My sister kindly met me at the public library on Saturday and lent me her library card. She also gave me a baseball cap, which she assures me I should use any time I visit the public library because it will ward off the attentions of creepy old dudes. I did not take the baseball [...]
Archive for May, 2010
Good omens
Posted in Misc., tagged do I feel like I am whoring out my accent? NOT AT ALL., my sublessor doesn't like coffee or TV which are two things I truly adore, on the other hand I'd probably never go out for coffee in the morning if there were a coffee maker here, tomorrow I shall go shopping for what will become my habitual breakfast place on May 25, 2010 | 31 Comments »
I read two books today, and am consequently behind on reviews. On the other hand, I am even behinder on reading about what y’all have been reading, and I have decided to give priority to that. So this is a quick post to say that I have arrived safely in my Impressive Academic Town and [...]
Review: The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy (NYRB Classics)
Posted in 3 Stars, Heard about from the internets, tagged Elaine Dundy, Ernest Hemingway was a big poop, Ernest Hemingway was seriously terrible - like that time he wrote that poem making fun of Dorothy Parker's suicide attempt, I am sorry I haven't been posting more but there is all this terrible moving to get through, I miss the scones at Gail's on Portobello Road, independent presses, NYRB Classics, one time the civics teacher at my school told her class that Ernest Hemingway killed himself because he was an expatriate and when you are an expatriate you get depressed and suicidal, shouldn't take her too seriously though because she was also under the impression that when her daughter got kissed at the altar it was her very first kiss, Spotlight Series, The Dud Avocado, today I moved all the rest of my furniture and organized my shoes into boxes which was depressing because I won't have them all summer on May 17, 2010 | 49 Comments »
Someone I love: Joan Wyndham Someone I hate: Ernest Hemingway Combine them and you get: Elaine Dundy As you can imagine, I had a strange combination of feelings about The Dud Avocado. It’s a semi-autobiographical novel about a young expatriate American party girl and her relationship with an American man called Larry, whom she runs [...]
If you could banish one euphemism forever
Posted in Misc., tagged and that's why I hate the story of Dream and Nada in the Sandman on May 12, 2010 | 52 Comments »
What would it be? Because I mentioned on Rose City Reader‘s blog today that I hate it when books say “sex” as a noun to refer to genitals, and it made me realize that I couldn’t let another day go by without telling y’all how much I hate that particular use of that particular word. [...]
Review: If You Come Softly, Jacqueline Woodson
Posted in 3 Stars, Heard about from the internets, tagged for young people, I like a little more bang for my buck, If You Come Softly, Jacqueline Woodson, Matt Damon was an English major too!, one of these days they're going to release all of Inside the Actors Studio on DVD and I'm going to buy it for my sister, one of those gifts - you know - that's ostensibly me being really generous but it's covertly sort of a gift for me too, seriously I could listen to James Lipton talk all day, we'd have an Inside the Actors Studio marathon that would go on for days and when we emerged we'd utter only calm perfectly-formed well-researched sentences on May 11, 2010 | 23 Comments »
Meh. I HATE TO SAY MEH. I particularly hate to say meh when it’s a young-adult book to which I am saying it, because I feel like if I say meh to a young-adult book, I am becoming one of those people who turn up their noses at young adult books and do not pay [...]
Milton in May: Week 1
Posted in Reread, tagged epic poems rock, Happy Election Day to my British readers!, I can tell the heaven sections are boring because I stop caring about the story and start noticing rhetorical devices, information from Latin IV AP has apparently been sheltering unmolested in the dark crevices of my brain, John Milton, Milton in May, Paradise Lost, you know who Milton didn't like? CATHOLICS, you know who Milton disliked even more? NON-CHRISTIANS on May 6, 2010 | 28 Comments »
I did a class on Milton when I was at university. The professor was this tiny, enthusiastic woman, clearly in love with Milton and excited for us to be in love with him, too. She would charge up and down the classroom gesticulating wildly and drawing stick-figure pictures of important scenes on the chalkboard. I [...]
Aw hell, I forgot all these books
Posted in 2 Stars, 4 Stars, Heard about from the internets, Picked up randomly, tagged Ammon Shea, Dan Ariely, I am reading six books right now which may be too many, I read about Predictably Irrational on this website that I LOVE but I don't want to tell you about it in connection with a book I wasn't crazy about so you'll have to wait, Kage Baker, Predictably Irrational, Reading the OED, stacking up my books makes them seem many but counting them in the LibraryThing catalogue makes them seem few, The Company on May 5, 2010 | 35 Comments »
I read seven more books in April than I reviewed here (oops). To wit: I read all the rest of the Company books, and at the end I was probably about 85% satisfied, the remaining 15% belonging to Mendoza and her lot, because that was a bit too weird for me. Oh, and at least [...]
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