Still toying with the idea of trying to figure out which books I would keep, if I were to limit myself to 100. Last week I figured out 25 works of fiction I'd want to keep; here are some selections from the Poetry shelf.

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  Veil: New and Selected Poems by Rae Armantrout
  [Armantrout's poems are enigmatic, delicate, and careful—she may be my favorite ( Read more... )

Here are the first 25 picks, all from the Fiction shelves.

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  The Mezzanine, by Nicholson Baker
  [One of my favorite authors, and this is my favorite novel by him.]
  
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  Labyrinths, by Jorge Luis Borges
  [This book has enough provocative, imaginative ideas in it to last one a lifetime simply by itself.]
  
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  The Age of Wire and String, by Ben Marcus
  [Still a ( Read more... )

So after I saw Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon (Film Club XXVII), I went and got a book of her writing out of the library (Essential Deren: Collected Writing on Film). It's pretty interesting, and it sheds some light on exactly what it is that she's attempting to do in her films.

I tend to read with a package of book darts nearby, and ( Read more... )

Of the last five books I've read (see the reading log here), all five of them are graphic novels. That's the first time that that's happened in the five years I've been keeping a reading log.

I think there are a few factors that might contribute to this, besides the fact that graphic novels are generally pretty quick reads. It's winter, and an ( Read more... )

I know we're a little bit far on into 2008 for a year-end recap from 2007, but I try to crunch the numbers on the reading log every year, and I don't want to skip 2007 just because I was so busy for the first few weeks of the New Year.

So. Total number of books I read last year: 58! That's up a comfortable 16 from last year, and only two shy of ( Read more... )

With classes being over (they ended, for me, on Thursday), I've been able to take some time to catch up on this year's reading log. That said, here are some new capsule reviews for stuff I read this fall...

Alma, or The Dead Women by Alice Notley
This book is many things simultaneously: a collection of experimental poems utilizing different female ( Read more... )

Back in August, I wrote that Charles Stross' Accelerando might be the best science fiction novel of the last ten years. After a few months to think about it, I stand by that, and I wanted to try to follow up on the claim a bit here.

First off, it touches on just about every hot geek topic from the last decade or two: bandwidth politics, data ( Read more... )

I've updated this year's reading log with some new reviews, posted below for your reading convenience:

Easy Travel to Other Planets, by Ted Mooney
There's a lot to like about the way this novel chronicles the interpersonal drama among a group of intellectuals and artists. The conversations are stylish, fragmentary, and mediated; the prose is ( Read more... )

Leaving tomorrow for a few days in the Great Northeast; if any readers of this blog happen to be in the greater Boston area and have a free lunch hour tomorrow or Friday, let me know and we'll hang. Otherwise I'm going to the Coop to blow some money.

Because of my trip, film club for the week is canceled, and I probably won't really be upping the ( Read more... )

Here are some reviews of stuff I read back in April. I didn't get a chance to review them then, because back then I was posting reviews of stuff I read in March. Oh well.

The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography: Volume 1 by Bob Perelman, Barrett Watten, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Tom Mandel, Ron Silliman, Kit Robinson, Lyn ( Read more... )