Over the summer, I read Travels with my Aunt, a light-hearted, mildly comedic piece by the crime author Graham Greene. I had never read Greene before, but have seen several adaptations of his books, most notably The Third Man. So I had pretty high expectations ( Read more... )

Started reading Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene this summer. In a word, it's droll. The action and themes are light, and it's peppered with light humor of a British sort, filled with understatement punctuated by the occasional dryly delivered absurdity. My favorite part so far definitely had been the description of the church his aunt her ( Read more... )

It's the kind of cold weather outside that makes you appreciate the warmth of your home. The lights are on, the apartment's quiet, and the couches look inviting. I've brewed some tea. In other words, I have the overwhelming urge to just sit down and read.

But, instead, I have to grade.

We did all of our holiday shopping this weekend. We consciously decided to keep the presents rather small this year and so we've been getting books and scarves and other presents. Today we walked through downtown New Haven and stopped in the Yale Bookstore (= Barnes and Noble), where we encountered several gift ideas. In the bestseller's section ( Read more... )

Got in late yesterday afternoon, talked to family, unpacked a little and was happy to find nothing had broken in transport. Fell asleep at 7pm and woke up at 5am. My parents still aren't up, but I've been abuzz with activity the last two hours. I've nearly unpacked all my suitcases, cleared out space in the closet and bookcases and slowly been ( Read more... )

After many, many recommendations from Christian, member's of his family, Berkeley friends and others, I finally got around to reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma.( review )

Finished reading Freakonomics, which Christian had bought in an airport, read, and recommended. It was generally an amusing, light read. For a mathematician, at least, the chapter on cheating teachers had the most appeal, since in it you genuinely had to design an algorithm and think about "suspicious" pattern detection. Some other chapters were ( Read more... )

I finally finished reading Der Vorleser (The Reader), which was adapted last year into a movie starring Kate Winslet. I bought the book in October 2009 in a bookstore in Bremen, because I wanted to practice my German with a book with reasonable vocabulary and style. I read the first section out of three quite diligently, but it still went slowly ( Read more... )

While in Buffalo for these three weeks, I borrowed God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut from Christian's aunt and uncle. It's very different from the fare I'm used to from Vonnegut; instead of science fiction, it's more of a political fiction. The plot's all about the general viewpoint that the rich deserve their riches because they're ( Read more... )

Christian and I were in a bookstore the other day. Now, I don't normally buy comic books, but the cover of this comic book screamed out at me:


( Read more... )