Posts tagged bookface

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?

readhard

We’re currently reading (and posting lovely pictures of ourselves with our copies of) The Great Gatsby for Read Hard. Care to join us?  My copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby features a detail of The Evening, a painting by Delphin Enjolras, on its front cover. (I know that because the book says so on the back.) The book is one of the “budget editions” from the Penguin Popular Classics series of “the greatest works of literature.”  When Penguin declared the books in the series as “budget editions,” they weren’t kidding. I bought The Great Gatsby for only P99 (roughly $2). And when Penguin referred to the books in the series as “the greatest works of literature,” they also weren’t kidding. Aside from The Great Gatsby, among the many novels released in the Penguin Popular Classics line are Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and Fryodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, all of which I have graciously bought (each costs only P99, remember?) but have not yet read. I’m starting with The Great Gatsby.

We’re currently reading (and posting lovely pictures of ourselves with our copies of) The Great Gatsby for Read Hard. Care to join us? 

My copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby features a detail of The Evening, a painting by Delphin Enjolras, on its front cover. (I know that because the book says so on the back.) The book is one of the “budget editions” from the Penguin Popular Classics series of “the greatest works of literature.” 

When Penguin declared the books in the series as “budget editions,” they weren’t kidding. I bought The Great Gatsby for only P99 (roughly $2). And when Penguin referred to the books in the series as “the greatest works of literature,” they also weren’t kidding. Aside from The Great Gatsby, among the many novels released in the Penguin Popular Classics line are Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and Fryodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, all of which I have graciously bought (each costs only P99, remember?) but have not yet read. I’m starting with The Great Gatsby.

readhard

I was about to head to Eastwood last night to see what I could score at Fully Booked, where books were, yet again, at 20% off, when Don rang me up and asked me to join him and Jansen for some pizza at the Shang. I was a bit reluctant at first to postpone my book-buying binge, but pizza with a couple of feral but very good friends was just impossible to pass up (that the pizza was going to be free made it so).  About thirty minutes later I was at a table with the two, in front of several slices of California-style pizza. The pizza was good, but the concomitant chat was better. In between talking about our jobs and Lost, we of course talked about Tumblr, that place where we got to know one another and the inspiration to the faux logo shirt I was wearing last night.  After discussing our plans (or the complete lack thereof) for our collaborative Tumblr film blog and flinching at the mention of a certain tumblelog filled with blind items (an exercise in poor taste), we eventually arrived at the subject of Zet’s just founded Read Hard! Tumblr book club. I said I’d submit a photo of my ugly face beside my copy of Everything is Illuminated, Read Hard’s first selection, and here it is. Everything is blurred, but that cover actually reads: Everything Is Illuminated Jonathan Safran Foer a novel While I’m a huge fan of gray318’s iconic book cover design, I got this limited Olive Reader edition instead not only because it’s the only copy of the novel I found when I went looking for it around the metro last year but also because its cover design was done by another favorite artist of mine, Milan Bozic. Also, it’s a tribute to Safran Foer’s nascent genius that his novel was included in this limited series of paperbacks, in the company of such great works as Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.  Lest I forget, I’ll still be participating in the Ilustrado online book club that I mentioned previously. I imagine it’ll be interesting to read both novels alongside each other, what with the parallels that can be drawn between the two, stylistically and thematically. For starters, the narrators in both novels were named after their respective authors. Also, the cover for the locally distibuted editon of Ilustrado was designed by none other than gray318. Then there’s the use of various literary devices in both novels. And… I think I better stop right here before I run out of thoughts to contribute to my online book clubs, both of them. And I think I still owe Fully Booked a visit.

I was about to head to Eastwood last night to see what I could score at Fully Booked, where books were, yet again, at 20% off, when Don rang me up and asked me to join him and Jansen for some pizza at the Shang. I was a bit reluctant at first to postpone my book-buying binge, but pizza with a couple of feral but very good friends was just impossible to pass up (that the pizza was going to be free made it so). 

About thirty minutes later I was at a table with the two, in front of several slices of California-style pizza. The pizza was good, but the concomitant chat was better. In between talking about our jobs and Lost, we of course talked about Tumblr, that place where we got to know one another and the inspiration to the faux logo shirt I was wearing last night. 

After discussing our plans (or the complete lack thereof) for our collaborative Tumblr film blog and flinching at the mention of a certain tumblelog filled with blind items (an exercise in poor taste), we eventually arrived at the subject of Zet’s just founded Read Hard! Tumblr book club. I said I’d submit a photo of my ugly face beside my copy of Everything is Illuminated, Read Hard’s first selection, and here it is.

Everything is blurred, but that cover actually reads:

Everything Is Illuminated
Jonathan Safran Foer
a novel

While I’m a huge fan of gray318’s iconic book cover design, I got this limited Olive Reader edition instead not only because it’s the only copy of the novel I found when I went looking for it around the metro last year but also because its cover design was done by another favorite artist of mine, Milan Bozic. Also, it’s a tribute to Safran Foer’s nascent genius that his novel was included in this limited series of paperbacks, in the company of such great works as Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. 

Lest I forget, I’ll still be participating in the Ilustrado online book club that I mentioned previously. I imagine it’ll be interesting to read both novels alongside each other, what with the parallels that can be drawn between the two, stylistically and thematically. For starters, the narrators in both novels were named after their respective authors. Also, the cover for the locally distibuted editon of Ilustrado was designed by none other than gray318. Then there’s the use of various literary devices in both novels. And… I think I better stop right here before I run out of thoughts to contribute to my online book clubs, both of them.

And I think I still owe Fully Booked a visit.

readhard