To my dog, there's no breakfast like cat hork ( Read more... )

Who knew, when I inherited the curiosity after Madeleine's passing, that Beckett would turn out to be so damn funny?  I read that whole Molloy trilogy and milk was coming out my nose.  Well, not ordinary milk but more like tear-milk.  Now I'm reading How It Is and it is doing a number on my mind because it seems to be about being born and dying and ( Read more... )

A sentence from a book I'm reading keeps resonating in my mind.  It's just a throw-away little read-on-the-bus murder mystery and I think this sentence encapsulates its spirit completely ( Read more... )

First Daughter continued her tradition of buying everything on my Amazon wishlist.  This really rocks, I gotta say.  Now the way books normally get on the list is either a review in one of the periodicals I read, or a recommendation from a friend.  I found a book reviewed in the NY Times a few weeks ago that I decided I Must Have.  I didn't even ( Read more... )

I finished a certain novel last night.  It's only 76 pages long and for a long time I thought I knew my opinion of it, but then I read that Bertrand Russell had a high regard for the author and I have a high regard for Lord R so I thought perhaps I should actually read it.  My edition is over 400 pages long, though.  What's in there?  Maps, history ( Read more... )

From time to time I feel the need to shout out for my homepage and favorite site, and today I'll also recommend this article, which I found via the homepage, and read twice.  Nothing really new here, just all put together in a coherent way.  I wish it had a map, though.

It's weird how unfazed kids are about how his mom gets offed by a hunter right at the beginning.   My brothers and I wouldn't touch mushrooms, though, because what if we turned bright green and died?  And then the Pet Boy tickled me by suddenly saying, "what, turn back!  look, Celeste is his cousin!  how can he marry his cousin!"  I explained that ( Read more... )

I sure do wish I belonged to a group of people who discussed urban legends and stuff like that there because from time to time I read things that are directly relevant to that topic.  For example, right now I'm reading a book with the title From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How Maps Name, Claim and Inflame that contains both information and ( Read more... )

It never fails that I will pick up a book and find some weird, arcane connection between it and the last book I read. But this one absolutely takes the prize. I just finished Ian McEwan's excellent Saturday and then picked up a book about nursery rhymes, a gift from my friend C of the W, called Heavy Words Lightly Thrown by Chris Roberts. The ( Read more... )

I am second to none in my admiration for Alexander McCall Smith and the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.  But I was only a few pages into the latest, and discovered that the Big Case involves mysterious deaths in a hospital ward, and I thought (and I know that all my urban-legend-loving mates will think), oops!  Oh well, it is fiction.....  (all in ( Read more... )