Days of Reading

Famam Librosque Cano

2010-03-15T15:00:00.003-04:00

Today, we take a break from book reviews and look at an early poem of Ezra Pound. Its title translates to “I sing of fame and books”: the opening line of the Aeneid (“armam virumque cano”) translates to “I sing of arms and a man”.Famam Librosque Cano * by Ezra PoundYour song? Oh! The little mothersWill sing them in the twilightAnd when the nightShrinketh the kiss

Arcadia, Part I

2010-03-14T21:51:00.005-04:00

Arcadia, Tom StoppardSummary:The set, a 19th century school room in an English manor overlooking a grand park, is shared by 2 sets of characters, living in 1809-1812 and "present day" (presumably 1993, when this play was first published. In 1809, Thomasina Coverly is a precocious genius of 13 being tutored by Cambridge-educated, gentlemanly, Byronic Septimus Hodge, who happens to be friends with

21: The Odd Women

2010-02-27T12:15:00.002-05:00

The Odd Women, George GissingThe Odd Women is acutely aware of misery.The title refers to unmarried women in Victorian society, when women outnumbered men and had virtually no way of earning a dignified living, aside from making a suitable marriage. Being brought up to be a lady and educated to be a lady, an odd woman could only obtain work as a governess or a companion - both unhappy position.

20: Clara Callan

2010-01-26T16:53:00.005-05:00

Clara Callan, Richard B. WrightI once read a satirical website that boasted a recipe for the composition award-winning literature. It had dictums like "thou shalt sneer at conflict" and "thou shalt commit no plot". I thought it was hilarious, sinister, at the time, distant. Now that I have wasted hours of my life - gone, irretrievably gone like the wind - reading Clara Callan, winner of the

19: Remarkable Creatures

2009-12-22T23:47:00.004-05:00

Remarkable Creatures, Tracy ChevalierElizabeth Philpot and her sister are eccentric spinsters in the early 1800's - back when mothers spent most of their energy marrying off daughters and the rest solving the menage problem (how to seat large dinner parties so that so married couples sit next to each other). When their brother prepares to get married, the sisters are exiled to Lyme Regis to lived

18: The Original of Laura

2009-11-30T19:06:00.002-05:00

Vladimir Nabokov, The Original of LauraA fragmentary review:"Dear Mummy and Hummy," wrote Lolita, once upon another Nabokov book. Flora might have written something of the sort, but her mother's tenant is named "Hubert Hubert".There is a lovely, nearly-complete scene wherein Flora is sitting on a bench at a train station and is accosted by an old friend, who presses her to read a book called

Why I hate Jane Eyre

2009-11-22T22:11:00.005-05:00

I thought I would hate Twilight. From listening to friends and reading reviews, I'd already noticed its similarities to Jane Eyre and I read it, hoping for a bash-fest of a comparison between it and my all-time-least-favourite book. But I was wrong. It's only Jane Eyre that I hate.Twilight is really not all that bad. It's a seductive, little fantasy about obsessive love on the dark side of

Reading Anais continued

2009-11-15T11:57:00.003-05:00

I keep a diary because journaling is supposed to have therapeutic effects. It's supposed to help with depression and various mental illnesses. Recording one's life and being able to look back on it and think about what has happened and why ... this process is supposed to filter out the crazy in one's life. It's introspection and meditation and all those healthy things. One should be able to spot

18: Swann's Way

2009-11-05T18:03:00.004-05:00

"And, drying my eyes, I promised them [the hawthorn flowers] that, when I grew up, I would never copy the foolish example of other men, but that even in Paris, on fine spring days, instead of paying calls and listening to silly talk, I would make excursions into the country to see the first hawthorn-trees in bloom."Proust, Swann's Way, somewhere towards the end of Combray chapterI had been

Reading Anais Nin

2009-10-28T19:05:00.006-04:00

Sometimes, I think I'm a bit whimsical. As I nearly finished cooking dinner today, I was seized with a sudden craving for onion soup. Despite having no idea how onion soup is made, I proceeded to cook and invent a recipe for onion soup out of the contents of my fridge, while eating the dinner that I'd already made.Yesterday, I was seized with a sudden compulsion to read the diaries of Anais Nin.

Wrapping up the September/October reading list

2009-10-27T19:02:00.003-04:00

I started this reading project with the noble ambition of making a large dent in the Nobel Laureates book list and am moving on to other books and other horizons.Most of these books that I've read (the Piano Teacher, Auto-da-fe, Mourning Becomes Electra) are about such extraordinary people. Here, I'm not using the word "extraordinary" as one describes superheroes or gods, but as in the sense of

Reading Herzog

2009-10-14T20:05:00.002-04:00

Buried under a pile of graduate student drudgery as I am, I am still reading and ticking off Nobel Literature laureates. This week, I'm reading Saul Bellow's Herzog. Herzog is a professor who is so afflicted by the cruelties of his ex-wife that he is reduced to a semi-sane state, wherein he stops in the middle of his lectures of scribble down snippets of letters. These letters - to various people

17: One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich

2009-10-04T11:19:00.003-04:00

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One day in the life of Ivan DenisovichThis is one of those books that I always wanted to read, but never got around to it. I thought it might be depressing and, like a hypochondriac, I often suspect myself of depression, read about symptoms of various mental illnesses, and fall under the impression that one depressing book will plunge me into a fit of depression and

16 Desire Under the Elms/Strange Interlude/Mourning Becomes Electra

2009-09-24T20:37:00.008-04:00