrified the people around him, John von Neumann transformed every field he touched, inventing game theory and the first programable computer, and pioneering AI, digital life, and cellular automata. Through a chorus of family members, friends, colleagues, and rivals, Labatut shows us the evolution of a mind unmatched and of a body of work that has unmoored the world in its wake.

The MANIAC places von Neumann at the center of a literary triptych that begins with Paul Ehrenfest, an Austrian physicist and friend of Einstein, who fell into despair when he saw science and technology become tyrannical forces; it ends a hundred years later, in the showdown between the South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol and the AI program AlphaGo, an encounter embodying the central question of von Neumann's most ambitious unfinished project: the creation of a self-reproducing machine, an intelligence able to evolve beyond human understanding or control.

A work of beauty and fabulous momentum, The MANIAC confronts us with the deepest questions we face as a species.]]> 368 Benjamín Labatut 0593654498 Eric 0 to-read 4.42 2023 The Maniac
author: Benjamín Labatut
name: Eric
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery]]> 150778841
Best-selling author and New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik investigates a foundational human How do we learn―and master―a new skill? For decades now, Adam Gopnik has been one of our most beloved writers, a brilliantly perceptive critic of art, food, France, and more. But recently, he became obsessed by a more fundamental matter, one he had often meditated on in The New Yorker : How do masters learn their miraculous skill, whether it was drawing a museum-ready nude or baking a perfect sourdough loaf? How could anyone become so good at anything? There seemed to be a fundamental mystery to mastery. Was it possible to unravel it?

In The Real Work ―the term magicians use for the accumulated craft that makes for a great trick―Gopnik becomes a dedicated student of several masters of their a classical painter, a boxer, a dancing instructor, a driving instructor, and others. Rejecting self-help bromides and bullet points, he nevertheless shows that the top people in any field share a set of common qualities and methods. For one, their mastery is always a process of breaking down and building up―of identifying and perfecting the small constituent parts of a skill and the combining them for an overall effect greater than the sum of those parts. For another, mastery almost always involves intentional imperfection―as in music, where vibrato, a way of not quite landing on the right note, carries maximum expressiveness. Gopnik’s simplest and most invigorating lesson, however, is that we are surrounded by mastery. Far from rare, mastery is commonplace, if we only know where to from the parent who can whip up a professional strudel to the social worker who―in one of the most personally revealing passages Gopnik has ever written―helps him master his own demons.

Spirited and profound, The Real Work will help you understand how mastery can happen in your own life―and, significantly, why each of us relentlessly seeks to better ourselves in the first place.]]> 256 Adam Gopnik 1324094435 Eric 1 2.50 2023 The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery
author: Adam Gopnik
name: Eric
average rating: 2.50
book published: 2023
rating: 1
read at: 2024/08/31
date added: 2024/08/31
shelves:
review:
God, I hated this so much I couldn’t finish it. Review here:
]]> A Summons to Memphis 60737 A Summons to Memphis introduces the Carver family, natives of Nashville, residents, with the exception of Phillip, of Memphis, Tennessee. During the twilight of a Sunday afternoon in March, New York book editor Phillip Carver receives an urgent phone call from each of his older, unmarried sisters. They plead with Phillip to help avert their widower father's impending remarriage to a younger woman. Hesitant to get embroiled in a family drama, he reluctantly agrees to go back south, only to discover the true motivation behind his sisters' concern. While there, Phillip is forced to confront his domineering siblings, a controlling patriarch, and flood of memories from his troubled past. Peter Taylor is one of the masters of Southern literature, whose work stands in the company of Eudora Welty, James Agee, and Walker Percy. In A Summons to Memphis, he has composed a richly evocative story of revenge, resolution, and redemption and given us a classic work of American literature.]]> 209 Peter Taylor 0375701176 Eric 0 to-read 3.64 1986 A Summons to Memphis
author: Peter Taylor
name: Eric
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Inside His Archive 121996758 The first publication to present the holdings of the Leonard Cohen Family Trust, Everybody Inside His Archive immerses readers in the many facets of Cohen’s creative life. Images of rare concert footage and archival materials, including musical instruments, notebooks, lyrics and letters, are featured alongside photographs, drawings and digital art created by Cohen across several decades.
Leonard Cohen (1934�2016) was a Canadian poet, singer-songwriter and novelist. Born and educated in Montreal, Cohen began his artistic career in 1956 with the publication of his first book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies . Over his long and productive career, he published two novels, The Favourite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966), and numerous books of poetry, including Stranger Selected Poems and Songs (1993). He recorded more than a dozen music albums, and numerous tribute albums have celebrated his songs in various languages. He died in Los Angeles in 2016 and was secretly buried in Montreal a few days later.]]> 167 Leonard Cohen Eric 0 4.20 Inside His Archive
author: Leonard Cohen
name: Eric
average rating: 4.20
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/27
date added: 2024/08/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Evening in Paradise: More Stories]]> 42971958 A Manual for Cleaning Women, a posthumous story collection by a relatively unknown writer, to wild, widespread acclaim. It was a New York Times bestseller; the paper’s Book Review named it one of the Ten Best Books of 2015; and NPR, Time, Entertainment Weekly, The Guardian, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and other outlets gave the book rave reviews.

The book’s author, Lucia Berlin, earned comparisons to Raymond Carver, Grace Paley, Alice Munro, and Anton Chekhov. Evening in Paradise is a careful selection from Berlin’s remaining stories—twenty-two gems that showcase the gritty glamour that made readers fall in love with her. From Texas to Chile, Mexico to New York City, Berlin finds beauty in the darkest places and darkness in the seemingly pristine. Evening in Paradise is an essential piece of Berlin’s oeuvre, a jewel-box follow-up for new and old fans.

Foreword: the story is the thing / by Mark Berlin --
The musical vanity boxes --
Sometimes in summer --
Andado: A Gothic Romance --
Dust to dust --
Itinerary --
Lead Street, Albuquerque --
Noël. Texas. 1956 --
The adobe house with a tin roof --
A foggy day --
Cherry blossom time --
Evening in Paradise --
La Barca de la Ilusion --
My life is an open book --
The wives --
Noël, 1974 --
The pony bar, Oakland --
Daughters --
Rainy day --
Our brother's keeper --
Lost in the Louvre --
Sombra --
Luna nueva --
A note on Lucia Berlin]]> 256 Lucia Berlin 1250234867 Eric 5 4.21 1981 Evening in Paradise: More Stories
author: Lucia Berlin
name: Eric
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1981
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/25
date added: 2024/08/25
shelves:
review:
(4.5 stars. Review here: )
]]> What Nails It (Why I Write) 210129449 From a celebrated critic, a heartfelt and adventurous reflection on the art of writing about art

“Essential for fans of Marcus and fruitful reading for anyone reflecting on the mysteries of art.”�Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Writers write. They can’t help it. They can’t not.� In this spirited book, the revered cultural critic Greil Marcus explains his compulsion as a yearning for fun, for play, and, most of all, to discover—to feel the moment when a creation speaks in its own voice.

Marcus reflects on over half a century spent honing the art of attention—from his California childhood, overshadowed by mystery and silence surrounding his father’s death, to his discovery of the critic Pauline Kael, to a confrontation with a sixteenth-century painting in Venice. Through it all, he invites readers to join him in exploring the revolutionary power of what it is, why it captures us, and how it forces us to confront what we think we know and who we think we are. Art challenges us to see the world differently, Marcus argues, and the role of the critic is to enact this perspective.

Funny and poignant, What Nails It is a tribute to the indispensable art of criticism by one of its greatest practitioners.]]> 104 Greil Marcus 0300272456 Eric 5 4.17 What Nails It (Why I Write)
author: Greil Marcus
name: Eric
average rating: 4.17
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/18
date added: 2024/08/18
shelves:
review:
“Most explanations of art are meant to exclude a lot of people, and raise up the people who are doing the explaining.� Not Greil Marcus, though, and we’re all the better for it.
]]> Wellness 65650229 A witty and poignant novel about marriage, middle age, tech-obsessed health culture and the bonds that keep people together

When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the '90s, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in Chicago's thriving underground art scene with an appreciative kindred spirit.Fast-forward twenty years to married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter cults disguised as mindfulness support groups, polyamorous would-be suitors, Facebook wars, and something called Love Potion Number Nine. For the first time Jack and Elizabeth struggle to recognize one another, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons, from unfulfilled career ambitions to painful childhood memories of their own dysfunctional families. In the process Jack and Elizabeth must undertake separate, personal excavations, or risk losing the best thing in their lives: each other.]]> 611 Nathan Hill 0593536118 Eric 3 3.97 2023 Wellness
author: Nathan Hill
name: Eric
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/18
date added: 2024/08/18
shelves:
review:
3.5 stars. Review here:
]]> <![CDATA[The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt]]> 13590154 By one of the most profoundly influential thinkers of our century, The Rebel is a classic essay on revolution. For Albert Camus, the urge to revolt is one of the "essential dimensions" of human nature, manifested in man's timeless Promethean struggle against the conditions of his existence, as well as the popular uprisings against established orders throughout history. And yet, with an eye toward the French Revolution and its regicides and deicides, he shows how inevitably the course of revolution leads to tyranny. As old regimes throughout the world collapse, The Rebel resonates as an ardent, eloquent, and supremely rational voice of conscience for our tumultuous times.

Translated from the French by Anthony Bower.]]> 307 Albert Camus Eric 0 to-read 3.92 1951 The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt
author: Albert Camus
name: Eric
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1951
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> There There 43076988 292 Tommy Orange 0525436146 Eric 0 to-read 4.05 2018 There There
author: Tommy Orange
name: Eric
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Little Life 25852828 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER � A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship� (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST � MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST � WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE �

A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves.]]> 816 Hanya Yanagihara 0804172706 Eric 3 fiction A Little Life a lot of credit for providing such a singularly divisive reading experience. On the plus side, I greatly admired its nuanced rendering of friendship (and occasional romantic entanglements) between four friends of diverse racial backgrounds and sexual orientations. And Yanagihara’s deep dive into acutely rendering the childhood trauma and physical suffering of the Jude character has a visceral quality rarely equaled in any work of fiction I’ve ever read.

But the storyline is barely believable—borderline ridiculous at times. I could buy the massive success of one of the main characters, but all four? No way. I don’t care how elite their educations were. And even if there are people out in the world that suffer as much as Jude does in this novel, narratively it felt like extreme and unrealistic overkill—beyond believable for the Bible, even. Job and Jesus have nothing on this guy.

But these extreme reservations can’t deny that the book did get to me in ways very few novels do. I haven’t decided yet if it’s a real or anodyne emotion, but it was there, and I definitely shed a few tears along the way. Is that a recommendation? You decide.]]> 4.36 2015 A Little Life
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Eric
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2017/01/19
date added: 2024/08/16
shelves: fiction
review:
I give A Little Life a lot of credit for providing such a singularly divisive reading experience. On the plus side, I greatly admired its nuanced rendering of friendship (and occasional romantic entanglements) between four friends of diverse racial backgrounds and sexual orientations. And Yanagihara’s deep dive into acutely rendering the childhood trauma and physical suffering of the Jude character has a visceral quality rarely equaled in any work of fiction I’ve ever read.

But the storyline is barely believable—borderline ridiculous at times. I could buy the massive success of one of the main characters, but all four? No way. I don’t care how elite their educations were. And even if there are people out in the world that suffer as much as Jude does in this novel, narratively it felt like extreme and unrealistic overkill—beyond believable for the Bible, even. Job and Jesus have nothing on this guy.

But these extreme reservations can’t deny that the book did get to me in ways very few novels do. I haven’t decided yet if it’s a real or anodyne emotion, but it was there, and I definitely shed a few tears along the way. Is that a recommendation? You decide.
]]> Beauty 6323955 In a book that is itself beautifully written, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton explores this timeless concept, asking what makes an object--either in art, in nature, or the human form--beautiful. This compact volume is filled with insight and Scruton has something interesting and original to
say on almost every page. Can there be dangerous beauties, corrupting beauties, and immoral beauties? Perhaps so. The prose of Flaubert, the imagery of Baudelaire, the harmonies of Wagner, Scruton points out, have all been accused of immorality, by those who believe that they paint wickedness in
alluring colors. Is it right to say there is more beauty in a classical temple than a concrete office block, more beauty in a Rembrandt than in an Andy Warhol Campbell Soup Can? Can we even say, of certain works of art, that they are too that they ravish when they should disturb. But
while we may argue about what is or is not beautiful, Scruton insists that beauty is a real and universal value, one anchored in our rational nature, and that the sense of beauty has an indispensable part to play in shaping the human world.
Forthright and thought-provoking, and as accessible as it is stimulating, this fascinating meditation on beauty draws conclusions that some may find controversial, but, as Scruton shows, help us to find greater meaning in the beautiful objects that fill our lives.]]> 240 Roger Scruton 019955952X Eric 0 to-read 4.03 2009 Beauty
author: Roger Scruton
name: Eric
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Illustrated Black History 50172803 208 George McCalman 0062913255 Eric 0 to-read 4.64 2022 Illustrated Black History
author: George McCalman
name: Eric
average rating: 4.64
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[CAD Monkeys, Dinosaur Babies and T-Shaped People: Inside the World of Design Thinking and How It Can Spark Creativity and Innovation]]> 9259048 352 Warren Berger 0143118021 Eric 4 design-architecture 3.89 2009 CAD Monkeys, Dinosaur Babies and T-Shaped People: Inside the World of Design Thinking and How It Can Spark Creativity and Innovation
author: Warren Berger
name: Eric
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2011/08/29
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: design-architecture
review:
A welcome surprise, and proof that maybe non-designers should write about design more often. While the stories here would be familiar to any somewhat informed person in the design field, Berger tells them in such a clear and compelling manner that even a seasoned (and skeptical) designer like myself gleaned new and inspiring insights. If you want a crash course in the present state of design and all its methods, I can't think of a better introduction for the novice or voyeur, not to mention a great resource for the seasoned design creative.
]]> <![CDATA[The Way It Wasn't: From the Files of James Laughlin]]> 576679

With an accent on humor, The Way It Wasn't is a scrapbook loaded with ephemera—letters and memories, clippings and photographs. This richly illustrated album glitters like a magpie's nest, if a magpie could have known Tennessee Williams, W.C. Williams, Merton, Miller, Stein, and Pound. In "C": "I wish that nice Jean Cocteau were still around. He took me to lunch at the Grand Véfours in the Palais-Royal and explained all about flying saucers. He understood mechanical things. He would advise me." In "P": "There was not much 'gracious living' in Pittsburgh, where at one house, the butler passed chewing gum on a silver salver after coffee." And: "The world is full of a large number of irritating people." In "H" there's Lillian Hellman: "What a raspy character. When I knocked at her door to try to borrow one of her books (hoping to butter her up) she only opened her door four inches and said words to the effect: 'Fuck off, you rapist.'" Marketing in "M": "I think it's important to get the 'troubadours' into the title. That's a 'buy-me' word." In "G": "Olga asked Allen Ginsberg if he was also buying Pound Conference T-shirts for his grandchildren. She was most lovable throughout." In "L": "Wyndham Lewis wrote 'Why don't you stop New Directions, your books are crap.'" And we find love in "L": "Cicero noted that an old love pinches like a crab." But in The Way It Wasn't James Laughlin's love of the crazy world and his crazier authors does not pinch a bit: it glows with wit and enlarges our feeling for the late great twentieth century.]]> 288 James Laughlin 0811216764 Eric 3 3.76 2006 The Way It Wasn't: From the Files of James Laughlin
author: James Laughlin
name: Eric
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/06
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves:
review:

]]> Go Tell It on the Mountain 18248426
Baldwin's classic novel opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin tells the story of the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Originally published in 1953, Baldwin said of his first novel, " Mountain is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else."]]> 240 James Baldwin 0375701877 Eric 5 4.10 1953 Go Tell It on the Mountain
author: James Baldwin
name: Eric
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1953
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/06
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves:
review:
Review here:
]]> Lost Children Archive 40245130
A mother and father set out with their two children, a boy and a girl, driving from New York to Arizona in the heat of summer. Their destination: Apacheria, the place the Apaches once called home.

Why Apaches? asks the ten-year-old son. Because they were the last of something, answers his father.

In their car, they play games and sing along to music. But on the radio, there is news about an "immigration crisis": thousands of kids trying to cross the southwestern border into the United States, but getting detained--or lost in the desert along the way.

As the family drives--through Virginia to Tennessee, across Oklahoma and Texas--we sense they are on the brink of a crisis of their own. A fissure is growing between the parents, one the children can almost feel beneath their feet. They are led, inexorably, to a grand, harrowing adventure--both in the desert landscape and within the chambers of their own imaginations.

Told through several compelling voices, blending texts, sounds, and images, Lost Children Archive is an astonishing feat of literary virtuosity. It is a richly engaging story of how we document our experiences, and how we remember the things that matter to us the most. With urgency and empathy, it takes us deep into the lives of one remarkable family as it probes the nature of justice and equality today.]]> 385 Valeria Luiselli 0525520619 Eric 0 to-read 3.75 2019 Lost Children Archive
author: Valeria Luiselli
name: Eric
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Blue Ruin 197472278
It's 2020, and Jay lives out of his car, working as a delivery driver in wealthy upstate New York. Sick and undocumented, Jay arrives at an enormous mansion and collapses from exhaustion - right at the feet of Alice, whom he had hoped he would never see again. Twenty years on, and while Jay teeters on the edge, she's married the man she left him for; Jay's former best friend and fellow artist, Rob. Ashamed, Jay hopes she won't recognize him behind his dirty surgical mask, but when she does, she invites him to recover on the property, setting the stage for a devastating reckoning that's been decades in the making.

Gripping and brilliantly orchestrated, Blue Ruin moves back and forth through time to deliver an extraordinary portrait of an artist as he reunites with his past and confronts the world he once loved and left behind. This is a novel suffused with tension and melancholy; an ode to an iconic art scene from an author at the height of his powers.]]> 352 Hari Kunzru Eric 3 Red Pill.]]> 4.44 2024 Blue Ruin
author: Hari Kunzru
name: Eric
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/29
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves:
review:
(2.5 stars.) A little disappointing, especially after Red Pill.
]]> Tropic of Cancer (Tropic, #1) 249 Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller’s masterpiece, was banned as obscene in this country for twenty-seven years after its first publication in Paris in 1934. Only a historic court ruling that changed American censorship standards, ushering in a new era of freedom and frankness in modern literature, permitted the publication of this first volume of Miller’s famed mixture of memoir and fiction, which chronicles with unapologetic gusto the bawdy adventures of a young expatriate writer, his friends, and the characters they meet in Paris in the 1930s. Tropic of Cancer is now considered, as Norman Mailer said, "one of the ten or twenty great novels of our century."]]> 318 Henry Miller 0802131786 Eric 4 3.69 1934 Tropic of Cancer (Tropic, #1)
author: Henry Miller
name: Eric
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1934
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/26
date added: 2024/07/26
shelves:
review:
Review here:
]]> <![CDATA[The Captive / The Fugitive (In Search of Lost Time, #5-6)]]> 18801 In Search of Lost Time contains both The Captive (1923) and The Fugitive (1925). In The Captive, Proust’s narrator describes living in his mother’s Paris apartment with his lover, Albertine, and subsequently falling out of love with her. In The Fugitive, the narrator loses Albertine forever. Rich with irony, The Captive and The Fugitive inspire meditations on desire, sexual love, music, and the art of introspection.

For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin’s acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of Á la recherché du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989).]]> 957 Marcel Proust 0375753117 Eric 4 fiction 4.38 1923 The Captive / The Fugitive (In Search of Lost Time, #5-6)
author: Marcel Proust
name: Eric
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1923
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/17
date added: 2024/07/23
shelves: fiction
review:
Oh these little lovebirds and their silly tricks�
]]> <![CDATA[You Say to Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn]]> 35259597
One of the Washington Post 's 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2017, a New York Times Notable Book of 2017, and one of Kirkus 's Best Nonfiction Books of 2017

"Wendy Lesser's You Say to Brick is easily the most complete narrative of Kahn's life and career, magnificently researched and gracefully written." ―Inga Saffron, New York Times Book Review Born in Estonia 1901 and brought to America in 1906, the architect Louis Kahn grew up in poverty in Philadelphia. By the time of his mysterious death in 1974, he was widely recognized as one of the greatest architects of his era. Yet this enormous reputation was based on only a handful of masterpieces, all built during the last fifteen years of his life. Wendy Lesser’s You Say to The Life of Louis Kahn is a major exploration of the architect’s life and work. Kahn, perhaps more than any other twentieth-century American architect, was a “public� architect. Rather than focusing on corporate commissions, he devoted himself to designing research facilities, government centers, museums, libraries, and other structures that would serve the public good. But this warm, captivating person, beloved by students and admired by colleagues, was also a secretive man hiding under a series of masks. Kahn himself, however, is not the only complex subject that comes vividly to life in these pages. His signature achievements―like the Salk Institute in La Jolla, the National Assembly Building of Bangladesh, and the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad―can at first seem as enigmatic and beguiling as the man who designed them. In attempts to describe these structures, we are often forced to speak in contradictions and structures that seem at once unmistakably modern and ancient; enormous built spaces that offer a sense of intimate containment; designs in which light itself seems tangible, a raw material as tactile as travertine or Kahn’s beloved concrete. This is where Lesser’s talents as one of our most original and gifted cultural critics come into play. Interspersed throughout her account of Kahn’s life and career are exhilarating “in situ� descriptions of what it feels like to move through his built structures. Drawing on extensive original research, lengthy interviews with his children, his colleagues, and his students, and travel to the far-flung sites of his career-defining buildings, Lesser has written a landmark biography of this elusive genius, revealing the mind behind some of the twentieth century’s most celebrated architecture.]]> 416 Wendy Lesser 0374537631 Eric 4 (3.5 stars.) 4.00 2017 You Say to Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn
author: Wendy Lesser
name: Eric
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/15
date added: 2024/07/15
shelves:
review:
(3.5 stars.)
]]> Milkweed Smithereens 60534033 in the winter? wrapped in bear skins
we’ll sit around pot-bellied stoves eating
the lobelias of fear left over from desperation,
last summer’s woodland sunflowers and bee balm remind us of black
cherries eaten in a hurry
while the yard grows in the moonlight
shrinking like a salary …]]> 96 Bernadette Mayer 081122922X Eric 3 3.60 2022 Milkweed Smithereens
author: Bernadette Mayer
name: Eric
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/05
date added: 2024/07/05
shelves:
review:

]]> How to Say Goodbye 62039252
“A poem to mortality and the beauty of how we can cope with it.”―Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal

New York Times –bestselling artist Wendy MacNaughton shares wisdom from hospice how to be, when to help, what to say―with full-color drawings throughout.

As artist-in-residence at the Zen Hospice Project Guest House in San Francisco, Wendy MacNaughton witnessed firsthand how difficult it is to know what to do when we’re sharing final moments with a loved one. In this tenderly illustrated guide to saying goodbye, MacNaughton shows how to make sure those moments are meaningful. Using a framework of “the five things� taught to her by a professional caregiver, How to Say Goodbye provides a model for having conversations of love, respect, and with the words “I forgive you,� “Please forgive me,� “Thank you,� “I love you,� and “Goodbye,� each oriented toward finding mutual peace and understanding when it matters most.

With a foreword by renowned physician and author BJ Miller, and practical resources, How to Say Goodbye features MacNaughton’s drawn-from-life artwork from both the Zen Hospice Project Guest House and her own aunt’s bedside as she died, paired with gentle advice from hospice caregivers on creating a positive sensory experience, acknowledging what you can’t control, and sharing memories and gratitude. A poignant guide to embracing the present and deepening relationships during great vulnerability, How to Say Goodbye shows that just as there is no one right way to live a good life, there is no one right way to say goodbye. Whether we’re confused, scared, or uncertain, this book is a starting point.]]> 128 Wendy MacNaughton 1639730850 Eric 5 4.23 How to Say Goodbye
author: Wendy MacNaughton
name: Eric
average rating: 4.23
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/04
date added: 2024/07/04
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket]]> 50548165 328 Benjamin Lorr 0553459392 Eric 4 3.94 2020 The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket
author: Benjamin Lorr
name: Eric
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/03
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves:
review:

]]> Kairos 62972496 294 Jenny Erpenbeck 0811229343 Eric 3 3.48 2021 Kairos
author: Jenny Erpenbeck
name: Eric
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/03
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves:
review:

]]> The Elementary Particles 58314 The Elementary Particles is a frighteningly original novel–part Marguerite Duras and part Bret Easton Ellis-that leaps headlong into the malaise of contemporary existence.

Bruno and Michel are half-brothers abandoned by their mother, an unabashed devotee of the drugged-out free-love world of the sixties. Bruno, the older, has become a raucously promiscuous hedonist himself, while Michel is an emotionally dead molecular biologist wholly immersed in the solitude of his work. Each is ultimately offered a final chance at genuine love, and what unfolds is a brilliantly caustic and unpredictable tale.]]> 272 Michel Houellebecq 0375727019 Eric 0 to-read 3.91 1998 The Elementary Particles
author: Michel Houellebecq
name: Eric
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Guest 61986136 A young woman pretends to be someone she isn't in this stunning novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls.

Summer is coming to a close on the East End of Long Island, and Alex is no longer welcome.

A misstep at a dinner party, and the older man she's been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city.

With few resources and a waterlogged phone, but gifted with an ability to navigate the desires of others, Alex stays on Long Island and drifts like a ghost through the hedged lanes, gated driveways, and sun-blasted dunes of a rarified world that is, at first, closed to her. Propelled by desperation and a mutable sense of morality, she spends the week leading up to Labor Day moving from one place to the next, a cipher leaving destruction in her wake.

Taut, propulsive, and impossible to look away from, Emma Cline's The Guest is a spellbinding literary achievement.]]> 304 Emma Cline 0812998626 Eric 3 (3.5 stars) 3.29 2023 The Guest
author: Emma Cline
name: Eric
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/16
date added: 2024/06/19
shelves:
review:
(3.5 stars)
]]> <![CDATA[There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension]]> 181346634
There’s Always This Year is a triumph, brimming with joy, pain, solidarity, comfort, outrage, and hope. No matter the subject of his keen focus—whether it's basketball, or music, or performance—Hanif Abdurraqib’s exquisite writing is always poetry, always profound, and always a clarion call to radically reimagine how we think about our culture, our country, and ourselves.]]> 334 Hanif Abdurraqib 0593448790 Eric 4
Easily Abdurraqib’s most ambitious book, incandescently written. But being a very non-sports fan, I found it harder to fully embrace as I have his other books. ]]> 4.32 2024 There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension
author: Hanif Abdurraqib
name: Eric
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/08
date added: 2024/06/08
shelves:
review:
(3.5 stars)

Easily Abdurraqib’s most ambitious book, incandescently written. But being a very non-sports fan, I found it harder to fully embrace as I have his other books.
]]> <![CDATA[Louis I. Kahn: The Last Notebook]]> 202099946 192 Louis I Kahn 303778752X Eric 0 4.00 Louis I. Kahn: The Last Notebook
author: Louis I Kahn
name: Eric
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/30
date added: 2024/05/30
shelves:
review:

]]> Year of the Monkey 44776548 Just Kids and M Train, a profound, beautifully realized memoir in which dreams and reality are vividly woven into a tapestry of one transformative year.

Following a run of New Year’s concerts at San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland with no design, yet heeding signs–including a talking sign that looms above her, prodding and sparring like the Cheshire Cat. In February, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing with it unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. In a stranger’s words, “Anything is possible: after all, it’s the Year of the Monkey.� For Smith–inveterately curious, always exploring, tracking thoughts, writing–the year evolves as one of reckoning with the changes in life’s gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America.

Smith melds the western landscape with her own dreamscape. Taking us from California to the Arizona desert; to a Kentucky farm as the amanuensis of a friend in crisis; to the hospital room of a valued mentor; and by turns to remembered and imagined places, this haunting memoir blends fact and fiction with poetic mastery. The unexpected happens; grief and disillusionment set in. But as Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the reader: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope for a better world.

Riveting, elegant, often humorous, illustrated by Smith’s signature Polaroids, Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times.]]> 171 Patti Smith 0525657681 Eric 4 3.81 2019 Year of the Monkey
author: Patti Smith
name: Eric
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/21
date added: 2024/05/21
shelves:
review:

]]> The Maniac 75665931 From one of contemporary literature’s most exciting new voices, a haunting story centered on the Hungarian polymath John von Neumann, tracing the impact of his singular legacy on the dreams and nightmares of the twentieth century and the nascent age of AI

Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Times� Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale.

A prodigy whose gifts terrified the people around him, John von Neumann transformed every field he touched, inventing game theory and the first programable computer, and pioneering AI, digital life, and cellular automata. Through a chorus of family members, friends, colleagues, and rivals, Labatut shows us the evolution of a mind unmatched and of a body of work that has unmoored the world in its wake.

The MANIAC places von Neumann at the center of a literary triptych that begins with Paul Ehrenfest, an Austrian physicist and friend of Einstein, who fell into despair when he saw science and technology become tyrannical forces; it ends a hundred years later, in the showdown between the South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol and the AI program AlphaGo, an encounter embodying the central question of von Neumann's most ambitious unfinished project: the creation of a self-reproducing machine, an intelligence able to evolve beyond human understanding or control.

A work of beauty and fabulous momentum, The MANIAC confronts us with the deepest questions we face as a species.]]> 368 Benjamín Labatut 0593654471 Eric 0 to-read 4.33 2023 The Maniac
author: Benjamín Labatut
name: Eric
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[When We Cease to Understand the World]]> 58191443
Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize and the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature

A fictional examination of the lives of real-life scientists and thinkers whose discoveries resulted in moral consequences beyond their imagining.

When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction.

Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger—these are some of luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the reader, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, alienate friends and lovers, descend into isolation and insanity. Some of their discoveries reshape human life for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear.

At a breakneck pace and with a wealth of disturbing detail, Labatut uses the imaginative resources of fiction to tell the stories of the scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible.]]> 192 Benjamín Labatut 1681375664 Eric 5 4.25 2020 When We Cease to Understand the World
author: Benjamín Labatut
name: Eric
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/20
date added: 2024/05/20
shelves:
review:
(4.5 stars) Think W.G. Sebald funneled through quantum mechanics.
]]> Miranda July 49971980
Regardless of the medium, July's daring, urgent, and idiosyncratic voice finds unexpectedly accessible forms that reflect the poignancy and strangeness of the human plight. In film, fiction, performance, public art, commerce, and even a smartphone app, July deftly explores themes of inclusivity, desire, fear, and fantasy. This chronological survey spans the artist's entire career to date, including her early plays and fanzines, participatory works, and personal projects which illuminate the multidimensionality and timeliness of her work.

Miranda July is brought to life in an introductory interview with Julia Bryan-Wilson and candid recollections by friends, collaborators, curators, assistants, and audience members: Carrie Brownstein, David Byrne, Spike Jonze, Sheila Heti, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and July herself. This revealing, insightful commentary provides an intimate perspective on the artist's ever-evolving process. July may be impossible to categorize, but the enduring importance of her work and her status as an essential cultural icon is irrefutable.]]> 224 Miranda July 3791385216 Eric 3 4.52 Miranda July
author: Miranda July
name: Eric
average rating: 4.52
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/16
date added: 2024/05/16
shelves:
review:

]]> The Sheltering Sky 760472 The Sheltering Sky is at once merciless and heartbreaking in its compassion. It etches the limits of human reason and intelligence -- perhaps even the limits of human life -- when they touch the unfathomable emptiness and impassive cruelty of the desert.]]> 335 Paul Bowles 0679729798 Eric 4 fiction 3.90 1949 The Sheltering Sky
author: Paul Bowles
name: Eric
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1949
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/16
date added: 2024/05/16
shelves: fiction
review:
Review here:
]]> Come and Get It 127482608
It's 2017 at the University of Arkansas. Millie Cousins, a senior resident assistant, wants to graduate, get a job, and buy a house. So when Agatha Paul, a visiting professor and writer, offers Millie an easy yet unusual opportunity, she jumps at the chance. But Millie's starry-eyed hustle becomes jeopardised by odd new friends, vengeful dorm pranks and illicit intrigue.

A fresh and intimate portrait of desire, consumption and reckless abandon, Come and Get It is a tension-filled story about money, indiscretion, and bad behavior.]]> 400 Kiley Reid 0593328205 Eric 0 to-read 3.32 2024 Come and Get It
author: Kiley Reid
name: Eric
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Logic of Images: Essays and Conversations]]> 981762 114 Wim Wenders 0571165176 Eric 4 film 3.96 1988 The Logic of Images: Essays and Conversations
author: Wim Wenders
name: Eric
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/11
date added: 2024/05/11
shelves: film
review:

]]> Art as Experience 37118911 379 John Dewey 1101667036 Eric 5 3.84 1934 Art as Experience
author: John Dewey
name: Eric
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1934
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/05/08
shelves:
review:

]]> The Idiot 35535660 A New York Times Book Review Notable Book

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction

"An addictive, sprawling epic; I wolfed it down."
--Miranda July, author of The First Bad Man and It Chooses You

"Easily the funniest book I've read this year."
-- GQ

A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself.

The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings.

At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan's friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin's summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer.

With superlative emotional and intellectual sensitivity, mordant wit, and pitch-perfect style, Batuman dramatizes the uncertainty of life on the cusp of adulthood. Her prose is a rare and inimitable combination of tenderness and wisdom; its logic as natural and inscrutable as that of memory itself. The Idiot is a heroic yet self-effacing reckoning with the terror and joy of becoming a person in a world that is as intoxicating as it is disquieting. Batuman's fiction is unguarded against both life's affronts and its beauty--and has at its command the complete range of thinking and feeling which they entail.

Named one the best books of the year by Refinery29 - Mashable One - Elle Magazine - The New York Times - Bookpage - Vogue - NPR - Buzzfeed -The Millions]]> 432 Elif Batuman 014311106X Eric 0 to-read 3.72 2017 The Idiot
author: Elif Batuman
name: Eric
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Gilead (Gilead, #1) 68210 Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson returns with an intimate tale of three generations, from the Civil War to the 20th century: a story about fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America's heart. In the words of Kirkus, it is a novel "as big as a nation, as quiet as thought, and moving as prayer. Matchless and towering." GILEAD tells the story of America and will break your heart.]]> 247 Marilynne Robinson 031242440X Eric 3 3.84 2004 Gilead (Gilead, #1)
author: Marilynne Robinson
name: Eric
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/28
date added: 2024/04/28
shelves:
review:
(3.5 stars. Review here: )
]]> No Judgment: Essays 75663718 288 Lauren Oyler 0063235358 Eric 0 to-read 3.29 2024 No Judgment: Essays
author: Lauren Oyler
name: Eric
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Graphic Events: A Realist Account of Graphic Design]]> 75675317 Graphic Events calls on graphic designers to embrace the uncertainty their designs face as they circulate in the world. It proposes that, rather than ignore the fact or to attempt to “solve� the problem, designers should play with this unpredictable process. This volume contains interviews with and essays by philosophers, graphic designers, photographers and artists, as well as a poem by Philip Larkin and an excerpt from a memoir by Patti Smith that engage with graphics in the real world.]]> 202 James Dyer 9493148661 Eric 3 4.00 Graphic Events: A Realist Account of Graphic Design
author: James Dyer
name: Eric
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/18
date added: 2024/04/18
shelves:
review:
Bewildering. Review here:
]]> Joan Didion: What She Means 63322751
In Joan Didion: What She Means, the writer and curator Hilton Als creates a mosaic that explores Didion's life and work and the feeling each generates in her admirers, detractors and critics.
Arranged chronologically, the book highlights Didion's fascination with the two coasts that made her. As a Westerner transplanted to New York, Didion was able to look at her native land, its mores and fixed rules of behavior, with the loving and critical eyes of a daughter who got out and went back. (Didion and her late husband moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1964, where they worked as highly successful screenwriters, producing scripts for 1971's The Panic in Needle Park and 1976's A Star Is Born, among other works, before returning to New York 20 years later.) And from her New York perch, Didion was able to observe the political scene more closely, writing trenchant pieces about Clinton, El Salvador and most searingly the Central Park Five. The book includes more than 50 artists ranging from Brice Marden and Ed Ruscha to Betye Saar, Vija Clemins and many others, with works in all mediums including painting, ephemera, photography, sculpture, video and film. Also included are three previously uncollected texts by Didion: “In Praise of Unhung Wreaths and Love� (1969); a much-excerpted 1975 commencement address at UC Riverside; and “The Year of Hoping for Stage Magic� (2007).]]> 128 Joan Didion 1636810578 Eric 4 4.38 Joan Didion: What She Means
author: Joan Didion
name: Eric
average rating: 4.38
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/13
date added: 2024/04/13
shelves:
review:

]]> Malina 42185902 Malina, originally published in German in 1971, Ingeborg Bachmann invites the reader into a world stretched to the very limits of language. An unnamed narrator, a writer in Vienna, is torn between two men: viewed through the tilting prism of obsession, she travels further into her own madness, anxiety, and genius. Malina explores love, “deathstyles,� the roots of fascism, and passion.

"Fascism is the first thing in the relationship between a man and a woman, and I attempted to say that here in this society there is always war. There isn’t war and peace, there’s only war."—Ingeborg Bachmann]]> 283 Ingeborg Bachmann 081122872X Eric 2 4.16 1971 Malina
author: Ingeborg Bachmann
name: Eric
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1971
rating: 2
read at: 2024/04/13
date added: 2024/04/13
shelves:
review:
(2.5 stars. Review here: )
]]> <![CDATA[People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present]]> 56769532 Auschwitz, the marketing of the Jewish history of Harbin, China, and the little-known life of the "righteous Gentile" Varian Fry. Throughout, she challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present.

Horn draws upon her travels, her research, and also her own family life—trying to explain Shakespeare’s Shylock to a curious ten-year-old, her anger when swastikas are drawn on desks in her children’s school, the profound perspective offered by traditional religious practice and study—to assert the vitality, complexity, and depth of Jewish life against an antisemitism that, far from being disarmed by the mantra of "Never forget," is on the rise. As Horn explores the (not so) shocking attacks on the American Jewish community in recent years, she reveals the subtler dehumanization built into the public piety that surrounds the Jewish past—making the radical argument that the benign reverence we give to past horrors is itself a profound affront to human dignity.]]> 237 Dara Horn 0393531562 Eric 4 4.34 2021 People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present
author: Dara Horn
name: Eric
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/08
date added: 2024/04/08
shelves:
review:
(3.75 stars. Review here: )
]]> <![CDATA[The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man]]> 345500 The Sabbath has been hailed as a classic of Jewish spirituality ever since its original publication-and has been read by thousands of people seeking meaning in modern life.
In this brief yet profound meditation on the meaning of the Seventh Day, Heschel introduced the idea of an "architecture of holiness" that appears not in space but in time. Judaism, he argues, is a religion of time: it finds meaning not in space and the material things that fill it but in time and the eternity that imbues it, so that "the Sabbaths are our great cathedrals."]]> 118 Abraham Joshua Heschel 0374529752 Eric 3 4.37 1951 The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man
author: Abraham Joshua Heschel
name: Eric
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1951
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/02
date added: 2024/04/02
shelves:
review:

]]> My Struggle: Book 2 18490588 "[Book 2] sears the reader because Knausgaard is a passionate idealist [who] wants to fight the conformity and homogeneity of modern bourgeois existence." —James Wood, The New Yorker

In the second installment of Karl Ove Knausgaard's monumental six-volume masterpiece, the character Karl Ove Knausgaard moves to Stockholm, where, having left his wife, he leads a solitary existence. He strikes up a deep friendship with another exiled Norwegian, a Nietzschean intellectual and boxing fanatic named Geir. He also tracks down Linda, whom he met at a writers' workshop a few years earlier and who fascinated him deeply.

My Struggle: Book 2 is at heart a love story—the story of Karl Ove falling in love with his second wife. But the novel also tells other stories: of becoming a father, of the turbulence of family life, of outrageously unsuccessful attempts at a family vacation, of the emotional strain of birthday parties for children, and of the daily frustrations, rhythms, and distractions of city life keeping him from (and filling) his novel.

It is a brilliant work that emphatically delivers on the unlikely promise that many hundreds of pages later readers will be left breathlessly demanding more.]]> 592 Karl Ove Knausgård 0374534152 Eric 4 4.42 2009 My Struggle: Book 2
author: Karl Ove Knausgård
name: Eric
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/30
date added: 2024/03/30
shelves:
review:
(4.25 stars. Review here: )
]]> Palestine 769712 Safe Area Gorazde: The War In Eastern Bosnia 1992-1995—Joe Sacco's breakthrough novel of graphic journalism—the acclaimed author was best known for Palestine, a two-volume graphic novel that won an American Book Award in 1996.

Fantagraphics Books is pleased to present the first single-volume collection of this landmark of journalism and the art form of comics.

Based on several months of research and an extended visit to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s (where he conducted over 100 interviews with Palestinians and Jews), Palestine was the first major comics work of political and historical nonfiction by Sacco, whose name has since become synonymous with this graphic form of New Journalism. Like Safe Area Gorazde, Palestine has been favorably compared to Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus for its ability to brilliantly navigate such socially and politically sensitive subject matter within the confines of the comic book medium.

Sacco has often been called the first comic book journalist, and he is certainly the best. This edition of Palestine also features an introduction from renowned author, critic, and historian Edward Said (Peace and Its Discontents and The Question of Palestine), one of the world's most respected authorities on the Middle Eastern conflict.

]]> 288 Joe Sacco 156097432X Eric 5 4.23 1996 Palestine
author: Joe Sacco
name: Eric
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/23
date added: 2024/03/23
shelves:
review:
4.5 stars. Review here:
]]>