Posts tagged as "book"

The Polysyllabic Spree 29
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell is a rare example of a contemporary novel that, upon learning of its existence and its apparent excellence from various media outlets or through word-of-mouth, I’d be absolutely willing to shell out good money (or a couple gift certificates, as it were) for. I’d set out to have it as soon as possible. I’d keep my eyes peeled for any sign of its availability in local shops. I’d grab a copy the moment I see one… or put off buying it until the first day of the month-long markdown of a popular bookstore chain. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell is Read Hard! Book Club’s selection for the most part of August, and you’d do well to join us and join in the fun: Not for the first time, we apologize for the delay in announcement. We knew full well that the slated end of our A Clockwork Orange discussion was a couple of days ago. We should have announced the theme and the candidates for our next round by then, but something came up while Zet, Carina, and I, having picked a new theme, were in the process of choosing which titles to put up for voting. That something was this, the Man Booker Prize 2010 Longlist. We perused the impressive list and, after much cajoling involving a positive review by the Dave Eggers and a sort of report on the relative accessibility of the longlisted books, we decided to suspend voting by Read Hard! members and we instead unanimously voted for David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (click for synopsis and author bio) to be the fifth Read Hard! Book Club selection.  We hope you don’t mind our taking matters into our own hands, so to speak. After hearing a lot of good things about Mitchell’s latest novel, we’ve grown confident that it will make for a great read and that you’ll end up thanking us for recommending it. Hah! So, please grab a copy of the book, available in both hardcover and trade paperback editions, and join us as we spend the first three weeks of August—that’s from Sunday, August 1, to Saturday, August 21—reading and discussing The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.  [reblogged from readhard]

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell is a rare example of a contemporary novel that, upon learning of its existence and its apparent excellence from various media outlets or through word-of-mouth, I’d be absolutely willing to shell out good money (or a couple gift certificates, as it were) for. I’d set out to have it as soon as possible. I’d keep my eyes peeled for any sign of its availability in local shops. I’d grab a copy the moment I see one… or put off buying it until the first day of the month-long markdown of a popular bookstore chain.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell is Read Hard! Book Club’s selection for the most part of August, and you’d do well to join us and join in the fun:

Not for the first time, we apologize for the delay in announcement. We knew full well that the slated end of our A Clockwork Orange discussion was a couple of days ago. We should have announced the theme and the candidates for our next round by then, but something came up while Zet, Carina, and I, having picked a new theme, were in the process of choosing which titles to put up for voting. That something was this, the Man Booker Prize 2010 Longlist.

We perused the impressive list and, after much cajoling involving a positive review by the Dave Eggers and a sort of report on the relative accessibility of the longlisted books, we decided to suspend voting by Read Hard! members and we instead unanimously voted for David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (click for synopsis and author bio) to be the fifth Read Hard! Book Club selection. 

We hope you don’t mind our taking matters into our own hands, so to speak. After hearing a lot of good things about Mitchell’s latest novel, we’ve grown confident that it will make for a great read and that you’ll end up thanking us for recommending it. Hah! So, please grab a copy of the book, available in both hardcover and trade paperback editions, and join us as we spend the first three weeks of August—that’s from Sunday, August 1, to Saturday, August 21—reading and discussing The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. 

[reblogged from readhard]

31 July 2010 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/880150790

The Polysyllabic Spree 7
The Other Side of Desire: Four Journeys into the Realms of Lust and Longing by Daniel Bergner In his acclaimed nonfiction book released in 1999, New York-based journalist Daniel Bergner details his stay in a penal institution in Louisiana, where he met and became friends with six inmates serving a life sentence. Using the penitentiary’s annual rodeo competition as a framing device, the award-winning writer recounts his experiences with his incarcerated subjects as he discovers that underneath the serious crimes that led them to the largest maximum-security prison in America each of them is still very much a person and not a mere prototype of a bad guy in a crime TV series. Bergner’s year-long self-imposed sojourn within the prison’s walls ultimately resulted in the publication of God of the Rodeo, a book that evinced both the author’s propensity for compelling narrative and his deference to the plight of others—qualities which he would exhibit again a decade later in another well-written work of nonfiction called The Other Side of Desire.  At once bold and captivating, The Other Side of Desire is an anthology of psychological nonfiction that could very well be God of the Rodeo’s identical twin. In this new book, the real-life protagonists are also prisoners, but they are of a different kind: they are prisoners of lust and its promise of ecstasy. The book, four years in the making, comprises four episodes of Bergner’s encounters with four individuals who are affected by different modes of fascinating, if bizarre, psychosexual conditions. Known in psychiatric parlance as paraphilias and often, but disputably, classified as sexual disorders, the conditions discussed in length in The Other Side of Desire include atypical patterns of behavior that when exposed are sure to cause raised eyebrows and turned stomachs, body parts that, while no doubt responsive, are not what Bergner sets out to elicit reactions from. As made evident as early as in the book’s introductory pages, he is after the reader’s heart and mind.  Each of the four intriguingly titled chapters in the book sees Bergner juggling between telling, fly-on-the-wall style, the interesting and at times surprisingly inspiring story of a paraphiliac person and presenting scientific information that seeks to clarify the mystery surrounding that person’s unusual condition as well as the varying proclivities of other similarly affected people. In the opening chapter called The Phantom of the Opera, Bergner introduces Jacob, a traveling salesman who has a deep-seated fetish for feet, endowing him with the ability to reach orgasm within seconds and without touching at the sight of a pair of what he refers to as “platypus feet,” with “toes [that] formed a perfect staircase.” In the next chapter, The Beacon, The Baroness, fashion designer by day and female sadist with a pronounced preference for “the topography of lacerations” by night, the author (and by extension, the reader) is made privy to her sado-masochistic sessions with her numerous slaves. The penultimate episode, The Water’s Edge, brings to mind Vladimir Nabokov’s Humbert and Lolita as it focuses on Roy, a band performer turned pedophile, arrested for harassing her eleven-year-old stepdaughter. Finally, in The Devotee, an advertising executive named Ron shares how he lives with his odd and highly selective erotic attraction towards amputees.  These stories of real people who happen to possess inclinations that are perhaps no less strange than the wish of some persons to buy a piece of celebrity memorabilia at a ridiculously high price are interspersed with reports of Bergner’s research and interviews with experts in the study of sex, that force which is nothing if not “a powerful, biologically based appetite.” In his attempt to pinpoint the provenance of desire, Bergner talked with a number of renowned scientists and psychiatrists, including the personal therapists of the four protagonists of his book. Not surprisingly, the bits of information he gathered from his research and correspondence with the PhD-wielding authorities resulted in another long and winding battle between nature and nurture, a seemingly endless tennis match between heredity and environment. Taking the case of Jacob for example, I could easily come up with a series of questions in relation to the classic debate: Was Jacob somehow hard-wired to feel extreme sexual interest towards feet while still in his mother’s womb, perhaps causing the absence of an enzyme that would trigger this abnormality? Or was it his habit of looking down when asked a difficult question in grade school, evading the humiliating stares of his classmates and admiring their feet instead, that caused his fetish? And how come one man’s craving for feet is considered abasing and another man’s attraction towards breasts, buttocks, legs, or napes isn’t? Is a sexual “disorder” a mere product of society and its established norms? How does Jacob cope with his problem? Will he ever be able to completely contain such a strong desire? Does he even have to?  Although the book is filled with informative and thought-provoking disciplinary statements and most of its paragraphs are punctuated with interesting bits of trivia, probably the most memorable being the existence of a tribe in Papua New Guinea where fellatio between an adult male and a young boy is traditionally encouraged, I finished The Other Book of Desire feeling a slight sense of not knowing the answers to all the questions posed by the author, much less to the ones that swam in my head while reading it. However, I also felt a seldom experienced sense of fellowship, inevitably established after having read about the lives of Jacob, The Baroness, Roy, and Ron, not because I could relate to their unusual desires but simply because I could relate to their humanity. Bergner immersed himself in the world of these paraphiliacs, who I should point out are all human beings lest somebody forget or think otherwise, let them be seen in a new light, and wrote about them with such sensitivity that I gradually developed nonjudgmental empathy towards these individuals who are no more prisoners of desire, sexual and otherwise, than you and I.  — The Other Side of Desire is available at Fully Booked, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City.

The Other Side of Desire: Four Journeys into the Realms of Lust and Longing
by Daniel Bergner

In his acclaimed nonfiction book released in 1999, New York-based journalist Daniel Bergner details his stay in a penal institution in Louisiana, where he met and became friends with six inmates serving a life sentence. Using the penitentiary’s annual rodeo competition as a framing device, the award-winning writer recounts his experiences with his incarcerated subjects as he discovers that underneath the serious crimes that led them to the largest maximum-security prison in America each of them is still very much a person and not a mere prototype of a bad guy in a crime TV series. Bergner’s year-long self-imposed sojourn within the prison’s walls ultimately resulted in the publication of God of the Rodeo, a book that evinced both the author’s propensity for compelling narrative and his deference to the plight of others—qualities which he would exhibit again a decade later in another well-written work of nonfiction called The Other Side of Desire. 

At once bold and captivating, The Other Side of Desire is an anthology of psychological nonfiction that could very well be God of the Rodeo’s identical twin. In this new book, the real-life protagonists are also prisoners, but they are of a different kind: they are prisoners of lust and its promise of ecstasy. The book, four years in the making, comprises four episodes of Bergner’s encounters with four individuals who are affected by different modes of fascinating, if bizarre, psychosexual conditions. Known in psychiatric parlance as paraphilias and often, but disputably, classified as sexual disorders, the conditions discussed in length in The Other Side of Desire include atypical patterns of behavior that when exposed are sure to cause raised eyebrows and turned stomachs, body parts that, while no doubt responsive, are not what Bergner sets out to elicit reactions from. As made evident as early as in the book’s introductory pages, he is after the reader’s heart and mind. 

Each of the four intriguingly titled chapters in the book sees Bergner juggling between telling, fly-on-the-wall style, the interesting and at times surprisingly inspiring story of a paraphiliac person and presenting scientific information that seeks to clarify the mystery surrounding that person’s unusual condition as well as the varying proclivities of other similarly affected people. In the opening chapter called The Phantom of the Opera, Bergner introduces Jacob, a traveling salesman who has a deep-seated fetish for feet, endowing him with the ability to reach orgasm within seconds and without touching at the sight of a pair of what he refers to as “platypus feet,” with “toes [that] formed a perfect staircase.” In the next chapter, The Beacon, The Baroness, fashion designer by day and female sadist with a pronounced preference for “the topography of lacerations” by night, the author (and by extension, the reader) is made privy to her sado-masochistic sessions with her numerous slaves. The penultimate episode, The Water’s Edge, brings to mind Vladimir Nabokov’s Humbert and Lolita as it focuses on Roy, a band performer turned pedophile, arrested for harassing her eleven-year-old stepdaughter. Finally, in The Devotee, an advertising executive named Ron shares how he lives with his odd and highly selective erotic attraction towards amputees. 

These stories of real people who happen to possess inclinations that are perhaps no less strange than the wish of some persons to buy a piece of celebrity memorabilia at a ridiculously high price are interspersed with reports of Bergner’s research and interviews with experts in the study of sex, that force which is nothing if not “a powerful, biologically based appetite.” In his attempt to pinpoint the provenance of desire, Bergner talked with a number of renowned scientists and psychiatrists, including the personal therapists of the four protagonists of his book. Not surprisingly, the bits of information he gathered from his research and correspondence with the PhD-wielding authorities resulted in another long and winding battle between nature and nurture, a seemingly endless tennis match between heredity and environment. Taking the case of Jacob for example, I could easily come up with a series of questions in relation to the classic debate: Was Jacob somehow hard-wired to feel extreme sexual interest towards feet while still in his mother’s womb, perhaps causing the absence of an enzyme that would trigger this abnormality? Or was it his habit of looking down when asked a difficult question in grade school, evading the humiliating stares of his classmates and admiring their feet instead, that caused his fetish? And how come one man’s craving for feet is considered abasing and another man’s attraction towards breasts, buttocks, legs, or napes isn’t? Is a sexual “disorder” a mere product of society and its established norms? How does Jacob cope with his problem? Will he ever be able to completely contain such a strong desire? Does he even have to? 

Although the book is filled with informative and thought-provoking disciplinary statements and most of its paragraphs are punctuated with interesting bits of trivia, probably the most memorable being the existence of a tribe in Papua New Guinea where fellatio between an adult male and a young boy is traditionally encouraged, I finished The Other Book of Desire feeling a slight sense of not knowing the answers to all the questions posed by the author, much less to the ones that swam in my head while reading it. However, I also felt a seldom experienced sense of fellowship, inevitably established after having read about the lives of Jacob, The Baroness, Roy, and Ron, not because I could relate to their unusual desires but simply because I could relate to their humanity. Bergner immersed himself in the world of these paraphiliacs, who I should point out are all human beings lest somebody forget or think otherwise, let them be seen in a new light, and wrote about them with such sensitivity that I gradually developed nonjudgmental empathy towards these individuals who are no more prisoners of desire, sexual and otherwise, than you and I. 

—
The Other Side of Desire is available at Fully Booked, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City.

30 July 2010 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/877098385

The Polysyllabic Spree 20
There was no instance of precipitation today, so here’s a light hail of bullets. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky  Cities in Flight by James Blish  The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer  You Don’t Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem  Summerland by Michael Chabon  House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski  Youth in Revolt by C.D. Payne  There was no instance of precipitation today, but at around five this morning a flash flood swept through our apartment. We live in the fourth floor. A couple of months ago I posted a picture of most of the books I’ve acquired since I moved here in Metro Manila three years ago. It shows a collection of titles which more or less assumes the role of a to-be-read pile, and it’s quite a lovely photo, if I must say so myself, my low-resolution iPhone camera notwithstanding. Here it is again:  In the paragraph accompanying this two-month-old photo of my shelf-deprived books in the original post, I wrote that I intended to “move them to higher ground,” like inside “the cupboard above the kitchen sink,” since they were “poorly arranged along a narrow corridor leading to the bathroom.” Being a man of my word, I did relocate some of them, particularly the ones in the arbitrarily chosen second and fourth stacks. The first, third, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth stacks were, rather carelessly, left behind and, last night before I and my flat-mates went to bed, were left at the mercy of the bathroom and the impressive wetness it could bring about. And bring about wetness it did. Last night, a few minutes before midnight, our water supply was cut off. Then one of us had the brilliant idea of going to the bathroom right before he went to sleep, opening one of the faucets in the bathroom, and, after seeing that there’s no water coming out of its spout, blissfully forgetting to turn its handle screw back to the off position. Four hours later the water supply was restored and water started escaping from the faucet in question. The kitchen floor must have been flooded in a matter of minutes. It wasn’t until an hour had passed since the first drop of many came out that we got our “kick” (You didn’t think I’d post about sleeping without mentioning at least one Inception reference, did you?) and got surprised by the sight of all the wetness, whose essence is moisture and which in turn is the essence of beauty (You didn’t think I’d post about an abundance of tap water without mentioning at least one Zoolander reference, did you? You did? Oh.), around us. Instinctively, I dashed to where my books were, towards the “narrow corridor leading to the bathroom,” and I heaved a sigh of relief when I saw that only a portion of the bottom books, listed and pictured with the wetness-absorbing Spongebob above, were out of sight and under water.  I have since apologized to these ill-fated books, caressed their covers and flaps, and blew their pages dry to some extent. I have also promised to read them one after another as soon as they regain every ounce of their non-wetness, or else I cease to be a man of my word.

There was no instance of precipitation today, so here’s a light hail of bullets.

There was no instance of precipitation today, but at around five this morning a flash flood swept through our apartment. We live in the fourth floor.

A couple of months ago I posted a picture of most of the books I’ve acquired since I moved here in Metro Manila three years ago. It shows a collection of titles which more or less assumes the role of a to-be-read pile, and it’s quite a lovely photo, if I must say so myself, my low-resolution iPhone camera notwithstanding. Here it is again: 

In the paragraph accompanying this two-month-old photo of my shelf-deprived books in the original post, I wrote that I intended to “move them to higher ground,” like inside “the cupboard above the kitchen sink,” since they were “poorly arranged along a narrow corridor leading to the bathroom.” Being a man of my word, I did relocate some of them, particularly the ones in the arbitrarily chosen second and fourth stacks. The first, third, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth stacks were, rather carelessly, left behind and, last night before I and my flat-mates went to bed, were left at the mercy of the bathroom and the impressive wetness it could bring about.

And bring about wetness it did. Last night, a few minutes before midnight, our water supply was cut off. Then one of us had the brilliant idea of going to the bathroom right before he went to sleep, opening one of the faucets in the bathroom, and, after seeing that there’s no water coming out of its spout, blissfully forgetting to turn its handle screw back to the off position. Four hours later the water supply was restored and water started escaping from the faucet in question. The kitchen floor must have been flooded in a matter of minutes. It wasn’t until an hour had passed since the first drop of many came out that we got our “kick” (You didn’t think I’d post about sleeping without mentioning at least one Inception reference, did you?) and got surprised by the sight of all the wetness, whose essence is moisture and which in turn is the essence of beauty (You didn’t think I’d post about an abundance of tap water without mentioning at least one Zoolander reference, did you? You did? Oh.), around us.

Instinctively, I dashed to where my books were, towards the “narrow corridor leading to the bathroom,” and I heaved a sigh of relief when I saw that only a portion of the bottom books, listed and pictured with the wetness-absorbing Spongebob above, were out of sight and under water. 

I have since apologized to these ill-fated books, caressed their covers and flaps, and blew their pages dry to some extent. I have also promised to read them one after another as soon as they regain every ounce of their non-wetness, or else I cease to be a man of my word.

27 July 2010 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/866448493

The Polysyllabic Spree 19
We just wrapped up a round of bookfaces, quotes, thoughts, and reviews on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby at Read Hard!, and now we’re moving on to another classic. This time we’re taking a stab at a modern one made into a celebrated film by none other than Stanley Kubrick. It’s not Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey nor is it Stephen King’s The Shining. It’s Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, which beat out Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Lois Lowry’s The Giver as Read Hard! members’ choice of dystopian novel to be pulled off the shelves for our little online discussion. This puts the number of my currently-reading books to a formidable five: Personal Days by Ed Park. Take a look at the Amazon page of Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End and you’ll see this as one of the books that most people who bought Ferris’s wonderful novel also bought. I can see why. It’s funny, it’s smart, and it’s about people like me. The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan. I’ve been reading this for so long that the phrase, “currently reading,” may not be applicable anymore. It’s basically Percy Jackson minus Percy Jackson plus a lot of weird Egyptians. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Today is the 19th of July, so I’ll be re-reading Chapter 19 tonight. The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. The only book I’m always currently reading. Besides The Catcher in the Rye, of course. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. I’ve had my minimalist copy for months. I accidentally purchased it at 80% off during a big sale in a big bookstore late last year. It wasn’t supposed to be discounted, but I bought it together with armloads of books on bargain and the poor cashier mistook it for one of them. Lucky me, I guess. And speaking of so-unbelievably-priced-off-they’re-as-good-as-free books, here’s round two of my Powerbooks Power Sale book loot bullet points: The Clothes They Stood Up In by Alan Bennett. Yes, this is indeed one half of the two-books-in-one The Clothes They Stood Up In and The Lady in the Van that I bought during round one. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. Well, duh. Prelude by Katherine Mansfield. Virgina Woolf on Mansfield: “I was jealous of her writing—the only writing I have been jealous of.” Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. I’m inclined to buy physical copies of novels which are readily available in the public domain only if I like their covers. Bite me. Clark Gifford’s Body by Kenneth Fearing. My first ever New York Review Books Classics novel. Morte D’Urban by J.F. Powers. My second New York Review Books Classics novel. The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder. Don has promised to give me his copy, the same edition as this one, and I’ve also found a smaller, older edition a couple of weeks before, but I still ended up buying this. Sue me. Love-Lies-Bleeding by Don DeLillo. I am not a huge fan of Mr. DeLillo, remember? The Elected Member by Bernice Rubens. This novel’s cover looks Kafkaesque, but pleasingly so. And the book’s a Man Booker Prize winner. Sounds important. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster. Another TIME 100 novel, but it’s one I am almost certain I won’t read anyway on account of its daunting length and yawn-inspiring title. Attention. Deficit. Disorder. by Brad Listi. Yes. Where was I? Citizen Vince by Jess Walter. My second copy of probably the only piece of crime fiction that I greatly enjoyed. I intend to give it away. Any takers?

We just wrapped up a round of bookfaces, quotes, thoughts, and reviews on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby at Read Hard!, and now we’re moving on to another classic. This time we’re taking a stab at a modern one made into a celebrated film by none other than Stanley Kubrick. It’s not Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey nor is it Stephen King’s The Shining. It’s Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, which beat out Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Lois Lowry’s The Giver as Read Hard! members’ choice of dystopian novel to be pulled off the shelves for our little online discussion. This puts the number of my currently-reading books to a formidable five:

  • Personal Days by Ed Park. Take a look at the Amazon page of Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End and you’ll see this as one of the books that most people who bought Ferris’s wonderful novel also bought. I can see why. It’s funny, it’s smart, and it’s about people like me.
  • The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan. I’ve been reading this for so long that the phrase, “currently reading,” may not be applicable anymore. It’s basically Percy Jackson minus Percy Jackson plus a lot of weird Egyptians.
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Today is the 19th of July, so I’ll be re-reading Chapter 19 tonight.
  • The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. The only book I’m always currently reading. Besides The Catcher in the Rye, of course.
  • A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. I’ve had my minimalist copy for months. I accidentally purchased it at 80% off during a big sale in a big bookstore late last year. It wasn’t supposed to be discounted, but I bought it together with armloads of books on bargain and the poor cashier mistook it for one of them. Lucky me, I guess.

And speaking of so-unbelievably-priced-off-they’re-as-good-as-free books, here’s round two of my Powerbooks Power Sale book loot bullet points:

  • The Clothes They Stood Up In by Alan Bennett. Yes, this is indeed one half of the two-books-in-one The Clothes They Stood Up In and The Lady in the Van that I bought during round one.
  • Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. Well, duh.
  • Prelude by Katherine Mansfield. Virgina Woolf on Mansfield: “I was jealous of her writing—the only writing I have been jealous of.”
  • Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. I’m inclined to buy physical copies of novels which are readily available in the public domain only if I like their covers. Bite me.
  • Clark Gifford’s Body by Kenneth Fearing. My first ever New York Review Books Classics novel.
  • Morte D’Urban by J.F. Powers. My second New York Review Books Classics novel.
  • The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder. Don has promised to give me his copy, the same edition as this one, and I’ve also found a smaller, older edition a couple of weeks before, but I still ended up buying this. Sue me.
  • Love-Lies-Bleeding by Don DeLillo. I am not a huge fan of Mr. DeLillo, remember?
  • The Elected Member by Bernice Rubens. This novel’s cover looks Kafkaesque, but pleasingly so. And the book’s a Man Booker Prize winner. Sounds important.
  • A Passage to India by E.M. Forster. Another TIME 100 novel, but it’s one I am almost certain I won’t read anyway on account of its daunting length and yawn-inspiring title.
  • Attention. Deficit. Disorder. by Brad Listi. Yes. Where was I?
  • Citizen Vince by Jess Walter. My second copy of probably the only piece of crime fiction that I greatly enjoyed. I intend to give it away. Any takers?

19 July 2010 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/832379124

The Polysyllabic Spree 27
Not only is today the one day in David Nicholls’s bestselling novel, One Day, in which two star-crossed lovers (soon to be played by Jim Sturgess and Anne Hathaway in a film adaptation directed by An Education’s Lone Sherfig) meet every July 15 from 1988 through 2007, it is also the start of Powerbooks’s out-of-nowhere month-long Power Sale.  The promotional materials warn potential buyers of “blow-you-away prices.” Guess what. They’re not kidding. From now until August 15, customers of the specialty bookstore can avail of selected books with discounts of up to 80%, a fancy percentage which practically translates to a special “This copy only: P49.95” price tag on a number of titles, including these books I had the good fortune of finding not two hours ago.  Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. I couldn’t find a copy of Mitchell’s most popular novel, Cloud Atlas, and at only 20% off, the hardcover edition of his latest, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, is still too expensive for my purchasing power, so I settled for this paperback instead, which I gather is also among his best works.  Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid by Lemony Snicket. “Life is a turbulent journey, fraught with confusion, heartbreak, and inconvenience. This book will not help.” Sold.  Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus by Alexander Pope and John Arbuthnot. I like that this is a satire of pseudo-intellectualism co-written by the author of the famous line, “Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind,” but not nearly as much as I like that its title is, at least to me, delightfully reminiscent of James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. End Zone and Valparaiso by Don DeLillo. I am not a huge fan of Mr. DeLillo. Heck, no.  Bullet Points by Mark Watson. With a blurb by Stephen Fry (“Woody Allen and William Boyd have a bastard love-child and his name is Mark Watson.”) and a cover illustration by Tom Gauld (as recognizably quirky as any of his works on several books by the late Jose Saramago), this book earned its own bullet point in this post even before I read its title.  Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. Lackluster title. Misleading name for a male author. One of TIME’s 100 Greatest Novels of All Time. I’ll be the judge of that.  How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton. I have never read a page written by Marcel Proust in my entire quarter-century of existence. Perhaps I never will. For one thing, his most famous work, In Search of Lost Time, reportedly has one-and-a-quarter-million words. I think I’d rather read Mr. Botton’s edifying words, which I guesstimate in this book are far fewer than in Mr. Proust’s masterpiece, for now.  The Clothes They Stood Up In and The Lady in the Van by Alan Bennett. Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader was brilliant. This is simply me making like the protagonist of that book.  How to Read a Novel: A User’s Guide by John Sutherland. Supposedly for optimum enjoyment of all of the above.

Not only is today the one day in David Nicholls’s bestselling novel, One Day, in which two star-crossed lovers (soon to be played by Jim Sturgess and Anne Hathaway in a film adaptation directed by An Education’s Lone Sherfig) meet every July 15 from 1988 through 2007, it is also the start of Powerbooks’s out-of-nowhere month-long Power Sale. 

The promotional materials warn potential buyers of “blow-you-away prices.” Guess what. They’re not kidding. From now until August 15, customers of the specialty bookstore can avail of selected books with discounts of up to 80%, a fancy percentage which practically translates to a special “This copy only: P49.95” price tag on a number of titles, including these books I had the good fortune of finding not two hours ago. 

  • Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. I couldn’t find a copy of Mitchell’s most popular novel, Cloud Atlas, and at only 20% off, the hardcover edition of his latest, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, is still too expensive for my purchasing power, so I settled for this paperback instead, which I gather is also among his best works. 
  • Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid by Lemony Snicket. “Life is a turbulent journey, fraught with confusion, heartbreak, and inconvenience. This book will not help.” Sold. 
  • Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus by Alexander Pope and John Arbuthnot. I like that this is a satire of pseudo-intellectualism co-written by the author of the famous line, “Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind,” but not nearly as much as I like that its title is, at least to me, delightfully reminiscent of James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.
  • End Zone and Valparaiso by Don DeLillo. I am not a huge fan of Mr. DeLillo. Heck, no. 
  • Bullet Points by Mark Watson. With a blurb by Stephen Fry (“Woody Allen and William Boyd have a bastard love-child and his name is Mark Watson.”) and a cover illustration by Tom Gauld (as recognizably quirky as any of his works on several books by the late Jose Saramago), this book earned its own bullet point in this post even before I read its title. 
  • Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. Lackluster title. Misleading name for a male author. One of TIME’s 100 Greatest Novels of All Time. I’ll be the judge of that. 
  • How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton. I have never read a page written by Marcel Proust in my entire quarter-century of existence. Perhaps I never will. For one thing, his most famous work, In Search of Lost Time, reportedly has one-and-a-quarter-million words. I think I’d rather read Mr. Botton’s edifying words, which I guesstimate in this book are far fewer than in Mr. Proust’s masterpiece, for now. 
  • The Clothes They Stood Up In and The Lady in the Van by Alan Bennett. Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader was brilliant. This is simply me making like the protagonist of that book. 
  • How to Read a Novel: A User’s Guide by John Sutherland. Supposedly for optimum enjoyment of all of the above.

15 July 2010 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/815512523

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I'm Aldrin, and when I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes and movie tickets and iPhone apps and still more books. Hello, I'm Aldrin, and I'm almost always broke. More...

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