Remember that copy of The Complete Short Stories of Flannery O'Connor that I rescued a couple weeks ago? I've been reading through it today, and it's excellent. A shame that O'Connor isn't more widely read outside of high school English courses.

One story in particular, "The Barber", struck a chord with me. It's a really funny story, but for all ( Read more... )

In which I describe what I've read lately (or not lately) in ten words or less, in approximate reverse chronological order. (For those of you who like to read, but don't like to read.)

Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre. LiveJournal of obsessive-compulsive French Adderall addict.
Jumpers, Tom Stoppard. (Stage play.) Acrobat philosopher's theodicy ( Read more... )

Today I went to the Strand and spent far too much on books.

Typical thoughts after reading Paul Auster, Jonathan Safran Foer, Haruki Murakami, Chuck Palahniuk, etc. on the subway:Oh...so that's what the endless city is. I am running there, in my heart--I can see the towers outside the windows, through the tunnels. Man, life is so beautiful, yet so ( Read more... )

Hey guys! Here's an idea for a completely insane postmodernist novel. There's this dude, see, in the Netherlands or some other quasi-socialist Western European country, who's the great-grandnephew of crazy sunflower saint Vincent van Gogh. He has his great-granduncle's passion for art and his great-grandaunt's ideological zeal (Vincent Van Gogh's ( Read more... )

*gasp*

JAMES AUGUSTINE ALOYSIUS JOYCE.

WELL I NEVER.

(literary nsfw)

Also, the Battle of Hastings as told with kittens.

Now, as you're probably already well aware, I'm not a big fan of the entire genre of published fanfiction literary tributes that Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice has spawned. (The kind with such authentically Austenian passages as " 'Why, Mr. Darcy,' cried a breathless Ms. Bennet as the hem of his breeches swiftly descended from his firm, ox-toned ( Read more... )

1.
Conversation with Maxine, of the Brooklynite Cabal (crwr/english majors who went to high school in Brooklyn together, went to college at Oberlin together, and came back to Brooklyn together), at a holiday party:

Maxine: So I heard you moved? Where ( Read more... )

Current subway book is perennial Nobel Prize nominee Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. There's a reason why every pastiche of pretentious postmodern snobbery involves namedropping Pynchon--just having heard of him makes you an insufferable hipster. Imagine that some a bitter, thoroughly Californicated early twentieth century Hollywoodite read ( Read more... )

The Strand Annex, the overflow location for New York's biggest bookstore, used to be down the street from my office. The Strand Annex closed last month. This makes me extra unhappy ( Read more... )

Heads up from prussianblueuu:

Click to view

Beautiful stop-motion update of an animation classic. This is exactly what computer programming is like.

Oh, Mudd Library...how I miss thee, and thine brightly colored furnishings.