I had a nice weekend, spent it alone.  Saw a lot of "Law and Order:  Criminal Intent" 'cause I have a crush on Vincent D'Onofrio (well, the whole cast) and it's good, too.  Last night I saw a 2006 episode where they gut the rationale for torture and waterboarding used by the Bush administration at Guantanamo.  Well done, a bit late, but well done.

• ( Read more... )

I got this from shirtlifterbear on here, and Pete Chvany on Facebook:

Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. List 15 books you've read that will always stick with you. They should be the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

1. The Deptford Trilogy. I've read it a couple of times. Three books that reveal why Boy Staunton ( Read more... )

I was going through a box of books and found a small copy of Chekhov's plays. Kind of nice yellow binding but marred, I can't tell if something is stuck to the front or if it's scraped off.

So I was thinking of donating it to the library when I opened the front, where it has Julian Beck's signature. I don't recall my parents knowing him, but he ( Read more... )

Book meme I got fromdisccub.

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE,
4) Strikeout the books you read but didn't like.
5) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track ( Read more... )

A random literary quote changed the course of my friend Carlos' life, a number of years ago.

Meeting with the headmaster of his private high school after his latest escapade, Carlos was asked why he should not be expelled.  The story goes that he replied,

"As Justine said to Clea in The Alexandria Quartet,, 'Just because you're spending all your ( Read more... )

I was thrilled to read a rave front-page NY Times Book review of Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke while i was in Seattle, and ran out and bought it (ok, I ordered it on Amazon, cheap!).  Now he's won the National Book Award for it, and may get wider \readership.

He's a fascinating writer, just a few years older than me (born in '49), and came through ( Read more... )

I got this from poetrytoweasels

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users as of 9/30/07. Bold what you have read, italicize what you started but didn't finish, and underline it if you watched the movie adaptation.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
( 104 more books )

Mei Long Village
I had a friend in town and wanted to take him someplace special and unique. I remembered a restaurant in Alhambra, but was fuzzy on the location, I hadn't been there in years.

I found the place originally when my friend Kori left town and had a going away dinner there.  The restaurant is in a little minimall dominated by its ( Read more... )

I read the new Easy Rawlins mystery, Little Scarlet, this weekend. It was good, Easy is 45 years old now and living through the Watts riots in 1965. It brought tears to my eyes in the first few pages, the part about his relationship to another tenant in his building, a Jewish immigrant cobbler. Through the book, Easy finds a new relationship to ( Read more... )

I used to be a voracious reader.  In fact, as a kid I read much ( Read more... )